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Musing on Sydney's news
8 November 2006
God, religion, spirituality, the afterlife and all that rot
Let's talk about God. Or god. Or a god or some sort of big spirit. Or something. Or everything. Or nothing.
First, let's draw a line between spirituality and religion.
Religion may have something to do with spirituality at times, but often it doesn't, instead being caught up in rather primitive dogmas. In fact, the naivete of some religious types beggars belief.
Take the example of American Republican evangelist, the formerly-Reverend Ted Haggard. A gay sex worker, Mike Jones, who had apparently been cavorting in some unsubstantiated manner with Rev Ted was outraged at Ted's hypocrisy in opposing gay marriage. So he spilt the beans and Ted had to quit his post.
After resigning, Ted told his followers that he is guilty of sexual immorality. To quote: "There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life".
So now we know why Ted was so anti-gay—he hated in others what he hated within himself. Look at the huge issue this so-called Man of God made of his own simple, garden-variety bisexuality. Throw a stone in the street and you will probably hit someone who is capable of responding sexually to either sex. It's called being an animal.
So what's the big drama? The drama, in my eyes, is that many religious people—and in senior roles—are so out of touch with the most basic aspects of reality that they are clearly unfit to lead anyone in any way, shape or form. That says more about the state of religion today than any amount of polemic.
If Ted and his followers had even the slightest grip on human reality he might have said something like, "I'm sorry, everyone. I'm resigning because I'd set myself up as a leader but I showed that I didn't have the self control to deny my most basic drives. I am sorry I have been so hypocritical".
Instead he glossed over his weakness of character in cheating on his wife with the pseudo-mystical "dark side" comment (move over Darth Vader). After all, how can we blame the poor man while Lucifer himself is apparently lurking within him, forcing him to seek out same-sex liaisons? A quick exorcism ought to do fix him up and then he can say "Praise de Lorrd. Ah'm cured!".
Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, it's true that some religious people aren't clowns like this bloke and are actually very deep thinking people. They aren't generally leaders who have to engage in heavy politicking and branch stacking to achieve their positions of power; they're normally just hanging around the fringes, teaching small ministries. You never hear them quoted in the paper but you might catch them late on Sunday night on radio 702.
I hear some of these very sophisticated people talk and wonder how on earth they can follow texts like the Koran or the Bible? Each of those books is chockas with totally irrelevant prose that's clearly specific to the culture and era in which they were written. Don't talk to unclean women? Beat your wife if she disobeys you? Don't eat shellfish? Sacrifice animals? God as a father? The world made in seven days. The list is almost endless.
Clearly, these few sophisticated spiritual religious practitioners who sometimes speak on John Cecil's 702 Sunday program are picking out the deeper parts of the "good" books and accepting the culturally-specific bits for what they are—historical writings.
However, the recent reviews of Richard Dawkins' book, 'The God Delusion', suggest that he has carefully deconstructed the whole idea of God and comes to the conclusion that scientific evidence currently suggests that there is no such thing as 'God'. His guess, based on current evidence, is that it's just little old us here in this great big universe, and when you snuff it, it's lights out time.
Upfront, I have been a huge Richard Dawkins fan ever since I read 'The Selfish Gene'. Yet I have also been hugely impressed with various Christian, Buddhist and Sufi guests on 702. While I wouldn't spit on most religious leaders even if they were on fire (naww, maybe I would) some of 702's religious guests have struck me as being deeply wise, a quality I don't associate with delusional religiosity.
All this respect and no place to go. I feel like a kid who loves her Mum and Dad but they argue all the time and I don't want to take sides. So who's it going to be? The highly intelligent, rational and ethical scientist or the highly intelligent, rational and ethical spiritualists?
I have no choice. Like Saul (or was it Paul or Raoul?) my solution is to cut them down the middle. When two credible parties are diametrically opposed, the truth generally lies somewhere inbetween the poles.
This means that the answer is to think about a god that's compatible with science. I did, in fact, attempt this in my Religion for Dummies article and took a pantheistic approach by referring to the almighty GIF (Ginormous Invisible Force).
Perhaps my current train of thought on the matter is best expressed in an email discussion with Patrick where we speculated about reincarnation and the afterlife. (Anything in square brackets is my afterthought).
Pat: Well, this is admittedly an area about which I’m a bit ambivalent. Not that I really believe there's anything after death, but the physical existence of brain waves that emanate during life leads to the possibility that somewhere, somehow, an accumulation of that wisdom and/or experience may be possible in some other person/lifeform after the fact of one's own existence. Maybe that's a truer way of living vicariously ...
Grea: I guess I’m thinking in terms of energy and chemistry - some energies and chemicals seem to congregate / combine better than others. Same with personalities. If we use the ocean metaphor for consciousness, then I’d be thinking of analogies where you would find coral reefs, deep ocean, saltwater concentrate spots, bays, surf beaches, lagoons etc - sort of consciousness ecosystems. Of course, the waters move through and beyond all of these spots, but there could be some level of ... bonding?
We ppl do seem to have our preferences - some ppl are drawn to the sea, others to the desert, others to cities etc. and we do tend to mix and congregate with compatible others. So if when we die our consciousness dissipates, one would imagine the various components would drift, then settle in places for a while, drift again etc
I didn't understand your comment about living vicariously, but it sounded good - lol
Pat: I was referring to how a person might live thru the experiences of others he/she may have incorporated due to some form of absorption of energy. Interesting concept you propound! Quite different from my view, though ... yours almost becomes a static environment (at least from time to time as it 'settles'), while mine is always dynamic in its flow, analogous to radio waves travelling outward constantly.
Grea: Ahhh, I see ... Ok, that makes sense ... there must be all sorts of remnants, although given the flow of energies, I wonder how consciousness energy (or whatever it is) seems to stay relatively constant throughout one's life?
My guess is it's a matter of filtering, our brains [and bodies, for that matter] setting the limitations of what goes through us, or at least what's noticed or how it's interpreted.
Actually, I am inclined to agree with your flow thoughts (as you'd gather from the above) but there must be different rates of flow, and some areas where it barely flows at all, like the oceans. so the flow occurs, but by degrees - some bits faster and slower. After all, aren't our own lives - our own consciousness, simply a slowish flow (very fast in universal time standards - less than a blink of an eye)? Perhaps we're a bit like one-use capacitors, that store energy for a while until they get full and send the energy all out in one go (where dying is like a mini big bang)?
Pat: I like your take on filtering, especially the part about how energy [or consciousness] is *noticed*. Not sure about flow rates, though, since energy travels at constant speeds except for when it encounters some physical force that resists it, such as a solid, gas or distortive energy force (gravity, magnetics, etc) - I simply can't see the math working in your scenario, but hey, I’m just a simple country bumpkin ;-)
Grea: Well, Mr Country Bumpkin, why wouldn't different energies get in each others' way? After all, the energies don't exist in a vacuum and it would seem that that physicality affects consciousness energy, and one would expect that other elements do too.
Pat: Ummm ... energy radiation doesn't exactly work that way ;-) and energy most certainly *does* exist in a vacuum! Two examples are solar radiation (heating all celestial bodies) and gravitational energies that keep things in orbit (and gravity is considered a *weak* force, so you can imagine the strength of the strong ones, like nuclear bonds).
Grea: Well, damn! [and doh!] So then consciousness is just this whopping big pool that flows through us, but we store the stuff up while we live until we start getting leaky with age before finally expelling the stuff we had.
The question is, do we strip nutrients out of the consciousness like overcropping does to soil or is it enriched in some way by the time we fall off the perch like compost ... or does it depend on how well we "farm" it during our lives?
Pat: All good questions! My guess is that we receive and save energies based on compatibility with our personal growth abilities - the smartest among us absorb the most, the ones with special (but more limited) abilities soak up energies more suitable for their own needs, etc.
It would be fair to say from the above exchange that our respective juries are definitely out. Perhaps that's how it shold be. After all, if we brought down a definitive verdict, would we be any better than—or as spectacularly lacking in humility as—the power-hungry religious dogmatists or mediocre, closed-minded scientists?
Ants don't understand planet Earth and humans don't understand the universe. The difference is that ants (apparently) don't try whereas humans do. Whether our attempts actually make a practical difference to our lives is another matter but, if nothing else, it's fun!
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