Tag Archives: Temple

Flourishing

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The solution to all our problems is to return to God.

How many times have we been told this recently? It seems here in the UK that hardly a week goes by without a new book, report or high-profile article appearing advocating a return to ‘Christian values’ or acknowledging Something Greater Than Ourselves (invariably the Christian God). This, it invariably assures us, is the only way to bring us back to our senses and solve all our problems. Even previously atheist/agnostic writers – Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, Jordan Peterson, Aaran Hirsi Ali and Russell Brand (how’d he get in here?) – suggest that Christianity must be revived to prevent the vacuum created by its decline from being filled by the less humane Islam.

I’ve written about this fallacy before – here and here – so won’t go over the same ground again. Instead, I want to highlight a recent report, The Global Flourishing Study, carried out by Harvard University and funded primarily by the Templeton Foundation. Alarm bells! The Templeton Foundation is a religious organisation, so already the study’s conclusions are thrown into question. What were participants asked? What was their background? What bias did the questions convey?

Not surprisingly then, the study concluded that many people in the world are not flourishing and that those who are, are flourishing – surprise, surprise – largely as a result of religion:

Religious service attendance was one of the factors most consistently associated with present or subsequent wellbeing, across countries and across outcomes.

Religious groups have leapt on the conclusions as evidence that humans need God to live fulfilling lives. The key word here, however, is ‘attendance’. The study itself acknowledges that human community – being with other, like-minded people with a common interest or cause – is a significant aspect of the resulting flourishing. But we knew this already so maybe the $43.4 million spent on the study might have been better spent: feeding the hungry, perhaps? An earlier 2017 study also by Harvard was headlined:

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier.

Numerous other recent studies have reached this same conclusion (see here, here, and here for more).

The god factor injected into Harvard’s more recent study to satisfy the Templeton Foundation and its affiliates is further complicated by the fact that there isn’t only one god involved in making us all feel jollier. There are currently thousands in use throughout the world (the internet is unable to provide an actual figure, however approximate). Thus, those who congregate in the mosque to praise Allah enjoy the same ‘flourishing’ as those who meet at the synagogue to worship Yahweh. Likewise, those who come together to worship Brahman experience the same benefits as those who gather to praise Jesus. Not because any one of the gods in question is the real one – they can’t all be – but because the participants are worshipping and serving together, collectively as a community. That is where the ‘blessing’ comes from. The innumerable gods involved are incidental. Indeed, each is dismissed, if not held in contempt, by the adherents of the others.

In the end then, what enables us to flourish and live longer healthier lives is company – human company. This doesn’t require a church, mosque, synagogue or temple. There are other, superstition-free ways: time spent with family; volunteering with others; joining a drama/bridge/walking/sports/writing/LGBT (worked for me) /whatever-you’re-interested-in group. The song from Funny Girl gets it right: ‘people who need people are the luckiest people in the world’. Of course other people can be frustrating (present company excepted) but unlike the gods they’re real and provide the companionship, fellowship and company we need to thrive. As ever, no God required.

What Jesus didn’t know

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Creating the picture for the previous post reminded me of how little Jesus, assuming he actually existed, knew of the consequences of his ‘ministry’. Here’s a few of the things he either didn’t do or had no knowledge of while he lived.

  • Jesus never read a single word of the New Testament. The earliest of its books, I Thessalonians, was written about twenty years after he died. The New Testament did not appear in its entirety until the end of the 4th century.
  • He never read any of the accounts of his life, the first of which didn’t appear until about forty years after his death.
  • He had no control at all over what went in any of the gospels.
  • He did not endorse them in any way, nor verify their accuracy.
  • He never met Paul nor was he aware of the fantastical claims Paul would make about him.
  • He had no idea he would come to be regarded as God.
  • He did not know that soon after his death, people would worship him as God.
  • He would not have anticipated that his teaching would be adapted for a Gentile audience. It is unlikely he would have approved if he had.
  • He had no idea a new religion would be created in his name.
  • He did not know anything about, nor did he anticipate, the Church. His apparent acknowledgement of it is a fabrication.
  • He did not know the damage those who followed him would do in his name.
  • He did not know that the Kingdom of God would never arrive on Earth, nor that the Romans would continue to dominate it for a further 400 years.
  • He did not know the world would continue pretty much as it was for another 2000 years.
  • He did not know of the scientific discoveries that would be made in those years that would invalidate his beliefs and worldview.
  • He did not know that, forty years after his ‘ministry’, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed by the Romans. His ‘prophecy’ of it is a fabrication written after the event.
  • He did not know of the world beyond the Roman Empire, if he was aware even of that. He certainly did not know of the American continent.
  • He had no knowledge of the United States, founded more than 1,700 years after he died.
  • He had no concept of most, if not all, of the concerns of today’s evangelicals: religious liberty, right-wing politics, guns, abortion, ‘the homosexual agenda’.
  • He had no idea what his legacy would be: the arrested development of millions and of western society itself; pogroms, persecutions and inquisitions; a corrupt and abusive church; the psychological damage caused to innumerable people; his name hi-jacked for political causes he had never heard of and almost certainly would not have approved of.

None of this is what he saw for himself. He thought he would be ruling the world with his besties on behalf of Yahweh. Like every other mortal, he had no idea of anything that would happen after his lifetime. What does this tell us about him?