Science vs God (and The Coffee Table).

I was involved in a recent exchange of ideas which seemed to me to have at its heart a gross misconception about Science. The issue was whether Science could prove that God doesn’t exist. At the same time my partner is reading a book which describes Catholic opposition to birth control as superstition (implying that support for birth control would be scientific by contrast). I thought its time to set the record straight about what “science” does and how it does it. Unfortunately there’s no “straight” record of science to go by.

Science is itself a subject of sociological study. If you take Levi Strauss perspective then Science extends back into the proverbial mists of time. “Primitive” [1] science is just trial and error with some memory of results. “Modern” science is not so different – the note taking systems are usually more regulated and the questions are less concrete  at times – but the principle is the same.

In fact Science and religion are not distinct in any way for much of human history. Religion (at least in ancient times) was also about trial and error. You made a sacrifice to one God instead of another or in one way instead of another in the same way that you cooked a joint of meat over coals instead of flame or attacked your enemy from a hill top or a valley and then suffered the results. If you were a prophet or sage (a proto-scientist) and your advice ruined dinner or lost a battle then your model of reality was brought into question. With some swift talking you might be able to account for the discrepancy but your claims about God, magic, divination and destiny just like your claims about cooking and tactics were likely to fall out of favour in relation to other peoples. Similarly success brought credibility.

Now in addition to this role of science/religion – the role of producing direct results – religion/science had another role. This can be understood as social cohesion. Basically you could make a very good case that the Gods wanted the smartest woman in the village to be ruler. This could even be tried with success. If your explanation led to social unrest or if the smartest woman had usurped the angriest man then there was a possibility that your theory could be “disproven” by a violent vote.

That’s an unflattering example of the politicisation of science/religion. A more positive example is that two peoples may have competing claims over a fishing cove. The model of reality worth having would have enabled the peoples to share the cove without abandoning the warrior attitudes necessary to protect their other borders. Other models of reality may have been leading to wasted resources and possibly no-body being able to use the cove safely.

Nowadays we would call this kind of science/religion, political science. To modern eyes this fishing cove example appears completely different to problems about how fire operates on meat - but why? In both cases models of reality are being tested on the basis of their benifits. In primitive cultures science/religion are both remembered through story telling. We would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the stories which explain the hygiene rules of primitive cultures and the stories which explain who is the king and why there is one. This is not to say that cultures can’t “believe” their stories (holding them to be absolutely correct without a metaphoric quality). This too is no different to modern western cultures. However we now seem to have two different ways of storytelling, Science and religion which are supposedly hostile to each other.

The source of the split between science and religion is hard to uncover. Bertolt Brecht in The Life of Galileo suggests the split is a consequence of religious persecution of claims of new knowledge based on direct observation; in reaction these claimants have to become purely interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake and abandon any goal of serving humanity to religion. This is what we call Science. Brecht is writing a commentary on his own atomic age however under the guise of history so this is not a reliable source. The play is compelling though and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The split between science and religion may simply be a consequence of accelerated change and what Levi Strauss calls the shift from a cold to a hot culture. A hot culture celebrates winning whereas a “cold culture” tries to avoid anyone losing; celebrating in game terms “the draw”. Cold cultures are capable of mainintaining consistency for a lot longer than hot cultures which are far more adaptable. We can see this operating in regard to the conflict between generations. Cold cultures utilise traditions of elder respect and formalised rites of initiation to adulthood so that there are smooth transitions in leadership. Hot cultures are wilfully blind to generational tensions. Knowledge claims are meant to be evaluated regardless of their authors’ prestige and oppositional debate is highly valued. Knowledge production in a hot culture is akin to boxing with the expectation that one day some “young turk” will K.O. the previous champion, only to be K.O.d themselves one day.

It would be neat to say that Science has become a term to capture hot culture values while religion is the refuge of cold-culture values. Certainly there are associations which back up this claim; hypothesis vs. hypothesis to the death is the scientific approach while interpreting findings to fit in with previous revelation is religions game. However we enter a circular problem of definition. Basically we would have to conclude that religion in its hot states is being “sciencey” and science in its cold culture forms is becoming a “religion”. This is generally what occurs by advocates of science over religion. Their definition proves itself and is really just a championing of hot culture values. I think it is fairer to try and identify another distinction and then allow hot and cold culture values to explain how science in (mostly hot) forms and religion in its (less commonly hot) forms thrive or struggle.

Remembering that primitive science/religion is also sciences’ history, any distinction between science and religion to be found is not going to be a creed that begins and ends what is science. Instead we can see progressive (and contentious) clarifications of science that gradually distinguish it from religion until we have our current split. Three distinctions I can identify are the philosophies of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism. Rather than viewing these as boundaries on science I see them as waypoints which indicate a direction. Scientists are never just those who completely adhere to these ideologies but the cluster of people who are close to them. To put it another way these philosophies are the flagships of the scientific enterprise of their times (and cultures).

 Here are my immensely crude summations of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism. Firstly Empiricism states that the vehicle of knowledge is sense data alone. This does more than rule out other less fragmented pictures of what is known (ie. intuition). Empiricism resets the direction of knowledge creation as coming from the observer rather than from the observed object. It is observing that creates what we know of things not “being” by the thing itself. This means the natural awe generated by empiricism is really awe of one’s observational powers rather than of an external object; a big difference to a sense of being spoken to by nature.

An even bigger consequence of empiricism is a move away from the goal of knowing true reality. As all we can ever obtain is sense data generated by observation, then an underpinning reality represented by the sense data is only a possibility – it’s not a knowable thing. The strict empiricist would say this doesn’t matter. There may not really be a coffee table in the middle of the room, however the sense data of a coffee table like foreground image over the carpet, allows us to reasonably predict that running across the room will lead to some nasty sense data in our shins. Sense data is all we have and all we need. An underpinning reality is only a predictive model of future sense-data. This reduces the primacy of knowledge derived from core-to-core or soul-to-soul meetings between knower and subject. Such experiences (including religious ones) are rebadged as feelings/sensations. What was once a privelaged knowledge is, under empiricism, less than seeing.



That's some nasty sense data there.



This leads directly to methodological naturalism, the explicit practical assumption that the only types of explanations science should look for are ones which are predictable and which can be controlled for; essentially “natural” explanations. What this means is that the sense data of the coffee table image and the hurt shins should avoid explanations which wont obey laws that help us to avoid banging our shins or predict other sense data. This has proven to be a useful limitation for society as essentially rogue explanations which we can’t predict are unable to be applied by us to solve their own and other problems. If we assume that the coffee table is a physical object we can step around it and we can put a coffee cup on it for example. Methodological naturalism however makes a big assumption that all knowledge is supposed to be practically applicable and this assumption can portray not only God but free will as “useless” explanations.

Logical Positivism is the most controversial of our three philosophical waypoints for Science. In its strongest form this philosophy holds that a statement is meaningless unless its validity can be conclusively established by a finite process. Although this seems reasonable this principle soon came into difficulty. Can the validity of the statement “there is a coffee table in the room” be established? Most would say yes. Look there it is. But what about the statement, “there is no coffee table in the room”? We can imagine all sorts of tests that would prove this reasonably but conclusively? (What if the coffee table was magicked invisible?)

As the totalising philosophy its authors imagined it to be Logical Positivism hasn’t been a success. There are however legacies of Logical positivism that have defined Science. Statements for which no process for establishing any validity can be imagined have been recategorised as nonsense for the purposes of doing science. This extends to ethical judgements and much of metaphysics (including God). Related to this is the importance of falsibility. Falsibility, the ability to be proven false, is now a pre-requisite of any meaningful serious scientific hypothesis. Of course to the extent that the narrative of science is generally accepted as the means of producing knowledge then this nonsense description of metaphysics and the importance of falsibility is taken up by broader culture. If anything this seems to me to be provoking a backlash particularly in the areas of ethics where society wants to have more than personal preference as a guide.

So can Science prove there is a God or not? I hope that I have shown that Science just isn’t a discrete entity so saying what Science can or can’t do is only ever based on the Science of a particular culture and time. It’s possible that future philosophical pushes will create a Science that is deeply interested in supernatural explanations and metaphysics. If so that would be very different to what we have now. As it is now Science is disinterested in the supernatural and metaphysics precisely because they cannot be put to use by us. In the same way that primitive science/religion evaluated its own culture we are all in the process of evaluating whether that disinterest is a beneficial approach to reality.

Science as it stands now is also only interested in those hypotheses which can be disproven. Is God such a hypothesis? Can anyone (not just Scientists) prove God doesn’t exist? Or for that matter can anyone other than Scientists prove that God exists? If not wouldn’t that mean that believing in Gods existence is just a personal affair like aesthetics? Or even nonsensical? Before reaching that conclusion however we should ask whether believing something and being able to prove something are the same thing. I certainly don’t live my life as if they entirely are.

Lastly and most importantly science is not about the existence of things anyway. Science is about developing predictive models of reality. A scientist doesn’t think of their belief in the coffee table as the goal and conclusion of their research. The conclusion of their research is more likely to be a reduced incidence of shin injury and a place to put their coffee cup. If the coffee table is actually God or a chaotic ball of electrons or mostly emptiness but for all intents and purposes the label coffee table captures the sense data we obtain from observing it and are going to obtain from interacting with it... well who cares?

The real point at which Science encounters God is in the investigation of applications of a belief in God such as prayer and whether they are reliably supportive of Gods existence. This is how science investigates such phenomenon as  Tarot cards, Ouija Boards, Water Divining, Vitamin loading to prevent cancer, Drinking Milk to prevent Osteoporosis, nailing wood to hold it together and so on. “Does She work?” is the scientific question of God.

The original theological experiment; Elijah calls down fire from heaven.

So far any scientific study I have seen has failed to show outcomes from “using” God that support Gods reliability. When people (generally not scientists) suggest that science has proven God is nonexistent this failure to perform is the only reasonable thing they might be referring to. However aside from some faith healers, most modern theists don’t expect God to be “useable” in this way. As C.S. Lewis put it God is not a “tame lion” who answers our commands.

It’s something to note that if worshipping a God does not provide tangible benefits then modern religion has moved further from primitive science/religion than modern science has. It would be unrecognizable to ancient people (including the Hebrews for much of the Old Testament) that a God is not supposed to be evaluated on their efficacy. It may even be that acts of worship that don’t have any anticipated “pay-off” in terms of tribal and individual success are ultimately not sustainable. Time will tell.

Time will also tell if the real issue is not whether God exists at all. If we recall the other primitive purpose for models of reality is to produce social cohesion and minimise unnecessary conflicts. It may be that we will not miss God as a cure or cause of disease or as a bringer of military success or failure or as anything particular useful in themself. It may be that we will miss our belief in God and the social effects that has. That’s a political science question.     

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[1] This post is already too long to consider making it more comprehensive or self-critical. Please treat it as a rough introduction and accept the somewhat circular definition of primitive as pertaining to cultures without a marked division between science and religion.

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.

Chocolate sex.

I want to write. Oh boy do I want to write.

I am full of thoughts about the idea of a small god (whose power is not assured) and the connection between such worship and non-violence.

I am also partly through a piece about my purpose in doing philosophy. It's also going to explain why I do theology or as I think of it the philosophy of how we reconcile what should be (which you can call God) with what we've got.

The frustrating thing is that I'm not ready.  I'm not just saying I have to learn before I can speak. That process is endless and if I wait to learn 'enough' before I blog again... It aint gonna happen. 

 Probably a "serious" philospher would learn the common language around what they're blogging about. Maybe my blog on a weak God should be a discussion of Jack Caputo's work. Where I'm going with the purpose of philosophy re-reading Satre is probably worthwhile. However if I need to research it then it's not that common a language anyway. Really I'm just not that kind of writer. Name dropping does not make a case. Or maybe I just can't stand postmodern writing conventions while liking postmodern ideas.

But I do need to show some respect for the people who have put what will be early thoughts for me into actual practice. I have to listen to their stories, their frustrations, their motivations to keep trying or their dissatisfaction with those thoughts. I might be happy to ignore the thinkers/talkers/bloggers who precede me, but the activists are a different kettle. Like listening to mothers before I blog on motherhood, it's essential.

I also think I ought to put some of these thoughts into practice myself or atleast consider how it all might be applied by me in my situation. I mashed out the last two blogs in a frenzy after a decent break. I could do with balancing the do with the talk. Nothing like wearing a philosophy for a while before you claim its wonderful.

Aaagh. Writing is like chocolate sex to me though. I don't want to hold off on it. That's why you've got this. Soft warm chocolate sex. There's nothing else I want to do today. Reading, cooking, walking, gardening, bah. I want to write.

I hope you don't mind. You probably wanted to read words but an open acknowledgement of an author with a hunger and a lust to write for you could seem a little pervy. We could pretend the words just landed here from space. That's how we read many newspaper articles -as if there weren't an author at all. Someones first ever byline and someones last go unnoticed.

Mind you, this is a blog. Blogs put the author on show a lot. So it's expected I'll include my desire to write. And the approapriate way to do that is to be altruistic. That's not untrue. I do want you to be happy. I want you to be alive, in this world, awake and wonderful. I want you to stop (right now) hurting yourself and others. I put that want into my writing. It's why I write what I write.

It's just not why I write at all. It's not why I write instead of cooking. I'm just not being honest if I don't admit to the pleasure of writing philosphy and theology, the sheer ecstacy of ideas, and the particular delights of phrases and words. Its not making love, it's making sense and sometimes feels even better. It's chocolate sex. Soft, warm, over roasted nuts and vanilla icecream, with a chilli afterburn, chocolate sex. Thought porn?

But I'll have to wait.

Chapter 13. The Point of Fiction - In which our character blogs again.

Recently I read “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. Writing about it is a thousand times harder for me than responding to an argumentative text like The Prodigal God, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea or The End of Faith (all featured in previous blog posts). In this post I want to unpack why. It turns out to be harder than I imagined.

Firstly fiction has had a profound impact on my opinions and ideas. Brave New World by Aldoux Huxley pretty much turned my intellectual life around. Prior to that text I was reasonably confident that problems (social and personal) had neat solutions just waiting to be found. I figured I’d contribute to that search. Brave New World turned me on to existentialism. Brave New World made me realise that people couldn’t be squeezed into my solutions but deserved the means to find their own.

Despite this today, my partner not I is the household reader of fiction. I borrow from a different section of the library. In fact I have acclaimed fiction books on my shelf waiting my attention, The Slap by Christos Tsolkias for one. It feels as if my reading purpose is to proceed with certainty of each step beneath me, up the ladder of wisdom. If one of those rungs is fiction then my ladder collapses. Or perhaps collapses is too harsh. I will have to repeat that step though in some more systematic way (by reading it again in a non-fiction book). It hasn’t truly been climbed if it’s only been climbed in fiction.

Bizarrely my bias against fiction overflows to affect anything that reads like fiction. What is the What by Dave Eggers has been neglected for years although I know the author is great and the subject matter is the biography of a refugee who effectively co-wrote the book. There seems to be no sense to my attitude. Surely this true tale is a reliable enough rung? Yet somehow I doubt that it is and subsequently leave it alone.

Proving that I am completely being a wanker about all this I am prepared to read biographies and histories which don’t “look like” fiction. How do I distinguish between these and “What is the What” by Dave Eggers? Partly it is the authors’ history (Dave Eggers is a fiction writer) and partly it is the subject matter and introduction where the book is placed inside a body of work about a famous person. It doesn’t feel right to say that what I’m looking for is a sort of peer reviewed credibility though. Instead I think I’m actually looking for something that doesn’t emphasise telling a great story.

One reason for this is that after finishing a great story I have a mess of sensation and emotion (joy particularly after Huckleberry Finn). I have none of the clarity of thought reading a nice analytic argument gives me (especially if I disagree with the author). If I try and explain to you what I got out of Huckleberry Finn I can almost only really say “Read Huckleberry Finn”. I can’t easily extract what I want to tell you.

This is because whatever wisdom is in great stories is experiential. The simplest stories won’t do that very well. They may just have characters that argue their points or their worlds are purely set up to present their moral. That kind of fiction I can easily disagree with and respond to. The best novels however don’t even seem to set out to inspire and challenge the reader. They merely tell a story that the reader inspires and challenges themselves with. They are like environments in which we live for a while potentially building (or degrading) our character. Mark Twain reminds us of this in a notice before chapter one of Huck Finn;

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

By order of the the Author.

Per G.G., Chief of Ordinance.

Given that Huckleberry Finn has been considered North Americas’ finest novel in regards to its characters, moral and plot it’s easy to conclude that Mark Twain, the consummate humourist, is having fun with us. However he is making an excellent point. It is not fair to the story of Huckleberry Finn to take an element of it out of its story and turn that into some kind of proposition that can be argued against or for. It’s also not fair to turn the events of Huckleberry Finn into arguments for or against any point of our own. There is something chaotic and purposeless to Huckleberry Finn. Essentially Huckleberry Finn the character doesn’t make choices for the writers’ purpose but for his own. That’s what makes it real.

What I don’t get is why this means I don’t read fiction. Take a look at my post on Gay Marriage and you’ll see that this kind of non-clarity is exactly where I think we should philosophically live.  I’m sceptical of this world of abstract arguments that are distinct from stories. I certainly don’t hold them to be realer than real (in that Platonic sense of the true forms).  Consider an argument such as “God can’t exist because of the problem of suffering” as one example. Although it can be false (by God existing) how can that argument ever really be true? If God doesn’t exist any becauseness of that non-existence is just an invention of our own. It’s not even a story we have told about it. It’s not like God was existing and then because of suffering She vanished. This thing we call an argument is fairly nebulously clinging to meaning let alone reality. You could even call it nonsense.

In fact if we look for “truth”- verifiable, definitive accurate statements – we are most able to see it in descriptions of event, people and surrounds. Basically empirical statements have at least “truthiness” to them. They can be more or less verified, defined and contradicted. And it’s these empirical statements that ultimately compose a story. Analytical and argumentative texts are far more likely to be removed from direct observation. In fact observation and storytelling are so neatly connected as to be almost the same thing. We tell stories automatically whenever we observe. Exposure to stories is closer to reality than any alternative.

Hmmm... Closer; perhaps this is precisely it. Perhaps this is the source of my distrust of fiction. Fiction is so like observation that the best fiction can convince us that we have in fact experienced something. The better the storyteller the more pronounced the effect. I am a little haunted by the memory that I once knew all about the justice system from television. The reality, in particular the deceit and deal making and the collusion between defence council and prosecutors shocked me when I faced it myself. There are people who I’ve encountered who learnt their streets are not safe and cops need to be more brutal, from fiction. And because they learnt it from fiction if you call them on it they can only say “You don’t get it.” What they mean is “You have to absorb the whole story as I did.”

I should add by the way, I watch a lot of fiction – movies particularly. I think that seeing actors performing their roles and also the relative brevity of a movie compared to the time it takes me to complete a book radically diminishes the effect. The exception to this are those movies which I’ve watched numerous times. The hours I’ve spent watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” probably add up to finishing a book. I’d say that particular film has had a correspondingly pronounced teaching effect on me. My favourite film from my teenage years “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the favourite from my twenties “Some Kind of Wonderful” are also in this elite category. It’s possible I’m being wilfully naive here - I might be exempting my movies from my bias against fiction to protect my enjoyment of them – but honestly I don’t think my screen time is generally anywhere near as influential as my reading.

I began this blog intending to praise fiction and damn my prejudice. As I write I can see my prejudice has a point. As a source of learning fiction overshadows non-fiction in my life. Maybe that’s not such a good thing though. Below is a list of ten things I believe, in no particular order that I learnt from my time in fictional worlds. Do you think they are sound? Is it not a little concerning that they come from “experiences” simulated by great story telling rather than my own life?

·         Religions are ways of shaping society that get out of control. (Dune Trilogy)

·         Heroes are found in unlikely guises. (Master of the Grove)

·         Adults are people too. (Mom the Wolfman and Me[i])

·         The Meaning Of Life is up to you. (The Plague)

·         Don’t be a dick – especially to the elderly. (The Pigman)

·         Utilitarianism misses a lot. (Brave New World)

·         We can all be blind to our blessings. (It’s a Wonderful Life)

·         The stuff we make up matters. (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)

·         Everything is transformed by a show tune ending. (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

·         You gotta be willing to be wicked to do right. (Huckleberry Finn)

Looking at these “teachings” I realise that these are opinions that have been reinforced by real life experiences either before or after the fictional source. Maybe that reinforcement is the real basis for my belief. Maybe I’m overstating the importance of fiction because anything it teaches that doesn’t bear fruit in the real world withers and dies anyway. On the other hand I don’t think I can deny that fictional experiences act as reinforcement themselves. Even if one fictional experience is worth a tenth of a real world experience it still contributes to my conclusions. And I’d say it feels more like 50%.

Furthermore it’s also necessary to remember that these are only the lessons I can identify. As I stated above the very best stories leave you with the least easily identifiable wisdom. I wonder what I’ve learned from some stories that I can’t even tell you. It may well be that Pride and Prejudice has been my biggest fiction influence for its subtle, deeply lived morality springing from an intelligent humanistic Christianity. The fact I can’t give a lesson it taught me in a sentence is part of its brilliance and perhaps the problem. All I can say is read Jane Austen.

Oh, and read Huckleberry Finn. It’s hilarious.

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[i] I read this obscure book an insane number of times when an adolescent. Please, please comment if you know it.

A Stumbling Response to Stumbling Towards Enlightenment by Geri Larkin

I read about a third of the way through John Piper’s God is the Gospel recently. My best defence of his work is that it’s kinda like Zen Buddhism. So why am I not reading some Zen Buddhism then I asked myself?

I was once very into Zen. By which I mean I read a couple of Zen books and told people at parties that I was into Zen. I grew disillusioned by the mostly male aloofness of its ideal practioner and the smarminess of all them koans. Strangely for what is a supposedly minimalist anti-superstitious anti-authoritarian tradition I found it needlessly obscure and drifted off. Also way too much sitting.

Zen Buddhism is (according to a book I read!) a hybrid of Buddhism and Chan – the Chinese religion that is born of Taoism. Aha I thought. Taoism is the part of Zen I want, I’ll go reading there. Oh you poor Western boy. The book of Chung Txu still taunts me. The Tao Te Ching on my phone teases me. I have periodically visited these texts over the last two years. They are brilliant but I have only dew on my hands to show for it. And I’m thirsty.

Although I have my reservations about its trappings the most thirst quenching spiritual stuff I’ve ever read has been Buddhist. As a father, Buddhism for Mothers is awesome. So now I’m back to Zen reading Stumbling Toward Enlightenment by Geri Larkin. She’s a once uber-powered executive who started meditating to get rid of an eye twitch. Over twenty years later she’s founded a Zen Buddhist temple, been their guiding teacher and written eleven books on the subject. And she’s not an aloof male. Should be good.

The first three chapters are like water to a parched throat. It’s not that I think Buddhism is so much better than other philosophies/religions. The real difference is that I can use it. Buddhism teaches that the right ideas about the world are realised by spiritual practice so its first emphasis is on the things you need to do. Basically to translate Buddhism for Christians it is heavier on the “forgive those who trespass against you” rather than “Jesus is God”.  Most (though not all) Christianities I bump up against say “Grapple with this metaphysical question first.” or “Pray and wait for an answer.” Buddhism says “Do.” (or Don’t Do, there is no Try – no wait that’s Yoda). I can do things, sure.

And so I read and I do a little more Buddhism. I pay a little more attention, try and stay open to wonder, cling less tightly to my expectations. The effect on my life is truly instantaneous. I notice ways I behave that actually contradict what makes me happy but that I keep insisting on doing (holding back on giving for one thing). I work on these things without an all or nothing attitude. I’m like an old guitar. There’s no point smashing me up in a big drama because I’m out of tune. There’s no point despairing over my love of distraction or my addiction to fear either. Just tune me up.

Interestingly I find the more Buddhist I get in my attitude the more keen I am to hang out with some very cool local Christians. I think my teensy bit more Buddhism is enough to help me see what’s coming from myself and my history with Christianity and distinguish that from what these people are actually doing in the community. I actually listen to what these folk say and do rather than expecting and thus hearing the typical atonement based Christianity I’m used to. Their theology is radically different and inspires great compassion. I’m a student so I head to where the teaching is good.   

I also got hit by a pretty hard wake-up call. A mother I know from playgroup was visiting a community centre where I was using the internet. I was actually working on this blog – looking for a pic for the post on How we create. She was there to obtain some material aid. Things were tough for her obviously and I’m pretty sure she had tears in her eyes. We chatted briefly. I could have offered to buy her a coffee or seen if she needed a lift. Instead I tried to finish what I was doing on my blog. When I next looked up she was gone. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I needed to confess this before I posted anything else up here. It feels more than a little hypocritical to post away about spiritual growth without showing how much I fall short of the most basic attentiveness and compassion. It’s worth noting that here was a situation where the blog actually competed with actually doing the right thing. It shouldn’t win.

But this is really what I find so quenching about Buddhism. Its feels crap actually to notice other peoples suffering. It certainly sucks to consider it your concern. But there is guidance regarding what to do about it. Best of all, this practical stuff comes first. Through interacting compassionately with other people around you is how you realise the metaphysical stuff after all.  

Then I hit Chapter four of Mind Games in Geri Larkins’ book. Ugh. It reads like management psycho-babble bullshit. The Buddhist notion of “All is Mind” is a great challenge to understand and an even greater challenge to communicate. When people fall short of that challenge they often produce something like this chapter. Basically it’s that old chestnut, “Johnny thought the world was against him and so he picked fights with other people and then in the end lo’ the world was against him.”

Sure we can all accept that this has some truth to it but once you universalise it so that “All is Mind” it starts to smell a little. For example one of those people Johnny picked a fight with might have been an optimistic Buddhist who looked innocently at Johnny for a moment too long. Furthermore when Johnny is facing court he might want to know what “mind” will get him off. I doubt Geri Larkin could tell him. If “All is Mind” means you alter reality to match your perceptions then it should really be “Some is Mind”.

I’ll have a crack at explaining it differently (really briefly as it’s probably a post in itself). When I misplace my keys- which happens regularly- it may well be an act of mind in that I fail to consider it important where I put them, but thats not what is meant by “All is Mind”. That’s just the karma of thoughtlessness. Instead when Buddhists say “All is Mind” they mean that no event such as the loss of keys occurs independently of our mind. Basically we interpret the event- we choose to let it ruin our day and inspire an argument with our partner. Alternatively we can use the event to remind us of all the times we didn’t misplace our keys. We can use all the anxiety and trouble of losing our keys to reflect on how rocking it was when we didn’t misplace them yesterday. And we took that for granted until now. Wow. It’s almost a good thing we lost our keys so that we stop missing all that joy right under our noses, eh. See, all is Mind.[1]

Anyway chapter four is only one bad chapter and it’s not all bad. There are self-fulfilling mantras in my head that warrant a look at anyway. Those teachings are useful too. I’m more than willing to get back into “Stumbling Toward Enlightenment”. Chapters five to ten are sweet. I read and I apply and things feel good. Some of the magic is gone though. I’m suspicious of Geri Larkin now. When will she next piss me off? See those self-fulfilling mantras.

Chapter Eleven; Preparing for Death. Yep, that’s the one. Once again not all bad but I’ve got to swallow reincarnation to get through it. And I can’t. Reincarnation is deeply counter intuitive to me.

A central tenet of reincarnation says that your next life is somehow influenced by this life which was influenced by your previous one etc. Now it might be incorrect to say “your” next life or it might not be depending on how you understand the way the “I” and “you” can be understood across lives. There are different opinions on the matter within Buddhism. But the gist remains that how many congenitally blind street kids there are compared to how many Buddhist monks there are is supposed to reflect cosmic demand for those lives. That just doesn’t seem to be how the world works to me. How do you explain the doubling of the human population? Are there alien souls wanting to be here or new souls being made. Doesn’t there seem to be a supply-side causality  rather than a demand side one to population growth or decline? Doesn’t it feel like we can mostly control if we have kids rather than taking metaphysical orders? Screw reincarnation.[2]

So that’s where I’m at. I’ve snuck a peak at Chapter 12 and it seems good but I’m losing my enthusiasm. I’m sure I could finish something I found useless easier but because I want to rely on this Buddhist stuff those two chapters I’ve choked on have stopped me in my tracks. At this point I’m looking at other Buddhist books more fondly than Larkin’s. I have “Invoking Reality – the Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen” by John Loori tempting me. I might even go back to John Piper though I doubt it. Or what do you reckon?  Should I keep reading Larkin? Is it just my Mind stopping me?

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[1] This is what I understand. Buddhists feel free to please correct any misunderstanding or miscommunication.

[2] Okay, I’m seriously open to correction from anyone on this, particularly Buddhists.

How do we create?

In a recent conversation about God’s creation of the universe the statement “We (meaning us humans) don’t create” was made. It surprised me and didn’t feel right but I felt that to argue against it I had very little solid statements. After all "create" is a woolly term.

You click on “Create” to start a new Word document but is creating a file really creation? If so is it the Microsoft program doing the actual creating?  I would consider that the most mundane definition. Yet is that all there is to human creation as well – a programmed response? Or is there something else – the capacity to bring forth genuinely new possibilities?

What about when sand in a dust storm creates a swirling pattern? Is that the height of creation? The more I learn about uncertainty in physics the more I realise this is a different sort of creation to that of a classic linear program but it’s still not intelligent. What does intelligent mean though? Is there such a thing as creativity that is guided by intelligence? Or is intelligence itself guided (even chaotically determined) by a dumb creativity? Is intelligence just the swirl in the sand storm?

Originally this essay was a polemic against a certain understanding of humans as non-creative or as “bad” creators. In this understanding the only good creative acts of humanity occur when we become animated by a divine other. The classic story is that of the Muses. In other versions it is the Christian Holy Spirit. In yet other versions it is a life force that runs through us and the planet.

My greatest concern with this way of thinking is all the horrible burden of divinely inspired dross that we have to deal with because of it. If I write a self-help book that is considered God-inspired (or Angel channelled etc) how much harder is it for people to challenge my advice. If the only way for my advice to be worthwhile enough to publish is to attribute it to a divine other, then I am always bound to create (or rather not create!) this kind of unstoppable force.  It seems more honest and more accountable to acknowledge the author in the room; myself.

Still without a Muse or God (or for that matter a Devil) separate from myself how do I create? Where do the new things that seem to issue from me (or through me) come from? If creation is the province of the divine, then is it perhaps necessary to consider the “divine-within” to explain it?

There is a vein of Christian theology which can be tapped to describe this human divinity. Much has been made of the idea that we are “created in the image of God” particularly in terms of our creative capacity. Alfred Whitehead (Process Theology) and Paul Tillich are two very prominent theologians who might be worth reading in this regard. Alas I gave away my Paul Tillich text recently - only now seeing his relevance. That’s often the way with the books that sit on my shelf for years. 

There are also a range of theologies outside of Christianity which present the divine realm as essentially incomplete without humanity to shake it up. That afternoon television classic “Monkey Magic” illustrates how in Perfect Land Buddhism a stagnant celestial bureaucracy exists under the perfect Buddha spirit. It is as important that Monkeys irrepressible manner kicks over the norms of heaven as it is that their attitudes are reformed by Buddha spirit. Personally I always identified with Monkey in this fashion. In atleast some forms of Buddhism and Hindusim I would be free to, as there is no separation between ourself and demigods and Gods. The divine is not other at all.

The Khabbalah, a Jewish mysticism that has paralleled both temple and rabbinical Judaism, contains a theology built around the incompleteness of God. This is an incompleteness that is resolved in Christianity by the relational Trinity. In the Kaballah however it is humanity’s relationship with God that completes us both. (Sort of. I’m no expert on this and would appreciate correction.) In Khabbalism for God’s creative work to be enacted there is an absolute need for us to embrace our creative role. In this schema we are purpose built to create and God relies on us completing this purpose.

“New Age” philosophies tend to be deeply concerned with enabling human creativity. This is possibly because of their suitedness to the post-industrial economies that sponsor them and the importance of creativity in those economies. It is also possibly because the New Age is defined by a demand for utility by the individual “seeker”. To the extent that New Age philosophies borrow Hindu and Khabbalistic ideas they tend to emphasise a human divinity. To the extent that they borrow from Gnosticism instead they tend to accentuate the divine-other as a source for human creativity. Certainly this question is huge in the New Age literature but it is hardly answered consistently.

My own formulation of how I create is complicated. I do believe that original “stuff” can emerge from me. I don’t think I am ever a doorway to a divine force though. I guess I never think of my creations as being divine. Somehow I consider them both ordinary and yet new and spontaneous. In fact it seems to me to be the ordinary way of things to be creative. That's life.

I don’t know how I can evaluate whether what I create is dross or gold however. I think that’s impossible in an abstract fashion. Living is the real on-going test of my ideas. I guess that means my creations are never really “good” or “bad” merely useful or not. This further reduces any expectation of a divine source.

I also think that the classic image of the creative human is a very atypical one. They are idealised as alone on a mountain receiving that flash of inspiration or conjuring truth ex nihilo. I think it’s more ordinary to create with ones’ peers and from ones’ culture. Further I celebrate such a process. I have always preferred rhetoric over other art forms precisely because its quality is produced through its audience and never without them. There is something therefore about the usual image of individual creativity whether by God through us or by us, which excludes me.

When I consider the greatest creations of humanity such as writing itself these obviously don’t belong to any one individual. In an on-going fashion we continue to create writing and what it means. That’s what blogs are. When this sort of creation is the subject in question it again reduces the expectation of a divine source. There is something of the swirling sand in the dust storm about it after all.

In the same way I also don’t understand the opposite image of God the sole creator. As with any rhetorician, the quality of creation is produced through its audience and never without them. Actually if your medium is Life then audience participation goes off the chart.  If you’re creating life of course you’re co-creating with life because of just what life means. It’s more than a little like roleplaying dungeons and dragons. Sure,the dungeon master has all the maps and has devised a series of events but its the decisions of the characters which makes the story. So if you ask the question from the other side – If God creates how do we join in? – I come closer to a Khabbalistic answer to the question.

My kid just asked me “What are you writing, Dad?”

I replied “A difficult question. How do we create things?”

She thought about it and then stated as if obvious, “With our hands.”

“Yes”, I continued, “But where do our ideas come from before our hands?”

“Our heads,” said my daughter.

“Yes, but where do our ideas come from before our heads?”

My daughter was momentarily stumped. She actually said “A challenge,” before adding “Our eyes.”

She wasn’t entirely sure though. What would you have told her?

I Trust in God.



Just a minute...



I have a persistent fantasy in which I lay dying and an appeal is made for me to accept Christ as my saviour in order to save myself from damnation. Like many of my fantasies it’s basically a set up so that I can say something I think is profound. (Is that a writer’s thing?) In this fantasy I reply “I trust in God and I shall not fear the Devil.”

As I have a colonoscopy planned today and my higher than average risk of bowel cancer is on my mind I’d like to take the opportunity to explain myself. This will spare me the bother on my actual death bed. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion over what a non-theist is saying “I trust in God” for.

Firstly any celestial being I could consider God is not going to make both unreasonable and unnecessary demands on my integrity. The mark of a true God would be to encourage those intellectual attitudes which would help people, especially those vulnerable at point of death, to distinguish them from a non-entity or random djinn.  Such attitudes would include caution in offering allegiance to just any deity. So long as a God’s existence is dubious to me I think if they are actually God they would want me to be shy of proclaiming them. Anything less is consistent with a false God, not one with truth on their side.

This argument is strengthened by the realisation that boldly proclaiming God to exist while being doubtful is not just unreasonable but unnecessary. The twin ideas that your life continues after death and that God needs you to form a relationship with him before death are incongruent. If God’s existence or not is due to become obvious in minutes the simplest response is to wait and see. After all, the afterlife is eternal so the five minutes of obviousness I would need to happily recant my atheism shouldn’t be any bother. No? I have to worship an invisible God now because as soon as I die the super-efficient afterlife will have me whisked off to hell before I can yell out “I was wrong.” That’s ludicrous and completely unnecessary. I trust God to be better than that. I trust I can go to my death as an atheist and still work it out with God if I’m wrong. I even trust that a true God would want me to do just that if it was where integrity led me.

As for not fearing the devil, if there is any supernatural being who would accept my worship (let alone desire it) when that worship is due to the threat of eternal suffering then that supernatural being is the devil. Plain and simple, that’s exactly how the devil would operate. If the devil whispers in the ears of earthly kings they are going to be perfectly encouraging of scaring ones subjects with the rack and the stake. Even if that whisperer is in the driving seat of the whole cosmos and who gets into heaven or hell, then they’re the devil by character. I do my best not to pay them any heed as inspiration in life and I will try not to fear them on my deathbed either.

One of my favourite imaginings of the afterlife is that once you die you are greeted by a towering God King who perfectly corresponds to all those images of the angry patriarchal God we know so well. They carry a sceptre and sit on a throne and their face is stern. They command you to kneel and most people throw themself prostate. With no aching knees in the afterlife people can stay like that for eternity. Those who don’t get down and stay down are hit by laser beams from the great God Kings eyes and are destroyed. In my imagining the only way into heaven is to stand. It’s the ultimate act of trust in God and refusal to fear the Devil.

Now I don’t know that when the morphine runs through me and my death rattle fills my belly and a bikini-clad Christian orang-utan (the morphine remember) starts up converting me I won’t break like a baby. Maybe I’ll swear allegiance to the angry God King of my dreams in order to be spared those laser eyes. Maybe I’ll throw a bet their way or at least both ways. What I hope I say, what I believe I should say, is “I trust in God and I shall not fear the Devil.”

Does it matter? Paradoxically if I am right and there is no afterlife it matters less. If I am wrong then it becomes all the more important I stick to my non-theist guns. If life genuinely continues then I’d better not convert “for the hell of it.” That path leads away from any heaven I can think of.

Halleluiah and Amen.

P.S. Bum check was all clear. No cancer or even polyps.