Between You And God Only

 

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made several pithy statements I admire.  One of them is: "Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only."

That's as it should be, I think.  I'm not an atheist.  I don't find the fact that someone believes in God in itself distressing, offensive or incredible.  I don't accept any of the arguments which have been made over the years claimed to prove God's existence.  Neither do I rush to contest them.

But I wish, oh how I wish, that those who are religious would would make their religion a matter between them and God only.  

I don't mean to say that believers should not worship together.  It's not something that appeals to me, however. Reverence for the divine is something I can express without the presence or assistance of others.  I don't think the God I revere demands that worship be a group affair, or that it's required. I find the thought that God needs or wants anything from us incredible. Similarly, I think it demeaning to us and God to believe that God will grant our wishes if we ask for them in an appropriate manner.  Nor can I accept a God who demands that adults have sex only in certain ways. To paraphrase an author whose name I can't recall, such a God seems to me to be too small.

What I find disturbing is when believers try to foist their beliefs on others.  They have a long history doing so, of course, if they are the kind of believers who believe that their beliefs are the only true beliefs and their God the only true God, and all others should believe as they believe.

In doing so, they've caused a vast number of people to be killed in various ways, or savagely oppressed, or forcibly converted, for thousands of years.  Intolerance is a necessary feature of such religions.  One is fortunate if the members of such religions content themselves with merely trying to persuade nonbelievers and, if they fail to do so, think them damned for all eternity.

It would seem a simple thing to make your religion a matter between yourself and God only, but it's clear that too many believers are inclined to proclaim their faith publicly even if they refrain from demanding that others do so as well.  Do they think this will impress God?  Do they hope to impress us with their piety?  Do they think this religious exhibitionism persuades anyone, or is it for their own satisfaction?

The God of Stoicism and Us

 Chrysippus was the third leader of the school of Stoicism, after Zeno and Cleanthes.  It's said that he died while laughing at his own joke.  It seems he made the joke after drinking unmixed wine, and that it related to a donkey eating, or trying to eat, figs from a tree.  Chrysippus supposedly suggested the donkey be given wine to wash down the figs.  

Perhaps this is humorous when rendered in ancient Greek, or perhaps you had to be there, as drunk as Chrysippus is said to have been.  Or, perhaps, the story is apocryphal.  I think it's most likely he died in some other manner, though I admit that the thought of a renowned Stoic philosopher dying while laughing at his own joke has a certain appeal.

I think the story shows Chrysippus to be human, even endearingly so given his reputation as the rigorous thinker who gave Stoicism a firm, rational foundation shorn of the vagaries indulged in by Cleanthes, an inspiring but, it seems, "warm and fuzzy" kind of thinker.  Chrysippus is credited with developing the tools by which Stoics could defend their philosophy from followers of rival schools, quick to chop logic and split hairs in the rough and tumble world of the philosophers of Athens and their students.  

The quote of Chrysippus at the head of this post is one that interests me, as it addresses more or less directly what I think is an issue in Stoicism which isn't addressed much in the popular interest in Stoicism which we see these days.  Some modern proponents of it who take it more seriously, I think, than those who claim it will make us better capitalists or better something or other in a Dale Carnegie fashion and so should be ignored, feel that God need have no place in it.  Think of Lawrence Becker or Massimo Pigliucci.  To a certain extent I think they're correct.  The Epicureans thought of God or the gods as existing but largely irrelevant.  We may look on Stoicism as a source of practical wisdom without considering the ancient Stoics conception of the deity based solely on the fact that it's directives regarding attaining tranquility are effective.

But it seems clear that the ancient Stoics accepted a God of sorts, and why they did so and what sort of God it was/is are legitimate avenues of exploration.  It seems that there are few exploring them, though, at least to the extent that can be judged by what is readily available on these subjects.  I'm currently reading Roman Stoicism by Edward Vernon Arnold, and its seem based on what I've read so far that he intends to explore them, but what I've read has involved a rather breezy discussion and comparison of Stoicism and other religious or quasi-religious movements of antiquity that hasn't (yet) been very enlightening.

I was told by someone on a philosophy forum that a God which isn't personal, which doesn't respond to prayers and petitions and doesn't intervene in our lives and the world is less reasonable than a God which is and does those things.  That isn't at all clear to me, but it may be that more people would find such a personal God more desirable than an impersonal God.   A more desirable (to us) God isn't necessarily reasonable, though.

The God of Stoicism doesn't seem to be a personal God if such a God watches over us (noting and judging our deeds and thoughts), responds to our prayers and petitions, works miracles by altering nature and punishes or rewards us based on our conduct and intentions.  The God of Stoicism isn't Big Daddy, which is what the God of an Abrahamic religion appears to be.  If the universe is God, or God is immanent in the Universe and the creative and intelligent spirit which infuses it, what we may think is contra mundum is necessarily contrary to God.  Earthquakes and natural disasters are not evils, and God, being the universe in which such things take place, isn't going to alter the universe to assure such things don't take place no matter how much we beg and plead.

As may be expected, then, by living "in accordance with nature" we live in accordance with God.  If we fail to do so, however, the God of Stoicism doesn't punish us as would Big Daddy or his equivalent.  What results is bad for us in the sense that it disturbs us, makes us anxious, slaves to our passions, discontented, miserable, covetous, murderous, but not as a result of any action on the part of God/Universe.

If this is the God of Stoicism, leaving aside the question whether it makes any difference, is this God one we would think to be good?  Does it inspire reverence, joy, bliss, awe, love and all the other feelings we associate with God, traditionally and typically?  If it does, how and why?  If it doesn't, can it be considered God?

The Vatican Just Says No

There once was a species called human,

Who thought God cared what they were doin',

But the truth is He said that "For me, they've been dead,

Since the Garden of Eden stopped bloomin'."

That's just a limerick of my creation which I thought up not long ago in a different context, but it seems appropriate in light of the Vatican's announcement that it can't "bless" homosexual unions.  I was going to write that it seems appropriate so near to St. Patrick's day, but a gnawing sense of doubt combined with a quick search of the Internet reveals that the limerick didn't necessarily have its origins in Ireland, though there is an Irish city which bears the name. 

I've noted before that our religions are not unnaturally, but still unreasonably, based on the assumption that if there is a God, that God is fascinated, perhaps even obsessed, with humanity.  Given the vastness of the universe, this seems unlikely.  To maintain that we're God's sole or greatest concern is preposterous, as we're mere specks on a speck among an unimaginably large host of specks which make up what God is said to have created.

Even more unreasonable (I think) is the belief that God is particularly concerned with our sexual conduct.  Any God which lays down rules governing who we have sex with and how we have sex is a very small, petty, and peculiar God indeed.  It follows that those of us who believe there are such rules and seek to enforce them are even smaller, more petty and peculiar.

And so we come to this latest declaration by the Vatican, endorsed, we're told, by the Pontifex Maximus himself.  The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church welcomes those who are gay ("homosexually inclined" is the wording used, I think) in a kind of grudging fashion, according to the declaration, but no union of gays may be blessed because only the sacramental may be blessed.  The most relevant sacrament is marriage and marriage, as we know, may only be between a male and a female.  Thus, no blessed gay unions and as sex is inappropriate outside of marriage, all gay sex is inappropriate as well, and may never be appropriate.  

This comes from having a Busybody God, a name I've used in the past in this blog.  But as you may guess from the limerick at the top of this post, I find myself curious regarding why such a God--the kind that is worshipped by the Abrahamic religions--would care what we do, if we accept the doctrine of Original Sin.

Under that doctrine, we're at the least tainted by the sin committed by eating of the Tree of Knowledge by our ancestors, the first humans, which caused them to be expelled from the Garden of Eden.  There are several versions of the doctrine of Original Sin.  The most draconian of them has us damned from birth.  We may nonetheless be saved if God chooses through the medium of Grace, but that's in God's sole discretion.  Then there is the version that proposes that we're cleansed of the sin by baptism.  Another version is that Jesus saved us from Original Sin through his sacrifice.  There may be more versions, I just don't know.  But even the kinder, gentler versions I know of provide that all of us are born with the proclivity to sin as a result of the first (notably heterosexual) humans.

So, we're either damned or damnable from the moment we are born.  If that's the case, though, why does God even bother to peer at us suspiciously, and why did he bother to dream up and impose the many regulations it's claimed he imposed on us after the Garden of Eden was shut down?  He would have written us off after the Original Sin was committed, I would think, as we all would be sinners of necessity thereafter.  Can it be the case that he decided in the first century C.E. that we may in one manner or another avoid the curse of Original Sin, and so appeared among us and induced us to create the sacrament of baptism sometime later?  What changed his mind?  Why are those who lived before then damned without recourse?  Why would he be so interested in what we do given that it's more likely than not that were going to sin anyway, being inherently inclined to sin?

The problems which arise from belief in such a personal God so fascinated with us aren't merely limited to those that result from the fact such a view is incredible, therefore.  They include those that arise when the doctrine which is inferred from that view is made and applied.

 

Rage, God and the Other Hitchens

The "Other Hitchens" as some may have guessed is Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late and more notorious Christopher Hitchens.  Peter is, or was, a journalist by trade, and although I hesitate to say it having brothers of my own, is probably known to most of us as Christopher's brother.  This may be unjust; frankly, I don't know.

I recently read Peter Hitchens' book The Rage Against God subtitled, I think, "How atheism led me to faith" (I'm not sure, as no helpful if irritating colon appears between the "God" and the "How" on the cover of the book; which indeed wouldn't make much sense).

Peter like his brother writes quite well.  Unlike his brother, he believes in God.  He believes in Christianity in fact, which means to me--necessarily though in many cases without acknowledgement and even in denial--that he believes in a certain God, said to be the only one in being, though Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

The painting, or more properly altarpiece, shown above is The Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden, a work of the 15th century.  The book is a kind of account of Peter's youth, his lapse into atheism, and his return to the faith of his fathers, combined with as assault upon atheism and its adherents, including his brother, and the arguments they make against religion and particularly their attitude toward it and the religious.  If I understand him correctly, this painting made such a profound impression upon him that it was essential to his rejection of atheism and embracing of Christianity.

I should say first that I think that Christopher Hitchens, whose writings I mostly admire, Richard Dawkins and others of the "new atheists" are excessive and extreme in their criticism of religion and the religious.  So to a certain extent I sympathize with complaints made by Peter Hitchens in this book.  But for various reasons I think it fails in its effort to persuade (as I think he tries to do) that Christianity is necessary to civilization, morality, and most everything we fallen creatures do, think or say.

I think it's clear that Christianity, not religion in general or belief in a deity, is what is being defended and propounded.  This is because Christianity is the only religion he mentions except to the extent he refers to other religions (primarily Islam and Judaism) as examples of the the efforts made by atheist countries or societies such as the USSR and (Christian support of it notwithstanding) Nazi Germany.  This is part of his claim that such societies purposefully persecute religions because of a hatred of God and because religion is based on the belief that what is good and right exists outside of humanity and indeed outside of the universe.  Totalitarian governments do not want anyone to believe such things, according to him, because they persuade people to think there is something greater than the State, something by which the State is to be judged.

Also, Christianity in its Anglican form in the 1950s is what he looks back upon most fondly.  Its current version is not at all to his taste.  The first portion of the book is an indulgence in nostalgia, in fact.   The author longs for the days when England ruled the waves, and the sun never set on it empire.  It's unclear to me whether he believes that the acceptance of Christianity by England assured her success and dominion and its rejection caused its decline, but one does get that impression.

Those halcyon days having passed, and with them all glory, grandeur, poetry, courtesy, gallantry, honesty, the author perforce became an atheist.  There were a number of reasons for this decline, and Christianity played its part in it, by buying into liberal views on sex, on multiculturalism, on relativism, on egalitarianism, etc. 

Then came the day he saw the work of art pictured above.  He saw in the naked figures at the bottom of the work people who he says looked just like people he knew.  Their nakedness apparently helped foster this impression.  This was not because they were naked, but because they weren't wearing any of the peculiar clothes worn by people of that time.  As a result they could not be dismissed as different.  Most effective, though, was the fact that they were in terror of the Last Judgment, some even shown as vomiting in fear.  

It seems fear was a motivating factor in Peter Hitchens return to the faith.  Fear of judgment, presumably, and eternal damnation due to conduct contrary to the laws of God.  Fear certainly can motivate intensely.  However, being told to believe in God or else doesn't seem to persuade unless one is already in extremis as it were.  Also, it hardly seems to be a particularly Christian method of persuasion.  "Believe or burn in hell forever" isn't something one can picture Jesus saying, though some of his followers were apt to make this threat on his behalf.

If fear played a part in making him believe, I honor his honesty in admitting as much.  But he argues also that in the absence of belief in God, horrible things are done.  Witness the USSR and Nazi Germany.  This also seems one of his arguments in favor of having a religion.

It is at least something he thinks atheists like his late brother should acknowledge if they were fair, and gave religion its due.  Even cynics and likely non-believers like Napoleon (not his example, but mine) recognized it was necessary for the "common people" to believe in religion for the sake of order.  Thus his deal with the Catholic Church.

This may be an argument to the effect that religion has its uses, but again is not one which inspires belief in Christianity or any other institutional religion.  What is it that he believes inspired him, or should inspire others, to believe?

Here I confess I begin to lose him.  The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were horrible.  Were they horrible because they persecuted religion and sought to eliminate it, or for other reasons?  Maybe there was more than one cause.  If there was, can we claim as he seems to that it was their eradication of religion--Christianity in particular--that made them become evil?  Does it makes sense to contend that if they had tolerated religions--Christianity in particular--they wouldn't have been evil?  Or only evil sometimes, as Tsarist Russian was, as he seems to admit?

Whether he does so intentionally or unintentionally, he seems to maintain that Christianity alone can give us what we need to be moral and to have a just and true civilization.  A part of this is his assertion that it is necessary to have a standard of what is good and true beyond what humans can conceive in order for us to know what is good or true.  A part is his claim that only Christianity, with its injunction that we love one another, that can bring us close to God, to do his will.  The Christian demand that we love one another is superior to, for example, the Golden Rule.

He chides his brother for saying it is unrealistic to demand that we love one another as we love ourselves or are children.  He claims we show this love in dying to save others as in war, or to save a child in danger.  Well, certainly such selfless acts have been done, but despite the rhetoric employed these days not everyone is or can be heroic.  We are not heroes everyday.  Typically, we favor our children for example over those of our neighbors or total strangers.  It is unclear to me that we always love each other, and clear that we do not, and not having done so for ages suggests we aren't likely to  do so no matter how many gods command us to.

But in the end, and finally, I am again astonished by the arrogance of the Christian apologist.  For all the good points and respectable arguments he makes, other religions are hardly mentioned as guides to living life morally.  And no consideration is given to the fact that humansurvived, somehow, for ages before Jesus lived and even for a longer period before Christianity became what it is today, and in that time developed laws and theories of ethics and the good state, and good life, without belief in Christianity and even without belief in a personal, transcendent deity, that Christianity borrowed from assiduously.

I don't understand the rage against God or the religious felt by some atheists, but neither do I understand how such people as Peter Hitchens contend that the only choice to be made is to be atheist or to be Christian.

The Sin of Knowledge

It's an odd tale, that of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.  Odd and disturbingly influential.  The doctrine of Original Sin has its basis in this peculiar story which, to some of us at least, is the word of God, literally or metaphorically true depending on the religious brand in question.  It's the stuff of various artistic works, psychological and philosophical theories.  I can understand why, because it is the foundational myth of great religions.

Just what it means is unclear to me.  Who can guess the intent of its ancient author, or authors? We read into it what we want; interpretation is a matter of convenience, or doctrine, one or the other. 

With that self-serving characterization in mind, I present my less than definitive, or for that matter less than definite, interpretation.  That's to say, what I think about it.   I think that it's language is clear enough and don't believe much in the way of interpretation is required, unless one is dismayed by the plain meaning of the words.  I think one should be dismayed.

What the supposed first humans did that resulted in their banishment from the Garden and, according to Catholic doctrine in any case, tainted the human race forever after (in saecula saeculorum), was disobey a command of God.  The wrong, as far as I can tell, was to disobey.  That in itself merited punishment.  Whether it was good or right or beneficial to eat of the Tree of Knowledge is not an issue--it isn't considered, even.  Regardless of the reasons for the command, even if it was unreasonable, failure to obey a command of God is an evil in and of itself.

Plato in his Euthypro dealt with the question whether acting as commanded by God is good because God commands it, or whether God commands it because it is good.  It can be argued that this story is an expression of the view that whatever God commands is good, not because it is good but because God commands it.  Knowledge, after all, wouldn't seem to be necessarily evil.  What is wrong with knowing? 

Perhaps it can be argued that knowing, or knowing some things, causes us harm.  In that case it may be maintained that God was trying to prevent us from being harmed.  In fact, God warns Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree because if he does, he'll die.  It's not clear to me why eating of the Tree of Knowledge causes death, and this isn't explained in the text.  Perhaps the knowledge gained by eating the forbidden apple in fact led to our undoing, if not death.  We came to think, and came to think of ourselves as separate and apart from the rest of the world, rather than living with nature in blissful harmony in the Garden.

If God was trying to prevent us from harming ourselves, though, it would seem perverse of him to cause us significant harm because we harmed ourselves.  Expulsion from the Garden exposed us to a life of pain and misery; doomed us to it, in fact, rendered us subject to eternal punishment if not appropriately saved.   It seems a remarkably high price to pay assuming a God devoted to our well being.

It's said that the knowledge gained was the knowledge of good and evil.  This is puzzling, to me at least.  It seems that in the blessed state of inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, the parents of humanity possessed no such knowledge.  Not knowing good and evil, they didn't even know what those words meant.  They lived not only without knowledge but without judgment or thought, which would be necessary to distinguish good from evil.  They were, it seems, much like the rest of the animals.  Thoughtless.  The knowledge of good and evil renders us like God.

It's difficult not to conclude that the Sin for which we were punished was that of having the capacity to think and to make judgments and decisions.  That view of sin is one which an autocrat or elite might find useful.  If thinking is a sin, thinking is something to be avoided lest we suffer eternal damnation.  This would seem to suit those in positions of power quite well.  Those who don't think are easily manipulated.

I'm uncertain of the origin of the phrase "ignorance is bliss" but this would appear to be what we can infer is the moral of the tale if we accept the tale as written, as told.  I'm certain, however, that this inference has been avoided for quite some time and alternate explanations offered.  I'm always suspicious when interpretation is made so lavishly of easily comprehended language, however.

Stoicism, God and Some Consequences of Belief

The immanent God of the universe which is characteristic of Stoicism would seem to be necessarily different from the anthropomorphic God or gods one finds in most religions of the West. Some contend that two, at least, of the later Stoics--Epictetus and Seneca--conceived of God as more "personal" than other ancient Stoics. While I think it's true that Epictetus refers to God with a kind of fondness which seems suited to a personal God, and even it appears spoke (jokingly I believe) as if God spoke to him, I think fondness isn't at all inconsistent with the reverence for nature which would be induced by belief in an immanent deity. So I doubt the God of the Stoics ever was a personal one.

I'm sure that those who believe in a personal God, concerned with we humans more than anything else, our actions, thoughts, what we want, who we have sex with, what we wear, etc., find this conception comforting and satisfying, that kind of deity is one I find hard to reconcile with the God of the vast universe. The Busybody God, as I've called him, isn't what I would expect one immanent in the universe to be. If there was a lesser God who was peculiarly concerned with Earth, it could well be the Busybody God.

The personal God most believe in now, and who has been worshipped in the past is of course not thought of as a God of the Earth solely. Though certainly a personal God, and one with some disturbingly human characteristics, those who believe think of him as being God of the universe nonetheless. Apparently, though, their God of the universe is particularly concerned with human beings living on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system located in one of billions of galaxies. Some think this God actually became one of us. Sort of.

Just why a God of the universe--one immanent in it or, as it seems many prefer, one immanent in it who nevertheless created it and so is apart from it--would be so concerned is something I think very unclear. But there are other consequences of belief in a personal God which I think create problems for us of a profound nature, and which I think can be avoided if we believed in the Stoic version of God.

The belief in a personal God tends to create conflict among us, because we're the concern of such a God. Though the same in essential respects, we're different in many ways which, though superficial, are emphasized because we have lived in groups which foster certain beliefs and norms regarding dress, food, acceptable conduct, sex, law, religious beliefs. Our personal God is concerned with us, and so approves of us and those like us, naturally enough. Those who aren't like us don't have God's approval, almost as a matter of course, until such time as they become like us. Those who don't believe in our personal God are outsiders, strangers, enemies. They must be; God wouldn't be concerned with us if he didn't approve of us. Though he disapproves of us from time to time, we can get back in his good graces because he's concerned with us when we seek forgiveness and act as we should.

An impersonal God, on the other hand, isn't especially concerned with us and as a God of the universe (in Stoicism, God in the universe) wouldn't be concerned with what we wear, eat, who we have sex with, what days we treat as holy, whether we believe in him; in other words, what is typically the concern of organized religion would be of no consequence to such a God. What is the cause of conflict among us cannot have its basis in the belief in an immanent God of the universe entire.

Such a God would as well have none of the characteristics we find comforting, however. Such a God wouldn't love us, wouldn't watch over us a parent would, wouldn't listen to our pleas, etc. Such a God wouldn't be impressed by our ceremonies or rituals. Such a God would in fact be unfeeling; wouldn't have our feelings, in fact, or be in the least bit troubled by them.

We may be saddened by aspects of an unfeeling, impersonal God, but it doesn't follow that without a personal God our lives have no meaning or we may do whatever we want. Impersonal though such a God may be, as it is immanent all of nature partakes in it; so we and all other creatures do so. This knowledge should have the effect that we treat all others (in fact all of nature) as divine, worthy of reverence and respect. What other people may do will not necessarily be divine and may in fact be wrong or harmful to others. That may well create conflict and require action on our part. Otherwise, though, their conduct to the extent it causes no harm is no cause of concern to us. Why should we cause no harm to others? Why should we prevent them from doing so? Because God is immanent in them and in all else.

The Stoic injunction to be indifferent to what is not in our control, and not to be disturbed by it, fits well within this conception of the deity. It also would minimize the tendency to do wrong to others, because those things which normally motivate us to do harm (desire for wealth, fame, power) would not longer do so. We wouldn't be motivated by concerns for things beyond our control. What would motivate us would be the desire to do the best we can with what we have. To live in accordance with nature, which is to say live reasonably, to do no harm, to benefit to the extent we can the rest of the universe of which we're a part.

It's a very spare, simple view of divinity and the spiritual, and requires no myriad of rules, proscriptions, ceremonies. But if it's accepted it diminishes the adverse consequences of belief in God which have otherwise been encouraged throughout out history, largely due to our own self-regard.

God's Image and Likeness

As most if not all of us know, it's written in the Book of Genesis that God made us in his image and likeness.  Somewhat strangely, God's portrayed there as speaking to himself prior to our creation.  "Let us make man [or mankind, or human beings, depending on the translation] in our image, in our likeness" God muses, or suggests to himself.

It happens that there were (and are) others besides the Hebrews and their successors in interest in Genesis who believe that we're the image and likeness of God or the gods, or at least believed that God or the gods resemble us to a startling degree.  The ancient Greek and Roman pagans, for example.

Certain of the ancients portrayed their gods as being hybrids, odd mixtures of humans and animals.  The ancient Egyptians did this, of course.  Certain cultures conceived of them as being particular animals.

It's interesting to speculate on the reasons for our tendency to worship divinities so like ourselves (at least, I find it interesting); our tendency, in other words, to worship ourselves.  The observation that this is what we do is so commonplace that it's thought perfectly natural or to be expected.  So we say things like "if horses had a god, it would be a horse."  Very well, then.  In that case, why do we so think and expect?

The simple fact is that physically, we're not particularly godlike.  If physical attractiveness or ability are worthy of worship or are considered to be aspects of divinity, a human god would seem unworthy.  There are animals far more graceful, more beautiful than we are as a rule.  There are animals faster, stronger than we are; animals that fly though we cannot; animals that are physically superior to us in many ways.  Why would anyone think that God or the gods would look like us, appear to be like us or resemble us, i.e. that we're the image or likeness of a deity?

The belief that humans are the image of God would appear to require a level of self-regard which is baseless almost to the point of lunacy.  Nonetheless, that has been and may even remain the belief of many.  Perhaps the apparent silliness of such a conceit led the religious to maintain that God or the gods were, in effect, super-humans, that is to say exceedingly beautiful, powerful and knowledgeable humans who are also better than normal humans in that they're not mortal.

That may have been the case with, e.g., the ancient Greek and Romans, but wouldn't seem to include the ancient Hebrews, who weren't inclined to picture God as having the physical form of a human being, portraying God variously as a burning bush or column of fire, etc.  But the God of the ancient Hebrews had various human characteristics nonetheless, if not physical attributes.  He was a jealous God, and could be an angry and vengeful one as well.  These characteristics are not those one would expect an almighty being to have, but are uniquely those of humans among the creatures of God, as far as we know.  The ancient Greek and Romans similarly portrayed their gods as having these human emotional characteristics and others, such as lust. 

So it appears that at least in recorded history, there's been a tendency to anthropomorphize the divine in one way or another.  Perhaps this came about due to the fact that animals came to be domesticated and we came to employ technology to alter our environment and so came in our opinion to dominate and tame the world.  Genesis of course indicates this was God's intent, to give us authority over the world and its other, lesser, creatures.  Not knowing much of anything else about the world, we may have come to believe that we were the supreme beings of creation, and thought that the Lord of creation would necessarily be like us, only grander.  Such a view would also be consistent with what came to be the hierarchical nature of our societies; as we typically had kings or oligarchs, so would the world in general.

Even so, it's difficult not to think the supreme being would be limited by being or appearing to be human in any significant manner.  This seems clear enough now, given our knowledge of the vastness of the universe and the resulting knowledge that we humans and our planet are almost unimaginably insignificant in comparison.  The creator or intelligence inherent in the universe probably would not be something which looks like us or is like us.  Perhaps our gods were in the past not considered to be supreme in the sense which is common at this time.  They had limited authority and power, peculiar to believers and their place in the world (universe) rather than authority over the entire universe.

We know that pagan philosophers in the West came to think the Olympian gods were not in fact real, but were meant to be representatives of the deity or aspects of the divine portrayed in a way comprehensible to the common people.  The "god of the philosophers" wasn't peculiarly human or like a human.  The philosophers were largely Deists or pantheists, like the Stoics.

The notion of God as perfect, all-good, omnipotent, omniscient is so unlike any notion we can reasonably have of ourselves that it's plainly unreasonable to think that we're created in God's image and likeness.  As that notion was entertained by pagan philosophers and as early Christians were eager to accommodate Christianity to philosophy, the Christian doctrine that God became man generated problems it took centuries to resolve.  Whether they were actually resolved is questionable.  The claim that Jesus was at one and the same time fully human and fully divine is unsatisfactory, but it was necessary for the heresies which maintained that he was not fully divine while human to be quashed, and quashed they were, though in a most mysterious way.

It seems unsurprising that particularly in ancient times, we worshipped gods which were strangely similar to ourselves.  But it also seems clear that an almighty God of the universe wouldn't be like us, wouldn't be especially or exclusively concerned with us and our affairs and how we act, or what we eat, or who we have sex with, or whether we keep holy the Sabbath day.  Christopher Hitchens claimed that religion is a relic of the selfish childhood of our species.  I don't think that's the case as I don't think a belief in the "god of the philosophers" for example can be considered childish, but religions which make the claim humans are significantly like God and our affairs God's special concerns may be.

Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger(s)

I've been less adoring of Mark Twain than others for quite some time, and have written of him unkindly in a few posts here in this very blog.  It may be that my view of him and his work is an example of familiarity, of a sort at least, breeding contempt.  The comedic Twain, teller of tall tales, the Twain of Hal Holbrook, creator of stock characters and folksy dialects, which seems to be the more popular Twain, I find annoying.   But I acknowledge that it may be that Twain did what he had to in order to make a living and thrive in this world and this required pandering, or that the familiar Twain of which I speak is in the nature of a caricature.

One thing I find quite interesting about him, however, is that work called The Mysterious Stranger.  I call it that here, in any case.  There are said to be 3-4 versions of this work, and each has been given its own title.  There is apparently no finished version; finished by Twain in any event.  His executor/biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, himself a writer of fiction and other things, is said to have created a version with an ending by slapping together 3 different versions and doing some creative editing with their texts together with a publisher named Duneka.

This work or more properly these versions or drafts of a work were written during the latter part of Twain's life, and address the subject of religion.  They feature the Prince of Darkness himself, or some versions do, or it may be that this character is merely his nephew, also named Satan.  It also may be that the Satanic figure is intended to be a different figure entirely.  I read that one version features Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  That obviously isn't the version I've read, and I'm not interested in reading anything about those two characters, though I am willing to imagine, fondly, what the Devil might do to them.

I don't wish to enter into the debate regarding which version is truer to Twain.  I assume I've read the Paine version.  It certainly has its problems.  It must be wondered whether we do any author a service by publishing unfinished work posthumously, especially where the author left different versions of the work lying about at the time of death.  This is an indication that the author was never satisfied with what was written, and in fact never thought it should be read.  In that case, we wrong him by doing so or at the least do something he/she didn't want us to do.

Nonetheless, assuming that some part of the versions written by Twain are present, I think it fair to say that the satire engaged in is not the broad, sometimes knee-slapping, overt satire Twain otherwise indulged in (for example in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court).  It is a grim, serious, and simply written tale, sometimes sinister, sometimes hectoring.  What is most interesting, I think, is the indifference of the Satan-figure to humans in general or particular humans, and especially as to what is called their "Moral Sense."  This he considers a peculiarity of humans and an unnecessary burden.

His indifference is striking.  Unfortunately it's rendered less striking by his propensity to lecture about the defects of human kind.  By all accounts Twain was prone to dwell on our many problems and deplorable nature and conduct, but I like to think that the lectures were inserted after his death.  They become repetitive and are boring, the point being already quite clear.  Also, he inserts himself into human events now and then.

The Satan-figure is quite willing to use his powers to benefit and do favors for some, and seems to have no real malice.  Our happiness or unhappiness isn't of much concern to him, it seems.  As might be expected, when he bestows benefits it's likely things don't turn out well for the person benefited, and as a result of the benefit.  He or she dies, or someone else does, or goes mad.  Episodes of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone come to mind, inevitably.

The overwhelming impression I receive from this work is that the concerns of humans, their deeds, problems, thoughts, and beliefs, even as to matters right or wrong, are small and insignificant and of no interest to Satan, or God, or the universe.  I think the Satan-figure could very well be a substitute for God, despite his name and the fact he refers to himself as an angel. 

Simply put, I think it's the intent or one of the intents of the work to point out that we flatter ourselves enormously by thinking we have any importance in the universe or the Divine Plan, if there is one.  The universe wasn't made for us, and isn't bound by our conceptions of right and wrong.  What happens merely happens, and there need be no reason to it; at least no reason humans would understand or appreciate.

The late Warren Zevon wrote a song called The Vast Indifference of Heaven.  Is this indifference what Twain was contemplating in his later years?  Did it comfort him, appall him, confirm him in his belief regarding our foolishness?  The vastness of the universe suggests that we're creatures of great pretensions, and our concerns with what is not in the power of our wills foolish indeed.  Perhaps Twain was something of a Stoic in that respect, at least.  But I have difficulty believing that he felt the universe to be divine in any sense, or that we shared in any divinity, which would seem to establish he wasn't a Stoic in the ancient sense.

The Magic Christians

Some of us remember the film The Magic Christian, a very silly bit of anti-capitalist, anti-greed satire (using that term broadly) which starred Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, and a host of others in cameo appearances, including some of the members of what was to be Monty Python.  The title was the name of an ocean liner on which the protagonists eventually sailed.  I saw it while in high school,  and it appealed to the adolescent in me.

I don't mean to comment on the film here, but use the title to draw attention to those who in the third to fifth centuries CE (somewhat broadly speaking, again) managed to make of Christianity something which was magical, or which I think may be called magical.  "Magical" I mean to refer to something based on a mysterious, extraordinary supernatural power associated with certain equally mysterious rites.

Of course I'm aware of the fact that even the Gospels ascribe miracles to Jesus, and these may count as magic--though not, I think, magic of the remarkable kind to come.  There were several men and beings which the ancients felt were capable of working wonders; even early Christians felt the pagan gods to be demons with supernatural powers.  Also, it's clear that even shorn of the Gospels' occasional, very cursory, references to Jesus being the Son of God and worker of wonders, the belief in the existence of a supernatural, creator god--that of the Jews, in any case--is presumed and manifest in them.  So, Jesus' early followers, if in fact they wrote the gospels, which doesn't seem likely, may be called "magic Christians" to a certain  extent.

But there was nothing unusual in this given the times and the culture.  For example, John the Baptist reputedly did much the same things as Jesus, and though honored in Christianity is not God or his Son.  Something very unusual occurred in the case of early Christianity as it became the Christianity we know of now and throughout subsequent history (at least the Christianity recognized by most of the established churches).  What happened distinguishes Jesus from the run-of-the-mill saviors and magicians who roamed the Roman Empire in those times, and required magic of an unusual sort.

What took place was, I think, necessary in order to maintain that Jesus was God; the only God, in fact.  Not merely God after he was crucified, or before he took human form, but God even while he was human and was killed.  The nature of Jesus was of course a subject of fierce and even violent disputes in the history of early Christianity and even into the Middle Ages and beyond.  Some found it impossible to accept that God, the Supreme Being, could suffer and die on a cross.  So, they thought Jesus must have been human or something less than wholly divine while on Earth, at least.  And so we see controversy of the kind which involved whether Jesus as Son was of the same or similar substance as God the Father.

These and other disputes resulted in the heresies we hear so much of in Christianity.  There was of course the famous dispute between the followers of Arius and Anathasius.   But there was also Nestorianism, which was the belief that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human;  Monophsyitism, which held that Jesus' divine nature wholly overwhelmed his human nature; Monothelism, which taught that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human, but only one "will."  This is not even to get into the controversies which came about once the Holy Spirit was in the mix as God as well, and Trinitarianism arose.  A heresy which followed was called Monarchiansm, which held that God the Father predominated over the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.  As they say, the list of Christian heresies goes on and on, though certainly not all of them involved the true nature of Jesus.

The controversies were deemed so significant that emperors of the Christianized Roman Empire felt it necessary to become involved in an effort to resolve disputes through the use of Councils over which they presided or at least sponsored.  They probably first rose to a governmental concern because the disputes were physical in nature in some cases.  People were killed or injured; property destroyed.  But some emperors were concerned about doctrine as well.  Indeed, emperors favoring a particular kind of Christianity persecuted other Christians in the same manner as pagan emperors are claimed to have persecuted Christians before them, and the Christians persecuted by other Christians believed themselves to be martyrs.

Constantine is generally considered to have been a great unifier of Christian doctrine, but Justinian, a peculiarly dubious emperor, was even more avid in his efforts.  Councils condemned certain views, accepted others.  Excommunications were made and then rescinded.  This went on for centuries.  The Council of Nicea was probably less important in the history of Christianity than that of Chalcedon, held by the Emperor Marcian.

These Christological disputes had the result that the Latin Western Church became disassociated from the Greek Eastern Church and had other significant ramifications.

What is remarkable is that these great controversies have nothing at all to do with the preaching of Jesus; with what he said was right or wrong, what he said one should or should not do.  They are wholly amoral.  Christianity became a matter of definition, and the truth and goodness in Christianity came to be determined by what a person thought Jesus' nature to be and the manner in which he was to be worshiped.  All resulted because it was deemed that Jesus was or should be construed to be the one God.

These disputes, and efforts at their resolution as they appear in written records of the time, resemble philosophical and legal disputes, in that their focus is on abstract concepts and their application as rules to circumstances.  Their legal nature may be understood as resulting from the fact that Christianity became in every significant sense a government as well as a religion.  Their philosophical nature may be the result of the desire early Christians had to give Christianity a basis which would be recognized as similar to if not sanctioned by the philosophy of the time, which was essentially pagan and, I believe, still is pagan.  If Jesus is God, and there is only one God, what then? 

Because of the fact the disputes were similar to legal and philosophical disputes, the arguments raised by one side or the other are not clearly false or absurd.  There is a basis for them in the sense that relevant scripture may be referred to in their support or recognized authorities appealed to by disputants.

But ultimately the resolution of these disputes, to the extent they were resolved, entailed the imposition of certain mysteries, certain inexplicable doctrines.  In other words, Magic, but Magic of the highest kind.  The view that God is one substance but three persons is magical.  The view that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father is magical.  There is simply no other explanation for these beliefs.

It's interesting to consider what would have happened if Jesus was not considered God or divine in some manner, or perhaps a lesser God.  I suspect Christianity would be much less complex and far less dependent on mystery.  But Christians in charge were probably leery of making him a lesser God, as this would smack of polytheism.  And what would the death of one man matter?  Jesus' death and sacrifice would be insufficient to salvation if he was not at all times God.

We tend to forget what a mess Christianity was during its development.  Dispute is considered inconsistent with what is said to be clearly set forth by God.  Perhaps Christianity's search for a rational basis was unwise, and there is none clearly present.  It's no wonder some Christians came to believe that God could not be known except through revelation.  This conclusion may be less the result of mysticism as the realization that applying reason in the case of Jesus/God inevitably results in machinations of a particularly tortured kind.

As Flies to Wanton Boys

The belief in a loving deity, one that created the universe and we humans, one that is good, one that responds to prayers, intervenes in the universe and our lives, has always posed a certain difficulty to any thinking person.  The difficulty arises from the fact that a thinking person cannot help but feel that the universe is in some respects, perhaps in many respects, not good at all.  Bad things happen.

Most importantly as far as we're concerned, bad things happen to us.  Those bad things are not necessarily caused by other people, and so it can't be said that some person or persons are to blame.  The blame for natural disasters, if it's appropriate to speak of blame in connection with them, clearly must lie with something more than human, or at least other than human.

The "Problem of Evil" as it has been called necessarily arises in regard to this belief.  Why would such a God allow evil things to exist, to happen?  There have been several responses to this problem.  One has been to respond as does Shakespeare's Duke of Gloucester in King Lear, and to maintain that there is no such God, and there is instead a God or gods for which we are nothing more than flies are to wanton boys, and who kill us for their sport.

Another response is to ascribe the evil of the world to a supernatural being such as the devil.  This doesn't do much to address the issue, though, if that being is subject to God; a lesser being.  Then the question simply becomes why does God let the devil cause evil?  If such a being is claimed to be an equal--a kind of rival--to a loving God, God isn't necessarily responsible for evil directly or indirectly.  However, in that case God isn't all-powerful, either, and God's omnipotence is something most believers revel in; so, this Manichean approach isn't favored by most.

Then there is the option which posits that we are the cause of evil.  Perhaps we brought it into the world, or Adam and Eve did, and we are tainted by their Original Sin.  This approach isn't entirely satisfactory, though, as it doesn't account for the evil (suffering) which results from natural disasters.  But there are some, of course, who think we cause those as well, usually by being bad in some fashion.  Sexual misconduct seems preferred as a cause for hurricanes and fire from the sky, but in any event we act wrongly in some sense and God punishes us through manipulation of natural forces, and such punishment is just.

A kind of catch-all or what perhaps may be called a default response is that what we perceive as evil isn't evil in fact.  It is actually good for some reason we're too dense or limited to comprehend, but is manifest to God.  Thus there is no "Problem of Evil" as there is no evil.  There is merely the working of God which will eventually, perhaps in a time so far distant as to be beyond the insight of humanity, result in good.

There is a problem even with this latter response, though, and that is probably a consequence of the fact that what we tend to think of as "good" is what would be good for us humans, i.e. what we perceive to be good.  What good, so to speak, would what God may have determined is a good result for the universe do us if it is millennia or millions of years in the future, when we may not even be around as a species?

Perhaps we can get around that problem by believing the universe was made just for us or with us being utmost in God's mind.  In that case, what is ultimately good must be good as far as we are concerned.  Or perhaps we can claim that once dead, we become immortal, and will experience and benefit from the ultimately good outcome of the universe.

Clearly, the belief in a personal God possessing human characteristics or concerns regarding fate, good and evil, results in complications of this kind.  The more speculations and arguments are required to explain or justify what happens in life from such a perspective, the less justifiable such a belief becomes, it would seem.  Or the more mysterious life and the deity become.

Perhaps the recent popularity of Stoicism as a quasi-religious view is in reaction to the manifold machinations required to make sense of the universe given belief in a personal, human though superhuman God.  A God immanent in the universe wouldn't necessarily create the universe for a particular purpose or end.  Being immanent in a universe of unimaginable size, such a God wouldn't have peculiarly human concerns or desires and wouldn't be concerned in any particular sense with humanity.  But as a part of the universe ourselves, we participate in God and by exercising our reason, our peculiar ability, we act in accord with our nature and that of the universe.

Such a belief at least prohibits us from thinking ourselves flies to wanton boys, and other things.

The Busybody God

Now and then I wonder why it is that some of us believe the God who created the unimaginably vast universe is so small.

"Small" as in petty, mean, paltry, pettifogging.  God as busybody, consumed with the thought that someone somewhere is doing something sinful, which is to say something prohibited, something that we his creatures shall not do on pain of penalty, even eternal damnation, and eager to ferret it out.  A God who peers through keyholes, as it were, or watches us balefully through heavenly binoculars when we think he's not looking.  A God who is an omnipotent version of Santa Claus but who does not merely withhold gifts when we're naughty, and instead punishes us either directly or through his agents on earth, or through the manipulation of natural phenomena as such as Pat Robertson would have it, hurling hurricanes at those who displease him and anyone else who happens to be in the way.

A God who requires that we wear or not wear certain clothes, eat or not eat certain food, attend particular and regular ceremonies at designated locations, sleep only with certain other humans in certain circumstances, say certain prayers, worship only him, make others worship only him, or failing that persecute those who do not worship only him in a variety of ways.  Read or not read certain books, see only certain things.  The list is nearly as endless as this endlessly demanding and jealous God is said to be.

We may speculate that this Busybody God is one it should be expected we would envision, being busybodies ourselves.  Or that the concept of such a God would occur to us inevitably if we presume that God must be concerned with humans primarily or exclusively.  As to the latter, I don't think the Busybody God is necessarily one we would choose to worship if we make such a presumption.  Such a God of limited concern need not be excessively mean, only of much restricted scope and majesty.

If we accept a Divinity creating or pervading the entire universe, how is it even possible for us to conceive it as being so concerned with such trivial matters?  It would seem a profoundly stupid conceit, even delusional, unless we thought for some reason at this point in time that the universe is, in fact, immeasurably smaller than we know it to be.  Absent that it's as if we thought God created the universe all for the equivalent of a speck of sand he perpetually studies and manipulates to the exclusion of all else.  It is a kind of insanity, a super-narcissism.

It is also, however, a stunning diminishment of the Deity.  Why would the God of this astounding universe be at all concerned with the minutiae some say is of such significance as to merit his retribution?  Why, indeed, would an all-powerful, all-knowing God seek retribution, or be jealous (of what?) or angry?  God would have to be neurotic at best in order to be fascinated with such things or to harbor such feelings.

Clearly, those who believe in a Busybody God do the Deity no credit; they may even be said to defame him.  The Busybody God is not merely anthropomorphic.  The Busybody God does not merely have human characteristics; he is attributed some of the characteristics of humans that make us most unworthy.  The Busybody God is unseemly.

I maintain that some conceptions of God are more reasonable than others.  This may not please the atheists among us, who sometimes seem inclined to claim that any belief in God is so absurd it is meaningless to say one form of belief is better than another.  But I think it is more reasonable to think that the Deity is not troubled by sexual preferences, clothes, food and such other matters it is said consume him, which are more properly considered concerns appropriate only to what Christopher Hitchens called the childhood of our species.

Belief in God is not necessarily childish; but it is all too possible to hold beliefs regarding God which are childish.  Thus the Busybody God and his adherents.

Raiders of the Lost God

I'm reading a book called The Death of the Mythic God: The Rise of Evolutionary Spirituality by Jim Marion.

Let's pause for a moment (humor me) and consider the use of "Jim" instead of "James" by the author.  Such things prey upon my mind.  Is the use of "Jim" an effort at self-effacement, or perhaps intended to to give the impression that the author, though we don't know him, is our buddy, our pal?  A swell guy?  I grow suspicious when encountering these diminutives in a name.  I think of Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, and other narcissists who have indulged in this ploy.  If one is going to do such a thing and scorn the formality of "James" why not go all the way?  "Jimbo Marion"; why not?  "Slim Jim Marion", or "Sweet Jimmy Marion"?  But to the book.

The author describes what he considers to be the death, or pending death, of God considered as the source of absolute commandments, proscribing all conduct and thought, accepting (sometimes) petition and prayers, intervening in creation, speaking through ancient books and prophets.  In other words, the death of the God of the Abrahamic religions if not others.  The knowledge of this death inevitably works on most of us, through the Kubler-Ross stages of denial, anger, etc. (I don't think the author explains why these stages apply or are appropriate).  Some of us linger in our worship of this Sky-God, some of us (those who are mystics, it seems) do not.  The Sky-God, or rather our worship of Him, has had various negative results.

This Mythic God was preceded by other, even more primitive, gods as we humans grew in sophistication and knowledge.  The Mythic God has been, for all practical purposes, interred by the growth of the rational view, exemplified it would seem by science, which to borrow Laplace's supposed remark to Napoleon rendered Him an unnecessary hypothesis.

This rational view has triumphed, but in its turn has wrecked havoc on the world, for the most part through the acceptance of a thoroughly materialistic conception of the universe which has caused us to rape the environment and each other when deemed appropriate.  Now is the time to evolve to a yet higher level of spirituality.

These levels of spirituality, or consciousness, have been categorized for reference by colors by some psychologists, and Marion makes use of these categories.  It seems the highest level is turquoise, which is indeed a nice enough color. 

The God of this higher level seems to be an immanent one, but I'm not entirely certain of this.  Marion's God may be both immanent and transcendent.  Marion (or should I say "Jim"?) is unclear in this, and in much else regarding this presumably real God.  He seems in some fashion to associate him with Jesus, who he says rejected the Mythic God, but whether Jesus is God is not directly stated.  He speaks of Jesus as discovering divinity in himself, but also indicates that we may, and should, do the same by "looking within" or seeking God in ourselves.  Perhaps we're all God, or God is everything, human beings included.  Perhaps Jesus is God in a sense, or a path to God, as are other great religious figures such as Buddha.  Marion's God seems to be one that has been realized and accepted by Christian and non-Christian mystics.

Marion evidently rejects materialism, and in addressing its limitations refers, as it seems many do, to physics or more particularly quantum mechanics.  This is something of a red flag, though, as physicists generally (not just Alan Sokal) have written despairingly of the misuse and misunderstanding of the theories of physics by those unfamiliar with them, and the efforts made to assert that they establish the existence of God, or an afterlife, or some inexplicable relation between everything in the universe and portals to other universes or dimensions.  If materialism is rejected it seems we may have problems with immanence.

Perhaps Marion's interpretation of physics is correct; perhaps it is not.  As I incline towards a Stoic point of view, I have a sympathy for the proposition that God is immanent in all things, and that we therefore partake in God.  However, I don't pretend that this view has the support of science of any kind or that it can be established by application of the scientific method or reason.

Marion also may be correct that the great religious mystics have encountered the divine, and that we can all do so.   We don't know whether they did or not, although it would seem to me that they felt in good faith they had experienced the divine.  I'm unconvinced that if we do this, or perhaps regardless of whether we do or not, we therefore become divine or are divine in a way we're unable to understand until we become divine.

One thing we can be sure of, though, is that those who have experienced the divinity cannot describe with any specificity what that experience was or how or why it took place.  Mystical encounters of this kind cannot be put into words, it seems, or if put into words are largely incomprehensible.  This may mean they are phantasms, or that we lack the ability or tools to describe them.

What seems clear enough, however, is that certain people have experiences which may be called mystical, and which may or may not serve as evidence of something beyond the universe we normally encounter.  While I'm not generally a follower of William James, I'm inclined to think with him that such experiences should be the subject of scientific inquiry, or at least may be the subject of inquiry (in other words, they are phenomena which can be studied intelligently).

What is also clear, for good or ill, is that we seem compelled to search for whatever it is we call God, or a higher or different reality which we may experience now or after we die.  Perhaps that's a part of being mortal.  Many of us are not willing to seek him in old books or in church, but seek him we will, and we'll write books about our search.  Most of us seem to want God or at least to seek God, despite the fact that we've lost one or more in the course of our evolution.  Lose one god and we will find another.  Good old Jim Marion may have found him.  If not, he and others will keep on trying until they can't try no more.  God is wanted, dead or alive!

Requiring Proof of the Divine

I've noted in this blog and elsewhere my belief that the debate regarding whether God exists is futile.  It is also, of course, unending, and may be unending due to its futility; we love to dispute what is pointless--there are those who claim philosophy consists of the consideration of questions which cannot be answered, and is wondrous as a result.  So much, then, for philosophy.

I hold that those who believe in God will never be convinced through debate there is no God, and that those who maintain there is no God will likewise never be convinced there is a God through this dispute, which seems to involve the repetition of points and arguments which have already been made for many years.  Nonetheless, those who believe in God insist on seeking to prove God's existence.  Their efforts to do so prompts claims they have not and cannot do so.  So I think believers typically initiate the dispute or debate, and wish they would not.  I'm uncertain whether the believers' forbearance in this regard would keep nonbelievers from insisting there is no God, but like to think it would.  As far as I'm concerned, we should believe or not believe and be silent in either case.

I'm baffled by the apparent need believers have to establish the existence of God in a manner others would find satisfactory.  I suppose it may be considered an effort at self-justification, but think it to be more a case of being unduly concerned with what others may think, which is one of the things Stoicism teaches us should be a matter of indifference.  Provided a belief in God causes no harm to others, that belief should be of no concern to anyone but the believer.

Non-believers may be expected to assert the belief causes harm to others, and there are certainly many instances in which it does.  But it need not do so, and when it does not it should be treated as a uniquely personal concern.  This is not to say we must respect all religious beliefs or sanction them; only those which cause no harm or are not used to cause harm.

Certain religious beliefs may be said to be such as would tend to cause harm to others.  Belief in an intolerant, angry, commanding deity requiring that all act in a particular manner and think in a particular way is likely to induce harmful conduct.  But there are other religious beliefs, other Gods, which don't impose such requirements.

There are, in other words, beliefs in God that are more reasonable than others.  A God which is not peculiarly human with exclusively or predominantly human concerns may be deemed more like a God of a vast universe than one which is so anthropomorphic, for example.  As such, it's more probably such a God would exists if a God exists.   An immanent God may be deemed more reasonable than a transcendent God in the sense that a transcendent God is necessarily unknowable, while an immanent God is all around us, is part of us.

The atheist will contend that we can no more establish the existence of a pantheistic God (or panentheistic) than we can any other God, and this is true in the sense that we can't establish God as we would something ascertainable by scientific means.  But accepting this as the case, we can nevertheless decide that certain conceptions of God are preferable to others, or so I would maintain, and have a reasonable basis on which to make such a determination. 

There are various things we can't establish scientifically, though, and would not think of being subject to scientific verification.  Love for a particular person or work of art, for example, can't be established or justified in that fashion.  Nor can a sense of the sublime, sense of awe and reverence be so established.  Are they thereby of questionable merit?

We experience love and awe and reverence and this cannot reasonably be doubted.  When we question such experiences, we question why they're felt, not whether they're felt, and we question why they're felt because we feel the subject of those experiences is not worthy of them, which is to say that we don't have those experiences in that case.  We have them in other cases.

Do we have any need to justify what we feel in listening to a great musical work, or viewing a great work of art or the beauties of nature?  Do we attempt to prove their existence?   I don't think we do.  I think that it makes no sense even to speak of proving them.  If the belief in God is substantially the same kind of experience, this angry, pointless debate should not be taking place.

The Mind of an Apologist

Now and then I take up and read, without the urging of a divine voice as far as I know, a work devoted to a defense of religion or belief in God.  I think I do so in the hope that I will find one which is convincing or at least worthy of respect.  I have not yet encountered such a work, alas. 

Dorothy Sayers, known for her detective fiction and the character she created, Lord Peter Wimsey, wrote such a work or two regarding Christianity, though it's not clear that she felt she did.  One of them is called The Mind of the Maker, which I'm currently reading.

When I say it's not clear she felt she was writing as an apologist I refer to the somewhat irritated preface of that book, in which she complains that another work she wrote was taken to be in the apologetic line when it was not; it was, she maintains, simply an effort to explicate Christian doctrine, and so could not be taken as a defense of it let alone as an expression of personal beliefs.  One might infer, then, that The Mind of the Maker was similarly written as an explanation, not justification, but thus far that's an inference I find difficult to make.  I can't help but wonder if she was hedging her bets, in the hope that she could respond to any criticism of her claims by stating that they're not hers, but that of the Christian faith.

She was a friend of another apologist, C.S. Lewis.  I've read him as well, and also G.K. Chesterton.  I've been disappointed by both Lewis and Chesterton, but perhaps they didn't think they were apologists either.  Lewis struck me as illogical and gullible (in his acceptance of Christian assertions), and Chesterton struck me as someone who did not think or argue so much as relentlessly manufacture mots.

Sayers' book addresses the doctrine of the Trinity, and naturally enough references St. Augustine's De Trinitate.  It seems she feels as he felt that the concept of the Trinity is something which we can understand by analogy with similar aspects of nature, i.e. the universe, and our interaction with it.  She evidently thinks that God as creator can be understood through contemplation of the creative process engaged in by artists, including writers of fiction like herself, because artists in creation engage in a process which itself involves a trinity--Energy, Idea and Power, which come into play not necessarily in that order.  And, since this creative process involves a trinity....etc.  It's perhaps unsurprising that she associates herself with God in this fashion (although I for the life of me cannot think of God as a lawyer).

I'm not that far into the book, but already I feel myself anticipating another disappointment.  St. Augustine indulged in this sort of thing as well, finding triads of all kind in all sorts of things (for example the act of seeing) which are in or take place in nature.  Indeed, C.S. Peirce was big on triads.  The number 3 has long been considered by some to be magical or mystical.  Perhaps this means something.

However, it seems to me this imposition of categories of three on the universe is facile and artificial.  Why not categories of four or five, or more?  We can do that sort of thing with relative ease.  Impulse, Energy, Idea and Power--how's that?  Interaction, Impulse, Energy, Idea and Power.  Why not?

She responds to critics who maintain that God should not be compared to humans and ascribed human characterises by claiming that we're always anthropomorphizing.  I suppose we do, or at least do so quite often.  It doesn't follow from this, though, that God should be ascribed human characteristics, nor does it follow from this that God shouldn't be thought of as having certain human characteristics in particular.

She maintains that biblical claims that God punishes not only sinners but their innocent descendants doesn't really mean that God does anything of the sort.  It is rather a metaphor reflecting the fact that certain conduct results in adverse consequences which continue over time.  Metaphor and analogy abound in Christianity, of necessity as we cannot truly understand the divine.

Well, at this time I sigh and go on reading.  But it seems to me that the efforts of these apologists consist in ignoring that which they purport to defend, or interpreting it in manner which requires they disregard it "as is."  That's been going on for some time.  In my reading so far, apologists for established religions have invariably expounded on claims and constructed arguments which, if they are valid, don't require the acceptance of aspects of those religions which render them unique and which are seemingly essential to them in the sense they make them different from other religions.

Thomas Aquinas repeated arguments for the existence of God made long before by pagan philosophers and claimed they established the existence of the Christian God, which one would think would of necessity have been different from the god of the pagan philosophers.  If the Christian God was not different, well and good, but Thomas presumably would have been loathe to make that claim.  If the Christian God is different, has the existence of a different god been proved by the philosophers? 

An apologist for a religion whose apology does not address that which distinguishes the religion does not defend or justify that religion.  Instead, the apologist establishes that he/she is unable to defend or justify its distinctive features.  The apologist unwittingly thereby puts the veracity of the religion in doubt. 

For which, no doubt, the apologist should apologize.

Waiting for Next Steps

The American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars wrote a book I'm currently reading, entitled The Next Step in Religion:  An Essay towards the Coming Renaissance.  This work was published in 1918.  As you might guess from its title, Sellars anticipated great things--the triumph of the scientific view and reason, the dissolution of traditional religions, the disappearance of anthropomorphic deities--which have not and possibly will never take place, at least in our Beloved Republic.  That seems to be the case, in any event, a little less than a century after this grandly optimistic book came forth from the Macmillan Company.

It wouldn't be the first time such hopes, and others, were exaggerated.  Think of how, in 1968, Kubrick and Clarke came up with 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Is it possible that reasonable men and women thought we would have large colonies on the Moon to which we traveled regularly, and could send a manned mission to Jupiter, in 2001?  So it seems.  What disappointments we are to ourselves.

What would poor Roy think now about his anticipated "Next Step"?  We have commercials in which we are told that God is employing a dating service to find spouses for us (you would think that if God truly is a mere matchmaker, he would manage to do that himself).  We are told by political and religious leaders that Satan has his sights on us, that God is angry at us and so will allow us to be punished by hurricanes and other things because of homosexuals.  The return of Jesus and the Last Judgment are eagerly awaited and the subject of popular novels.  The year is 2013, and it is being demanded that evolution not be taught in our schools or that alternatives to evolution in the form of creationism be taught as well.  Some of us think that the world was created 6,000 years ago.

It's an interesting book, really, and worth a read despite its optimism.  But one wonders what happened.  Are we stupider than, or at least as stupid as, we were in 1918?  Are we off schedule due to some event, such as the Second World War, which distracted us?  The First World War was apparently not enough to convince Sellars that the Next Step would be postponed indefinitely.

I suspect that the good professor simply overestimated us, rather drastically.  Perhaps this can happen if an academic is too sheltered from the oppressively real world which lies outside the academy, but I doubt that is the whole answer.  There are still those who proclaim the end of the "God Delusion" even now.  I prefer Sellars' arguments to theirs, so I anticipate they will prove to be even less insightful than he was regarding our future.

It seems clear that most of us need religion, or in any case feel it necessary and worthwhile to believe in God.  If that need will ever dissipate, it is most doubtful that will take place in the foreseeable future.  But should it take place?

I don't think a belief in God or spiritual or religious feelings are undesirable in and of themselves.  One can believe in a God who is not busily finding ways for us to meet our wives or husbands, not obsessed with our sexual conduct and does not insist that we believe he wrote a certain book through someone and does not proscribe death and eternal damnation if certain rules are not followed.  One can, in other words, conceive of and believe in a God who is not a particularly nasty, intrusive, and demanding kind of human being.

Perhaps our intellectual leaders would do better service by seeking to transform and inform our beliefs in God rather than condemning the belief in God and religion generally.  These beliefs won't go away, but it is possible to have intelligent, reasonable beliefs in these matters.

Practical Skepticism

I use "practical" here in an effort to make clear that the skepticism I would like to consider is not what is sometimes called "philosophical" skepticism, or at least skepticism as conceived or applied by certain philosophers which, I think, is a skepticism which is insignificant to those of us who struggle to get by in the world.  Whether we can "really" have knowledge of anything, or of the truth of any proposition, is I'm sure interesting (to some in any case) but this is of little concern in our day- to-day affairs, where the doubts we face are encountered and not generated as grist for philosophical mills which seemingly are always grinding.  But, for what purpose and to what effect do they grind?

Purpose can be rather important in our lives, and effects as well.  And in the play of purposes, conduct directed towards them and the effects of that conduct, practical skepticism can be of considerable value.  One can usefully doubt certain claims and question certain conduct in circumstances in which such doubts or questions may be addressed and eradicated, or answered.  When they can't be, however, it isn't clear just what one achieves by being skeptical, if that skepticism is active, if I can use that word (I have, in any case); in other words if one maintains that something is not true.  That's because the issue cannot be resolved, one way or another--the question can't be answered.  It would make more sense in those circumstances, I think, to be unconvinced; in other words, not to accept that something is true rather than maintain that it is not true.

It can be maintained that the existence of God is one of those areas where active skepticism does not seem to achieve much.  Nobody can prove God exists to a reasonable degree of probability as we lawyers say, nor can it be proved God does not exist.  If that's the case, why insist that God exists or does not exist?  More significantly, why insist that others believe, with you, that God exists or does not exist?

One can, or course, think that God exists or does not exist.  And many do.  One can assert that certain things indicate that God's existence is likely or unlikely, or suggest that God exists.  As to certain such claims, it can be argued that regardless, God's existence is not established.  But this should disturb we who believe, I would think, no more than it should disturb us people disagree with us on other matters the veracity of which cannot be determined.  Similarly though, and for the same reason, I would think that those who do not believe should not be disturbed that others do.

Now the atheist can assert that he/she is more reasonable than those who believe in God's existence, and in that sense "better" because he/she doesn't believe in something the existence of which can't be established.  And that is certainly true, if it is only reasonable to maintain that someone can only feel something is real, and exists, if its existence can be established in the same fashion as any subject or potential subject of scientific inquiry can be established.   But scientifc inquiry is not necessarily a pertinent basis on which to base belief in God, from the perspective of the believer.  So, such a view will leave most believers unimpressed.  It would seem an appropriate response for the believer to say to the atheist in that case:  "So be it."

The problem, though, is that too often there is more involved. God's existence or nonexistence is something many of us seem incapable of addressing in an abstract, dispassionate manner.  We're inclined to insist, proclaim, demand, even fight.  It seems a highly emotional, even irrational, concern of ours.  There are too many believers and atheists, and skeptics, who are evangelists of one kind or another.

Historically, though, the believers have been far more agressive than unbelievers in imposing or seeking to impose their beliefs on others.  This doesn't speak well of believers, and makes the aggressiveness of the "New Atheists" and their fellow travelers somewhat understandible.  There is no Inquisition, but perhaps there will be an Imposition, if the religious among us have their way. 

Perhaps our hope must be in a practical skepticism and the humility which it inspires.  "Presume not God to scan" said Alexander Pope, a phrase which has a new meaning now.  We are a presumptuous species in far too many ways.

Charged with the Grandeur of God: Some Preliminary Thoughts

These words appear in a sentence I've always admired, in a poem I've always liked.  "The world is charged with the grandeur of God."  Hopkins' reference here is presumably electricity, the only characteristic of the real world through which he could make his point; there is a charge running through the world, a force which as Dylan Thomas wrote (meaning something different, one would think) drives through the green fuse of the universe, which is caused by God's grandeur or perhaps is God's grandeur.  It "flames out" at us, "like shining from shook foil"--these are magnificent words.  Magnificent words for a magnificent idea.

Though he was a Catholic, there are times when I suspect based on his poetry that Hopkins was a pantheist or had pantheist leanings, and I wonder sometimes whether intelligent believers in God must necessarily be pantheists if any kind of believer at all.  We can say we believe in a transcendent God, but we cannot know of what we speak when we do so.  Too often the transcendent God we refer to seems to have disturbingly human characteristics, or at least characteristics which are all too present in the universe God supposedly transcends.  So we are left with asserting God transcends the universe because he created it, an assertion which seems at best unsatisfying.

Ascribing human characteristics to God seems to impose limits which immediately strike one as absurd.  We know the universe to be almost unimaginably vast, and that we exist on one planet in one solar system that is an almost unimaginably tiny part of the universe.  It seems a laughable conceit to think of God as merely a kind of super-human.  The Church was right to fear the death of the Earth-centered view of the cosmos.

A super-human may inspire fear and dread, may even inspire love, as that is a fundamentally human emotion.  But the universe itself rightly inspires awe and wonder; it has grandeur, and may be said to be charged with grandeur.  Why long for something more, why insist the God must be more than that grandeur, particularly when one does not know and can't even begin to say what that "more" must be?

I'm content to follow the Stoics in this as well in other things; a God immanent in the universe is good enough for me, so to speak. 

Of course, an immanent God is one that need not be proved to exist in the sense that the universe need not be proved to exist (except, of course, to such as those unfortunates who purport to believe it necessary to prove the existence of the universe, other minds, themselves, etc.).  However, it can legitimately be argued that if an immanent God is "merely" the universe, why insist there is a God in the first place?  Why isn't the universe "just" the universe?  Where does God come into the picture?

If you are someone like me, you find yourself inclined to reply God is the grandeur Hopkins refers to in his poem.  That is nothing like a proof of course, and I think the honest believer, not to say the reasonable believer, must acknowledge that there is no proof.  Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.  Seeking to prove God's existence as one would prove the Earth is roughly a sphere, or that light travels at a certain speed, is essentially a vain exercise.  At best one can be persuaded, or may suspect, or feel. 

Perhaps that grandeur has always been there, or perhaps Peirce's "guess at the riddle" was a good one, and what started out, if it started at some point, as chaos has become progressively more organized and rational and will continue to do so.  I wonder whether it matters.  The universe is what it is even as we are what we are, and we are parts of a universe charged with grandeur, and as parts of the universe we share in its grandeur.

This is a kind of mysticism, but it is what may be called an informed mysticism.  It has its basis in what we can observe and test and experience; it does not pretend to manufacture a transcendent entity nor is it conditioned on anthropomorphism in the blatant sense needed to support the idea of a personal God.  It allows for a certain kind of communion, though not of the kind relied on by Christianity and its various predecessors which it would rather not acknowledge, and even a kind of existence after death.  I suppose it may be said to provide comfort of a sort, and we are creatures in need of comfort.  Our needs always take precedence over our reason, and this way of looking at God may merely be less objectionable to atheists than others. 

Ultimately, though, the issue of God is one that cannot usefully be debated (note the qualification).  It's like taste in that respect.  Nonetheless, we speak of good taste and poor taste, and I think there are senses is which certain ideas of God may be said to be preferable to others.  Here is one version.