The Gospel According to Paul, The Apathetic Agnostic: The Gospel Truth About The Gospel

By Paul W Sharkey

What is the gospel truth about the Gospel? Jesus may have called Peter "the rock" upon which he would build his church but it was Paul of Tarsus who first proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus as Christ and Savior, the corner stone of Christianity. It is Paul's account of Jesus' redeeming sacrifice that lies at the very foundation and reason-for-being of Christian faith. But what if he got it wrong? What if his understanding of the story of Jesus is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem for which he believed Jesus was the answer? And what if, because of that, Paul's answer created more problems that it solved? Who was Paul? What did he believe about Jesus and why? What have been the consequences of his error? The Gospel According to Paul, The Apathetic Agnostic, explores these questions and provides an understanding of the moral to the Gospel Story of Jesus that is a gospel truth because it is a logically necessary one. It is also one that preserves the central message of Jesus' redeeming truth as applicable to non-believers and believers alike, irrespective of any other beliefs they may or may not hold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul W Sharkey
• Release date: Apr 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310394409

Paul W Sharkey

Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Professor of Community Health, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior: (retired) University of Southern Mississippi and University of Mississippi School of Medicine. Co-founder: American Society for Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy; Co-founder: American Philosophical Practitioners Association. Instructor: Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning (ORICL), Oak Ridge Tennessee.Graduate of Pasadena High School, Pasadena City College, California State University at Los Angeles, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Southern Mississippi and a former certified Hypnotherapist and certified Instructor of Hypnotherapy.A lover of the sea, Naval Veteran, and sailor of rag boats who definitely qualifies for the title "old man" and the sea! A Scots Irish wearer of kilts, player o' the whistle, and fighter with the bagpipes (and once upon a time, a damned good trumpet player).A California native, now lives with his wife, Novia Kathleen, three tiny dogs, six angora pygmy goats, eight shetland sheep, and assorted chickens atop the Cumberland Plateau near "The Big South Fork," north east central Tennessee.

Book preview

The Gospel According to Paul

The Apathetic Agnostic

The Gospel Truth About The Gospel

Paul W. Sharkey

Nescient University Press

International University of Nescience

http://nescience.org

Published 2015 by Nescient University Press

Copyright 2015 Paul W Sharkey.

All Rights Reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet, or a Web site, without the prior express written permission of its author.

Contents

Preface

Give Me That Old Time Religion or The New Atheism?

The Gospel According to Whom?

Paul Who?

Agnostic Apathy: I don’t know and I don’t care.

The Fall: Sin, Original and Otherwise.

Jesus: The Second Adam.

What comes out of A Man’s Mouth.

Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Religions, Science, and Human Nature.

Life in The World to Come.

On Being Christian.

Let Us Rejoice and Be Glad In It.

About the Author

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Preface

You mean you actually read the prefaces to books? Well, I will try to keep this one short, to the point, and relevant. I don’t need to tell you what you are about to read. If I have to do that, then it means I must not have done a very good job of writing it in the first place. I do, however, want to explain a few things about its format.

This version of the book has been formatted to be read as an e-book. Consequently, rather than listing reference and notes as footnotes or at the end of the book I have included them as (parenthetical remarks) within the text itself. Also, most of the notes or references to external sources are cited as hyperlinks to relevant web pages. Very few people actually run out to a library to check on all the citations in any book but I have tried to make it as easy as possible to see relevant additional information, if one wants it.

There is also no index. Indexes do not lend themselves well to e-book format. Every e-reader is different and since individual readers can select different font sizes, the pagination of citations from an index is useless at best. If the e-reader you are using has one, simply use its search function to more easily access any word, topic, or issue otherwise accessed through an index.

I will also spare you, here at least, my litany of all the people to whom I am indebted in being able to have written this work. The list would be endless. Nevertheless, I have included some of the more prominent ones (to me) at the end.

That’s it for the preface. I hope you enjoy the book.

Paul W. Sharkey, PhD, MPH

Jamestown, Tennessee

Chapter One

Give Me That Old Time Religion or The New Atheism?

Personal Notes and Prologue

Among my earliest memories as a small child, now well over sixty-five years ago, are those of my mother reading fairy tales, fables, poems and nursery rhymes to me from The Book of Knowledge. What I remember most from those days and nights is not only the loving comfort of her affectionate attention but also her encouragement in asking me what I thought was the moral to the story: What does this story, poem, fairy tale, nursery rhyme, fable, mean? What does it have to teach us? Without either she or I realizing it at the time, she had no doubt set me upon the path of philosophy, the love of wisdom, of knowing the difference between what is known or knowable and what isn’t.

My mother was a woman of quiet faith. Raised a Lutheran, she was in my youth a good Christian whose grandfather had been a circuit preacher; she came from a family steeped in the traditions of the Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod. My father was a naval veteran of the Second World War who had had a ship literally sunk out from under him. He was a declared atheist. The war and too many bad experiences with hell-fire-and-brimstone preachers had made it impossible for him to believe in the existence of a loving or caring God. However, he did not begrudge or belittle my mother’s faith nor did he try to prevent me from finding my own way in religion. Despite their apparent differences about religion, my mother and father were devoted to one another in ways I have subsequently found to be unfortunately all too rare. That devotion has profoundly affected my understanding of religious truth.

When I was about nine years old, my mother gave me her Bible. It was a white leather bound octavo sized volume printed on gilt-edged lightweight offset paper. It was the King James translation, of course. I cherished it and actually read it, though I was not a church goer at the time. My knowledge of institutional religion was limited to what I had heard from my friends who attended Sunday schools. What I knew of the story of Jesus I had learned from my mother, not so much by indoctrination but rather in story form and by practical example: The story of one who loved and taught that we should love one-another despite being misunderstood or rejected by others. I couldn’t wait to read that book, but it wasn’t easy. I was (am) dyslexic! [Note: Dyslexia is officially classified as a cognitive disorder related to reading and speech. However, it is not necessarily an impediment to success. In fact, it has been described as a gift because it is also associated with other more positive characteristics of thinking and creativity. Many very successful people in a wide range of fields have suffered from the gift of dyslexia. http://www.dyslexia.com/famous.htm].

Dyslexia is usually considered a learning disability but it can also be a gift. When you are young and in school, finding it difficult to read can definitely be a handicap. Trying to study, do homework, and learn through reading is frustrating. On the other hand, having to take extra time to try to understand what you are reading can also make you much more sensitive to the ambiguities of language and to developing interesting and creative (and sometimes amusing) alternative ways of understanding things: and to a critical eye. In struggling to understand if you understood what you have just read, there are the ever-present questions: Is that true? Does it make any sense? Did I understand that correctly? Whenever I tried to read the Bible, my answers to these questions ran the gamut. Some things just jumped right out at me as true; others just didn’t seem to make any sense at all.

Another thing about being dyslexic (especially when young) is the tendency to be labeled as learning disabled or in less polite terms (and the ones I usually heard) as stupid! So, whenever I read something, especially in the Bible, and it just didn’t make any sense to me, my initial reaction was to assume that I must not have understood it correctly. After all, I was stupid wasn’t I? Or was I?

I began to go to church. I went to many. I also attended a number of different Sunday Schools. Some seemed to have read an entirely different book than the one my mother had given me. Quite frequently what I was taught at one would be contradicted by what another was teaching. I was evidently not the only person having trouble reading and understanding that book.

By my late teens I had become so confused that I didn’t know where to turn. Almost by chance, I read a brief book about Buddhism: The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path. [Note: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/8foldpath.htm] Here were truths I had also found in the Bible but without the difficult to comprehend, let alone believe, fanciful stories and superstitions.

I eventually had the opportunity to visit a Buddhist country, compliments of an all-expense-paid trip from my rich Uncle Sam, where I spent time visiting with some Buddhist monks. [Note: The country was Thailand, which I was fortunate enough to be able to visit while serving in the Navy during the early years of the Vietnam War, 1965.] The monks seemed wise and reasonable but many of their followers, well … not so much so. Just as I had seen with some Christians and Christianity, I saw Buddhists doing things and practicing superstitions in the name of the Buddha that the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), had specifically taught against. I also learned that, just as in Christianity, there were many forms of and different beliefs in and about Buddhism. I quickly discovered that Christianity was not the only religion with problems. How can you tell which, if any, are true?

How is truth to be found? Many say it is found in the sciences. So, I studied the sciences: anthropology, biology, chemistry, economics, physics, psychology, sociology, zoology. By chance, I was also introduced (kicking and screaming) to philosophy. Philosophy was a requirement for the pre-medical program at the college I was attending at the time. What could studying philosophy possibly have to do with finding truth? As it turned out, everything! I eventually abandoned my pursuit of a career in medicine for one in philosophy, although I eventually ended up teaching in medical school in addition to my posts as a Professor of Community Health, and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the university.

Philosophers have said some pretty stupid things. They have also said some that are deeply profound. Separating the two is part of philosophy itself. Philosophy is not so much a discipline about anything in particular as it is about challenging the claims people make about what is true, no matter what the discipline: science, religion, ethics, politics, even, or perhaps most especially, philosophy itself.

Before I go any further, perhaps I should try to explain what kind of philosopher I am. I am a conservative one, but probably not in the sense of what that term might mean to you. By a conservative philosopher, I simply mean one who tries to stay close to the literal definition of the word philosophy: the love of wisdom and to the Socratic ideal of wisdom as knowing the difference between what one knows and what one doesn’t. For me, it is about honesty.

Being honest does not necessarily mean never speaking an untruth. If honesty meant that, it would be impossible. It is quite possible for someone to speak a truth yet for someone else to hear it as an untruth. The ambiguities of language and communication make misunderstandings, even between the most honest of people, an ever-present possibility. It is also possible for someone to speak what she or he honestly believes to be true, yet be mistaken. Honesty is a matter of moral intent and ethics. Truth is a matter of logic and epistemology. Errors in the one are not necessarily errors in the other. Being honest isn’t as easy as one might think. Telling the truth is even more complicated. The phrase telling the truth is interestingly ambiguous. It can mean, speaking the truth. It can also mean, determining what is true and what isn’t. Both meanings are relevant here. Nowhere is telling the truth more complicated than in trying to assess the conflicting claims within and between religions and between religions and the sciences. So, how does one tell who’s telling the truth?

The truth of the matter is, there are different kinds of truth. What makes a statement like Widows have deceased husbands true is quite different from what makes the statement Widows dress in black, true. Both are true but the first one is always true no matter what, while the second is true only under certain circumstances. In philosophy, those things that are true by definition, or whose denial is literally a contradiction, are known as necessary truths all others are said to be contingent truths because their truth depends upon something else being true. Necessary truths can also be said to be eternal and universal because they are true in all times and places, even beyond all times and places and for that reason are sometimes also called transcendental truths. Contingent truths, on the other hand, are always context dependent. Then there are statements like If you place your happiness in things that will be taken from you, you will lose your happiness which though similar to the first statement about widows in what makes it true, is nevertheless different in another way. It represents a moral rather than merely a descriptive truth. Without going any further for now, suffice it to say that telling the truth in the sense of determining what is true and what is not, and why, is not as easy as one might think, even for an otherwise honest person.

The thing about honesty and the truth is that they too can be related in ways more complicated than commonly thought. Honest persons may very well, and often do, say things that are not true. It is even possible for a dishonest person to say something that is true while attempting to be dishonest. Both cases are possible because of ignorance. An honest person might tell an untruth believing it to be true while a dishonest person may tell a truth believing it to be false. What makes both cases possible is that each believes something that simply isn’t so. Both are ignorant of the truth.

Perhaps nowhere is our ignorance about truth greater than when we talk about God. Since time immemorial people have said all sorts of things about gods, including whether or not they exist. Theists and atheists are born as twins. As soon as a theist is born (perhaps especially if born again), an atheist is born too. This is because either the theist declares anyone not believing in his or her particular vision of god to be an atheist or because those who disagree with that theist’s view of god openly and assertively declare themselves to be atheists themselves: for every conception of god there is an atheist and for every atheist some conception of god. To the extent that one person’s belief about a god is not the same as another person’s belief about god, the two are atheists with respect to one another: My god is not your god. No one believes in all the gods ever believed in by every person in every religion. Hence, we are all atheists with respect to at least some conceptions of god. Those who claim to be absolute atheists say they take that reasoning just one step further in rejecting any and all concepts of god(s). Personally, I find this naïve because it is based upon a very limited understanding of what is involved in believing in something as a god. It is more an expression of willful intent than of descriptive fact. Nothing can be a god unless regarded as such by some believer. Pantheism, or the belief that god is everything that exists and everything that exists is god, is not a claim that can be challenged with respect to such a god’s existence but only as a rejection of such a believer’s attitude of reverence toward it.

The difference between theists and atheists is sometimes expressed in terms of the question of whether God created man or man created god. Whether there is or ever was a god that predates and created human beings, religion doesn’t. Religion is a human invention even if God isn’t and it is within religions that claims about gods are made. What if a religion is mistaken?

Give Me That Old Time Religion

In the West, one of the oldest of old time religions is the Hellenistic pantheon. The mythologies of Eastern religions go back even further than those in the West. Hinduism is the oldest known yet still currently practiced religion in the world. What we now call Greek Mythology was once the expression of a living religion. There is no reason to believe that the stories of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Poseidon, etc. were any less true or real to the ancient Greeks who believed them than those of the Bible, Koran, Talmud, or Vedas are to their believers today.

Consider the story of Persephone:

One day while gathering flowers, Persephone came across a beautiful narcissus. As she stooped down to pluck it, a huge abyss opened up and Aides seized her in order to take her down to live with him in the underworld. When Persephone’s mother, Demeter, learned of this, she became so inconsolable that she refused to return to Olympus to be with the other gods. As a result, even though men sowed and ploughed their fields, nothing grew and the earth was barren and desolate. Seeing that the world was threatened with famine, Zeus sent Hermes to persuade Aides to return Persephone so Demeter would return to Olympus and the earth could be made fertile again. Aides agreed to release Persephone, and gave her some pomegranate seeds to take with her, which she thoughtlessly swallowed, for Aides had ruled that any immortal who tasted food from his realm would be bound to remain with him there forever. Zeus, however, proposed a compromise in which Persephone would spend half of the year with her mother among the gods at Olympus and the other half the year with Aides in the underworld below. For those months Persephone is above the earth, the earth is blessed with green trees, flowers, fruits, grains, and vegetation (including pomegranates) while for those she spends below the earth with Aides, it lays fallow until her return. [Note: http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-hades-and-persephone/]

How are we to understand this story? How did the ancient Greeks understand it? Scholars today view it as a colorful poetic allegory for the changing of the seasons and for the celebration of planting, growing, and harvesting in spring, summer, and fall. No doubt there were ancient Greeks who understood it that way too. However, others saw and taught it as a literal account of an actual historical event and regarded it as religious dogma. Anyone who believed otherwise might be condemned as an atheist. A beautiful expression of a wonderful truth and joyful event of nature thus becomes an article of religious dogma to be obeyed.

To be condemned as an atheist in ancient Greece was not just a matter of casting aspersions of personal or social disapproval; it could mean a sentence of death. Long before Jesus died on a cross, Socrates was executed for being an atheist. His crime stemmed from teaching that whatever else the gods may be, they must be good or else they are not gods, and certainly not worthy of worship. He rejected stories that depicted the gods as avaricious, vengeful, jealous, or vain, and dared to raise the question of whether something was right or good because it was pleasing to the gods or was pleasing to the gods because it was right or good. How you answer that question, now as then, says more about you than it does about any gods.

If religion is indeed a sacred thing, then its perversion is all the more damnable. Ironically, it is often those who get called atheists (either by themselves or by others) who are the real opponents of blasphemy. Paradoxically, they may be the true and ultimate defenders of religion’s sacredness, for nothing threatens the truths of a religion more so than their perversion.

Descriptive versus Moral Truth

Today, as in ancient Greece, there are people who insist that the stories told in the scriptures and teachings of their religions must be regarded as literally, historically, factually, and descriptively true. There are also people today, as then, who understand those same stories, scriptures, and teachings as allegories, fables, and parables intended to represent and communicate deeper moral and spiritual truths. Still others just want to reject the whole thing entirely.

From the perspectives of logic, science, history, and common sense, it is all too clear that if taken literally (that is, as factually accurate and precise descriptive accounts), at least some of those stories cannot possibly be true. However, that does not necessarily mean they are not true in some other way. Remember: there are different kinds of truth and just because something might not true in one way does not mean it might not be true in another.

Are these our only choices: Insist on preserving our possibly perverse understanding of our old time religions as literally, historically, and factually true, on the one hand, or reject the whole thing as superstitious fantasy and along with it whatever truths they may have to teach us, on the other? Surely