Ok – I own the coolest new coffee toy.

And another angle. . .

Elegant eh?

Ok I am talking about the Presso not the model.

The Presso is an Espresso maker.

It requires no power supply. Hot water goes in the chamber at the top, coffee goes in the filter handle like a normal espresso machine, you raise the arms, wait 15 seconds then lower the arms.

Espresso is extracted.

Drink the espresso.

Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

It is a terrible and wonderful world when a device like this gives you better espresso shots than most cafes.

I was going to leave it at work – I took it with me this morning but I just can’t bear to be parted from it so it came home with me again on the train.

I think it likes me.

In the last chapter of this saga, I been discussing my approach to valuing life – as an atheist but I didn’t really talk about how my views have been shaped and whether or not the values of my earlier faith have played a part.

Well, perhaps unsurprisingly they have, and I value that highly. As I said in an earlier post, I am sort of individualistic – my views about God have not been shaped by reading a lot of philosophy or theology, nor through exposure to a cadre of atheists in the workplace. In fact the ‘theists’ outnumber the atheists in most places I have worked.

I would have benefited from more reading I am sure – and I think I’d be more coherent in my writing about belief if I’d read a lot more in that vein. In a way, having not drunk to deeply from the shiraz and chardonnay of the ‘great thinkers’ on both sides of this debate (are there in fact sides to this?) leaves me free of at least some of the clichéd arguments that must have been endlessly repeated.

Or at least I hope I am – its my first foray you see, so it is entirely possible that I am saying things that I think are original but that others have indeed heard before – too bad!

As a young Catholic I was exposed to Jesuits, Franciscans, and a range of other groups within the Catholic Church. This gave me a pretty good start in terms of my access to values that I cherish even today. One thing I will say for Christianity is that it does forgiveness better than just about anyone – at least in theory!

The teaching of forgiveness is something that is very valuable, and it is certainly not practiced enough. It is however one of the hardest parts of Christianity – particularly because any objective reading of scriptures makes in pretty clear that it is a must.

So under what framework then can a person that does not believe in God apply forgiveness in daily life. Its not a requirement of me that I forgive anyone. I’m not a superstitious person, and don’t believe in Karma – so why should I forgive anyone anything ever?

I’ve met people who never forgive. Dry bitter people. Just being around them is like having a 9-volt battery permanently attached to your tongue. They age before their time and live lonely lives surrounded only by their fantasies of what could have been – ‘only ifs’.

I do have the added luxury now of being able to consider some individuals guilty of ‘unforgivable’ acts. A pretty small group, thankfully. Like Christians I see redemptive value in individuals and given that we get one chance at life I don’t think people should be abandoned.

So for Christians, forgiveness has a fairly important meaning and is a central part of the teachings of Christ, but what can it possibly mean to an atheist? I’m not speaking for atheists though, I’m speaking for me – and for me forgiveness is an integral part of my acknowledgement that people need to be valued and forgiveness is a leg of the table – take it away and you lose the balance that allows you to honestly value other people.

Why should we value others? I may think independently, but I live in a world full of people who are different to me – and they interest me. I want to get to know them all better. I like people. I’m a little afraid of them, but they are fascinating. They do and say wonderful, funny stupid appalling things all at once. They are contradictions; they are a remote chance, a last hope, a fresh start, an accident and a carbuncle on the rest of the planet.

But they are also the only life form that we know of that has developed the capacity to think and to use this ability to build espresso machines.

Also I am one and by learning about others I learn about myself. By learning to forgive others I can also learn to forgive myself.

One of the things that I find hard to accept about most religions is the idea that there is only one path to ‘salvation’, or heaven etc., and that path is through their religion. Naturally this increases potential for conflict between religions and even within religions as factions promote their interpretation of scriptures as the sole accurate interpretation.

If there was a God – could that entity be an exclusivist? Could a creator really condemn a large proportion of their creation simply because they bought the wrong brand?

I’d be quite happy to assign people to a lesser hell for drinking Nescafe, but as I’m not a deity people can be permitted this grievous error without fear of divine wrath.

But let’s substitute Nescafe for Baptist and call Catholics ‘Espresso’ (the Italian connection you see. . .). I went to high school with classmates who regularly informed me that I was doomed for all eternity because I drank espresso. So for preferring espresso to Nescafe I was damned?

Ok – I know we could extrapolate this out to extremes – ‘but what if the religion taught that killing and eating of babies was a good thing’ etc. Yes, I think we can draw the line somewhere – religions that REQUIRE you to harm something or someone are probably slipping outside my personal parameters of acceptability – particularly in the modern context.

My thinking on this refined a little over time – though I do discuss it only crudely here – but boiling a number of things down – can you accept the existence of a condemning God? (oh boy, back to Genesis and original sin we go. . .) I don’t accept the ‘but it is the creation that strays’ argument. Sorry, just doesn’t work from a logical perspective – its fine for personal responsibility at the level of society but an omnipotent omniscient God would have had to know exactly what was going to happen from the get-go, which to me means that that being would have condemned the larger part of its creation from the moment of creation – and did so knowingly.

A bit too callous for me – and I refuse to accept the existence of such a malign entity.

So we move to the all loving creator, endowing its creation with the ability to reason, and therefore to know and worship the creator. Do we then accept that because people are so broadly scattered and such independently minded critters that when a general consensus on the path to God can be agreed within a community that the creator is accepting of that as a valid expression of the human function in knowing and worshipping God?

I might be a little more disposed towards that concept – except that is an heretical statement for almost any religion I have heard of.

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A question for those who have knowledge of the emerging church.

Next Sunday night Compass is doing a story on the Franciscan monks in Minto in Sydney. While I haven’t seen the show and have only heard the 15 second blurb, it sounds a little like some of the discussion I have read here about the emerging church – which led in my mind to the next question, “Can established church, alse be emerging?”.

It is quite possible that this question has already been answered before – but I’ve missed it.

I’m very fond of Franciscans, and of the Missionaries of Charity (The order founded by Mother Theresa). They do some amazing work and have good values – OK the Friars have got a bit of history and some weird mysticism at times but I can live with that!

I have noticed when around them that there is often no overt effort at conversion – often almost a rule against the attempt in fact. They do their work and allow that to witness to their faith, is that also part of the emerging church?

And why is an Athiest so interested anyway? (and yes – feel free to answer that question for me!)download rescuers the police academy 5 assignment miami beach dvdrip