Tag Archives: agnostic

AND??????

by in Family, Human Consciousness, religion and tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

One of my dear old friends submitted a comment to my blog post I Am Not A Sinner which ended with:

AND???

In other words, what happened next? Good question. That’s the purpose of this blog post, to talk about the aftermath of my spiritual tsunami. I described the event itself in my earlier blog post (also annoyingly entitled I am not a Sinner, go figure).

Anyway, as I described earlier, I eventually came to the conclusion that the entire concept of religion is rather preposterous. The idea that the Creator of the universe with all of its wonder has an intimate relationship with me, in which He (She? It?) monitors my very thoughts (including this one!) in real time. I mean, really.

After all, every spiritual experience I have ever had has been completely subjective. Can I really trust my own experience? I knew all too well how thoroughly I am capable of deceiving myself. I therefore decided to chuck the entire question of God as a meaningless, silly question with ultimately no answer at all.

Fundamentally, I finally understood that I am alone in the universe. That life actually has no purpose, meaning or significance. That I am, as the old song says, merely Dust in the Wind.

Now, that sounds depressing. Let me tell you: For me it was incredibly liberating.

An interesting side effect: I became much more humble. I know what you are thinking: There you go bragging about being humble.

No, not really.

You see, I now understand how truly broken I am. And how fundamentally I really know nothing. Nothing at all.

That’s the thing about doubt: Once I understood, I mean really understood at a gut level, that I really don’t know anything for sure, then my faith collapsed, and I became humbled.

Interestingly, faith made me kind of an asshole. I heard a piece on NPR once about a woman who wrote a novel in which the main character was someone she described as:

A white, wealthy, middle aged, conservative, Christian man who thinks he’s good but he’s not.

And why was he not good:

Because he had empathy for people like him, but no one else. People of his gender, race, religion, culture, social status, sexual orientation and political views. God forbid that he would ever talk to or treat a homosexual, feminist, Democrat, or such like a human being.

That was me. For me, faith was a form of hubris: I was completely and totally convinced that I was right, that there was an ultimate truth, and that I could know it. That I had the line on the truth, straight from the mouth of God.

That hubris has collapsed. In the process, I began to do things very differently.

Like a couple of weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco, I found myself sitting down on a park bench with homeless guys, and hanging with them for a while. I had some incredibly sweet conversations with really decent men, who were simply homeless. I have been homeless too. My momentary success, and apparent financial wealth, have simply served as a barrier between me and the homeless. Once I remembered how much we struggled when we were living in Texas during the 80s, I knew: I am not different from them. I am the same. Only our circumstances are different.

The barriers fell away. I became open to people I have never even considered talking to. Like a young, black, homosexual hairdresser from Vallejo who I met on the Muni. We became fast friends, exchanged emails and are still communicating. Before my tsunami, there is no way that I would ever become friends with someone that different from me. No problem now.

And of course there is my most important relationship: My marriage. At first, my wife resisted my spiritual journey. She wanted me to remain a Christian! However, I persisted. Now she constantly tells me that I am, by far, more loving, kind, gentle, compassionate, and sensitive than I have ever been. She would not go back to the old Jeff, that’s for sure!

The key, at least for me, was understanding that there actually is no purpose. That life has no ultimate meaning. That the quest for understanding and significance is another form of delusion. That all we have is this present moment, the very breath that I am taking as I write this.

This moment. Now. There is nothing else.

So, how shall I then live? Optimize the moment. Which for me is simple: Be as loving, empathetic, sensitive, and such as humanly possible. Allow my feelings to express themselves. If I am sad, allow the sadness to wash over me. Understand that it is simply a feeling. Like the weather, it will pass. And then there will be another feeling in that moment. And so on and so forth in a constant progression of moments.

Will I survive in some way when I die? I have no idea. The issue does not bother me though. I suspect that the software just stops running. That won’t be so bad. I certainly won’t be there to care about it.

Ultimately, in a few thousand years at most, I will be utterly forgotten. And then a few billion years after that, the Earth will be destroyed (by the Sun if nothing gets it first). If our species has not escaped from this rock by then, every single thing that every human being has ever known will be lost forever. And that includes me.

Shall I then by any action of mine affect the lifespan of the universe? Shall I somehow change the fate of all mankind? Doubtful.

I can then be free. I am free of religious delusions. I understand now at last who I am and what this life is all about. And that pleases me.

More later.

Reasonable Christians

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I met a reasonable Christian today. It was a bit weird, actually.

My wife wanted to visit a local Anglican church where my Christian friend Ray and his wife attend, and I thought: Sure, why not? So we went. There you have it. I actually set foot in a Christian church today. And I have no doubt that many of the Christians in that room would be offended by the things that I say on this blog (although I would certainly love it if they would read it).

Be that as it may, I was immediately drawn to a young woman when we arrived. You are probably thinking that this was due to my (admittedly) heterosexual nature. But, no, in this case, I was not attracted to this person in that way at all. For one thing, she was dressed in a very traditionally religious manner, which is about as sexually unattractive as it is humanly possible to be. And she had done absolutely nothing to make herself attractive, as that standard is described in our current culture. (Not that I find that necessarily attractive either: More on that later.) It was not that she could not have made herself attractive in our terms, had she tried. She simply did not care to try.

What drew me to this person was her absolute, visible and obvious rebellion against the direction of our modern culture. As soon as I started talking to her, she explained to me about how the Anglican church we were in was “officially a mission of the Anglican Church of Rwanda. You see, the Rwandans decided that America was an evil, secular, and godless place that was in need of evangelizing. So they planted this church.”

I still cannot tell if this statement was dripping with irony or not. If so, she delivered it very well, and very straight. She had me immediately.

I confessed that I was an extreme theological liberal, and told her about a bit of my journey. How I had made a terrible mistake: I decided to read the bible as a work of human literature, and put my faith on the shelf for a while. As a result, my belief systems traumatically collapsed and left me as you see me here: A spiritual wreck. Of course, the irony in my case was more obvious.

Interestingly, she understood. Turns out that she is studying the New Testament at a major university in Israel. (A very interesting place to decide to study the New Testament.) She said she had been through a similar journey. She was, as she put it: “Aware of the difficulties.” That is, she has a place at the conversation because she is at least familiar with the material concerning the origins of Christianity, the bible and the rest, and is not simply deluding herself, as many Christians do. The good news, she said, was: “You can make it through this to a better place.”

I did not get to continue the conversation past that point, although I would like to. Is it possible for a person who does not even believe in Hell, or the concept of sin (as in failing to meet the standard set out by God in His law) to be a Christian in some way? Perhaps it is, so long as it is clear that I am also a Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim. As well as an agnostic, and in times of deep despair, possibly even an atheist.

But the Christian might be the better part of me.

One thing my friend Ray pointed out to was the 10 commandments, as a part of the standard raised by God. Unfortunately, I was not persuaded by that very much. If I had to come up with a set of human laws to live by, I would have created a very different list than these. Especially when you put it in the context of the rest of the Old Testament law. Like the commandment against adultery. I would certainly not condone the form of marriage described in the law of Moses, which was, as I have pointed out frequently, polygamous, blatantly discriminatory against women, and fundamentally a form of slavery. I would have certainly added a commandment against rape. (Want to get your hair raised? Read the laws in the Old Testament on rape.) And I certainly would have added a law encouraging compassion and empathy towards every human, regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Which is obviously missing from the Old Testament law, as it is completely bigoted in favor of the children of Israel, and against the rest of the human race.

So there is the challenge: Can a man like me fit into a community of Christian believers? Not sure. I guess we’ll see.

More later.

Goddess

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My Christian friend Ray sent me the following email today:

When I hear all of the discussions of the god El and the god Yahweh as per as the creation stories, the implication is that religion is a human invention. While it is clear that humans have developed a lot of religious ideas and notions about God or the gods, the question is what is really going on? Is the knowledge of or belief in God a logical conclusion, wishful thinking, or a reflection of a real experience however distorted in history? I think it has to be one of these three choices.

Of course, the least interesting to me is the notion that God is simply a figment of a hopeful human imagination. We needed a psychological comfort and explanation, so we basically invented God, or in the past the gods, to fill the gap.

Perhaps God or the gods are simply a logical conclusion. The evidence is just too strong that there is a creator who made all things. We conclude that it could not have happened by chance. This creator made the universe with incredible design and complexity surpassing anything that humans have been able to fully understand or process. Unfortunately if God has communicated in the past, it is has been too spotty to rely on, or maybe he is the watchmaker who just stopped talking.

I believe what we have is the third option, that the knowledge of God is a reflection of a real experience. Perhaps you can conclude that the knowledge of God has been distorted. The question is whether the myths and legends reflect not just the imagination but are tales of actual events. Were people originally polytheists or did polytheism follow monotheism?

I believe polytheism is the creation of people. The fact that we can see people moving towards monotheism is based on experiences where God supernaturally appeared, indicating that he was the one true God. Most of the primitive societies have a legend that “we used to serve the one true God but then fell away and serve demons”. The Hebrew prophets constantly declared that the idols were not real gods but simply paper, wood and metal.

So I guess the question is to whether you believe that God is real and active in history? If he is real and active in history, such as evidenced by your acknowledgement that Jesus rose from the dead then should not affect how we view textual criticism and the Bible. Was there a supernatural reality behind these stories, or all they simply humanly created myth? Humanly created myth is different from a mythical retelling of a true event.

So is the knowledge of God a logical conclusion, human invention or based on real encounters?

And there it is. The gauntlet has been thrown. I must now state what I really believe. For I certainly owe Ray that much. After all, he is my closest and dearest friend in the all the world, with the exception of course of my wonderful and lovely wife, Ruth. I will blog on my love for Ruth soon. First, though we must turn to Ray’s email.

OK. I think Ray has it fairly close in his explanation, but for purposes of completeness, I think there are the following possibilities with respect to the existence and nature of God:

  • God does not exist, and the universe is a natural phenomenon, nothing more. This is the standard atheist position. I have held that position at times in my life. I certainly understand that position very well. I have read all of the “new atheists”, and know the basic pitch. I am not really a fan, though. I choose not to be an atheist, for the simple reason that it is a dreary and depressing way to live. I will probably blog on why I am not an atheist later.
  • The existence of God is unknowable, so therefore it is a silly thing to talk about. This is the standard agnostic position. I have known many Christians who believed that an agnostic was an easy mark for conversion, because he / she admittedly does not know whether or not God exists. That ignorance can be cured, after all! But this is foolishness. The correct way to characterize the agnostic position is this: Whether of not God exists is not knowable by human means. That is a completely legitimate philosophical and spiritual position, and I have known many people who hold to this position, including members of my own family. Again, though, I do not hold this position either. Basically, there is no difference in the way that you would live if you were an atheist vs. an agnostic. I would find this way of life dreary and depressing. More on that later.
  • God exists, and this fact is clear from the existence and unique nature of the universe. However, He / She / It cannot conceive of our existence. Therefore, the existence of God is merely a necessary conclusion to account for the universe’s existence. Otherwise He / She / It has no relevance or meaning in our life. Certainly, He / She / It never conceived of any “laws” that we, as created beings, are directed to carry out, and does not listen to any of our prayers. This is the standard theist position. Many of the founders of the United States believed something very close to this. This is also very close to the position of Aristotle, with his concept of the “unmoved mover”. Buddhism also gets very close to this, or possibly The Buddha could be referred to as an agnostic. (Certainly he dodged every question he ever received concerning the existence of God. He regarded it as an inappropriate question.) I often flirt with this position. But I am not sure what I would do with a deity that simply could not be contacted by any means. How would He / She / It have any impact or meaning on our lives? Certainly, some of the mystics believe that He / She / It does. There is an inexpressible longing to many theists. I share that longing, and in that sense, I am a kindred spirit. Certainly, I am very drawn to spiritual movements like yoga that are essentially theistic in their philosophical approach.
  • God exists and has intimate and loving contact with human beings, through miraculous and spiritual means. This is the standard monotheistic position. It has some nuances though. In my own way, I believe in this most of the time. However, my form of monotheism is a bit eccentric: Most often, I relate to the divine as Female. I call Her The Goddess, hence the name of this post. While this may seem weird to my Christian friends, bear in mind that I had a miserable relationship with my father, while my mother, although she was insane most of the time, actually did love me. And there is actually abundant support for Goddess worship in early Christianity, as well as other religions. More on the Goddess, and why I worship God in this manner, in a later post. One of the aspects of many monotheistic religions, including Christianity, is the notion of a divine law. This gets into the various subsets of monotheism, which I suppose I will get into at some time. Suffice it to say, that the monotheistic religions that claim that God created a divine moral law that we are required to at least try to carry out (which seems to be the basic pitch of Christianity) are essentially all wet as far as I am concerned. Especially if you actually read the law that is supposedly being foisted upon as a divine law. But I digress. Back to the high-level options with respect to the existence and nature of the divine.
  • The gods exist and they are real! This is paganism. I believe that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam evolved out of paganism, as I have said earlier on this blog. This does not mean that these religions do not contain elements of truth, though. There seems to be an idea that if a faith or belief evolved out of something else, that therefore it is not true. Certainly, it would be a cool validation of the message of a particular religion if the revelation of that religion simply sprung out, intact and unchanging, onto the world stage. I sense a bit of that longing in Ray’s comment about primitive man being monotheistic. But this is not what we observe. Instead paleolithic man is animistic, which I will cover next, and animism is very different from monotheism. With respect to paganism, however, Christianity is not as far from this as we would like to think. Certainly, notions like the trinity (which is simply a rehashing of the pagan philosopher Plotinus’s notion of the Divine Triad) come very close to being polytheistic, and many of the other monotheistic religions (like Judaism and Islam) criticize Christianity for this very thing. I think paganism is a fun and interesting religion, and certainly I read a lot of pagan literature. (Much of the genre known as fantasy falls into the pagan category.) However, the idea of many ethically ambiguous semi-divine beings who are at war with each other seems rather ridiculous to me. In the end, I would be right there with Socrates drinking the hemlock. So, no, I am not a pagan.
  • Everything we can see is a shadow of a spirit world which is more real than this world. Every rock, every tree, every animal, are all pregnant and pulsing with spiritual power. This form of belief is called animism, and it has been the dominant form of belief for most of human history. The paleolithic humans who persist on the earth are largely animists, and some of the more primitive neolithic cultures are as well. Certainly, all of mankind apparently starts out as animistic, according to the universal consensus of the anthropologists that I have read. (Ray, if you have any science to corroborate your “primitive monotheism” theory, please let us know.) When I am in nature, sometimes I feel the numinous impulse, as described by C.S. Lewis, when I see a thunder cloud or some other awesome natural phenomenon. I had that experience once standing at the foot of Exit Glacier at midnight on the longest day of the year. I have also had that experience on the seas in very rough weather. At those moments, I feel what the primitive humans must have felt, and I flirt with animism. But in the end, I know that the universe is essentially rational, and I understand the physics well enough to explain all of the natural stuff I see in front of me. So, no, I am not an animist either.

That leaves monotheism. OK, then I am a monotheist. But am I a Christian? That is a more interesting question, which I will save for a later post.