I wanted to say hello.
my name, not shockingly, is Pete Zimm (that is shortened form of my last name, but I go by this online…if you can’t figure out what it is short for, google bob dylan)
I really loved talking with people. and even praying with people. as a very liberal christian, I felt that the prayer was more about comfort and connection than anything else.
i also tended towards process theology, which says that the divine does no miracles (why would the divine create rules and then break them?) but simply opened up new possibilties-- that sounds nice. don’t know that it means anything real.
I pretty much stopped believing in a god that acted in the universe.
my goal was to be ordained in the united church of christ, the liberal denomination that admits the bible is full of errors, ordains gay people, thinks athiests are perfectly fine if they stay atheists.
I wanted to start a progressive spiritual community in austin. i have been meeting all the free thinking and non-traditional types in austin (new agers, skeptics, philosophy buffs, atheists, etc.)
what I found was on one side I met a group of very bright passionate people, who cared alot about science and reason. and would verbally rip your throat out if you hit a pet peeve. whether it was something I also hated (like homeopathy) or something I valued (mystical experience) this was the skeptic groups, the atheists, the humanists.
so…anyway… last week I went to my denominatioanl meeting for my ordination.
as I walked out I realized not only did I not want to be a traditional l pastor (i knew that)
but that i did not want to affiliate with a group where most of my fellow ordained members spent 6 hours a week studying the bible and spent the SINGLE hour they had all the member present quoting it for no good reason. because we no longer believe it.
since I don’t believe in heaven, hell, angels, demons, need for salvation from sin, the bible, the virgin birth, etc…I realized that we were wasting our time focusing on this old book.
I realized I was post-christian. that my values were humanist.
I have been googling humanist stuff. found CFI. am going to meeting this week.
I wanted to say hello. my name, not shockingly, is Pete Zimm (that is shortened form of my last name, but I go by this online...if you can't figure out what it is short for, google bob dylan) I am an geek in texas. I recently got my masters in divinity. 2012. Then I was accepted as a chaplain intern at a local hospital. I really loved talking with people. and even praying with people. as a very liberal christian, I felt that the prayer was more about comfort and connection than anything else. i also tended towards process theology, which says that the divine does no miracles (why would the divine create rules and then break them?) but simply opened up new possibilties-- that sounds nice. don't know that it means anything real. I pretty much stopped believing in a god that acted in the universe. my goal was to be ordained in the united church of christ, the liberal denomination that admits the bible is full of errors, ordains gay people, thinks athiests are perfectly fine if they stay atheists. I wanted to start a progressive spiritual community in austin. i have been meeting all the free thinking and non-traditional types in austin (new agers, skeptics, philosophy buffs, atheists, etc.) what I found was on one side I met a group of very bright passionate people, who cared alot about science and reason. and would verbally rip your throat out if you hit a pet peeve. whether it was something I also hated (like homeopathy) or something I valued (mystical experience) this was the skeptic groups, the atheists, the humanists. on the other hand were new agers, intergral theorists, other progressive groups... they have empathy, are friendly....but often believe all sorts of things that make me cringe (angels, tarot, psychics, charkra, reiki, homeopathy but, these people asked me how my day was. they did not only monologue. I can't universalize my experience and I have not met the CFI austin people yet....I meet them this week. but so many skeptics are angry. hey, I am angry. don't you think I puke when I see a creationist website? But I realize that you change the world with honey not vinegar. so..anyway.. last week I went to my denominatioanl meeting for my ordination. as I walked out I realized not only did I not want to be a traditional l pastor (i knew that) but that i did not want to affiliate with a group where most of my fellow ordained members spent 6 hours a week studying the bible and spent the SINGLE hour they had all the member present quoting it for no good reason. because we no longer believe it. since I don't believe in heaven, hell, angels, demons, need for salvation from sin, the bible, the virgin birth, etc.....I realized that we were wasting our time focusing on this old book. I realized I was post-christian. that my values were humanist. I have been googling humanist stuff. found CFI. am going to meeting this week.Welcome. You will probably learn that you are a "recovering Christian," which has many parallels to a recovering Alcoholic. Like alcoholism, religion is not something you will ever be fully recovered from. It's a process. As with alcoholism, there is no amount of religion you can imbibe without regressing. Good luck. You might like to read the web pages of former pastor Ryan Bell who is trying to experience atheism for a year. Though I am skeptical of anyone who wants to "try atheism," his writings have proven to be more insightful than I expected. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearwithoutgod/ Lois
Welcome to the CFI forums, Pete. I live just up the road from you in Round Rock. I know what you mean about skeptics getting a bit over the top, as I have been guilty of that in the past. I’m getting better though. At least I think so.
I just checked the CFI Austin web page and don’t see anything listed on the calendar and the Meetup page no longer exists. If you’d like to get together sometime send me a PM. We have similar backgrounds although I only made through one-half semester of seminary.
howdy Darron S. I found the CFI austin on meetup. maybe they switched pages or something if a new person started paying for the account… http://www.meetup.com/cfiaustin/
will pm
Welcome Pete! Ah, another Southern skeptic and from the deep South as well, a double bonus. From what I gleaned from your post, you and fellow semi-theists may well represent the crossover from pure theism to skepticism. Nothing like a degree in theology to set the skeptical ball rolling so to speak. hope you get a chance to meet Darron; he’s a regular poster here with some damn good insight. Looking forward to your posts.
Cap’t Jack
Welcome Pete! Ah, another Southern skeptic and from the deep South as well, a double bonus. From what I gleaned from your post, you and fellow semi-theists may well represent the crossover from pure theism to skepticism. Nothing like a degree in theology to set the skeptical ball rolling so to speak. Cap't Jackthanks. I hope to contribute. for a brief moment... I would like to deconstruct the term semi-theist. modern theology can, and often does, completely and utterly reject "classical theism" and that might seem like a move toward semi-theism. what is classical theism? well, any definition I give would be debated, but I would point to some key characterics that many modern theologicans since paul tillich utterly reject. 1) god is a supreme being, or any sort of being that in any real or ontological sense has person hood. God does not feel, think, or relate to universe in any like a person. A person is always in one place, in one time, having one perspective. the classical view of the super-being god that knows all and is all place and in all time basically negates any real correlation with personhood. 2) god as omnipotent. "if god is all powerful" many modern theologians just flat out state that either the divine never was all powerful or gave that in order to relate to creation. 3) god "knows" or has "been" to the future. from what we know about space and time, all the conceptions of god "knowing the future" really don't speak to how time/the future works in the universe. the big cause celebre in modern theology is that theism is over and panentheism is in. in this view, god is not seperable from universe but in relation to it. and God does not act in "miraculous" ways...to create a universe and then, as primary mode of important action, break the natural law of the universe, seems very odd. in this view, God is a a non-coercive reality of connection that people like to call things like "loving presence' and "hopeful reality" they are aware this contradicts how the bible views god. they don't give a shit. they would say that the people who wrote the bible put their own need for control onto their image of god. the second view is pantheism, either weak or strong. I never quite understand the difference. but I think in weak pantheism. saying "the universe in all its connectedness" and "the divine" are just two ways of saying the same thing..one is left brain way to saying it and the other is poetic way of saying it. in strong pantheism the universe somehow aware but that would be so foreign a way of being aware when compared to how people are aware...I am not sure what that means. another would l is postmodern theism, which states that god is not a being, but an event. in this system, God is the shared event that happens with people..God is a hoped for reality, not an actual reality. God does not actually exist...God is simply something we long for that, in events, we experience an approximation. a lot of people hate this view. and say it is is linguistic obfuscation. this theory notes that "democracy" and "truth" are never really real. they are concepts we long for. we have an approximation of democracy and we long for something closer to what we want democracy to be. the demoracy we live in is not, in an ideal sense the essence/being of what is meant in theory by "democracy". so we don't experience the reality of "democracy" but a mere approximation. i think all of these theories are believed by people that would not see themselves as semi-theists. because their theories are not halfway to another theory. they are new theories. one can argue they are subcategories of theism. that is a very valid point. they all have theism in their title :) but they are not classical and they are not half way to agnosticsm or atheism. in fact, when progressive christians become agnostics or atheists, these type of theologians are pretty annoyed when it is claimed that "I was a classical theist, then a process theist, then I found atheism" these are not a continuum. they are different theories that people journey towards. the fact that I used to be a classical theist, then a panentheist, and now vacillate between agnosticism and pantheism is not evidence of sliding on a scale. I did not "slide" or "evolve." I came to a new set of commitments. I have a lot of issues with process theology and a lot of liberal theologies but I refuse to believe that somehow I "evolved" into something better. anyway..the term semi-theist to me, seems to have connotations of a halfway house towards atheism. I actually think that some people must, due to biology and other factors be atheists, and should be atheists. and that other people could never honestly be atheists..and that this impossiblity has nothing to do with being weak-minded, or not a clear thinker, etc... but has to do with how much the person relies on intuition, how right brained they are, and other factors that are not good or bad..just simply are.
i think all of these theories are believed by people that would not see themselves as semi-theists. because their theories are not halfway to another theory. they are new theories. one can argue they are subcategories of theism. that is a very valid point. they all have theism in their title but they are not classical and they are not half way to agnosticsm or atheism. in fact, when progressive christians become agnostics or atheists, these type of theologians are pretty annoyed when it is claimed that “I was a classical theist, then a process theist, then I found atheism" these are not a continuum. they are different theories that people journey towards. the fact that I used to be a classical theist, then a panentheist, and now vacillate between agnosticism and pantheism is not evidence of sliding on a scale. I did not “slide" or “evolve." I came to a new set of commitments. I pthave a lot of issues with process theology and a lot of liberal theologies but I refuse to believe that somehow I “evolved" into something better. anyway..the term semi-theist to me, seems to have connotations of a halfway house towards atheism. I actually think that some people must, due to biology and other factors be atheists, and should be atheists. and that other people could never honestly be atheists..and that this impossiblity has nothing to do with being weak-minded, or not a clear thinker, etc… but has to do with how much the person relies on intuition, how right brained they are, and other factors that are not good or bad..just simply are.Hmm, ok a poor choice of words on my part. I do have a tendency to simplify concepts in order to save space but I see your point. Often we filter other philosophies through our own. In my case it was a sliding scale from early fundamental belief programmed into me by loving parents, extended family and local culture. During my undergrad years skepticism crept in as I began to study the history of religion in general through my grad and post grad work plus another twenty years of searching finally led me to be a non-theist and active in the cause of church-state separation. now my interest in religion is purely historical I.e. it's social and political impact on culture. Also, I never viewed atheism as something having a neurological origin, a tendency perhaps but not a root cause. I view religion as mainly a cultural phenomena. Cap't Jack
that is ok. at one level, I do feel like moving from christian to new ager to progressive chrsitian to agnostic has been an evolution in one direction. when I feel curmudgeonly, I think I have evolved beyond my liberal christian friends who still go to church and spend time with the bible. but somehow a part of me feels that it not the most productive paradigm.
the christians who walk around saying “hey, I love jesus but am pro gay marriage and believe in evolution. I read my bible” do a lot of good. other christians listen to them somtimes. I know that I will lose a lot of credibility amongst friends when more of them find out I no longer am part of a christian church.
Welcome, Pete Zimm. Glad to hear from another reasonable Texan.
I am, probably, more open, than most, to the possible level of influence of biology in determining our religiosity. Although it is also, obviously, a product (to a great extent) of environmental and cultural factors.
Personally, however, I wouldn’t attempt to explain the biological influences, using (what I view as pop-neuropsychology terms such as) “right-brain” and "“left-brain” phenomena. But then, my underlying orientation is applied behavior analysis and I recognize phylogenetic as well as ontogenetic factors that influence our behavior.
that is ok. at one level, I do feel like moving from christian to new ager to progressive chrsitian to agnostic has been an evolution in one direction. when I feel curmudgeonly, I think I have evolved beyond my liberal christian friends who still go to church and spend time with the bible. but somehow a part of me feels that it not the most productive paradigm. the christians who walk around saying "hey, I love jesus but am pro gay marriage and believe in evolution. I read my bible" do a lot of good. other christians listen to them somtimes. I know that I will lose a lot of credibility amongst friends when more of them find out I no longer am part of a christian church.There has been some recent pshycholgical research that shows you are right. People are more inclined to listen to other who have similar views and reject not just opinions but facts from people with opposing views.
There has been some recent pshycholgical research that shows you are right. People are more inclined to listen to other who have similar views and reject not just opinions but facts from people with opposing views.Hence the news networks FOX and MSNBC, even though both skew the facts to fit a particular agenda. It's a dangerous tendency politically to move to the extremes without first considering the facts. As to neurological hardwiring, the last word on that isn't in as yet but eventually takes us back to nature v. Nurture again and this debate has been hashed and rehashed here for years. I read a book by McCauley, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not that deals with this subject, I.e. the brain is preprogrammed to intuitive thinking and not critical which leads to rejecting the opinions of "the other side". Cap't Jack
... I.e. the brain is preprogrammed to intuitive thinking and not critical which leads to rejecting the opinions of "the other side". Cap't JackMy best guess is that it would be more accurate to say that intuitive thinking develops prior to critical thinking. (And for some, critical thinking never develops.)
My best guess is that it would be more accurate to say that intuitive thinking develops prior to critical thinking. (And for some, critical thinking never develops.)That, BTW is the premise of the book I cited Tim. and unfortunately it's not some but many. How many Americans "believe" that evolution isn't a fact? Cap't Jack
howdy Darron S. I found the CFI austin on meetup. maybe they switched pages or something if a new person started paying for the account.. http://www.meetup.com/cfiaustin/ will pmI'm not a Texan, but I have recent ancestors named Zimmerman (one N, like Bob Dylan). Who knows, maybe we're related! Lois
Welcome, nothing wrong with the desire for community which I think a lot of supposed believer really want in church. There are many types of non-religious communities to partake in and serve. Good luck!
Welcome Pete! Ah, another Southern skeptic and from the deep South as well, a double bonus. From what I gleaned from your post, you and fellow semi-theists may well represent the crossover from pure theism to skepticism. Nothing like a degree in theology to set the skeptical ball rolling so to speak. Cap't Jackthanks. I hope to contribute. for a brief moment... I would like to deconstruct the term semi-theist. I don't know. Semi theist sounds an awful lot like semi-pregnant. Lois
Interesting comment, Lois. Some items are dichotomies with nothing between the two ends, but others are more a spectrum. Fundamentalist theist is at one end, and strong atheist is at the other. However, where do we put categories like agnostic, nontheist, deist, those who are still theists but are beginning to have doubts, those who have moved from theism to atheism but still have a bit of a nagging belief?
Personal note: BTW, Lois, you missed a better than average discussion Friday evening.
Occam
Interesting comment, Lois. Some items are dichotomies with nothing between the two ends, but others are more a spectrum. Fundamentalist theist is at one end, and strong atheist is at the other. However, where do we put categories like agnostic, nontheist, deist, those who are still theists but are beginning to have doubts, those who have moved from theism to atheism but still have a bit of a nagging belief? Personal note: BTW, Lois, you missed a better than average discussion Friday evening. OccamTheist, non-theist, deist and atheist are statements of belief. A deist is a theist. An atheist and a non-theist are the same thing. Agnostic is a statement of knowledge. It is not a third choice between theism and atheism. It has nothing to do with belief. A person can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. I think people make it more complicated than it is. There can be strong theists or weak theists (belief is a continuum) but there is only one kind of atheist. I, for one, do not accept terms such as weak and strong atheist, though some try to make that distinction. My position is that one is an atheist or one is not. Either one believes god(s) exists or one does not. I see no middle ground. Claiming to know there is no god is just as irrational as claiming to knows there is one (or many). No one can know. Belief or non belief in god(s) is all that is possible. I would like to have been at the discussion Friday night, but I was on my way back from London where politicians are having an argument as to whether England is a Christian country. Several make good arguments that it is not, despite the established church. Someone said the Church of England has saved the English from Christianity. :lol: Lois
I can understand our different points of view. Example: Three of us decide to go to the Costco. I’m just getting into my car and will drive the ten miles. You are about to pull into the parking lot. The third person has just walked in. From your point of view two of us are not at Costco, one is there – dichotomy. From my point of view, I’m a long distance from Costco, you are very close to it, and the third is at Costco – spectrum. While the external reality hasn’t changed, we have different ways of describing it. Your way is more straightforward and simple; mine is more nuanced. We both see a flaw in the other’s thinking. I guess that’s a good enough reason to have discussion websites.
Occam
I can understand our different points of view. Example: Three of us decide to go to the Costco. I'm just getting into my car and will drive the ten miles. You are about to pull into the parking lot. The third person has just walked in. From your point of view two of us are not at Costco, one is there -- dichotomy. From my point of view, I'm a long distance from Costco, you are very close to it, and the third is at Costco -- spectrum. While the external reality hasn't changed, we have different ways of describing it. Your way is more straightforward and simple; mine is more nuanced. We both see a flaw in the other's thinking. I guess that's a good enough reason to have discussion websites. OccamYou must be a Costcoist, as you appear to believe that Costco actually exists. Better that, I guess, than a Walmartist.