Recently the Huffington Post online news site featured in
their religion section a wonderful essay entitled "A God for
Atheists." I was drawn to it immediately when I noticed that it was
written by Dr. Stafford Betty, a longtime professor of religious studies at California State University Bakersfield. It's
an honor to acknowledge that Dr. Betty (pictured below) has been a follower of this blog and his
occasional comments have been welcome.
While definitions of God (or as I prefer, Divine Source) are
not necessarily central to this blog's mission, I do want to share a few
thoughts about Professor Betty's provocative article because his comments do run
parallel with what we've considered here before. I think he is right on mark
when he singles out present-day Christianity (especially its evangelical wing)
and its 13th century theology for causing many to explore the more rational
alternatives atheism offers. "...[T]he roots of atheism are often found in primitive,
narrow views of the Divine picked up in preteen years," Dr. Betty writes. "Waking
up to the absurdity of God condemning non-Christians to hell is enough to blow
into smithereens the childhood faith of many a thoughtful adolescent. A God who
created the universe a few thousand years ago by merely wishing it into
existence out of nothing is almost as fatal. For others ‒ and this goes for
older people too ‒ it's the belief that God will bless us with what we pray for
if we pray hard enough, or that everything that happens to us is supposed to
happen. Or that God inspired everything found in the Bible, or the Qur'an, or
the Vedas, or the Book of Mormon. To believe in such a God is to fly in the
face of reason and evidence."
 |
| Dr. Stafford Betty |
Like many of you, I can personally relate to this. Entering
college as a staunch evangelical I was suddenly exposed to numerous realities
about my faith that had previously been hidden from me (hidden by my church
intentionally in order to "protect" followers from being "led
astray.") These realities, of
course, are the many problems of
Christianity that have been uncovered over the past 300 years by academic
religious scholarship. Most atheists are well versed in this field and the
findings of scholars give them much ammunition when they choose to attack the
predominant religion of the West. Most Christians, however, are largely
ignorant of what scholars have discovered about their religion.
Add to this the childish, superstitious and out of touch
picture of God present in most churches and it's a wonder that in this day of
increased education the pews are as full as they are. As an alternative, Dr. Betty
offers a portrait of God that seems to reflect quite well what we as
spiritualists have heard from the other side over and over again. Gone are the anthropomorphic
qualities as are the vengeance, jealousy
and desire to punish that so often tarnish Christian teachings. The essay is a
good read and as of this writing it is still available online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stafford-betty/a-god-for-atheists_b_4870627.html.
I see, however, that at least one atheist has already tried
online to shoot holes in Dr. Betty's argument which really doesn't surprise me.
As an alternative to the antiquated world view offered by traditional orthodox Christianity,
atheists buy into a materialistic world view that holds matter as we now know
it as the full extent of reality. They dogmatically assert that what we see is
all we get; there simply cannot be other worlds, other realities, other forces.
But as we've pointed out here before, there is an abundance of evidence showing
that other forces DO exist. We acknowledge that these discoveries do not prove
the existence of God but I propose, "who really cares at this point in
time?" Our Source, if he/she/it actually exists, is no doubt far beyond
our comprehension so it is probably useless to argue either for or against its
existence. Instead, let's proceed in a direction where we can make some discernible
headway and in order to do that we will need to somehow release our researchers
from their materialistic mindset so they can move on unencumbered.
This blog is primarily focused on after death communication
and this has also been an area receiving a lot of attention by Dr. Betty over
the years. He is on the board for the Academy of Spirituality
and Paranormal Studies and his 2011 book The
Afterlife Unveiled is a superb collection of descriptions of the afterlife
revealed through mediumship. Professor Betty acknowledges that there is a "massive
amount of evidence that points to an afterlife" and this book presents
some of the most compelling accounts.
"The
literature written by doctors and psychologists on the near-death experience,
the books written by hospice personnel about the extraordinary visions that
dying people who are not doped up with painkillers commonly report, and the
reports of spirits speaking through mediums, such as we've examined here,
points to a mysterious dimension that exists alongside ours" he writes in
the book's conclusion. "One needs no faith to appreciate and weigh this
evidence, only an open mind uncontaminated
by materialist presuppositions."
My
favorite descriptions of the afterlife came through the mediumship of Anthony
Borgia who died in 1989 and the communicator who worked through Borgia was none
other than the Catholic priest and later Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson
(1871-1914). Fr. Benson's messages were published in several books during the
1950s and, thankfully, they are available free online. Dr. Betty's book,
however, masterfully condenses Benson's descriptions. In summarizing his
chapter on Benson's message, Betty says that "The spirit world according
to Benson is a place of endless variety spread out in virtually infinite space ‒
with every individual spirit residing in a realm suitable to his or her
spiritual maturity." This is the essential message of all afterlife communicators when they try to put into
language their world that is so much more expansive than our own.
Harkening
back to Betty's essay about A God for Atheists, we need to remember that 160
years of psychical research has amassed a ton of evidence that points toward
life after death and the probable existence of an ultimate source for all that
is. Ignorance and stubbornness have led people to shelve all this and consider
it to be unimportant, irrelevant, unscientific or even evil. Thanks to Dr.
Betty and a growing number of other leaders in education, research and science,
information is slowly going out that shows the bigger picture. At some time the
outcome of this expansion of awareness, I feel, will be an increased
willingness to investigate our true spiritual nature in more depth. Then I'm
sure we will be able to count on willing communicators from the "other
side" who will be glad to help us advance our understanding.
Dr.
Stafford Betty's book, The Afterlife
Unveiled, is available through Amazon.com in both print and Kindle formats.
