Catching my drift.

The banner at the top of this site declares, "This is a theology and philosophy blog written by an non-theist". I’m not sure that non-theist is the best descriptor for me anymore. I think I’m drifting…

With blog posts like “God : what are we talking about”, and  "Beyond Logical Theology"  I have been investigating the middle ground between theist and non-theist. 

Sometimes that means showing how we all “worship” something and sometimes its about showing that we all have to operate without that something in hand. The classic one is truth. Whenever we argue for truth we are worshipping it in a way, but we don’t possess it. Hence we all function as both theists and atheists, living with and without “god”, all the time. To agree with that you will probably have to smudge and stretch your old concepts of god. I know I did.

That’s how I encountered a type of goddish concept I believe in. It’s taking me a long time to articulate though. In fact I would say this is a process of discovery that really kicked off with "Worshipping a Small God" well over a year ago. I was told my concept of god was too small. I found that a profoundly challenging concept. Hence I wrote a post that asks “What does it mean to separate God from their hugeness? What does it mean to worship a powerless source of good or a small god?”

I had previously put God into one of two categories. First there is the God who commands the unraveling of all history for their own glory and threatens us in a first person voice through their holy books. They still strike me as a spooky side-show attraction, at best. At worst they are a demonic evil that we ought to oppose no matter what.

The other category for God is an impersonal one. They are something non-material, non-rational and just as irrelevant. Plato called them the unmoved mover. Physicists and philosophers have used this God throughout history as a tool to make their sums work. They’re like “dark matter” on legs. I’ve never denied the existence of this kind of God. I just tend to think that we should call them something else like the Tao or Quantum energy. The word God evokes too personal a figure for many people including me, to use here.

What I’m beginning to contemplate is something which borrows from the impersonal god concept their field like characteristics. Fields are like a force in natural science however rather than being created at a particular point, spending their energy and then extinguishing, fields continue. They are continuing qualities of space and time. Gravity is a field rather than a force. It has no beginning or end.

What I am taking from the personal god concept is that this field has an interest in life. This field values certain ways of engaging with life over other ways. As I put this into words I feel uncomfortable with it. I’m ready to take it back. Am I really saying that I believe in a cosmic field that cares? You can see why the non-theist label is slipping. (You can also see some of these thoughts developing in " A moral world".

So how have I got to this point? A significant first step is in recognizing that morality underpins everything. You can’t have science without a concept of good and bad science. You can’t be a scientist without having outrage at flagrant superstition. Science is at its heart a moral enterprise before it is even begun.

This is true of all thought. Morality has to precede thought, or surround it, or sustain it (choose your metaphor) because otherwise you can’t have good thought and bad thought. Before you can think, you have to care about thinking.

Now you could say that this caring is just some evolved characteristic of our brains. You could certainly make the case for its usefulness to encourage learning. When we care we pay attention. However, even if you recognize it as merely evolutionarily expedient to give a damn about the world, you can’t shake it off. If you try to you’ll crash all your other functions of thought as a consequence.

Even if it didn’t do that it, rejecting morality would “be” wrong. That’s something I explored in "It's OK to Kill" The wrongness of throwing away your morality precedes anything else and persists even after you have thrown away your morality. I believe that’s because the wrongness is not a product of our individual morality but an observation of the moral field from which our morality is drawn.

Woah…hold on. Morality as a pre-existing field in which all other thought (and intentional activity) is sustained; that’s pantheism not non-theism. The key distinction is that in pantheism everything is connected by something akin to a single perspective. The theos is that connective aspect. Perhaps perspective is too strong a word. Perhaps moral orientation is a better term. As I said in The Problem of Evil if you believe in an underlying moral nature to the world you are at least pseudo-theistic.

Historically one of my key reasons for being a non-theist is that disconnection makes the most sense of the world. I still feel like there’s something to emphasise there. Viruses and floods and monkeys have separate causes and purposes. They intersect to create the web of life but they aren’t in any way part of a gaian hive mind. They aren’t intentionally working in concert but are just made to work in some kind of concert by sharing an environment. That is part of the splendor of the world to me.

However now I’m talking about something that is a single will – the will for good – that permeates at least intelligent life. By intelligent I mean whenever life is making conscious choices. Choices require some level of thought and thought exists in a moral field.

A reasonable objection to all of this is that it isn’t real. I am only describing feelings and to be honest those feelings have contradictory feelings as well. My response to this objection is that asking if God is real is a different question for different concepts of God. If God is a bloke with a staff on a chair then they ought to have the sort of reality you can poke a stick at. If god is a moral field in which everything makes sense then the stick test doesn’t work. In fact I would go so far as to say that if you’re hung up on whether god is real you’re missing my point entirely. Is love real?

None of this means that I have any more time for the idea that we are born under Adam and Eves original sin for example. I also still don’t believe in reincarnation or any  enduring self after death I’m certainly not saying a) there is a moral field so b) when Paul the apostle tells women their voice in church is a disgrace they ought to believe him. That’s a lot of leaps, in the wrong direction too.

What I am able to do is enter into religious stories in a different way. I’m understanding the resurrection for example in a way that I wouldn't have before. People sometimes talk about the resurrection as an event that can’t be taken non-literally without losing all meaning. I wonder how the transformed body of Jesus can be considered literally at all. What does literally walked through walls mean? Think about it; it’s not walking as we know it that’s for sure.

Instead of worrying about the atomic weight of a risen Jesus, I am considering how whenever we act with moral intent we are acting in a way that is out of the normal flow of time and space. There is something eternal about compassion and embracing a life of compassion attaches us to that eternity. (Just think about when you do something good for a stranger.) Hence the promise of an eternal life for those who embrace love of others is true – it was never going to be sitting on a cloud but it’s still true.

This is a journey I’m on. Writing this blog puts that journey out into a public space. I don’t mind how that puts me at risk of public contradiction. I see it as growth.

You can expect that I will grow from this point too. I may recant everything I’ve written here and in the posts I've linked to. That would be surprising. For the moment I wonder if I need to change this blogs description at the top. Pretty please comment with your suggestions for a new tag line.

UPDATE: Currently cycling through some options. For reference the original description of the blog was;

This is a theology and philosophy blog written by an non-theist who has a deep respect for sincere theism.

Expect arguments that intelligent and integritous people exist on both sides of this supposed divide between atheism and religion.

I also aim to do theology and philosophy which is both humble and yet trying to be wonderful in the existential tradition.

(Original artwork from www.ambernowak.org/ )

A dialogue on Eeeevil.

My last post discussed "The Problem of Eeevil". My brother Simon wanted to reply to the topic but as his reply exceeded the word limit he published it on his own blog. My reply to my brother was also too long for any comments section so here it is as its own post.

It's always very exciting to discuss these issues further. It lets me clarify my thinking even if only for myself. I hope that's not too self-indulgent for any other readers.

I also get to spell out that I'm not really trying to set a logic trap for God, I think the problem of evil is a problem for objective morality ultimately. Further I think there is no easy solution. As my brother points out subjectivity has its own problems too.

Lastly one thing that lies outside both my and my brothers positions is the idea of a plurality of Gods which aren't absolutely Good. Basically we're both pretty much throwing the Pagans in with the non-theists in these posts based on our definition of theism. Ummm...sorry?

____________________________________________________________________

Simon,

I am prepared to accept that the definition of evil is opposition to a perfect Good whom many including yourself (I think) call God. I realize I’m paraphrasing you here but it’s to relate it back to my post.

I don’t think this means that evil’s existence ceases to be a problem. The problem becomes where does “the will to oppose god” come from? Is it our invention? Did we think it up with our imagination? Does it issue from a rival God like power? Or paradoxically from a perfectly Good God themselves?

You see my question isn’t just why does God permit opposition to Good (evil) but how do we understand its source. How we can say that opposition to Good/God comes from a source other than Good/God and also say “God created everything without any competition and God continues to govern everything without any rival.”?

To express all this in a way you might be more familiar with, it is sometimes said that "our heart" is the source of our opposition to God. But is our heart capable of originating anything, of actually coming up with something new on its own? Is it a source? Or does everything only have one source in God?

Now firstly I need to say this isn’t and can’t be a fight between theists and non-theists. I make the cheeky and sneaky claim that once a non-theist moves away from moral subjectivity to moral absolutism then they have become a kind of theist (pantheist or deist). They can question the existence of evil but they also have to answer it. I also say that if a theist accepts that God doesn’t control the unfolding of history except through us then they have the kind of theism than a non-theist shouldn’t be bothered objecting to. I could also go further than I have and say that if the supreme rule of the universe (God) is not a moral character then they become a bit like physics and less like theism. Such a God is morally at least uninteresting. Let’s test them with science and be done with it. These are all bold claims but designed to show that these two opposites (theism and non-theism) essentially meet around the resolution of this issue. But where they meet is at different points.

To the body of your post… I think you are playing a bit of sleight of hand with the concept of free will. Perhaps it would be better to use the word “choice.” We do only hold people accountable for actions if they have made a choice.

So if we concede that people have choice then I set out how Good/God’s sovereignity is compromised by that in two ways. First by the internal nature of our relationship to Good/God;

“At the end of time all of us may be singing God’s praises regardless of our free will (choice). However, free will (choice) would still mean that at least two possible choices exist - we chose to be there or we were compelled.”

Note I have given God more power here than you seem to have. You seem to suggest that God’s sovereignty is unchallenged due to their capacity to hold us to account for evil choices but that is only power after the fact and only to punish. In such a situation we humans could radically change the end of history by all choosing to go to hell to spite God.

Secondly I raise what God’s sovereignty means to us – that our fate is in God’s hands. This is at stake if evil is a choice. If we believe God has ceded control to human choice even if only temporarily then our position is experientially no different to someone who doesn’t believe in God. Good/God is absent and cannot be relied upon to save us.

I do state that there are solutions to these issues. I am not proving God is impossible here. In fact I pretty much give a nod to a position I don’t hold but admire; that absolute goodness (God if you will) is deeply present in the world but not directly powerful.

As to God’s goodness the question I’m posing isn’t so much about why is God permitting evil as whether or not God is authoring it.  Did Hitler and co. come up with the idea of the holocaust in opposition to God’s plan for the twentieth century (and God wept) or did God come up with it? If the Nazi’s came up with it independantly of God then, at least in terms of those affected by it, God is not the only creator of human history. If God came up with it then God’s goodness is weakened considerably.

Now you may say that God’s goodness is unweakened by their being the author of the holocaust because our standards of good and evil can’t be thrown at God in that way. In which case you are standing in the middle of the nazi crowd yourself unable to say this is evil; the position you put me in actually.

Now the other bold claim I make is to say that even just calling Good essentially logical (or common sense) is to put non-theists in the same predicament as theists re: the problem of evil. It is perhaps wrong to say that this leaves them with only moral subjectivity as a solution. I could possibly come up with as many varied answers as I did for theists.

However it is precisely the realization that it is possible for educated, well fed, church going citizens to stand in the midst of a nazi crowd and call it good that caused Western philosophy to acknowledge the terrible truth of moral subjectivity. What was even more heartbreaking for atheistic left wing intellectuals were the horrors of Stalinism. Nobody wants to believe that their moral opinions are the consequence of their crowd but it’s historically evident that they can be. This is why I continue to plead for empathy over any moral system of statements about what is true evil.

Basically Simon I agree you stand on firmer ground when you believe that moral statements are discoverable facts. It allows you to "know" that all manner of things are either right or wrong. Perhaps you even feel that matters of degree such as how much we give to charity or spend on our luxuries have a morality that is a discoverable fact as well. It certainly indulges our instincts to feel that way. The alternative is a self-questioning shaky ground.

As you rightly point out it is a place with many problems…to quote you;

“…Why fight evil if it doesn’t really exist? Why do I feel that evil and right and wrong does exist if it is just an illusion? Am I comfortable with the idea that my concept of evil may just as well be good in a different time or place or culture? If there is no God then where is there any hope that evil will not win? If there is no God where is there any hope that evil will one day be fully dealt with?”

Once we see that our moral objectivity may just be a tempting illusion that’s exactly the rough road ahead .

Worshipping a small god.

It was recently put to me that my picture of God is too small. On the one hand I can deny that charge quite easily. My God as a non-theist is nothing. The only people who have a God as large as mine are the pantheists who worship everything. After all every Buddhist knows that the only thing as large as everything is nothing –the two being complimentary sides of the same concept. I’m not being facetious here. Both Buddhists (and Daoists even more so) make a lot of the smallness of particular Gods in comparison to emptiness or the dao.

The accusation however was not about the non-God (no-thing) I profess to actually believe in. What was being referred to by the smallness of my God was the smallness of my imagined Divine being. I actually consider it a very valid (though incorrect) criticism. It’s a fair question as to whether it’s true that my picture of God is too small even though I don’t believe in them. I agree that any answer as to whether or not you think God exists is less important than who would you worship as God if you believed they existed. Whether you believe God exists is after all a matter of your experience (hopefully). What you consider God is a matter of your values and to me much more interesting.

I’m also more than happy to respond to the question as I particularly find the idea of worshipping a small god fascinating. I’ve been wondering a lot about it lately. What if your God couldn’t kick all the other Gods arses? What if they didn’t control the universe and everything that went down? What if they couldn’t make people believe in them, or decide who didn’t? But they were still your God.

Is that even possible? Can we imagine size (which I equate, perhaps foolishly, with power and majesty) ever not being a defining characteristic of God? I sometimes feel that I labour under a version of God largely determined by the Christian Reformation. This God can’t be assessed morally by mere humanity. This God is good but they aren’t known by that Goodness because humanity in its depravity can’t recognize Goodness reliably enough to find God by it. Instead this God is known by their might and by might I’m talking off-the-charts might; omnipotence, complete control over everything, absolute sovereignty. In brief this is a God known by their power whose goodness is a matter of faith. They are God only because of their size.

What if we reversed that? What if we had a God who was known by their goodness but whose power was a matter of faith. This is our small god. They are what we might consider God if we were content with small. What would such a God look like?

Firstly let’s consider the following prayer,

Dear God,

I know you cannot prevent my enemies from harming me.

I accept that bad things will still happen despite you.

God, I hope I can bear when bad things happens to those I love as well

And you cannot save them

I shall remain faithful to you

I shall not turn to other Gods who can protect me.

I shall not even turn to other Gods who can protect those I love.

Although you cannot make me I will worship you, my God,

Amen

This prayer gives a picture of what the worship of a small god might look like. For me the comparison with a commitment to non-violence is obvious though every attempt I have made to write out the connection has been clunky and insuccinct. The connection for me is obvious because I instinctively imagine “turning to a god” to mean putting one’s faith in a method or approach. I think of worshipping a God as a gangster worships his gun or an investor his business acumen or a politician his charm.

When we turn to a God of “size” the method we trust in is violence because violence is essentially about making things happen, about control and about the virtue of power. If we worshipped a small god (deliberate small-g) then we would instead be putting our faith in powerlessness. We would be turning to non-violence.

Now it is possible to be non-violent precisely because you believe in a large God who makes things happen. It is quite possible to repeat “Vengeance is Mine” sayeth the Lord. Here we hand our violent duties up. We refuse violence because to engage in it is to (attempt to) usurp God’s role and we wait patiently for God to kick ass instead.

Similarly we can be non-violent because violence isn’t tactically effective in a particular situation. Consider a discussion about tactics before an anti-logging action. One person may argue against using aggressive tactics because the break-up of peaceful protests on the news will look so bad that public support will swing to their cause and force the logging to stop (whereas aggression would do the opposite). That is an argument which both anti-violence and pro-violence protestors can appreciate.

Both of these essentially strategic rejections of personal violence are not worshipping a small God. I consider them important to mention so that we can put them to one side. There is a deeper commitment to non-violence. This is an active and complete rejection of violence in principle. Sometimes this is thought of in terms of non-action. The Daoists who reject violence take this path. Others have replaced violence with love. This would include Buddhists and of course Christianity.

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5: 9)

“You have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, don’t resist him that is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.

If any man would go to law with you and take away your coat, let him have your cloak also.

Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.

Give to him who asks you and don’t turn away him who desires to borrow from you.

 You have heard that it was said: You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy; But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

(Mathew 5:38-45)

Then Jesus said to him, “Put up your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword” (Mathew 26:52)

A common soundbite is how deeply confusing Jesus as God was to the 1^st century. Here was a weak God who couldn’t stop his own arrest, couldn’t overthrow the Roman oppressors, or protect his temple, got hungry, tired and hurt. Heck, they got dead. What kind of God was that? 

The soundbite continues that the Jews failed to recognise their messiah because they were looking for a militaristic God who would change the world forcefully. The idea that a God wouldn’t or couldn’t kick arse was insane – size effectively equalling Godhood.

Strangely evangelical Christianity seems to be back in the same place it places 1^st century Judaism. The evangelical Christian looks forward to the strong image of the returning God presented by Revelation rather than backwards to a Gospel God who didn’t make Empire. This Revelation Jesus is the fantastic God who kicks arse. They are the same hopefully militaristic, world changing messiah that the soundbite above attributes to the hopes of first century Jews. Basically if we understand The Revelation of John even semi-literally we have a very different attitude to violence, to power and to making things happen than the Gospels give us.

Jack Caputo is a theologian who illustrates this point brilliantly. He describes the Christian Gospel with Revelation as “violence deferred”; The cross is not God rejecting violence but God suspending its use until the end times. In fact the only way to avoid the violence of our eventual punishment is to enter into the symbolic rescue of the cross. This in effect makes the cross violent. We are being invited to be grateful to Jesus for saving us but at the same time the invitation is written on a baseball bat (or a horse’s head in our bed). And we can rest assured that Jesus is only sparing Roman rule (indeed any alternative rule) for a little while.

It would be cute for me to conclude that the evangelicals have got it wrong and that Christianity is indeed the worship of a small or weak god. It would make a neat rejoinder to the accusation that began this piece (which came from a Christian). When discussing this idea with non-christians they have often jumped to this conclusion without my mentioning Christianity at all.  Tolstoy, whose The Law of Love and the Law of Violence I am currently reading would agree with them. He makes a great case that Christianity is love in the place of violence without exception.

I’m not sure I agree though. I think God’s powerful return is deeply imbedded in Christianity. I think you can make a case that Christianity should evolve into something non-apocalyptic (it’s been two thousand years after all) and that it must go beyond understanding the atonement inside first century concepts of justice. I just don’t know if it’s fair to say that’s what Christianity is just because that’s what I might think it should be. I think that kind of claim is a type of linguistic violence.

So what about me though. Do I worship a small god? My own attitude to violence is an ambivalent one. I have received violence from the state and it was both the uncivilised boot to the head and the civilised false charges and a court date. I know that violence can occur explosively particularly if your skin is darker and your accent thicker or you mess with people’s ideas about gender but also even when those things don’t apply. I know it can make no sense.

I also know we live in a world where violence lurks at the end of many conversations. Certainly I have been a resource gate-keeper and a key-twirler in my employment in social services. Sometimes it’s been my call that’s led to someone being evicted from a housing or detox program. Ultimately I’ve called the cops to do my violence for me if conversation doesn’t work. Only by kidding myself that I am only what my own hands and feet do can I pretend this is non-violent. The possibility of that phone call and my relative power in making it permeate my interactions with “clients” or “residents” at all times. Honestly the threat of violence is distant but still present in every conversation about cleaning up your own mess or attending a group meeting that I’ve had.

Lastly I’m aware that I am fairly articulate and that this articulation can be experienced as violence to people without it. There are definitely rhetorical “tricks” that are deceptive. Equally definitely there are rhetorical “sledgehammers” which are a kind of violence. Sure they don’t threaten life and limb but they try and make things happen conceptually that are inescapable. I narrowly avoided one when I refused to say Christianity is what I think it should be.

I certainly didn’t enjoy receiving violence and I feel uncomfortable wielding it (directly, via the state or even in language). However I am not prepared to completely reject it. I am scared for my family almost every day. I get angry at bullies and would rather get between them and their next victim with all the force I need to stop them. On the conversational level I am tired of tolerating homophobic and sexist drivel that hides behind claims of “separate but equal”. I want to slap it down. Really, really honestly I want and feel I need violence. I care about results too much in some regards to throw away the certainty of outcome that violence offers.

Quite frankly I am too frightened to really say the prayer in this blog. I can see myself turning from a God who can’t help me to methods which can. I admire those who are braver – people like Ghandi and Tolstoy and Oscar Romero who remained with non-violence no matter what. Maybe I will get there one day but I’m not there yet. I am just not brave enough to worship a small god.