1) Is there a God? No, there isn't. It's that easy. There's no magical sky daddy who created us and lives in a place called heaven or anywhere else. There are also no angels, devils, heavens, hells, heavenly saints or magic virgins. These categories we've inherited have perverted the discussion of religion, resulting in an understanding of the subject in our culture that ranges from sadly ignorant to profoundly dumb. However, it's not entirely our fault. We're taught from an early age that the question of religion comes down to whether we "believe in God" or not. It doesn't. Or it shouldn't. Worship of the anthropomorphic God is virtual idolatry, monotheism with a polytheistic mindset. God is not someone to be worshipped; God is an experience to be known.
2) If there's no God, then who made the world? No one. If the world didn't work, we simply wouldn't be here. End of story. Like Ann Richards said about George Bush: "He found himself on third base and assumed he'd hit a triple." Just like us. We found ourselves alive on Earth and assumed we were meant to be here instead of looking around at a world that functions and taking delight in the fact that it does, and gave rise to us. Per Alan Watts: "Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about an insignificant star on the outer edges of one of the smaller galaxies." But how cool is that?
3) What about the conflict between science and religion? There is none. This silly, alleged debate is the sad result of those who take the Book of Genesis as history instead of poetry. Science explores the origin and nature of the physical universe. Religion explores a deeper, more profound, psychological experience of human life. They work two completely different sides of the street. The nonsense that is creationism -- or its uptown cousin, intelligent design, which is just creationism with a GED -- is the sad byproduct of those who need to feel that the Bible must be literally true in its entirety or it's rendered entirely false. This perverts both science and religion. The phenomenon of a magnificent sunset can be explained scientifically: what causes the brilliant lights, how my eyes take in the sight and how my brain processes it, how many muscles move in my face when I smile. None of this negates or diminishes the joy or wonder I might feel sitting on the beach watching it. That is a moment for poets to write about, or artists to paint. Why do we need to feel that there is any purpose to the sunset beyond the sunset itself?
4) Doesn't the question of God and religion come down to faith vs. reason? No. Faith in the existence of a benevolent God is the way religion has been framed in our culture, and that is unfortunate because it blinds us to a deeper understanding of religion. However, a kind of faith is an element in our lives, but it's faith informed by reason. There are times in life when reason will only take you so far, like when you're in a plane that's barreling down the runway. You can be comfortable in the knowledge that the odds are on your side and that the pilot is experienced and sober, but in that moment before takeoff, you are in a world beyond your control. Experientially, there is little difference between saying, "I have faith in God," and, "I believe life is good." Either can give one the strength to persevere in tough times. Now, perhaps the God connotation is too strong for people to hear the word any differently, but there is a meaning to faith that arises out of human experience but which has nothing to do with some benevolent God looking out for you. At one of the many poignant moments in The Power of Myth -- conversations between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell -- Moyers asks him about faith, saying, "You are a man of faith. Of wonder." Campbell replies: "I don't need to have faith. I have experience."
5) What about the afterlife? There is none. There's no beforelife. There's no afterlife. The Kingdom of Heaven is a psychological or mystical concept that has been misconstrued as a physical place. Eternal life is an experience of the here and now. Our yearning for an afterlife is based on our insecurities and fears about death and the unknown. What we are is energy that can neither be created nor destroyed. Our individual lives are waves rolling in off the ocean. Nothing more. There is no soul that is in any way attached to our personalities. Of course we want to think we go on. Who wouldn't? You put all this effort into a life and then it's like you're mugged and it's all taken away. But the notion of an eternal soul has to do with our common essence, not our individual existence. When the energy goes out of us, "us" goes. However, insofar as our essence is concerned, we are eternal, though, again per Joseph Campbell "just not the 'we' that we think we are."
6) If there's no God, then what is the meaning of life? Wrong question. Why do we assume that meaning needs to come from above and that our lives only have significance if they're part of some divine plan? The right question is: where is the meaning in life? Meaning is something we infer from the experience of being alive that makes it feel worthwhile. Meaning exists within the fact that our lives are finite. In fact, it's because of that fact that life's meaning is heightened. The meaning is in the experience.
7) Doesn't religious war negate the claims of religion? No. It proves the harm that can be done when a cunning dictator manipulates a race of stupid, gullible, desperate people. Marx's opiate of the masses easily becomes the amphetamine of the extremists. Religious war is an oxymoron. While every tradition has blood on its hands, the culprit is blind belief and obedience, whether it's to an absolute power or an inevitable historical movement. At various times in history that same mindset has been used by both the church and the state. And while religion is not always the culprit, it is more tragic when religion is used as a justification for murder or genocide because of the inherent expectation of moral behavior. Religion can be used as a weapon only when people are stupid enough to fall for it.
8) What about those who claim to speak for God? Villains, thieves, and con men (or women). God is not an entity. There is no God who speaks or endorses political candidates. When preachers or politicians claim that their efforts are part of God's plan, they should have a net thrown over them, because that is insane. Anyone who claims to be receiving these messages is either crazy, or lying for power or money, or both.
9) But isn't God interested in my life? No. Thinking of God as some divine father-figure who knows your every thought and watches over your every move is the outgrowth of our fears of being alone in the universe, coupled with the knowledge that we will most likely lose our parents and have to live our lives without daddy's guidance. God the Father provides comfort for our existential fears. He's the daddy who never leaves. And while the psychological need is understandable, and very human, this idea is perverted into the notion that there is a God who wants you to be rich, successful or happy, putting aside the fact that only in America could we conflate the two things we worship, God and money, despite their contradictory impulses. There is no God who wants you to be rich, and especially not one who can be bribed through donations. This notion has created some very well-off, happy-talk preachers who have managed to sell the idea of divine sanction for greed and personal aggrandizement, impulses that are the antithesis of religion. The "God wants you to be rich" line is just motivational speaking -- purpose-driven megachurch nonsense.
10) But how can we have religion without God? Most people in the West see this as an impossibility. But as an exercise, ask it as a possibility. In other words: how might it be possible to have religion without our traditional understanding of God? Religion has not been handed down from above. It erupted from within the collective unconscious and the knowledge that our ego-driven experience of life is limited, and a more profound experience is there to be known by anyone at anytime. This awareness -- call it spiritual, mystical, or simply psychological -- is the experiential core of religion. Of all religions. All traditions have the purpose of laying out a road map to it, not as a replacement for our normal experience, but as an enhancement of it. We need to refocus our understanding of religion from an aspect of our identity to an activity. From something we are to something we do. We need to bring religion back down to Earth. Lose the literal interpretations of gods, heavens, angels, and miracles, and resurrect religion as an activity of connecting with that part of us that is not us, but lives in us, or flows though us. Call it energy, being, essence, Tao, Brahman, God -- it doesn't matter. These are just linguistic and cultural variations on a single theme. Religion is an outgrowth of a very human desire for self-knowledge and an experience not just of our common humanity but of our unity with all life -- an experience that inspires us morally, socially, and culturally. However, as long as the discussion remains mired in false arguments between faith and reason, religion and science, or belief and atheism, we will never crawl out of this intellectual hole we've inherited, and we run the risk of losing the important message that religion is intended to communicate.
This post is adapted from a book I just published: Deconstructing God: A Heretic's Case For Religion.
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Valerie Tarico: God's Emotions: Why the Biblical God Is So Human (Part 1)
What is Buddhism? Religion without a God? The basic beliefs ...
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Sunday, August 08, 2010
Greetings AP,
In today's Sunday Denver Post, there is an AP report about a plane-crash in Salina, PA. The report quotes a Westmoreland County spokesman, Dan Stevens, who makes an absurd statement about the surviver, Steve Yanko, that is not challenged by AP in the story.
The statement "God was on his side" (common in such reports of "miracles") should always be followed up with a question of "Why was god not on the side of those who died?" to at least challenge the absurd notion of a god who is involved in such matters. As an atheist I seek only balance in such reporting. A questioning press should present balance in all things.
As Epicurus once asked:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?
Epicurus (c. 341 - c. 270 BC)
I guess, for this topic, the 'hand, having writ, moves on'. I expected thousands of comments. A shame--Gurvitz is the closest to what I believe, or don't believe. He is probably too far 'ahead'--there were many replies to Dossey and Lanza for fluff piecies that everybody could spot, and then feel superior to.
Mr. G, as long as you are doing this stuff and you can handle even more indifference, see my assembled comments on 'permalink'; you might as well extend your range by writing about DEATH, as I have outlined (I'm not the first, but there aren't many writers on it--see James Hillman's first book, on suicide).
I'm not a secular humanist because the symbols that well up from my 'center' or Self certaintly don't make my human life comfortable. The goal is tension, or as Becker said in 'Denial of Death', a hero is a person who has maximized the amount of uncertainty his particular system can handle.
Instead, Sanatana Dharma can only be understood in complementary ways. Also, participation along with observation is another, and essential road to knowledge about Sanatana Dharma.
The participatory aspect is featured in the scheme of the 4 complementary aims of life -- Virtue, Prosperity, Enjoyment, Liberation/Enlightenment.
The observational aspect is featured in the scheme of the 6 complementary views (Darshanas) onto self and world.
6 VIEWS
Nyaya-Vaisheshika -- thought-logic-analysis
Mimamsa -- Participatory Ritual
Yoga -- Gnosis, foregoing the sensory and thought modes
Samkhya -- Phenomenological mind-matter dualism and subject-object divide
Vedanta -- mind-matter non-dualism and subject-object synthesis (samadhi) arrived at via Science, Philosophy and Gnosis as one probes deeper into phenomenon, including oneself.
The objective and the subjective means are both equally respected and it is considered that these complementary ways cannot be reduced to each other. The objective cannot be reduced to the subjective, otherwise one ends up trying to espouse the philosophy of Idealism. But also, the subjective cannot be reduced to the objective, or one ends up trying to espouse the philosophy of materialism. Although both these reductions can be tried and one may gain insights and knowledge in the process, but ultimately these attempts at reduction will hit the brick wall of reality, of how things are, of Sanatana Dharma.
The word "religion" is a Western word and does not comport well with the Indian approach. The Sanskrit word "Dharma" is the overarching word in India. What outsiders call "Hinduism" is called 'Dharma' in India. The word Dharma came to gradually replace the word "Rta" (used in the Rg Veda) and looking at the meaning of Rta gives a good understanding of what 'Dharma' is meant to convey. Rta is the root for 'rhythm', Ritu is the word for the rhythmic change of seasons, the regular movement of the stars and planets in the sky -- the order of the world, both microcosmic and macrocosmic, from the galaxies to the cell and beyond.
Actually, the native word for "Hinduism" is "Sanatana Dharma", where Sanatana means 'eternal'. So we are talking about the eternal rhythmic order of the world, the eternal, rhythmic/orderly world process. The change from 'Rta' to 'Dharma' adds another layer of understanding. Rta is the rhythmic world process, and Dharma refers to the notion of a self-generated order, or a self-contained order -- this undercuts the idea that somehow the world has had its order infused into it from some source outside itself, it undercuts the idea of an external creator God who stands outside Its creation. All of this tells that to participate in and observe this order are not separable activities. There is no possibility of a 'God's eye view'. Instead, Sanatana Dharma can only be understood in complementary ways.
Devotees of this or that have always been dangerous due to their attachments and premature sureness. Its become a shouting match between 2 sides which I hope keep each other occupied while the rest of us can proceed forward.
Ideally religion should be relegated to a museum type atmosphere. Ancient traditions and stories which had meaning to our ancestors, and should be preserved for the historical record. Religion should not continue to be taught as a truth, but rather as an example for what maybe a moral life, with the understanding that a strict adherence to any of the outdated traditions is unnecessary. I appreciate the frankness of the author in this article. It is refreshing to hear it all spelled out.
The ego is antinomically united to the One,” p. 186. Most confusions and arguments on this subject are the result of the paradox that we are united by what we hate or oppose.
This is a completely satisfactory self-knowing, but it is not a sensory nor cognitive type of knowing. It can be called a knowledge by identity, a knowing something by being that something. It is considered that every sentient being has this very same consciousness shining forth from its eyes. Almost all beings are completely caught up in being what can be seen in the mirror or that which can be thought about (one's personal history, or the history of the body). This is considered to be a being caught in appearances, or at least being only partially self-aware. The quality of the 'pure subject' is the quality of consciousness -- it is the knowledge of what consciousness is to itself.
This self-experience has a transcendent quality -- it cannot be captured in sensory nor cognitive forms -- it cannot be said to have arisen at a particular time, nor in a particular place -- it cannot be captured in terms of time, space, nor matter -- it is transcendent to these categories. This must be 'seen for oneself'. This the Upanishads term 'THAT', and they say "THAT you are".
Samadhi is "non-dual awareness". Samadhi or Sama-Dhi, means 'Same-Seeing'; that which is seen is the same as that which sees... the subject and object are the same. In considering oneself, one is both a subject which is doing the considering and the object which is being considered. Sensory perception and thinking are both in the form of the subject-object duality. The subject remains mysterious as its unreachable. If one tries to 'look' at the subject it becomes the object being considered, but also a 'new' subject arises which is now doing the considering. This is an infinite regress.
One can say that consciousness cannot be objectified, and the attempt to turn it into object only manages to create another division of subject and object. In Zen, the subject which cannot be objectified is called "one's original face". Knowing this ultimate subject cannot be accomplished by manoeuvres of thought -- it is not a knowledge of a sensory sort nor a thought form. Even though one can see one's reflection in a mirror and can think about oneself, one remains unknown to oneself. However, in making the senses and thought quiescent to the required degree, there is a spontaneous collapse of the subject-object division and one's self-experience is of that subject which one is, though one has been unable to see it as long the the subject-object divide has been in operation due to sensory/mental movement, rather than quiescence.
In India, the aim of what is called "hinduism" is Moksha, which is different than Salvation. It has less to do with God than a personal 'liberation' of some sort, a seeing through some sort of false picture. In Buddhism, one keyword is Nirvana. The other important word is "Samadhi"... this is so in Yoga, Vedanta and even Buddhism as the last of the 8-fold path is "Samma Samadhi". Also, 'moksha' is commensurate with "samadhi'. So, the word "samadhi' is the key term to understand as far as Indian approaches are concerned. The aim of interiorization practices is Samadhi. Samadhi is the name for the *experience* which might called the core spiritual experience.
Anyway, I have downloaded the kindle sample of your book .... should be an interesting read. Hope the sample has more than just a preface. Thanks for what I expect will be a stimulating read.