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Recommendation: One Earth Project

September 8, 2012

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One earth?  Of course we all live on one earth, don’t we?  Yet, we don’t acknowledge this is all our actions.  Do we consume more than our share?  Are we depleting resources?  These questions have been around for a long time, without bringing people to new understandings of the place of humans on the earth.  Notice that I speak of “understandings” here, not of actions.  Action follows from belief structures.

Myths and religions grow up together.  Myths may have multiple meanings.  Religious leaders try to narrow them down.

I believe that sacred texts are meant to be encountered anew by each generation, each devout reader.  But we come to them with preconceptions, conditioning.  There’s the conditioning of our upbringing in Sunday School, perhaps.  But an even stronger influence may be the conditioning we have acquired from the society we live in.  Going back to reexamine our sacred text and to rethink meanings which have been handed down is a true spiritual quest.  It is how prophets are made.

Purple Mat

I put here a new picture of the purple mat in my yard.  Notice the curved edge beside it.  That is a 12” round stepping stone that provides a sense of scale for this small plant.  You have to be watching for it to see it.  This is a good metaphor for the voices of prophets in our midst.  You have to be listening for those voices, but they are there.  One such voice can be found on Lee Van Ham’s blog, The One Earth Project.  Lee has rethought some very old stories in Genesis, the story of Eden and of Cain and Abel.  His interpretations give new insight for people trying to relearn what seems in our day almost a lost art: to be one with the created world instead of using and, in some cases, abusing it.  And to stop living as if we had multiple earths to supply our needs.

Click on One Earth Project in the blogroll on the right of this page.  See where Lee’s thinking is taking him now.

Political Conventions Then and Now

September 5, 2012

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The purpose of a political convention, traditionally, is to select a party’s candidates.  This year that’s all been done, due to a long process and lots of media attention.  Instead of a meeting to make a decision, the conventions are carefully scripted presentations, meant to persuade those outside the hall, who, thanks to the television coverage, can usually see what’s happening on the stage more clearly than those inside.

Things were different in 1876, when Robert Ingersoll gave his famous speech nominating James G. Blaine for the Republican candidate for the presidency.  In those days the people outside the hall had to wait to read the speeches in the newspaper.  Ingersoll’s rhetoric was for the attendees alone.

In matters other than technology, however, there were similarities between 1876 and our present state of affairs.  The national debt was worrying everyone.  It had quadrupled during the Civil War; it stood at $2.18 billion and was showing no signs of dropping.  In addition, a panic in 1873, propelled in large part by shady dealings among Wall Street financiers, had induced a recession that was far from over.  Wars, deficit and recession: things we are familiar with today. Ingersoll’s speech suggests a different approach to these issues from that which current leaders offer.  What the Republicans want, he argues, is this:

They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money, and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it.

Later on he adds:

This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by passing resolutions in a political convention.

The idea that money could be created without gold and silver to back it up was unthinkable in 1876.  Wealth, whether of the country or the individual, could only come through work.  Ingersoll becomes quite poetic as he expand on this.  His balanced phrases can be set into lines like a poem:

The Republicans of the United States demand a man
who knows that prosperity and resumption,
when they come, must come together;
that when they come,
they will come hand in hand
through the golden harvest fields;
hand in hand by the whirling spindles
and the turning wheels;
hand in hand past the open furnace doors;
hand in hand by the flaming forges;
hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire,
greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil.

Such fine language, though highly praised and long remembered, did not win Blaine the nomination, which went to Rutherford B. Hayes.  Hayes then won the election through promises to the South to remove from southern soil the Federal troops that were attempting to enforce northern standards, an issue Ingersoll had not addressed.   Government requires more than rhetoric.

John Emerson Roberts Begins to Think for Himself: Excerpts from the Biography

August 25, 2012

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John Emerson Roberts had a good Baptist education and became a successful Baptist preacher.  He was called to the First Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1881.  He was about 28 years old and three years out of school.  However, Roberts continued to read and to think.  By the summer of 1883 he was not preaching the same gospel his father had preached.  Here is a description of one sermon from that year, entitled “Co-laborers with God.”

He begins by saying, “What God has designed for humanity and how He will accomplish it, have been questions that have ever been discussed and never fully settled.” He blames the lack of an answer largely on a focus on secondary doctrines. He singles out Catholics for claiming none can be saved outside their communion. He then points out that Christ’s call was to action, not theories. He concludes this section by saying, “My faith is simple enough to believe that this round world will yet be won by the gospel of the Son of Man, but it will never be done by dogma and controversy, and the bitter strife of words.” Instead, it will be won by those who “have imbibed the spirit of the Nazarene, and who, like him, go down among men to teach them charity and forgiveness, and purity, and faith, and love.”

It’s no surprise that a Baptist would find fault with Catholics in Roberts’s time.  And to dismiss theories of the fall of man as a case of people “reasoning about things that are beyond them” was also common in churches that focused on individual commitment to Christ.  But Roberts went further:

Any doctrine of hell or of election (that only some will be saved) he puts in this category of doctrines which have gone astray. They contradict the biblical record: “Jesus Christ said he died for the world.” He calls attention then to an opposite error: the idea that it is entirely a man’s choice to accept or refuse salvation. Roberts interprets Paul’s claim “for we are laborers together with God” to mean that the work of redemption involves both God and man.

In August, 1883, when Roberts gave this sermon, the members of First Baptist Church seemed to be very pleased with their pastor.  Fourteen months later, in October, 1884, the attitude had changed.

            Roberts was asked to preach two sermons stating his beliefs, in particular concerning the existence of hell. He did this on the evenings of October 25 and November 2. In one sermon, he argued that the idea of “endless punishment” is an inaccurate reading of scripture, contrary to reason and the sense of justice, and offensive to moral sentiment. In the other, he offered a contemporary understanding of hell: “Hell begins where sin begins, and is where sin is. Hell is no postponed catastrophe: it is here now.”
Following his November 2 sermon, the congregation voted to dismiss Roberts.

Robert Ingersoll was in Kansas City shortly after this event.  It was his custom to notice local religious events, which might provide local color for his lectures.  In this case it was not in a lecture but in conversation with a reporter for the Kansas City Journal that Ingersoll commented on what the First Baptist congregation had done:

I see that the Rev. Mr. Roberts of your city has the courage to say that the reason of each man is his highest standard of truth.  Of course, this is absolutely true, but the members of his church, holding their own reason in contempt, justly it may be, proceeded to vote (in order to be consistent) against their reason and turned him out.

Roberts and Ingersoll were not yet acquainted when Ingersoll made this statement.  Roberts had more thinking to do before he came to agree fully with Ingersoll’s point of view.

Excerpts are from Chapters 3 and 4 of John Emerson Roberts: Kansas City’s “Up-to-date” Freethought Preacher.  See the Books page for more information.

More on Archimedes: Poem and Reflections

August 22, 2012

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He said: Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.” Some commentators think he also mentioned “a lever long enough” but this seems not to be the case, though he was speaking in connection with the use of levers.

I don’t know how Archimedes pictured the earth that he would be able to move, but I have trouble imagining his lever working on the round and ever-in-motion world we live on.  If it had curved tines like a fork, perhaps, the lever could catch it.  A giant shovel?  And when he lifted it up, where would he put it?

On a Roll

Ancients admired the
untiring sun. Unaware
this solid earth rolls ever
eastward, they charted
elaborate ellipses to
explain shifts caused
by the planet’s tilt.

Circling days spiral
down, spiral up, Europe
chasing Asia, which gets
to morning first every time.

Westward movement,
once search for Asia’s
back door, becomes
drive “into the sunset,”
where civilization has
gone to die.  And still
we praise the dawn.

Of course, Asia only gets to morning first because of the international date line, which was set by those folks in Greenwich, England.  If Japan had set the international clock, would the dateline be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Pacific?  One more thought to ponder.

I find even more to ponder in the question of “a place to stand.”  The question of where we stand has been addressed by many scholars in this post-modern era.  The general impression is that no two people stand in the same place; this challenges the possibility of real communication.

Fortunately it’s in our nature to keep trying to communicate. One function of poetry is to connect people across the different places on which we stand.  Another is to explore the metaphors and assumptions that determine the place where each of us stands.  Do any of us have solid ground under our feet?  Physically, we have shifting tectonic plates beneath us and space all around an ever-rolling globe.  It’s up to each of us to find a spiritual view that fits―for us―with that reality.

“’On A Roll” was first published in Lunarosity, a fine ezine which is now defunct.

Rationalist And Revivalist: More on Robert Ingersoll

August 15, 2012

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Excerpts from an essay I’ve posted on the American Society of Church History blog.

Robert G. Ingersoll and Dwight L. Moody were two of the best known speakers of their generation, from roughly 1875 to 1899, the year both died.  They represented two poles on the religious spectrum, the rationalist debunker of orthodoxy, and the orthodox evangelist.

In my blog post of August 11, I described Ingersoll’s career and beliefs.  Dwight L. Moody’s development took the opposite trajectory.  Born into a Unitarian family, he converted to orthodox Christianity at age 18, after he had left home.  He worked as a salesman until he felt the compulsion to teach and to preach the Gospel.  He first was a teacher, moving into evangelism after 1871.  A tour of Britain in 1875 began the period of his peak success, in his famous collaboration with the musician Ira Sankey.   Moody’s focus was on immigrants in the cities.  He was supported by coalitions of churches and by business leaders.  He introduced many businesslike aspects in his revivals, including advance men and rooms where volunteers could meet with those who answered the altar call.  Moody himself came to recognize that the revivals were not having the effects desired and turned his focus back to education, though he continued to preach extensively.

Moody’s message addressed behavior as well as conversion.  This is evident in a sermon variously called “Sowing and Reaping” or “Reaping Whatsoever We Sow.”  It is based on the text from Galatians 6:7-8:  “Be not deceived.  God is not mocked.  For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.  For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” Moody begins by stressing that God cannot be deceived and giving examples, from individuals to nations, of consequences arising from sin.  In the version I have seen of this sermon Moody intertwines consequences in this world, confession and making amends in this world, and confession to God, repentance and the promise of eternal life.  The free grace of God is almost lost: “He will forgive you the sin, though He will make you reap what you sow.”  God forgives, but society does not.

Robert Ingersoll responded to this sermon with a lecture in which he pointed out that Moody was contradicting himself.  Most of the lecture laments the fact that Moody has not read some useful books, such as Darwin and Spencer.  Ingersoll’s climax points out the inconsistency: that a man can convert just before death and be forgiven, but when a man appears before God moments after death, God sends his soul to hell.  (Moody, of course, avoided the death-bed conversion scenario entirely, calling for conversion at the time he spoke.)  Ingersoll concludes with the idea that Moody is behind the times. “Yes, the people are becoming civilized, and so they are putting out the fires of hell.  They are ceasing to believe in a God who seeks eternal revenge.”

Was Moody behind the times?  Would reason win out over revivals?  For the complete essay, go to:

http://www.churchhistory.org/blogs/blog/revivals-and-reason-rationalist-protests-1875-to-1920/

Happy Birthday, Mr. Ingersoll!

August 11, 2012

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Robert Green Ingersoll was born August 11, 1833, in New York State.  His father was a minister whose calling meant that the family moved frequently to different places.  Robert’s mother died when he was young, leaving two older sisters to “mother” him.

After service in the Civil War, which earned him the nickname “Colonel Bob,” Ingersoll became a successful lawyer, first in Peoria, Illinois, later in Washington, DC and then in New York City.  He first came to national attention as a speaker in 1876 when he made the nomination speech for James G. Blaine at the Republican National Convention.  Blaine lost out to Rutherford B. Hayes, but Ingersoll’s fame as a speaker was set.

Although he was involved with some headline trials, and gave many speeches in support of Republican candidates, Ingersoll’s real contribution to society was in his effort to bring reason to bear on the religious doctrines that flourished in his day.  Ingersoll’s father’s faith had been Calvinist, believing in the fallenness of humanity and God’s election of certain persons while condemning others to an eternal hell.  This strict orthodoxy was being challenged by the time Ingersoll began speaking out, as the churches struggled with developments in science, Biblical criticism, and other research.  In spite of the growing questions, an orthodoxy that focused on the hope of heaven and the fear of hell dominated popular thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century.

A lecture called “What Must We Do To Be Saved” was one of Ingersoll’s successful and repeated challenges to orthodox Christianity.  In this lecture, Ingersoll uses a review of the gospels in the New Testament to make his case.

He focuses first on the Gospel of Matthew.  He finds there the beatitudes (“Blessed are the merciful . . .”), the explanation of the Lord’s Prayer (“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.”), and several other passages which support the idea that it is right behavior, not belief, that God asks of us.  Given the current state of Biblical criticism, however, he felt free to mark as an interpolation anything that did not fit with this developing picture.

Ingersoll went on to review the Gospel of Mark, where he found one text he found offensive; current Biblical scholarship agrees that it is a late addition.  The King James Version of the Bible includes without question the ending to Mark now seen as a pastiche of later interpretation, which includes the statement: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Dismissing this selection as interpolation, Ingersoll finds Mark and also Luke basically in agreement with Matthew.  He dismisses the whole Gospel of John as written not by those who knew Jesus, but “by the church” and therefore not relevant to his argument.   From this survey Ingersoll concludes that the God of Jesus is merciful to those who show mercy, forgives those who forgive, operates according to the Golden Rule, and would in no circumstances send anyone to everlasting suffering in hell.  He closes the lecture by saying:

The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.
Upon that rock I stand.

“What Must We Do To Be Saved” is one of Ingersoll’s more gentle attacks on orthodoxy.  Sometimes he enlivened it with an introduction on the horrible deeds ascribed to the deity in the Old Testament.  In other lectures he focused on the books of Moses or on the crimes of the church in medieval times.  As he became better known he could expect to fill the largest hall in every city he visited.  He did not always speak on these issues.  People were eager to hear him on topics like Shakespeare, Robert Burns or Lincoln as well.

Ingersoll quickly became a favorite of freethinkers around the country.  He was giving popular credence to their claims and ideas.  After he died in 1899, one follower called Ingersoll “a prophet of the future, the light-bringing herald of the dawn.”  Ingersoll was placed alongside Thomas Paine as a second American freethought hero.

He’s one of my heroes because he did wonderful things with language.  His lectures are fun to read, with their rolling phrases and sly jabs.

For a full description of Ingersoll’s life and lectures, I recommend Frank Smith, Robert G. Ingersoll: A Life (Prometheus, 1990).

Coed College in 1870: Excerpts from my biography

August 4, 2012

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Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois was founded to develop an educated clergy, like many colleges, including Harvard and Yale.  Unlike Harvard and Yale, Shurtleff decided to admit women in 1869.  It happened because two women, Hasseltine Read, daughter of the College President, and Sarah Ellen Bulkley, daughter of an important professor, campaigned energetically for the opportunity to study.  The innovation was a success.  Two years later a total of twenty-six young women were enrolled in the preparatory school and the college.

The program at Shurtleff was divided into three terms of 13 1/2 weeks each.  Tuition was $8 per term.  College rooms could be rented for $4 per term, but separate arrangements had to be made for board, which was available in various clubs or boarding houses by the week.  Students also had the option of finding both board and lodging with a private family, for which the going rate was $4 or $5 per week.

What did they study?  Each course used one book per term.  Subjects included Latin, Greek, mathematics, and French or German.  There were other courses on Natural Theology and Moral Science.  The course on Moral Science used a text by Francis Wayland.

Wayland understood science . . . as a process of observation, deduction, and classification of elements of a fixed natural world.  He believed the human world of ethics could be similarly organized and he titled his text The Elements of Moral Science.  He began by comparing moral law to Newton’s laws of motion.  The consequences, he argued, were as certain, if not always as immediately obvious, as those of the force of gravity. . . .

Wayland further claimed that human beings were created to choose pleasure over pain, and were also intended to choose long-term over short-term pleasure.  He gave one example specifically aimed at students:

          Thus I am so formed that food is pleasant to me.  This, even if there were no necessity for eating, is a reason why I should eat it.  But I am also formed with a desire for knowledge.  This is a reason why I should study in order to obtain it.  That is, God intended me to derive happiness from both of these sources of gratification.  If, then, I eat in such a manner that I cannot study, or study in such a manner that I cannot eat, in either case I defeat his design concerning me by destroying those sources of happiness with which he has created me.

Wayland had definite ideas about how the material should be taught:

           Let the portion previously assigned for the exercise be so mastered by the pupil, both in plan and illustration, that he will be able to recite it in order and explain the connection of the different parts with each other without the necessity of assistance from his instructor. .
            Let the lesson which was recited on one day be invariably reviewed on the day succeeding.
            As soon as any considerable progress has been made in the work, let review from the beginning be commenced.  This should comprehend for one exercise as much as had been previously recited in two or three days; . . . .

The student who absorbed a whole text in this manner would in theory become able to develop his own ideas in a similar manner.  It is not clear where the student would get his own ideas if he, or his instructor, never challenged the book.

Life at Shurtleff was not all study.  There were two societies, called Alpha Zeta and Sigma Phi, which became coed as soon as the college did.

Each society had its own reading room and gathered its own library.  The two societies were mutually exclusive, since their weekly meetings were held at the same time, Friday evenings, but activities were similar: they held debates, invited guest speakers and arranged musical presentations.  Each held an annual Exhibition, scheduled so that members of the other society could attend.
Alpha Zeta’s Semi-Centennial History, published in 1898, noted the “advance” in the musical offerings brought about by the “advent of the young ladies.  As with most college organizations, not all activities were cultural.  Parties for holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween were popular events, and there were boat rides in spring and fall and coasting and skating parties in the winter.

It might be supposed that Justus Bulkley would have favored admitting women to Shurtleff because, of his nine children, only five, all girls, lived to adulthood.

He justified the inclusion of women in the program, however, by pointing out that educated young women would make better helpmeets for pastor husbands, thereby enhancing the men’s ministry.  Coeducation also gave women more opportunity to find those husbands.  In 1873, shortly after her graduation, Sarah Ellen Bulkley married Charles Brockway Roberts; . . . .  John Emerson Roberts would marry Frances Newell Bulkley in 1878.

These excerpts are from Chapter 2 of my biography, John Emerson Roberts: Kansas City’s “Up-to-date” Freethought Preacher.  See Books page for more information.

Two copies of the book are being offered as a Goodreads giveaway ending August 8: http://www.goodreads.com

 

The Story Begins: Excerpts

July 18, 2012

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        In 1869, John Emerson Roberts ran away from home. He was sixteen. His father had just died in the Michigan Asylum for the Insane inKalamazoo. His two elder brothers had left home, leaving him to be the man of the family for his mother and four younger siblings. Perhaps this was more responsibility than he was ready to bear. Many years later, Dr. Roberts told a newspaper interviewer that his plan was to go toNew Orleansand become a sailor.

This action is the first indication of John Roberts’s individuality and courage.  He was born in 1853 in Ohio, where his father was a Baptist minister.  His mother had strong religious roots going back to her grandfather who was a Congregational minister in Connecticut.  John’s family moved every few years, following his father’s calls to different churches, until they settled  in Michigan in 1857.  John grew up as a farm boy outside Battle Creek.

Mental illness was not well understood in the 1860s.  John’s father was diagnosed with melancholia (severe depression) in 1864, but was only admitted to the hospital in 1869, when the facility expanded.  Two primary theories about melancholia were that it was hereditary, in which case it could not be entirely prevented, and that it was caused by too much “brain work,” for which the remedy was physical labor.  John was a thinking person, as his later career would demonstrate, so he may have feared that he was susceptible to his father’s illness.

            The life of a sailor would both free John from the constraints of religion and reduce the risk of developing a disease that was believed to be caused by too much thinking and not enough physical activity. To his sixteen-year-old mind in 1869, it appeared to be a good solution to the frustrations of his situation as he headed south toward the Mississippi River. The action also shows his curiosity and readiness to try something new.

Excerpts from the first chapter of John Emerson Roberts: Kansas City’s “Up-to-date” Freethought Preacher.  See more on the Books page.  Or go to www.goodreads.com for a giveaway which ends on August 8.

Thanks to All My Readers

July 14, 2012

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This is the first anniversary of the publication of my biography, John Emerson Roberts: Kansas City’s “Up-to-date” Freethought Preacher.  I’m celebrating, first by saying thank you to all who have read it, are reading it, or are reading about it (along with other things) on this blog.

I’m also celebrating by offering two free copies on Goodreads, one of the places I first made connections beyond my existing circles.  If you’re interested, go to www.goodreads.com and check out their giveaways.

The book’s “launch” was a soft one.  Xlibris is good at fast turnaround.  They kept me moving to the next stage of production when I thought I’d have more time to prepare for marketing.  Suddenly the book was done, while I was on vacation, and they wouldn’t wait until the date I wanted to start publicity.  They sent out press releases – to whom I could not figure out from the data base they sent me – three weeks before I was ready.

I know about book signings, presentations, emails and post cards and went at those steps eagerly.  But this book is a niche item.  It appeals to people interested in freethought, history, and/or Kansas City.  We are a relatively small group.  Yet I know I have not gotten the word out to all of those who would enjoy reading the book.

I didn’t know what to do next.  I looked up freethought groups, religious historians, regional libraries and sent a variety of letters, announcements and sample copies.  “You need to market on line,” people said.

Xlibris wants to do marketing for its authors.  They set up a website for the book as part of my production package, but I have no access to it.  They will happily provide additional services, many at more than the cost of production.

“How will you target the niche this book is intended for?”  I asked.

“Librarians,” they answered.  “We will put an ad in their journal and send out emails to librarians across the country.  For you, a $500 discount on the price.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“New York Times Book Review,” they suggested.  It must be nice to see your book as one of eight on a full page Xlibris ad in the New York Times, but there’s no room for any of the words I’ve carefully crafted to explain why it’s a good story. [See my Books page, if you haven’t already.]

I felt I was very considerate not to laugh out loud at the Xlibris salesman who suggested television ads.  Was he going to survey freethought historians before deciding where to place those ads?  I thought not.

I’ve learned a lot this year, connecting on social media, getting advice from many sources, sending out more letters, creating this blog.  As a “platform” this is still a bit wobbly, but I progress.  If you can’t find your niche, you make one, right?

Such was the beginning of my non-fiction book in the world.  Next time, I’ll turn to the beginnings of the story IN the book – for those of you who haven’t read it yet.

What Use Is Metaphor?

June 30, 2012

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I believe we think in metaphor.  I’m sure I do.  All the dead metaphors lying around suggest this: melting pot, wall of separation, war on drugs, information superhighway, to mention just a few.  Many people, unfortunately, discount metaphor and this limits their thinking.

If we think in metaphor, this would be the way we think about deity, about religion.  It was reading the work of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides which first made me aware of this.  He asserts that we can only talk about God by analogy.  If we say God is good, we are only saying that this attribute of God is in some way analogous to the qualities we admire in a person we call good.  It makes sense that, if we are creatures, our Creator is beyond our understanding.  Our ideas can at best be vague approximations.

The problem is that modern popular language dismisses metaphor because it is not “true” by which is meant that it is not factual.  The reduction of “truth” to “fact” is unfortunate, because it easily constricts reason to “thinking about facts.”

Beginning in the mid-19th century, those who wanted to gain public attention for new religious ideas presented them in scientific language: the mediums of spiritualism tried to present their work as science; Mary Baker Eddy not only called her belief system “Christian Science,” her basic text is The Science of Health With Key to the Scriptures.  Similarly Madame Blavatsky presented her ideas, to which she gave the name Theosophy, as science.

In our time the dominant popular world view limits the reading of sacred texts because if the only truth is fact, then scripture must be either factual or false.

Fortunately one can escape this trap and think more broadly.  One can read one’s sacred text as human interpretation.  One can recognize that all language about God has to be metaphoric (including such terms as “Father” for God),.  But those who do read their scriptures in this broad way find themselves on one side of a very large gap between two kinds of believers.  And those who take their sacred text literally have the strength of popular scientific thinking on their side.

Some people who are raised in a literal belief system abandon it to find other levels of awareness through other traditions.  Those other levels inform all religions, including the one the former believer has left, knowing only the version diminished by reductive language.

I choose to stay in my tradition and explore its alternative meanings.  This is hard to explain to both literal believers and non-believers.  It is probably wiser to hint at it in poetry than to write explanations.

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