Theofatalism: Theology for Agnostics and Atheists

By Lewis Tagliaferre

When your world of traditional assumptions is shaken where do you turn for inner peace and personal comfort? Considering Pascals wager, if there is no god and we disbelieve we have lost nothing, but if there is a god and we disbelieve we may have lost everything. But, what if there is no free will and we all must believe whatever we are given? That is the primary question that pushed this author into investigating what the world religions and philosophies taught about the existential puzzle called life. When my traditional faith failed to provide any comfort after untimely death of my wife I began searching for some belief I could live with, and this is what I was given.

Many thinking people have rejected the mythical god of the Bible and the Quran but they have not found a suitable substitute. Since there is no proof for or against the existence of God, everyone must be agnostic or atheist if they will admit it. Perhaps it is time to replace the anthropomorphic god with one that really works. Not the god of the Bible or the Quran, but the prime force in the universe: Generator, Operator, Destroyer...G.O.D. The expanded and updated essays in the second edition of this book develop such a new theology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475991222

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Copyright © 2013 Lewis Tagliaferre.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-9121-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9122-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 5/31/2013

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1. The Call For Personal Reformation

2. A Challenge To Faith

3. The Virtual Church Of Theofatalism

4. What’s Wrong With Fatalism

5. The Cruelest Necessary Hoax

6. The Fraud Of Christianity

7. Santa Claus And Other Necessary Myths

8. To See God, Look Around

9. God Works In Mysterious Ways

10. Of Paparazzi, Family Secrets, And Christmas

11. Acts Of God

12. Diet, Rest, Exercise, Acquire, Die

13. The Unreasonable Power Of Faith

14. God Always Wins

15. Resolving Dichotomies For Inner Peace

16. Mysteries Of The Universe

17. The Day Earth Dies, If Not Before

18. Whose Will Is It

19. Subconscious Conscience

20. The Greatest Miracle

21. The Coming Energy Crisis

22. Wolves, Lambs, And Homeland Security

23. This Thing Called Love

24. Invisible Links Make Visible Chains

25. The Last Word

Appendix: Start A Discussion And Support Group

PREFACE

When your world of traditional assumptions is shaken and you come to realize it must be GOD doing the shaking, then where do you turn for inner peace and personal comfort? Considering Pascal’s wager, if there is no god and we disbelieve we have lost nothing, but if there is a god and we disbelieve we may have lost everything. But, what if there is no free will and we all must believe whatever we are given? That is the primary question that pushed me into investigating what the world religions and philosophies taught about the existential puzzle called life. When my traditional faith failed to provide any comfort after untimely death of my wife I began searching for some belief I could live with, and this is what I was given. My research culminated in a trilogy of books including Voices of Sedona, Baby Boomer Lamentations, and this capstone to the new belief system for agnostics and atheists who want to hedge their bets, called Theofatalism. Many thinking people have rejected the mythical god of the Bible and the Quran but they have not found a suitable substitute. Since there is no proof for or against the existence of God, everyone must be agnostic or atheist – if they will admit it.

Perhaps it is time to replace the anthropomorphic god with one that really works. Not the god of the Bible or the Quran, but the prime force in the universe: Generator, Operator, Destroyer…G.O.D. This also is symbolic of the life cycle; the trinity of birth, life, and death, and it predates Christianity in Hinduism. This is like disrobing Santa Claus in public to disclose the real person underneath. It is not about trying to convince you to abandon atheism to adopt some religion, it merely is offering this work to those who may be searching for a belief system that accommodates all the others. As such, it may be likened to a virtual church where everyone is a member and no one can resign or be expelled. This is a unique version of religious philosophy that could be the beginning of something really, really big. It began like a pile of jig-saw puzzle pieces scattered on the floor, but now the pattern is completed and the work is finished. If you are searching for inner peace in a sea of uncertainty, perhaps your search has ended. All in God’s will of course.

Many churches in America have become little more than social clubs with Sunday entertainment that pay no taxes. Members are kept busy with activities and committees so they won’t have time to realize the official dogma is both irrelevant and impotent in the real crises of life. Their holy books and theologians present a puzzle of myths and legends that no thinking rational person can accept, unless some force above all forces wills it to be so – what is called faith. This is especially true when some unthinkable tragedy occurs to wipe out lives, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and mass murders or an untimely death in the family.

After such times of human suffering the clergy is silent because they cannot afford to blame the loss on their benevolent god of love because that would turn Homo sapiens into its victims. Then you will be on your own with only your personal belief to guide your decisions and reactions. This is what I discovered when my traditional church family provided no help after the untimely and traumatic death of my wife at age 52. They even treated me like I had a contagious disease, and I did. It is called grief. I was like the father with the afflicted son who lamented to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. (Mark 9:24) If you ever lost a close loved one, perhaps you can relate. So I had to find some other way to survive that immense loss and go on working until I could retire. Although I was a Sunday School teacher and an ordained deacon, the faith that I relied upon came up empty when the real issues of life and death invaded my comfort zone. I began searching for help in books and among counselors in order to survive. One therapist led to another and another and one book led to another and another until I discovered Sedona, AZ while on a business trip to the southwest.

In subsequent trips I was introduced to its historical late matron, Mrs. Sedona M. Schnebly, wife of the founding post master. Although she died in 1950, I believe she led me to this understanding through meeting five imaginary teachers on metaphorical trips of discovery. They provided me with a new belief system that could enable people like me to survive and maybe even grow through the great tragedies of life. Such principles can never be created, only discovered. Albert Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Wherever it came from, this product of my imagination and research may stir some responses in your own thinking about the issues of reality in human life on this planet. Now, I feel called to pass on what I have learned to those few who may be ready to receive it.

Most people live in a very small box of life and few are ever motivated to break out to see a larger view of the universe. For many, it is dangerous and like looking at the sun, they must avoid a direct confrontation with reality because its threat to their fragile egos could be blinding. For those who are called and have the blindfold removed so they can really see reality, this could be a new and radical form of enlightenment. Here you will find the historical evidence and support for belief in God – not just the god of the Bible or the Quran, but the God of everything – the Generator, Operator, Destroyer – the Almighty three in ONE, the real Trinity. This is nothing less than a belief system to accommodate all belief systems – past, present, and future. It is for all those who find their traditional beliefs provide no comfort for the spiritual needs of real life – the life that includes criminology, tragedy, sickness, wars, poverty, and depression and death. It requires some out-of-the box exploration where few conventional pay-for-play churches and professional theologians could ever go without destroying their careers.

This work is not about making people feel good by going to church – so it likely will not be popular with the masses who merely want health, wealth, and happiness in life from religion. As such, it will likely appeal mostly to people dominated by their intuition and thinking functions of personality that resonate with my own makeup – which combines introverted thinking with extraverted intuition or imagination similar to that of my late mentor, Dr. C.G. Jung. [My personality type is INTP for those who know the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.] Perhaps it will be of some help to church leaders who don’t really believe what they preach on Sundays and may change their homilies to something more helpful and realistic. Whether you accept it or not is up to GOD as nothing happens outside of its will. Believe it, or not.

I have concluded that the affairs of mankind and the actions they take from the homeless to the White House are driven by an uncontrollable force like the weather that brings storms and calm to the atmosphere, a force called G.O.D., the Generator, Operator, Destroyer. Even atheists must have a god not to believe in. At this scale of thought the lives of individuals all are insignificant but indispensable to the jigsaw puzzle of life, and like such a puzzle each piece has its one and only one place in the whole, which would be a hole without it. We each are given a box full of pieces at conception without the full picture. Life requires that we complete the assembly fully, and then we die. Some lives are small and short with just a few pieces and some are large and complex with many pieces. But they all are interconnected and inevitably attached to make up the whole. We cannot see the end of life until close to its completion and realize how all the pieces fit perfectly together and the links are connected to form the chain of each life.Most everyone lives without any awareness of this analogy, but for some reason I was given the insight to see all the random pieces of the universal puzzle of life in its full completion by its creator - Generator, Operator, Destroyer – G.O.D.

Seeing this reality as it is would be much too painful and shocking, like staring at the sun, so mankind is given the belief in free will and the anthropomorphic version of a man-made god by the ego to mask its pitiful powerlessness through illusions of control and immortality. This work is a vision of God based in reality beyond the senses, including all the indefinite uncertainty in life. Not many people are mature enough to handle this truth, but if you are, maybe exploring the full trilogy of books in Theofatalism would be food for your own spiritual and personal growth. And, perhaps sometime in the future another one more qualified in theology than I am will find this work and extend it to whomever God intends to receive it.

Except for the quotes from secondary sources, the word sheeple replaces the word people throughout because the relationship of the shepherd to his flock of sheep flows from Genesis to Revelation in the Bible and provides the basic voice for this work as that of a shepherd/Jesus tending and feeding his sheep. I am the good shepherd. The shepherd gives his life for the sheep. (John 10:11) This work concludes that people naturally fall into two groups: 1) those who are living God’s will 24/7 and know it and; 2) those who are living God’s will 24/7 but do not know it.

Many sources unknowingly contributed to this work, often posthumously. For all of them I am very grateful. The Bible is used as the primary resource, although probably much differently than you were taught. The miracle is how the sources were gifted to me by powers beyond my understanding. I could never have discovered them by searching on my own. Thus, I am not the author but merely the reporter of what I was given. All sources and quotations are included for educational purposes with legal advice under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. laws on copyright in accordance with Title 17 U.S. Code, Section 107. Bible scriptures are from the New International Version, used by permission. Some of the quotes, data and statistics were obtained from Internet sources and are not directly referenced because they may be temporary. No claim is made about their accuracy or validity. Published sources of quotations are integrated with text wherever possible. The Chicago Manual of Style does not apply as this is not presented as a scholarly work, and there are too many sources to footnote them all. It also is published without formal professional editing, so there are no doubt grammatical errors of commission and omission that could be improved. [However, my author editorial comments are printed in italics within brackets.]

IUniverse Publishing deserves much credit for enabling unknown authors to make their contributions to this publishing genre, because they may have something valuable to say worth reading. If you find this book somehow and think it worthwhile, please recommend it to others – not for me but for them. Note this is the expanded second edition and may be replacing some older versions that are in limited circulation in print and on the Internet. If this work is to be discovered and used by others, it will be up to you and God’s will of course.

Taken together, all this work may add up to a new virtual belief system that accommodates all the others – especially agnostics and atheists because God made them too. [Visit www.schooloftheofatalism.org. Or, if you prefer a religious approach, visit www.churchoftheofatalism.org.] But, like any school, it will do you no good unless you attend, take notes, and do the homework.

The symbol of Theofatalism is the ancient labyrinth on the cover artwork and title page from the Cathedral of Our Lady in Chartres, France There is far more to this ancient graphic symbol than meets the eye of the western mind. There is only way to go out from the center into the world and returning to our source at death in the pathway laid out for each person. It is composed of four quadrants and you must meander about from one to the other while completing the walk. Just as in life, it is not about the destination, but rather about making the trip. The Bible claims, A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way? (Proverbs 20:24)

In this book, the trip is long and arduous because, as the late New York Opera star, Beverly Sills (1929-2007) learned, There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile. So, I make no excuses for the length and depth of this reading. I had to report what I was given, sometimes several times, and some readers who cannot let go of belief in free will just need a lot of convincing. As in the walk of life, you just put one foot in front of the other. There are only two rules; begin and continue.

Caution: Nothing in this book is intended to challenge your traditional belief if it works for you. But if it no longer provides inner peace, then these essays may help you feel better inside no matter what happens outside. If the essays about traditional beliefs make you feel scared and confused, that could be normal because all growth comes with suffering as the old ways must make way for the new. But, if they make you feel panic and uncontrollable anxiety, please seek professional care immediately from a qualified counselor. Nothing in this work is intended to be a substitute for competent medical or mental health treatment.

INTRODUCTION

This book can be summarized in one sentence: You don’t have to worry about anything because nothing happens outside the will of God – Generator, Operator, Destroyer – and it controls everything. But, it’s not that simple or this book would not be necessary. The daily news is full of events that make a thinking person wonder what God had in mind by creating Homo sapiens in his own image and likeness. The world is suffering so much that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI observed during his final public audience that sometimes it seems like God must be sleeping. Obviously, he had some doubts, so we are in good company when we challenge traditional religious dogma that does not hold up to reason. The need for a new reformation in religious belief is more urgent now than ever before but it is almost impossible to launch – perhaps it must come from outside the traditional Church as it did in the time of Jesus and the reformation of Martin Luther.

Modern Internet and wireless communications are being expanded so that information is spreading faster than anyone can follow it all. Among the decisions made every day are not only what media one chooses but also the content of information that one ingests. What the future will bring nobody knows. The only thing known for sure is that no one can go back in time to do anything over differently. With so many options increasing daily, there is only one logical explanation for what gets into your head, i.e., God’s will. How else to explain why people do what they do - legal and illegal, moral and immoral, right or wrong, etc. - when there are infinite choices. Belief in free will turns out to be a necessary illusion given by God to protect fragile human egos from the shock of this reality – like staring at the sun. If it were not necessary it would be different. I have no free will, so I must believe in free will.

But, those who invoke free will in the affairs of mankind may have much to learn. Modern research in brain neurology is disclosing that what we thought was free will may not be so at all, as the human brain seems to prompt actions before the conscious mind is aware of unconscious thoughts. Belief in free will may be necessary to sustain a system of social justice and religious dogma, but when you can believe that God controls everything you can declare with Martin Luther King, Jr., Free at last, thank God I am free at last. This, of course, eliminates personal responsibility so that neither praise nor blame are relevant to human society and grief, remorse, regret, shame and blame lose all their power. Unfortunately, that is a leap in belief that most sheeple are not ready to contemplate. But those who can make this leap of faith may feel good inside spiritually no matter what happens outside physically.

Humans are pack animals and must be corralled by some boundary be it church, family, sports team, social club, neighborhood, nationality, or even planet. We are defined by memberships subdividing the human race with rules and assumptions about behavior in each pack or group. But when do this - get that no longer works as planned many are left with indefinite uncertainty and no firm place upon which to stand - called angst – which is one of the five principles I discovered in my travels and research. The conclusion is a new belief system that accommodates all the others; one that integrates reality with imagination and defines god not as the Bible or Quran or Book of Mormon does but as Generator, Operator, Destroyer, G.O.D. We need a new image of God which more accurately explains reality to replace the all loving Santa Claus version. Sheeple seem to be limited by the extent of their imagination in defining God, but this definition extends the limits of 2,000-year old dogma to include the modern understanding of science. This is heresy to the professional religious but all reformations begin that way, and we sure need a new reformation. As the late Neil Armstrong announced as he stepped onto the moon, this could be one giant leap for mankind.

This work is not for everyone – maybe even not for hardly anyone – and yet it is the story of everyone if they would but admit it. You have to be mature enough and hurting enough to be searching for a way through life which is not based upon the milk of infancy, but are ready for the whole foods of a new reformation. Hang out a church banner in America offering health, wealth, and happiness and many sheeple will line up to enter. But offer a course in reality and the line gets a lot shorter. Offer a book guaranteeing fame and fortune – even how to win the lottery - and it climbs to the best seller list. Practically any book in the For Dummies series sells well. Get real and there are few buyers. It is easy to have faith when you live in health, wealth, and happiness, but not so much when you live in sickness, poverty, and depression. Any belief system worth believing must serve the latter as much as the former – maybe even more so. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) observed, Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. Only you can decide if the burdens are worth the benefits of this new great idea, and whether you will or not depends upon the will of God as there can be no other. When the blindfold of childish faith is removed, religion in its present organized form is seen to be irrelevant and impotent in dealing with the real issues of mankind. Those who will admit it then are left with a void of options that work, and many become atheists. But, hey, God makes agnostics and atheists too.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI [aka Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger] recognized the impotence of religion as he wrote in Introduction to Christianity (2001), We are tempted to say, if we are honest with ourselves, that the Church is neither holy nor catholic: the Second Vatican Council itself ventured to the point of speaking no longer merely of the holy Church but of the sinful Church, and the only reproach it incurred was that of still being far too timorous; so deeply aware are we all of the sinfulness of the Church…And so for many people today the Church has become the main obstacle to belief. It’s amazing that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope after that in 2005. He pounded another nail in the coffin of faith by quoting Albert Schweitzer in The Quest for the Historical Jesus, (1922) There is nothing more negative than the result of the research into the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who appeared upon the scene as the Messiah, proclaimed the morality of the kingdom of God, founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and died to consecrate his work never existed. He is a figure sketched by rationalism, brought to life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology with historical scholarship. This image has not been destroyed from outside; it has collapsed internally, shaken and driven by the actual historical problems."

Anyone who sees the full range of human existence on this planet must either conclude that there is no god and become an atheist, or must conclude that God did not create any one-sided coins and shudder in fear of the consequences emanating from necessary opposites, faith and reason. If there is only one source of all, then it must be the author of both good and evil. Can you believe that? Most sheeple cannot, and so they invoke random chance, nature, or human free will to explain the sufferings of mankind.

The persistent Judeo-Christian alternative is to conclude that the sin of the first man caused it all by passing his faulty genes along to the rest of us. That leads to the even more fantastic assumption that God sent his son as himself into the world through the womb of a virgin to provide a blood sacrifice that redeems a selected segment of mankind for some utopian existence after death in another realm in a new heaven and a new earth – but only for those who choose to believe it. (John 3:16) The many other belief systems throughout humankind present equally fantastic myths as solutions to the ubiquitous suffering of mankind. Searching for some belief that would accommodate all of the above has frustrated philosophers ever since mankind became conscious of their thoughts. The world is desperately in need of a belief system that will accommodate all other belief systems. This work presents a system of thought that offers the fantastic possibility of an explanation that includes all the other explanations – for those few who can handle it.

Meantime, human suffering beyond imagination continues as never before. The Buddha, along with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI [aka Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger] in his Eschatology, Death and Eternal Life (1988) discovered, History is real, it really continues, and its reality is suffering. American-born English Nobel poet, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) said, Humankind cannot bear very much reality. Like the Jack Nicholson character proclaimed in the movie, A Few Good Men, (1992) You can’t handle the truth. President Harry Truman said, I don’t give people hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell. This seems to be the essential question: how much truth can you handle? Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, that, all the world’s a stage and men and women merely are the players. So perhaps this is a tour behind the curtain to show you how things really work. If you cannot handle it, perhaps you can pass it along to someone who is ready for this new reformation.

Most Christians don’t take time to read the Bible for themselves and thus are unaware of its flaws. A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion concluded that atheists and agnostics actually were better informed about religious dogma than most religious devotees. Arguments for and against belief in God as Supreme Being have never been settled. This is a different view of god than the all-loving father image they still teach in Sunday school. It is the Generator, Operator, Destroyer – triune GOD – and is much more realistic than the Santa Claus version that still is taught in Sunday school and the faulty prosperity preaching in many churches. Possibly no better argument for lack of a supreme being that is all loving was noted by Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, (2006) The total amount of suffering in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, and thousands of all kinds of people are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease and wars. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Triune God – the Generator, Operator, Destroyer - does not seem to mind that its supreme creation, mankind, has no more self control than any other animal – making babies sure to die of starvation by the millions, for example - possibly because it is the cause of it all. Can you believe that?

Dawkins argues quite persuasively that evidence from neurology indicates the belief in free will among mankind merely is an illusion, albeit one that still has no consensus among its investigators in philosophy, religion, and neurology. This work concurs and develops an alternative belief. Letting go of belief in free will actually frees you of all personal responsibility to accept the will of God. There actually is scant scriptural support for belief in free will in the Bible so it must be concluded only by inference - from such as John 3:16 and maybe 1 Samuel 8. Belief in free will seems to be a necessary illusion given by God to protect the fragile human ego from the shock of seeing the reality of God’s dominance, which would be like staring at the sun. However, there are many scriptures describing the predestined will of God. See for example these references to Christians: God had planned you even before you were born or before you were in our mother‘s womb (Jeremiah 1:4). Belief in Christ comes only by the will of God. (Matthew 16:16-18, John 6:65) God planned things for you in the future before the earth or time existed (I Corinthians 2:7). He had made plans for your life to give you His grace before you were born (Galatians 1:15). He chose you and called you to redemption to be saved and be made holy (Ephesians 1:4). He chose you before your birth to bless you and save you through Christ (Ephesians 1:3-4). He planned your adoption prior to your birth (Ephesians 1:5). And according to His good pleasure, revealed the secrets things of God to you (Ephesians1:9). So, those who insist on teaching belief in free will have little support and much opposition in the scriptures.

Like the Buddha was, many sheeple were shielded from reality since their childhood so they have no coping skills to see through this absurd disaster called life. If supported at their level, children can handle tragedy, sorrow and tears much better than they can handle lies, deceit, and evasions. Such parenting can help youngsters gain the inner resources needed for adult challenges they will surely face. Someone said life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. So as you grow up you may come to realize that do this – get that does not always work. This means making choices with consequences that are unpredictable, and that creates anxiety and fear from indefinite uncertainty if you stop to think about it. There may be no mistakes, only choices and consequences - which all come with both burdens and benefits. Everything that happens must be necessary or it would be different. Children who never learn this truth must suffer for its lack later in life. You have to reach a certain degree of spiritual maturity after you finish playing let’s pretend to be interested in reality. So if you are ready, let’s move on.

Reality is like drinking straight whiskey; you can only take a small sip at a time. That is why this work is presented in small doses of essays and organized the way they are. They move forward and backward as one does walking through a labyrinth, often encountering a spot visited earlier but with new insight, to reach the core at the center. It may seem at first that one is meandering about in a path to nowhere but although it may appear to be meaningless it may lead one to the center of being where there lies the peace that passes understanding. Some of the essays are longer than others, but that must be necessary or they would be different. Beloved opera diva, Beverly Sills (1929-2007) opined, there are no short cuts to anywhere worth going. Often, this requires walking around in circles as the Labyrinth used as the symbol of this work depicts. [You can buy a Chartres Labyrinth in table top placemat size at www.labyrinthcompany.com wherein you can let your fingers do the walking.]

In this modern age of 30-second TV commercials and 140-character tweets, a book as long and serious as this may attract very few readers. One may process a tweet in a few seconds but it could take a lifetime to absorb all this wisdom. After all, it took 25 years to develop so take it easy on yourself and give yourself as much time as it takes. So please do not treat this book as a quick read to be discarded and forgotten. Treat it as you would some valuable insight into human nature that becomes more valuable as it is read over and over…sort of like the Bible. Most sheeple in spiritual distress would rather pretend things are different than to look into reality and see what is really there – only indefinite uncertainty about the future. That is why so many sheeple seek diversions from their normal lives by stalking celebrities in sports and entertainment and filling the arenas of celebrity preachers who sell prosperity religion. Fantasy sells, reality sucks. For them, it is not about the truth; it is about the money. Perhaps there is no growth without distress. Get used to it, or go outside and play.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) stipulated that new truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed, then it is opposed, and finally it is accepted as self-evident. Perhaps this work will have to survive the first two in order to achieve the latter, if it ever does, since it comes from an unauthorized and unqualified writer. It can be unwise to assault the assumptions of common sense that authorities hold in high esteem, but that is a risk that must be taken in order to achieve any growth at all. Sometimes the process takes centuries. Such was the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, (1632-1677) a glass lens grinder who was excommunicated from his Jewish tradition and was banned by the Catholic Church, so he wrote mostly under a pseudonym. Then he died at age 44 after a celibate lifestyle. But today his work is considered to be necessary reading for every serious student of the Enlightenment. Thomas a’ Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ (ca 1418), One should love to be unknown…do not ask who said this, but pay attention to what is said. So, take your time…even if it takes the rest of your life, or more.

French philosopher Voltaire [aka Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778)] wrote, It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. This is especially so among warring religious leaders who have killed and are killing the ones who disagree with their dogma. The ongoing clash between belief systems desperately needs a new one that accommodates all the others. The logic of Theofatalism is iron clad and that is what makes it so infuriating to the authorities.

Most sheeple prefer to be wrong with the support of a group than to be correct all by themselves. The trouble with making new discoveries is that they destroy our confidence in the establishment. You may find yourself out on a very long limb all alone if you accept the principles of Theofatalism. But you will be in some very good company. This is like flying high about the earth with the astronauts for a view of reality that very few ever see. Sheeple do not really believe in God, they believe in Santa Claus. And God must want it that way or it would be different. When the establishment feels threatened it will try to evict the invader.

Dean emeritus of Harvard University Henry Rosovsky observed, Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts. Those who are called to further knowledge often must be able to live without social approval. Consider that John the Baptist was beheaded for speaking the truth and we never hear anything further about him, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated for his crusade on civil rights. To avoid being excommunicated and executed for heresy, Galileo was forced to recant his discovery that proved Copernicus was right in concluding the earth was not the center of the universe. It took the Roman Catholic Church 400 years to apologize for its arrogance and his unjust censure. Jesus was crucified for alleged blasphemy, and Martin Luther was ex-communicated and declared an outcast by the Pope for his disobedience to Catholic rules. In all such conflicts, God is commanding both sides – can you believe that?

Every major change in human beliefs originally began as a heresy, and the originator usually was condemned for his efforts. Threaten the power of established institutions and a defensive reaction is sure to come – never moreso than threatening the Church. Sometimes a common sense belief becomes so strong that suggesting it might be wrong is nearly impossible. Apostle Paul wrote, Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. (1 Corinthians 3:18-19) Note it was the wisdom of his age that he described as foolishness. But the churches today are still teaching from the wisdom of his age. Catholic mystic, Father Richard Rohr has observed, True prophets please nobody, neither left nor right—which of themselves are mere ideologies, and two places for the ego to hide. When you are truly prophetic, both the left and the right will invariably mistrust and attack you. How can this be unless God wills it so?

This opening dialog is not moot because it impacts daily living. The collapse of banking and the failure of mortgage financing in 2008 shows how true this warning can be in our time. The banking system was totally broken with literally no one in charge. Traders who earned commissions for transactions and executives who get multimillion dollar bonuses for negative results were dooming the system because without trust in your bank no one will deposit, and no deposits mean no lending. The biggest mistake of President Reagan and President Clinton was deregulation of banks and permitting them to act like stock traders. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the greatest mistake of his career was assuming banks would regulate themselves. Events have proven that mankind is more disposed to suffer, so long as evils are sufferable, just as the founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence discovered. Now, the global money system is in terrible risk of self destruction by banks too big to prosecute - but sheeple must be blindfolded by God to avoid seeing the reality of it because the shock would be too great. The consequent great recession has permanently eliminated millions of U.S. jobs and threatens to reverse the social progress we have made the past century. It must all be in God’s will of course as there can be no other, and where it all leads no one can tell. The wise are those who know they do not know. As Socrates once put it, The difference between you and me is that I know that I do not know. If you cannot trust your banker or your government and church leaders, the impact can be devastating. If you are still reading, then read on.

The history of science is full of discoveries that went unnoticed because the establishment did not recognize the author until some time later when another one got the attention with the same message. For example, a French astronomer named Ole Roemer predicted in 1676 that light traveled at a finite speed when everyone thought it was instantaneous, but it took 50 years for anyone to agree with him. Vesto Melvin Slipher actually discovered that the universe is expanding at increasing velocity, using the Clark telescope at the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. But it was Edwin P. Hubble who became famous for it after repeating the same discovery from the Mount Wilson observatory in Pasadena, CA. Many discoveries have been made several times before they actually were perceived as common knowledge, and often legacy beliefs linger long after they are obsolete. In surveys reported by Newsweek of March 2007, 48 percent of U.S. respondents claimed they believe that God created man as is about 6,000 years ago. How long will it take for belief in this God to die off? Must we wait for eons of evolution to finally surpass the remnants of Paleolithic man that still occupies our brains?

Whether you read this work like a novel from front to back or skip around from essay to essay, you will arrive at the same place. And wherever that is for you it is the only place you can be. However, I recommend that you read the first five essays in order first. Then you may find more benefits in reading the others randomly as the spirit moves you. The principles of Theofatalism explained in the third essay set the stage for all the essays that come after it. Such principles can never be created, only discovered. And, as the revolutionary war pamphleteer Thomas Paine stated, one should look beyond the content to the author, in this case not the writer who is only a scribe, but the source of all creation – the Generator, Operator, Destroyer - GOD. It does not matter if you believe in the triune God or not. If he/it exists and is omnipotent then what you believe is what you are given. God makes agnostics and atheists too. And if there is no God, then Homo sapiens must do the best they can with what is. However, if there is a spirit that gives life as claimed by Jesus, then you may be about to begin the adventure of a lifetime. (John 6:63)

Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, (1915-1968) [aka Fr. M. Louis] wrote in No Man Is an Island, (1955) Without a life of the spirit, our whole existence becomes unsubstantial and illusory. The life of the spirit, by integrating us in the real order established by God, puts us in the fullest possible contact with reality – not as we imagine it but as it really is. So read on and you may find the benefits are worth the burdens…or not.

The Dalai Lama wrote in his book, Beyond Religion, (2011) Any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate. Certainly religion has helped millions of people in the past, helps millions today and will continue to help millions in the future. But for all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, in today’s secular world religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. Though religion certainly has the potential to help people lead meaningful and happy lives, it too, when misused, can become a source of conflict and division. All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness, can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I believe the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics that is beyond religion. Such a way of thinking is presented here as Theofatalism.

In his autobiography written at age 90, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, (1920-2012) founder of the Unification Church wrote: "If we continue the era of people congregating together only by religion or race, then humanity cannot avoid a repetition of war. The age of peace absolutely cannot come unless we transcend cultural customs and traditions [as well as national borders.] No ideology, philosophy, or religion that has influenced humanity in the past is capable of bringing about the peace and unification that is needed for the future. We need a new ideology and philosophy that goes beyond Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam." Perhaps this is it.

One post script: In order to get in the correct frame of mind for receiving the work ahead it may help to recite the following poem each time you begin – in fact, it is a good way to begin each day. It won’t change anything but you may feel better thinking that it can.

God, grant me calm submission

to accept with serenity things

I cannot change and

Detach from things I wish were different

Remaining thankful for who I am

And so die in peace knowing

That I did all that I should because

Nothing happens outside your will.

1. THE CALL FOR PERSONAL REFORMATION

Therapist and atheist psychiatry professor, Irvin Yalom pointed out in Staring at the Sun (2008) that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor believed mankind really needs magic, mystery and authority, and religion serves very well to provide all three. Healers and religious shaman and priests supply those commodities in great abundance to the poorly educated and superstitious sheeple. The Catholic encyclopedia claims there are some 21,000 different religions among us – all in God’s will of course. But, ever since Martin Luther posted his little memo on that church door in 1517 there seems to be a continuing interest in reforming the church initiated by disciples of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago.

Modern communications make it possible for a few reformers to organize hosts of like minded rebels in continuing attempts to change the world. Someone said the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Nevertheless, a crisis now is brewing among religions of the world. Some studies indicate that membership in Christian churches is declining world wide while Islam is growing. Things are changing rapidly in modern societies, and human consciousness is moving into a new expansion – some call it the Age of Aquarius. But religion commonly is stuck in legacy beliefs that have not kept up with the times. The sources of faith sheeple have relied upon for centuries now are obsolete, but very few theologians realize it yet. They are irrelevant and impotent in helping sheeple live with reality in science, politics, economics, philosophy, medicine, psychology and the basic issues of life and death. It is time for a quantum leap in religious thinking - a big change is needed.

The Chinese ideogram for change also contains elements of both threat and opportunity. Whichever way this emerging spiritual crisis evolves, it certainly includes adopting an attitude of both/and rather than either/or among various beliefs. You will see that distinction repeatedly in this work.

[Philosophers reading this may relate the either/or dichotomy with the mutually exclusive duality of Aristotle, i.e., right-wrong, up-down, hot-cold, etc. - while the both/and is the middle way of Buddhism described by the scribe, Nagarjuna who wrote in the second century CE. This necessary dichotomy is seen in science as the absolutes of bipolar mathematics on one hand and the indefinite uncertainty of quantum mechanics on the other where, for example, light is both a wave and a photon and particles are found in two places at the same time. The endless argument about mutual exclusivity of science and religion was described by French biologist, Jacques Monod in his Chance and Necessity (1972) in which he argued for the arbitrary choice which was in turn refuted by theologian, Keith Ward in his rebuttal, God, Chance and Necessity (1996), both of which were derived from lectures by Rudolf Steiner in 1915, titled, Chance, Providence and Necessity.

These opposing reviews on reality are brought together by David J. Bartholomew who evoked both/and in his book, God, Chance and Purpose, Can God Have it Both Ways, (2008) with a logical argument for answering,Yes. Albert Einstein did not believe that God plays dice with the universe, but astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has argued the universe is both arbitrary and random, citing the determinism of LaPlace plus the random quantum theory of Heisenberg, i.e., you can choose to search for a particle’s position or speed, but not both because finding one changes the other. He claimed, Not only does God play dice but sometimes he throws them where they cannot be seen…one can calculate probabilities, but one cannot make any definite predictions If this is true in science, how much more it must apply to human affairs. Zen Buddhism claims to avoid selecting a preference for this or that, i.e., science or religion to see the truth. If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between for and against is the mind’s worst disease. To this conclusion one might add, if there is only one source of all, then it must drive both sides in every conflict – including those between science and religion, reason and faith.]

The old ways always must make way for the new, but this time the reformation will be devastating to those who cannot or will not move with the times, like using the Internet for information transfer. Martin Luther could change the world with only one page tacked onto a church door in 1517, but today one must use the latest information technology to spread the word. Luther lamented, I never would have thought that such a storm would rise from Rome over one simple scrap of paper. Imagine what God can do with the Internet - where every personal computer is connected to all other personal computers. Because there are no new continents to explore on planet earth we must live among each other for better or worse, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, in peace and war, until death do us part each with our own version of information display in the palms of our hands. Unfortunately, information without wisdom is worthless. We are flooded with information but dangerously bereft of wisdom – so we will always have wars and the poor among us as Jesus declared. The more options the more difficult the decision is. But, among the infinite options, what makes everyone choose the ones that they do? This work will show that the assumption of human free will is an illusion which must be replaced with belief in the will of God – Generator, Operator, Destroyer.

The schism between Islam and Christianity that now threatens to explode into open warfare between the intolerant extremes in both camps is but a symptom of the inner struggle among mankind to choose who they will serve, God or Baal, self or technology. Space travel and the modern physics make it no longer possible for many to accept the old laws of Moses compiled in the Torah and re-formalized in the sharia law of Islam. Neither does the teaching of passivity by Jesus from Nazareth stand up to the challenge of modern minds under the reality of science in new warfare by remote control. We cannot look at the earth from the orbiting space station or look into the universe through the orbiting Hubble telescope and continue believing in the Gods of our ancestors or even our fathers, church leaders, and Sunday school teachers. You only need to fly commercial above 35,000 feet to realize that heaven does not exist above the firmament. The emergence of this new reformation will require real suffering and challenge to the faith of our ancestors before it is fully birthed. It is an old struggle, continuing to balance faith and reason among mankind, and the end is not yet in sight.

Retired Episcopal Bishop, John Shelby Spong (1931…) is the spox [new term for spokesperson] of a more progressive form of religion. [The San Francisco Chronicle says of Bishop Spong, "He provides enlightenment for those who no longer believe in the God of Sunday school and are looking for something else to give their lives meaning. Spong coined the term, agnostic believer, in his classic work, Jesus for the Non-religious (2007)] He put it this way in his blog (www.beliefnet.com); People can talk about their understanding of God until the cows come home, but we have not yet come to grips with the fact that there is no supernatural, parental deity above the sky keeping the divine record books on human behavior up to date and ready at any moment to intervene in human history to answer prayers. Moreover, our concept of God must change as we discover more about the universe, our home planet, and human life. When we do embrace this fact then prayer [and worship] becomes an increasingly impossible idea and inevitably a declining practice. To get people to embrace this point clearly, I have suggested that the popular prayers of most people are little more than adult letters written to a Santa Claus God. There are then two choices. One says that the God in whom I always believed is no more, so I will become an atheist. The other says that the way I have always thought of God has become inoperative, so there must be something wrong with my definition. This stance serves to plunge us deeply into a new way of thinking about God. Can God, for example, be conceived of not as a supernatural person, but as a force present in me and flowing through me as life itself? The spiritual life is then transformed from the activity of a child seeking the approval of a supernatural parent to being a spiritual journey into self-discovery and into the mystery of existence. It also feeds my sense of growing into oneness with the source of all life [in its many forms and manifestations.]

Spong goes on; We once defined human life as a special creation made in the image of God, endowed with an immortal soul and just a little lower than the angels. Then came Charles Darwin who defined us instead as just a little higher than the apes with self preservation and survival of the fittest driving our lives. We began to see ourselves not as fallen angels, but as highly developed animals linked by DNA to everything from the plankton of the sea, to the cabbages, to the chimpanzees. Suddenly we wondered if there was any meaning to life other than the biological processes of being born, maturing, mating, reproducing and dying. However, Darwin ran into trouble trying to explain altruism, as when some are called to practice self-sacrificing charity or even death-defying protection of others. Jesus claimed there is no greater love than to give ones life for his friends. Now there is space travel with views of the universe that reduce the earth to just another dot among infinite dots in the blackness of space and makes it possible to envision mankind as nothing but a zit in the infinite scale of space/time.

Spong continues, "So it is that faith wavers in the modern world and the external supernatural being we once thought of as God might just turn out to be little more than a stage in human development. Certainly the God who rewards and punishes is little more than the behavior controlling parental deity that immature children seek [not unlike belief in Santa Claus.] I urge you to turn your attention inward not outward, to go so deeply into your own humanity that you escape its limits and begin to experience that which is transcendent or the divine presence. That is the only doorway that in my experience enables me to contemplate life after death." So, turn off the television and sit quietly for a while each day to access your own inner being that usually is buried under all the noise of modern living.

The Asian ancients attempted to make that journey inward through the practices of yoga, the Buddhists by the practice of meditation, and lately the Church of Scientology provides its techniques of psychoanalysis to break out of the bounds of mind/body mortality and emerge into the spiritual condition of Clear. Jesus declared, The kingdom of God is within you, but only after he described it in a dozen parables as outside oneself. (Luke 17:21) [Believers in Gnosticism claim this is evidence which crept into the Bible that Jesus was a spiritual teacher who was misunderstood by the Roman hierarchy.] Unfortunately, he never described how we can access it, and he appeared to be more than a little confused himself. Fr. Richard Rohr tried to accommodate this dichotomy by claiming in The Immortal Diamond (2012), That God is utterly beyond me and totally within me at the same time is the exquisite balance that most religion seldom achieves. Thus, God is to be found both out there and in here, i.e., both/and rather than either/or. But, how can anyone reconcile something that is both out there and in here?

To such queries Jesus replied, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26) C.G. Jung (1875-1961) observed, Those who look outward dream, but those who look inward awake. The least likely place to experience this self awareness/transcendence is in a modern contemporary church service on Sunday morning. It takes extended contemplation in silent meditation to exit the ego false self and to tap into the true self within. Jesus called it a hidden pearl of great price. (Matthew 13:44-46) He tried to explain this by declaring, Whoever wants to save their life/ego will lose it, but whoever loses their life/ego for me and the gospel will save it. (Mark 8:5, Matthew 10:39, 16:25, Luke 9:34) This is not much different from the promise to Muslims in the Quran that those who fight for Allah will, win or lose, be given a great reward. (4:74) Can you believe that? [Muslims believe the Quran to be verbally revealed through angel Gabriel from God to Muhammad gradually over a period of approximately 23 years beginning on December 22, 609 CE when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death.]

There always is an opposing opinion, as stated by The Very Rev. Canon Robert S. Munday, People who allow unbelief and prayerlessness to rob them of intimacy with God do not know what they are missing. The precious truth of the Gospel is that God loves us, that he created us for fellowship with him, and after we had fallen into sin, God sent Jesus Christ to redeem us, not only so that we can enjoy heaven later, but so that we can experience the joy of daily, constant fellowship with God now. The unbelief of the skeptics will never destroy what the saints know to be true: You can petition the Lord with prayer! Catholics have designated some 10,000 or more saints posthumously as personal advocates with such standing in heaven that they can indeed change the mind of God. But, what kind of God would change his plans whenever his creation asks him to? Answer: The kind that Jesus described…Therefore, I tell you whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. (Matthew 17:20, 21: 21-23, Mark 9:23, 11:23-24, John 15:7) He also promised, "Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. (Matthew 18:19) Whether this promise was only for his disciples at that time or for all future followers, no one can tell. Very few sheeple