Booth # 4: Religion and Spirituality

[melon1]

I advise anyone on this board who considers being a Christian but finds their intellect getting in the way to read C.S. Lewis, preferably Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters.

[Meursault]

I advise C.S Lewis get his intellect checked.

[Rit]

right on, Meursault. c.s. lewis was a hack.

[Mary]

Chrisfan said:

I disagree. While obviously there has to be something about faith appealing enough to bring a non-believer to belive, I just don't belive that the "something" is wired in to activate at a given time. Churches have members who join as a "profession of faith" all the time ... there must be SOMETHING a believer is saying to a non-believer, at least in some of those cases, that is making them come around. If not, then you'd have "Believers" and "Non-believers" and the numbers of each would never change.

Yeah, the point isn't so much that no one can possibly make the leap of faith - people do - but precisely that it's a leap - there's no compelling rationale that can be offered from it from the standpoint of non-faith. And yet people make it anyway. That's why it's a "radical" leap, a total break, a leap into the unknown, and why it seems paradoxical, unless you'e made already made the leap. I think that's more what the concept is getting at - not so much that no one could ever make the leap, but only that we're never going to be able to articulate the reasons for that leap in a compelling way.

I guess I'm not totally with Kierkegaard here, because I can imagine some "reasons" both why people gain faith and why people lose it. As I was saying the other day, I suspect that even if God does not exist, people would still fabricate him and believe in him, because the concept of God responds to so many of our existential anxieties. Although still, there's something radical about the leap here, because you still have to jump from wanting something to be true to believing it really is true, and there's really no ordinary worldly logic than can explain why we should make that jump. Conversely, I can understand the loss of faith - a lot of Jews lost their faith after the Holocaust, and that doesn't seem terribly difficult to comprehend. Indeed, maybe it's just because of where I stand on the faith divide, but loss of faith is much more fathomable to me than the leap of faith itself.

I really want to return, if possible, to the phenomena of people who want faith but don't have it. I think this category of people are commonly forgotten in these kinds of discussions - it's more assumed that you have religious folk, militant atheists, and happy, indifferent agnostics. But how do we make sense of people actively searching for faith who never find it? People who desperately want to believe in some kind of transcendent power, but just can't make that leap? What kind of moral category do they fit into?

Cheers,
M

[Rit]

I really want to return, if possible, to the phenomena of people who want faith but don't have it. I think this category of people are commonly forgotten in these kinds of discussions - it's more assumed that you have religious folk, militant atheists, and happy, indifferent agnostics. But how do we make sense of people actively searching for faith who never find it? People who desperately want to believe in some kind of transcendent power, but just can't make that leap? What kind of moral category do they fit into?

People actively searching for faith but never finding it? I don't know what that's supposed to mean.. do you mean as in actively searching for the archetypal Christian God and somehow failing to find this god to their satisfaction?

Many people have an easy conception of God, and it serves their purpose in life well. You'll find very few people unable to find God, i think... if they can't find God, then they are seeking something different, even if to all intents and purposes, they seem to be earnestly pursuing a religious epiphany.

Different levels of expectation enter into it, i s'pose. I mean, i was searching for God (again, be specific here) once.. i didn't find one which satisfied whatever i was looking for... but that just means, on hindsight, that i was looking for a multiplicity of categories, none of which overlapped neatly in the archetypal Judeo-Christian god of the bible. However, i would read Bloom or existentialists like Kierkegaard and feel much more at ease with the ironic god they seemed to know so much about.

[Kensterberg]

As (some of) you probably know, I've long ago sworn off this discussion. Once upon a time I was happy to argue round and round this topic, but of late I've tried to keep a low(ish) profile on matters of religion and politics.

However, the last few posts here have piqued my interest ... 'cause I've always thought of myself as one of those guys who is actively looking for faith, and just can't find it. Like Adam Duritz said, "I wanna be someone who believes."

But I've never found a conventional "faith" that I could follow. For about a decade now, I've counted myself as a nominal Buddhist, but even there I've got lots of issues with the way Buddhism is practiced. And I've really, actively, tried to embrace Christianity at a couple of occassions in my life (once at the kind of "I'm gonna believe or kill myself" crossroads that so often facilitates conversions). Most (if not all) of my family is pretty religious, and I'd love to have the kind of deep seated faith that my mom (for example) has. But I don't.

And I think that an informed reading of American religious practices shows that I'm not the only one who fits into this category. Conventional Christian faiths (Protestant and Catholic) have experienced long-term loss of members, while evangelical and other such Christian sects have seen dramatic growth over the last twenty years. Surely this demonstrated that millions of Americans were looking for something to believe in, and weren't finding it with their established religion. Similarly, the entire "new age" movement reflected a continuing quest on the part of millions of others to find a spiritual message that they could fully embrace. There are numerous examples of this, I'm just pulling out a couple here.

The point is, I just don't think that it's that uncommon for folks to want to believe in something, but to have a hard time finding the right thing. Which does, as Mary noted, point out the conceptual difficulties of dealing with this group. I don't have the slightest idea how to slap a convenient label on them (for myself, I'm quite comfortable with agnostic, a label which nicely jibes with one of my favorite lessons from the Buddha: believe in whatever gods you like, but they are still subject to the laws of karma). But I think that this group certainly needs to be dealt with in any discussion of faith in America over the last fifty years.

So me and Mr. Jones, we're still hopin' to be someone who believes ... but just can't find it.

[JACkory]

Ritalin said:

right on, Meursault. c.s. lewis was a hack.

I SO disagree with this statement.

I was thinking about the prospect of Allah being the same as YHWH, and I still cannot embrace it. Muslims deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and therefore do not believe in the Trinity, which is an essential Christian doctrine. How can anyone claim that Allah and YHWH are one and the same when there is no Trinitarian aspect to Allah, when the Christian God is made up of Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

Anyone genuinely interested in a more detailed essay concerning this topic is directed to answering-islam.org.uk/Shamoun/god.htm

[Rit]

i apologize for that statement, Jac. i think it was out of line myself, it's just that i was reacting to years of c.s. lewis pushed down my throat as the exemplary Christian thinker.

a girl i knew hung most of her ideals and thoughts on his (mere) peg, and it annoyed me no end.

There's nothing really i can say except that Lewis often seems blithely arrogant in his own way.

[Kensterberg]

JAC -- I don't know about folks within the three religions, but religious scholars agree that the god of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims are the same. There are obviously differences between the three faiths, but each claims to be "the way" to worship this deity. Trying to draw the line at "Muslims don't believe in the trinity" is simply silly -- the Jews don't believe in this either, and no one proposes that Christians and Jews worship different deities. It's a doctrinal distinction, nothing more.

[Rit]

excellent point, Holzman.

[Rit]

I'm pretty sure that Muslims clearly concede that Jesus was a prophet and holy. It's written in their Qu'Ran.

[chrisfan]

Ritalin said:

I'm pretty sure that Muslims clearly concede that Jesus was a prophet and holy. It's written in their Qu'Ran.

That is correct. They simply differ on the Christian belief that he is the son of God. Jac, I can understand where you are coming from, with the belief that there is no distinction in the holy trinity -- that it is not three separate beings, but that they are one in the same. However, I tend to agree more along the lines of what Ken has said. Honestly, it is my personal belief that after seeing the great divides between the Jews and the Muslims, that God sent Christ to the earth in an attempt to bring us all back together.

[JACkory]

KenHolzman said:

JAC -- I don't know about folks within the three religions, but religious scholars agree that the god of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims are the same. There are obviously differences between the three faiths, but each claims to be "the way" to worship this deity. Trying to draw the line at "Muslims don't believe in the trinity" is simply silly -- the Jews don't believe in this either, and no one proposes that Christians and Jews worship different deities. It's a doctrinal distinction, nothing more.

First off, I wasn't "trying to draw the line" at Muslims not believing in the trinity...that was just something that occurred to me at the time.
And yes, I understand and can even accept the bottom line that all three faiths claim to be the "way" to worship what the outside observer would probably consider the "same" God...but "same" only in the sense that we all claim to serve the ONE true God, the Prime Mover, etc. As monotheists we are bound to an understanding that there can only be one God, so the argument among us cannot be whether or not Allah and YHWH are the same, but rather the debate must focus on WHOSE UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRIME MOVER IS THE LEGITIMATE ONE...can they all be legitimate? Not according to the Koran, which depicts Allah as blood-thirsty to eradicate all who do not accept Muhammed as his prophet.
So, yes, when looked at from a completely secular point of view it must be that a monotheist God must be the same God for all who seek the TRUE God.
As a Christian, however, I must radically affirm that the nature and attributes that the Muslims ascribe to the one true God (who they call Allah) are very often in stark opposition to those of the LORD. And as a Christian I also affirm that Christ's resurrection from the grave gives Him the upper hand, as it were, as to whether I personally would choose between Him and Muhammed as God's Prophet. That same resurrection proves beyond the shadow of a doubt, to me at least, that Christ's claim to divinity ("Before Abraham was...I AM") was legitimate.
For me to say that "Allah and YHWH" cannot be one and the same is not to say that the same God does not rule over Muslims, Christians and Jews. He does. But the revelation of the Koran is inconsistant with the revelation of the Holy Bible, and adherants to the respective holy books will never see eye-to-eye.
I don't believe in Allah, but I believe in God.
That means that I don't accept the Islamic ideal of Who/What God is.
Regardless of the bottom line.

[Thorngrub]

I would like to post here, for the perusal of all sides of this discussion, an essay by one of my favorite writers, John Shirley, on the nature of "God", whether or not "He" exists, and the ramifications thereof.

I really believe that it was written from a meticulously-thought-out perspective, covering nearly all the bases conceivable that might spring to mind in the ever-elusive quest to latch onto some meaningful definition of what "God" might be, should He/She/It exist in the generally anticipated form(s) we have come to address His eminence.



For those who believe in Him along the lines of Chrisfan or JACkory -- be warned that the essay has an incredibly focused quality to it that demands certain undeniable and problematic questions regarding the (biblical) alleghations that such a "God" exists; but on the other hand, I believe you shall find Mr. Shirley's diplomatic approach to these questions as being sufficiently open-minded enough to allow the matter at hand to be fully exposed on the operating table of this debate. I.E, if anything, for the Believer this essay shall further tighten the screws of Faith ye have already embarked upon; whereas for the Nonbeliever it shall more than likely underscore all the problems inherent to such a belief.

I would really, really appreciate feedback from Chrisfan, JACkory, or any other Christians on this one.

[Thorngrub]

Is There A God?
an essay by John Shirley


Does God exist?

When we ask this question, perhaps we should first define our terms. What do we mean by God? What ontological framework is involved in our idea of God's existence? A gigantic super-anthropomorphic entity, the creator of the universe -- is that what must exist, for God to exist? Must it be a Someone who is In Charge and who, as the Bible said, has numbered every hair on your head, and knows when every sparrow falls? (And what did the Bible's writers really mean by that?)

If ever there was a question for which the answer is more questions, it was that one.

But let's not be coy about so important a question. (It is, at least, important to many of us). To simply state, "Whether God exists is all a matter of definition" is just another cop-out; just another sophistry.

I don't kid myself that I can speak with genuine authority here. I can only offer opinions which I hope are thought through. And we'll come to those...

Professor Timothy Ferris has written a fascinating book about cosmology ("the science concerned with discerning the structure and composition of the universe as a whole"), called The Whole Shebang: A State Of The Universe Report. It's a good book, written, Ferris thinks, for the layman -- although it's not as layman-friendly as he presumes.

From the preface: ". . .The psychological connections between religion and cosmology probably go too deep to be uprooted, but it may be worth keeping in mind that much of this God-mongering arises from the assumption that God is embodied in a set of equations. . .For a scientist to make such an assumption risks introducing religious controversies into cosmology, a science that has more than enough to do trying to figure out how the universe works without also flattering itself that it is going to tell us why..."

The phrase "psychological connections," in this context, is of great interest. Those connections may have even more to do with our assumption of what God is than Ferris has realized; indeed, our psychological connections should not only call into question what religious orthodoxy thinks about God, but what Ferris and other scientists assume about God. Our ideas about God are largely cultural, and as Joseph Campbell and history have demonstrated, mythology arises from culture impacted by instinct, sociology and psychology. We naturally have a psychological need to see God, or The Gods, as analogous to parental figures; we have a sociological need to perceive God as a lawgiver, a source of orderliness; perhaps we have some instinctive drive toward religiosity, for reasons of sociobiological tribal cohesion, which makes us more survival-prone.

All of this -- and especially psychological factors -- influence our assumption of what God is, and would have to be.

If a scientist asks himself if God exists, he starts with a definition of God as 1) the creator of the universe 2) a controlling, probably benevolent (in the human sense), all-guiding, omnipotent entity. Those definitions are part of our cultural (psychological, sociological, instinctive) heritage. They are unavoidable for most people.

In The Lessons Of History, Will and Ariel Durant admit that no recorded society has long maintained itself without the help of a religion-based moral code. But they ask: "Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean...a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative...the total evidence suggests either a blind or an impartial fatality...Nature and History do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives and bad as that which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ as against Genghis Khan..." Their logic, again, is based on a God conceived in rather feeble human terms. If God must exist on the Christian model, it's hard to see his hand at work in a demonstrably impartial universe.

Some Christians would probably respond that puny humanity cannot see the "Supreme Being's intelligent and benevolent" design -- as in the book of Job, in which God asks the rebellious Job "where were you?" when God conceived his Great Plan, when he created the universe. That is, how can Job speak of injustice or meaninglessness when he is a part of a conception he can neither fully perceive nor understand?

But this argument will not be persuasive to a critical mind that notes that it seems to have been constructed to inquire into that very mystery. And the skeptic can point out that an impartial, reasoned examination of the universe not only leaves us in the dark with respect to its guiding intelligence, if any, but generally militates in favor of the sovereignty of random chance. From a scientific point of view, the universe itself seems to testify, like the ultimate expert witness, to the primacy of the random interaction of physical laws.

In one of Ferris's more mind-wrecking chapters, "The Origin of the Universe(s)", he discusses the notion of First Cause, the originating cause of the universe and of Time itself. He mentions the seminal theological notion that one proof of God's existence is that the universe must have had a "prime mover", an originating cause, since it could not have come from "nothing". "But we today," Ferris says, "understand the doctrine of causation to be rather more problematical than was appreciated in the thirteenth century." He goes on to discuss non-singularity cosmogonic theories, involving quantum mechanics, "spacetime foam", theories by Stephen Hawking and others in which the universe is seen as a sort of self-contained system emanating, in some sense, from "a set of geometries".

Hawking maintains that, "...the universe is completely self-contained...there is nothing outside the universe. In a way you could say that the boundary conditions of the universe are that there is no boundary." But as Ferris observes, "Their elected geometries and spacetime foam are not quite the 'nothing' from which a genuine cosmogony would fashion a universe..."

Modern mystics talk airily of the Tao of Physics, of particle physics and quantum physics that supposedly confirm the mystical view of life. To some extent it may do that: it does apparently confirm, among other things, that "All is One" on a certain level of consideration. But glib, self-serving mystics like Deepak Chopra play fast and loose with quantum ideas, fast-talking about the observer who changes the nature of subatomic reality with his observation, and construing the "observer paradox" in ways both superficial and convenient.

Still, it's a fairly easy intuitive leap from the ungraspable implications of quantum mechanics (a universe originating in paradox) to mystics like Meister Eckhart: "Why doest thou prate of God? Whatever thou sayest of Him is untrue." That is, the true nature of God can't be "said". And the Lankavatara Sutra: "Nirvana...is seeing into the state of Suchness, absolutely transcending all the categories constructed by mind..." Ultimate nature cannot be grasped by the conventional human mind, no matter how powerful that mind may be.

In his notes, Ferris mentions the strange conceptions offered in the book The Physics Of Immortality by Tulane University physicist Frank Tipler, who compared the universe to a vast computer and suggested that if the universe is a closed system destined to recollapse, all cognizant beings could be 'resurrected' in a gigantic "computer simulation" -- one which includes God, Grace, and Paradise -- made possible by the convergence of world lines near the end of Time; a simulation that would allow resurrected beings to enjoy a form of eternal life. This may be the last word in elaborate "in denial about death" fantasies. I don't, though, pretend to the capability of refuting or confirming the esoteric mysteries of Tipler's mathematical logic. But I appreciate Tipler's point of view when he says: "...either theology is pure nonsense, a subject with no content, or else theology must ultimately become a branch of physics."