By Moristotle[Originally published on September 9, 2007.]
I have talked approvingly of what I understood to be Søren Kierkegaard’s view, on the question of belief in God, that it was nobler (as well as more accurate) to hang with one hand from one ledge of the narrow chasm of religious belief and with the other hand from the opposite ledge than to transfer either hand to join the other on the same ledge. Hanging precariously from both ledges symbolized doubt. Kierkegaard thought doubt nobler because it consigned the doubter to the perpetual angst of his uncertainty whether to believe or not to believe, since, as a matter of accuracy, the person could not be objectively sure which belief was right.
But I’ve now given up nobility. I’ve shifted the hand that was clinging to belief over to the other ledge and am now hanging with both hands from un- or non- or disbelief, and I feel ever so much better. And those who have done just the opposite – and cling to belief with both hands – feel better too, I assume.
I suppose that being either all in or all out of anything is more comfortable. A juror who just can’t make up her mind whether the man accused of murder is guilty or not will be in agony over it. If deliberations go overnight, she might not be able to sleep. I used to agonize over whether or not to approve of the death penalty. I feel better now that I’ve come down unshakably against it. In general, humans find relief and feel better after they stop roiling and make up their minds!
On “the religious question” (which is essentially whether God exists and can be approached through some form of worship or prayer), believers who cling to their belief with both hands usually try to fortify their position by applying to a particular “holy scripture” which they accept as containing “the revealed Word of God.” This could be The Torah, The New Testament, The Qur’an, The Book of Mormon, or whatever. A belief in a particular divine revelation, it seems to me, works this way in “fortifying” their fundamental belief: if the scripture in question is true, then of course God is...this or that, for The Book says so. But note the “if” regarding the scripture. No one can know objectively whether it’s the “Word of God” or not. A noble doubter will cling to the two opposed ledges on that question.
I said that believers in God “try to fortify” their belief through application to a holy scripture. “Try” because of course such application is no real help at all. They still have to face Kierkegaard’s question. The leap of faith has to be taken on the question whether there really was a revelation or not...
...just as the disbeliever takes his leap of faith that religion is false, that God (in the personal sense) does not exist, that Jesus was not the Son of God, that Muhammad was not a Messenger of God, that Joseph Smith’s golden plates were an elaborate hoax motivated by greed and venality, that the various similarities of religious belief and practice around the world show, not that God has revealed Himself to peoples everywhere, but that evolved man tends to project the same gods everywhere, that most of those beliefs and practices flatter neither the assumed gods nor the actual men, and so on.
And, to be honest (which I hope I always am), I admit that I make an application myself to try to fortify my nonbelief. My application is to rationality, or common sense. Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens seem to me to make a very great deal more sense (in their books The Age of Reason, Why I Am Not a Christian, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great, respectively) than the “holy books” I’m familiar with. It seems ever so much more reasonable to me that religion is a childish fantasy than that it is a serious adult vision. But some of the things said in scripture are nevertheless apt:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. [The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 13:11]I do have at least one remaining question. It has to do with the distinction between religion and spirituality. As a noble doubter, I felt that I could “be spiritual” even though I found it ridiculous to try to “be religious.” The question is: Now that I’ve opted for being all out when it comes to religion, is spirituality still an option for me, and what does that mean?
| Copyright © 2007, 2020 by Moristotle |
To further your excellent question about the possibility of being spiritual, if you opt out of being religious: What is being "spiritual" anyway? Being "religious" can apparently enable a bizarre justification for shooting girls in the head because they dare go to school, or killing your own sister or daughter if she falls in love with someone from a different belief, or it can allow women to be clergy--or ban them from a church if they try to become clergy. So what is being "spiritual" and what does being spiritual allow, or enable? Is being spiritual just a device to enable the non-religious to justify being vegetarians, or meat eaters, or having great concern about the environment and the future of the earth, or having no concern about environment and the future of the earth? Is being spiritual a personal code, a societal code, or just a non-religious person's version of "it was god's will" as they procrastinate instead of taking action? Just asking...
ReplyDeletePaul, we do of course have to begin with how we define “spiritual,” and I think I’ve offered one (or several) definitions in a number of posts, including some of the “Goines On” vignettes, as the chap ruminates in the kitchen or on a walk.
DeleteI have probably even said some of the sorts of things you manage in your comment, but, generally, I reserve the bad stuff for the “religious” label, and reserve “spiritual” for the stuff I value and admire. I also tend not to see “spiritual” in a political or social context; to me it’s a very personal matter, in the here and now, from moment to moment. As an atheist, for me “God’s will” doesn’t enter into it. But love does, and gratitude.
This is one of the clearest and most concise statements of this issue I have read. Well done! My only question is, thirteen years later, where did you land on the issue of spirituality? Namaste!
ReplyDeleteYes, Eric, spirituality is definitely still an option, and it need not bear any relation to “being religious.” In fact, going by what I read of religious people, I would hazard that spirituality has little to do with the lives of many of them. (But spirituality is private, so I may be wrong.)
DeleteI hope spirituality has much more to do with my own life, but I am hesitant to tout anything about my own spirituality – maybe as a matter of that spirituality. I don’t think people can “be spiritual together” with one another – unless we admit unspoken mutual lovingness as an expression of it, as we express our wonder of Nature, of the birds and butterflies and insects and mammals in our yards and woods.
Eric, the namaste greeting--or namaskar--certainly has its advantages over a handshake, especially during a pandemic.
ReplyDeleteGlad you brought individuality and Nature into it. To some of us, Nature is the only true higher power, and all else is just a vain attempt to make people feel like they matter. Makes no difference if you are a spiritualist, evangelical, or follower of Islam or any other self-important religion, self-justifying beliefs have no standing in the face of Nature. Maybe the world would be a better place, with less war and strife and violence, if people would remind themselves on a daily basis: in the end, the worms win.
ReplyDeleteRight on. And your sentence beginning “Makes no difference if you are a spiritualist, evangelical, or follower of Islam...” reminds me that I don’t label myself “a spiritualist.” I think of myself as “spiritual” only in the sense of being in tune with Nature and recognizing the true proportion of things.
DeleteIt is refreshing to encounter someone who recognizes "the true proportion" of the human situation, instead of buying into the theory that people will ultimately control and conquer Nature. We all survive here at the whim of Nature, but even though I wish people would live daily with that knowledge, I also worry that what is arguably the most neurotic civilization in history, would be even more so if they realized they truly had no control. The idea of a "natural religion" (religion, especially deism, based on reason rather than divine revelation) is a somewhat palatable concept, but only if the "supreme being" or "creator" can be defined as Nature, rather than something humankind invented in its own image.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I think you’re right. As I have many times said myself, many people seem highly dependent on one or more of the various crutches of religion. And if those crutches were taken away, the dependents would fall into dire straits. It’s uncomfortably ironic to have to agree that religion seems a necessity to many.
DeleteAs do booze and drugs to others. It is ironic how many of the people I've known since their teens follow the same pattern: heavy drinkers in their teens and 20s, heavy drug use through their 30s, 40s and 50s; overbearingly religious in their 60s and 70s. I've seen those choices work well for some, disastrously for others, but I can't conjure any mathematical conclusion that one works better, overall, than the other. If there is a hereafter, and if I had to choose one group or the other to spend eternity with, I would probably take my chances on a group of cocaine users in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I never had the guts to try the stuff myself, but the many professional people I knew who used cocaine moderately seemed to be happy, energetic, optimistic, reasonably fit and attractive, and always eager for the next challenge. Which is more than I can say for them when they were young and over-drinking, or now that they are old and overdoing religion.
ReplyDeleteHa, indeed, the crutches that people rely on are numerous and of various kinds.
DeleteI like that you raised the topic “spending eternity” – that’s a hell of a long time to do the same-old, same-old, especially with the same-old, same-old people....
Coming at this from a different angle: What if there really is some sort of omnipotent being like humankind has created in its own image, and what if we do really go before it when we leave our earthly realm; have you ever pondered what you would say, what you might ask, when your time came?
ReplyDeleteShort answer: no. Preparing for the scenario you lay out seems equivalent to taking Pascal up on his wager: believe just in case it might be true, so you will have an entrance ticket.
DeleteInteresting. I've always thought I would ask, "Why are you so cruel? You have the power to create all this, and make it all great and wonderful, but you instead inflict massive amounts of what seems pointless cruelty: Why is that?" Don't know that asking that question would be much of an entrance ticket, but that's the question I have, and would love to hear a coherent answer for.
ReplyDeletePaul, there are a lot of much better people than I ready to ask those questions in that eventuality – Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, & Sam Harris, to name the four major “New Atheists.” Also UNC New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman.
DeleteNot to question such great minds, but I don't know that tragedy and pointless cruelty points to there being no such thing as a god, versus the possibility there is a god and people are indeed created in its image. Look at people and their instinct for meanness, violence, warfare and pointless cruelty: where does that instinct come from, if not from whatever created them?
ReplyDeleteAssuming that god has a wonderful positive ambition for all--instead of a mean streak and a wicked sense of humor--is much like people who can't wait to find aliens in outer space and who want to attract them to earth so they can interact with them: why do these people assume such aliens would be friendly? Why couldn't these aliens be just like the people who settled what is now the United States, who committed a genocide that wiped out 90% of the native peoples, and who destroyed countless ecosystems and sent an unknowable number of species into extinction?
Is humanity's existence and direction a happenstance of Nature and random chance, or is there a god that is mindlessly mean and cruel and gets a kick out of watching disaster unfold? The more I think about it, I'm not sure that weighing good things happening, versus bad, necessarily answers the question.
Is it more plausible to you for a malignant god to have created our world than for it to have evolved from Nature?
DeleteYes, I think our world evolved from Nature. But if there was some sort of god involved, I fear the more accurate description might be malignant--or maybe malevolent--rather than benevolent.
DeleteI believe in the omnipotent power of Nature, and in "chaos theory" as explanation for the occurrence of seemingly random events. That said, I have seen, and heard of, enough unexplainable events throughout my lifetime and in recorded history, that I have to wonder if there is some capacity for humans--and other animals, for that matter--to tap into something unknown and produce acts that qualify as miracles of sorts. To use a modern terminology, do we live with a version of "The Force" as explained in Star Wars movies, and fail to recognize it?
What I don't believe is the theory that praying to one "god" or the other produces such miracles, and I think there would be much less strife, murder, warfare, etc, if people could just band together and worship "Nature" generically, instead of labeling it and its powers as attributable to a Christian God, or Islamic Allah, or whatever. The ancient Egyptians basically worshipped the sun, since we die without the sun, maybe we should try that. There's only one sun in our universe, if we all agreed to worship it there's much less to argue about or fight over.
We don't have to look any further than what happened 19 years ago today, and the response, to raise plenty of questions that undermine all sides of religious arguments about the powers and capabilities of various "gods" routinely worshipped today. If the Christian "God" is almighty, why did all those Christian prayers aboard those three airplanes go unanswered? And if Allah is almighty, why did all those Islamic prayers go unanswered in the years of warfare that have followed? If we look only at 9/11 and its aftermath, it is not unreasonable to raise two questions about the supposed existence of those all-powerful gods: 1) do they exist at all; 2) do they delight in pointless cruelty and enjoy watching human disaster unfold? What I don't see is reason to wonder if there might be a benevolent god involved.
Much does remain unexplained, and might never be explained.
DeletePlease specify how you mean “worship” Nature; I trust it bears little resemblance to Judaic, Christian, and Muslim practices. Or does it?
How could a global conversion to Nature worship come about?
Paul, please do say how you see “worship” as playing a role in a nature-based religion. And must it be a matter of religion, rather than a world view or an attitude we adopt toward the world, as science is? I guess my prejudice (it could just be a prejudice, I suppose) is to junk religion as a bankrupt enterprise that has outgrown its usefulness to mankind. Have you ever heard of scientists worshiping science or knowledge? I haven’t, and I don”t think worship has any place in the scientific attitude or world view. Unless we might stipulate that it’s just a manifestation of the personal, gentle, respectful, intimate, and affectionate quality of attention with which we attend the world we live in. (See my comment of yesterday at 7:33 a.m., below.) And it need not be science; it could be poetry.
DeleteI heard a former priest give a speech where he said he considered studying the bible, or just studying the history of "biblical times" as tantamount to praying, and I would say the same for spending time with nature as opposed to trying to make a religion of it or somehow formerly "worship" it.
DeleteAs to how to make such a conversion to appreciating Nature? Start by taking some time away from sitting in buildings where you are told that your religion is so much better than any other religion (even though there seems scant factual proof that any religion has any legitimate claim to superiority), or that your branch of your particular religion is far superior to other branches of your particular religion (again, scant proof) and instead spend that time outdoors. Take a walk, watch some birds, paddle a canoe, whatever your choice.
Do this just a few times and you will probably start asking yourself, "why am I spending so much time, effort and money on the idea of some fabulous next realm, of which there is zero proof, instead of investing it in this realm, which I can see, hear, smell, taste and feel?" And you may start thinking about how you can help this realm, and the people in it, instead of worrying about helping yourself in some theoretical next realm, which you can't even prove exists.
And who knows, maybe by dedicating yourself to improving life in this current very real realm, you enhance your status in that next realm--if it exists--because you have spent your spare time here actually doing something positive, rather than wasting it debating that which is unknowable.
That could work for converting candidates with natural sensibilities. Would you call on naturalists to devote some hours a week to finding adherents to church religions and trying to persuade them to start taking walks in woods and fields on days their churches meet rather than going to church services?
DeleteThere's a Side Story lurking here, about strategies for converting the planet's human inhabitants away from religions to naturalism....
DeleteAs a person who often thinks the world would be better off if we banned groups with more than three people, I am hesitant to endorse much of a formal effort to convert anyone to anything. I think we should encourage people with an instinct to interact with actual right-here-on-earth Nature to do so, and leave those with an affinity for living immersed in mythology to do so--which keeps them out of the way of the rest of us who are actually trying to do something in the here and now, instead of pursuing the "slacktivist" ethic of just thinking about doing something...hopefully...at some unknown time in some very distant future.
DeleteI raised the question how a global conversion to naturalism might come about because of your statement, “There's only one sun in our universe, if we all agreed to worship it there's much less to argue about or fight over.” And I thought, by your “As to how to make such a conversion to appreciating Nature?” that you were enlisting in the enterprise. But I seem to have misinterpreted you, since in your comment above, with its “I am hesitant to endorse much of a formal effort to convert anyone to anything,” you deny an interest in improving others, just hoping you can avoid them and they won’t get in your way. I suspect you consider global conversion a pipe dream anyway. In that, I admit I agree with you.
DeleteWhile it would be great to think I would have the ability to "improve others" to use your term, I don't have the ego for such. People are generally motivated for their own reasons and by their own interests--and generally think they are right and ignore all facts that might indicate otherwise--so I don't think trying to "improve" them is the strongest way to begin a sales pitch. Better for those with what may be a better plan to go ahead and follow that plan--living in step with the reality of Nature instead of following questionable mythology, for example, or becoming a vegetarian instead of a meat eater, or maintaining a "natural yard" instead of a coiffed green desert like the neighbors--rather then worrying about trying to "improve" others by pushing them to follow a plan that doesn't appeal to them. If more people would individually set an example by actually doing something that others will ultimately have to admit seems to work better, they have a much better chance of accomplishing more by attracting willing followers, than by trying to "improve" people by pushing them in a direction they naturally resist.
DeleteBut there’s the rub, your “ If more people would individually set an example....” What, you’re going to rely on Chaos Theory to bring that to pass?
DeleteYes, I have more faith in the power of Nature and the effects of Chaos Theory than anything else I've seen. And both seem to be working, at least around the fringes.
DeleteWhen I was a kid, hardly anyone ran or exercised for their health, most exercise was done only by athletes in training. Look how much that has changed in 60 years, and at the positive results.
When I became a vegetarian decades ago, I was literally the only vegetarian I knew. Now I know many vegetarians, and I can buy many excellent vegan products at Wal-Mart, of all places, that I used to have to make myself or seek out at specialty shops. Chaos theory, or not, there has been progress on the health, fitness and vegetarian fronts, at least. And as far as I can tell, that mostly came from people getting out and doing what they thought was best, instead of trying to push other people to do the same. You may be able to create a wave, or catch a wave: not sure you can push a wave.
As for other aspects of life: would you rather trust voters and our current electoral system to choose a competent president, or Chaos Theory? In my lifetime, our political system has chosen only one, or possibly two, presidents who were--or even tried to be--positive gamechangers: all out pandemonium and catastrophe could probably beat those results, so how could we lose with mere chaos?
Damn, I think you’ve just succeeded in converting me to a belief in Chaos Theory, with an associated great reduction in my worry about the future of the planet. THANK YOU!
DeleteDavid Brook’s op-Ed column “When a Heart Is Empty” may have formulated the core of what I comprehend as “spirituality”:
ReplyDelete“you have to project a certain quality of attention that is personal, gentle, respectful, intimate and affectionate — more moving with and feeling into than simply observing with detachment.” Excerpt from the column:
This is not an intellectual stupidity. I imagine Trump’s I.Q. is fine. It is a moral and emotional stupidity. He blunders so often and so badly because he has a narcissist’s inability to get inside the hearts and minds of other people. It’s a stupidity that in almost pure clinical form, flows out of his inability to feel, a stupidity of the heart....
St. Augustine’s theory of knowledge begins with emotion. Love is a focus of attention. Love is a motivation to learn more about a person. Love is a reverence for the image of God in each person.
Through his own failures, Trump illustrates by counterexample that the heart is the key to understanding. To accurately size up a human situation you have to project a certain quality of attention that is personal, gentle, respectful, intimate and affectionate — more moving with and feeling into than simply observing with detachment....
Maybe I spend too much time on Twitter and in media, but I see less and less of this sort of attention in America, even amid the tragedies of 2020. Far from softening toward one another, the whole country feels even more rived, more hardened and increasingly blind to lives other than our own.