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June 17, 2007
Posted at 11:07 pm by Richard and tagged books, flatland, god, rudy-rucker, sci-fi, science. Popularity: 13% [?]
One of the earliest books I can remember reading that had an influence on my spirituality was not a book on religion at all but a book by a science fiction writer, Rudy Rucker. “God” is usually talked about as a father figure, or some mystical being (who looks somewhat like us – old dude, white beard) in the sky – and while these stories might be just metaphors for the true nature of God, it created a barrier to the possibility of me ever accepting the existence of higher power. I remember that “The Fourth Dimension: And how to get there” inspired me to think about the possibility of this higher power in a new way. Rudy Rucker is best known as a science fiction writer, but the book “The Fourth Dimension” is a work of non-fiction. In it, Rucker draws on the works of Edwin A. Abbott who wrote “Flatland” in 1884.
In “Flatland” Abbott explores the fictional life of “A. Square”, who lives in a two dimensional world and is visited by “A. Cube” (a 3-dimensional creature). While it’s a rather simplistic example, it raises the possibility that we (3-dimensional creatures) may be surrounded by “beings of a higher dimension” who could interact with us in God-like ways. While I don’t necessarily believe that God is, in fact, a creature from a higher-dimensional universe, the book suggested the possibility that maybe God can physically exist, but still be “omnipotent”.
Rudy Rucker gave me a way of thinking about the nature of a higher power that still allowed me to understand the world from a scientific viewpoint, and while I’m sure it wasn’t his intention – Rudy Rucker opened my mind to the possibility of “God”.
Popularity: 13% [?]
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June 10, 2007
Posted at 1:38 pm by Richard and tagged agnosticism, belief, conflict, eclecticism, omnipotent, religion. Popularity: 14% [?]
When someone asks me if I’m religious, my standard answer is “no, but…”. The “but” refers to my issues with religion specifically, but not the underlying teachings and spirituality. I like to call myself “eclectic”, as I don’t subscribe to any one religion, but at the same time I think each one of them has some founding in truth. Personally, I’ve found that every religion I’ve looked into (notably: Christianity, Buddhism, … even Pastafarianism!) has some very good ideas, but also has some which I just cannot believe.
I came across a post by Paul Hartigan on Open Source Theology recently which outlined 7 reasons that make it hard to believe in traditional christianity. I think his arguments can be summarised by two very common theological issues, and one I’m not sure I’ve thought of before, but is important none the less:
- The problem of evil – why does God allow bad things to happen? Even worse, why does God allow bad things to happen in his name?
- Conflict between claims made by different religions (and even conflict between branches of Christianity), some of which seem entirely illogical (“how can Christ be both God and man”)
- Problems with the belief that the universe (as large as it is) could somehow “revolve around” one short period in history, or one particular person on earth. In other words, what could possibly make us (the followers of religion “x”) so special? (Jesus in a universe of 125 Billion Galaxies)
I think Paul makes some very valid points, and these can be further generalised to almost all religions (not just Christianity). The problem of evil definitely causes issues with and idea of a God that is both omnipotent and benevolent, which it seems many religions (the Abrahamic ones, at least) claim God is. There are definitely other ideas about what God could be that would render the problem of evil void – but these ideas are not generally labelled “God”. It’s partly for this reason that I take issue with the traditional views of God, and probably why I try (although often fail) to not use the word God when discussing my views of spirituality.
Conflict between religions is definitely an issue that I’ve had problems with myself, as I tried to address in my posts “Religious Eclecticism” and “The Eclectic Agnostic’s Wager“, but it doesn’t cause issue for specific spiritual beliefs, the conflict occurs when you must accept the whole package. Taking the simplest ideas or teachings from any religion, and it’s likely you’ll find the same idea or teaching in another (although, almost certainly from a different perspective). The “golden rule”, or “ethic of reciprocity” is found in many variations by many spiritual leaders, for example.
On the third point – there seems to be an eclectic way of accepting the leaders of all religions without needing to think that the universe revolves around any one teacher or religion. What if every person is inspired by (or, “is”) “God”, and the ones we call spiritual leaders are just more in touch with that connection? Each person would interpret this connection through their own life experiences, and each would therefore describe the same “truth” in different ways.
What do you think would happen if we could get Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius and every other spiritual leader in a room together – would they see mostly eye-to-eye, or would there be massive disagreements? Personally, I’m sure each would have his own (human) views that differ from the others, but I believe they would each agree that every one of them is fighting for the same cause.
Yes, I have a problem with religion – because each one seems to take the word of their prophet, God or leader as the one true interpretation of “God’s message”. I certainly don’t have an issue with the teachings of any of our great spiritual leaders, I think they were all attempting the same thing – to make this (and possibly the next) world a better place. We need to stop fighting about which religion is right or better, and just learn from each of them.
Edit 11 June: Right after posting this I came across another article which expands on the 3rd point perfectly – An Exercise in Perspective.
Popularity: 14% [?]
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June 3, 2007
Posted at 10:18 pm by Richard and tagged agnosticism, belief, eclecticism, pascal, religion. Popularity: 11% [?]
In my last major post, I look at the idea of “religious eclecticism“, and how I think it’s likely that all religions share the same basic ideas. I also said I’d try and use a variation of Pascal’s wager to help justify my position.
Pascal’s wager goes something like this:
Living your life as if God exists will bring infinite benefit (you go to heaven) if, in fact God exists. If it turns out that God does not exist, then you haven’t missed out on much. If, on the other hand, you were to live as if God didn’t exist, but you turned out to be wrong, then you’d suffer infinitely (hell and damnation). Even if you were right about God not existing, the benefit you’d gain while you were alive would be minimal compared to eternal damnation. In a more graphical format, Pascal’s wager looks like this:
| |
God exists (G) |
God does not exist (~G) |
| Living as if God exists (B) |
+∞ (heaven) |
−N (none) |
| Not living as if God exists (~B) |
−∞ (hell) |
+N (none) |
The Wikipedia article on Pascal’s Wager notes a few rebuttals to this wager, most notably that Christianity is not the only religion which claims God will judge you based on your beliefs. Pascal also assumes that God rewards belief, and even if he did one might assume that God wouldn’t be too happy with simply accepting his existence based on the probability of damnation as this is not a “true belief”.
While I don’t claim to have the answers to all these problems, it seems that, given many of the world’s major religions share some fundamental aspects (belief in one ultimate power, be it Allah, God or Brahman, for example) it might be easier to accept a more general belief in a higher power than in the God of a specific religion. Let’s look again at the options discussed in my last post:
- The teachings of all religions are wrong
- The teachings of some religions are wrong
- The teachings of all but one religion are wrong
or
- All religions are right
If all but one religion is “wrong”, then we have such a small chance of choosing the right one, it hardly seems worth it. Similarly, if all religions are “wrong”, then we have even less chance unless we try something radically different. If all religions are right, however, or even if many of them are acceptable to God, then by following the fundamental teachings of as many as possible, you would increase your chances of entering heaven.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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May 28, 2007
Posted at 12:20 am by Richard and tagged eclecticism, logic, philosophy. Popularity: 8% [?]
Assume, for a moment, that there is in fact a God. If we follow a “correct” religion, then we will be able to “know god”, “reach nirvana” or otherwise know some ultimate truth. If we follow a “wrong” religion, then, well, we put ourselves at the mercy of the “correct” God. Since every religion has different rules and beliefs about the nature of God and how to reach “heaven”, we immediately have a problem. Either:
- The teachings of all religions are wrong
- The teachings of some religions are wrong
- The teachings of all but one religion are wrong
or
- All religions are right
If “all religions are wrong” (but there still is a God), then we have a serious problem. It could be that there is a correct religion, but we just don’t know what it is yet (or, we’ve long since abandoned it), or that religious teaching is inherently incapable of allowing us to reach God. If these is indeed a God (which we’ve assumed, for now) and God has provided no way of “reaching heaven”, or at least, seems uninterested in educating us. Given the vast number of religious beliefs we have, if God actually played any part in inspiring these beliefs, we’re either incapable of being inspired in this way (which would be God’s fault, if we are his creations), or God’s doing a bad job of inspiring us. A powerless or incompetent God seems worse than no god at all!
If we assume that “some religions are wrong”, and therefore some are “right”, then there must be one or more religions (the “right” ones) which are similar on some fundamental level, and it is only at this level that matters. For example, we have two “correct” religions – Religion A and Religion B.
If both state that “there is only one true God”, but Religion A says God likes to be worshipped on a Friday, but Religion B states that all worshipping should be performed on a Tuesday, then it must not matter if you worship God on a Friday or a Tuesday. If this were the case, then religions are more complicated than they need to be – to reach heaven, we don’t need to follow all the rules, only the ones that matter.
The “all but one” option is, I suppose, an extension of the previous idea. For one religion to be right, and all others wrong – there must be some point at which two religions differ on a fundamental principle. In other words, if my religious views were exactly the same as the “right” religion except for one detail, and I am “wrong”, but the other religion is “right” then that detail must be fundamental to the “correctness” of religion. This seems to be the view that many religions take – every religion but this one is wrong. Of course, given that all religions make this claim, how do we know who’s telling the truth?
Finally, if “all religions are right”, perhaps the fundamental concepts of religion which must exist before a religion can be considered “right” are so broad, that every religion agrees on the points that matter. Eating pork, getting circumcised, abortion & contraception, wearing a hijab, etc. are trivial and God doesn’t care (or, is willing to allow us to make up our own minds on these issues). This could mean that every religion simply looks at the “truth” from a different perspective adding their own “flourishes”, but each is equally correct. Or, as far as God’s concerned, all that matters is that you have religion (whatever that may mean).
This last option is also the one I find most compelling, and in my next post, I’ll attempt to justify this choice using a variation of Pascal’s Wager.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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May 23, 2007
Posted at 10:44 pm by Richard and tagged 10commandments, atheism, bible, books, christianity, homosexuality, interpretation, language. Popularity: 11% [?]
If you read my essay Reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian Theology (and you did, didn’t you?) You’d know that I think it’s entirely possible to believe in both Darwinian evolution, and the Christian God (not that I necessarily do, but the possibility isn’t entirely ruled out). There are different ways of accepting evolution and Christian theology, of course, and I’m sure even Christians who have reconciled their faith with evolution differ on the specifics, as I outlined by the two views expressed by Moore and Gray:
“Moore separated [special creation and evolutionist theories] by allowing them both to act in their own time periods. For Moore, special creation was the mode for primary creation, while evolution was the method by which species continued to diversify. Gray, on the other hand, separated them by purpose. While evolution was the guiding process by which species were created, God was still the driving force behind it.”
One group that may not be convinced by either of these options, however, are those who believe that the bible is to be taken literally, and is infallible. Putting aside, for the moment, my views on this position as a whole, this raises another important question:
If the words in the bible are the true word of God, then which version of the words do we take as the ultimate truth?
As you are probably aware, the bible as we know it today didn’t come down written on stone tablets like the 10 commandments supposedly did – it was written by many different authors, over many years. Even worse, we don’t actually have many of these original writings. We have copies of copies of copies of copies, with god knows (irony intended) how many errors. Then, of course, we have the issues of translation. It’s one thing to say that the original scriptures were the infallible word of God, but that each and every version of the bible (however different) is also God’s infallible word?
Then, of course, there’s the issue of contradictions within the bible itself. If we assume these translations are trustworthy, how to we know which bits to follow when there are definite contradictions? “The Atheist’s Wager” examines one aspect of the problem noting that Jews and Christians seem to have very different ideas on what God actually thinks about homosexuality based on giving authority to certain words in the bible over others – how do we know which ones are really important? When is the last time you heard a Christian or Jew saying “I’m sorry, I can’t eat shrimp or oysters, the bible clearly states ‘all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales … you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat’” Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps people like this do actually exist – anyone met any? Of course, the seafood issue isn’t the only one – have a look at Skeptics Annotated Bible for just some of the “absurdities” that can be found within the word of God.
A book I’ve been reading recently goes much into much more detail about the problems with the issues associated with translation and access to the original biblical writings. So, even if we wanted to take the bible at its literal word, there seems to be no hope of doing this without significant problems in verification of what those words actually are.
“Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture… , however, we don’t actually have these authoritative texts… we can’t interpret the words of the New Testament if we don’t know what the words were.”
We need to interpret the bible if it’s to have any real meaning. And in doing so, there will obviously be different interpretations. How can we know which interpretation is correct? Simply, we can’t – that’s why the bible should not be treated as a 100% factual account of history or the nature of god. It is definitely a valuable text, which has historical and spiritual significance, but I fail to see how it can logically be accepted as “gospel”.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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May 21, 2007
Posted at 4:00 pm by Richard and tagged creationism, darwinism, Essays, science. Popularity: 57% [?]
This essay was originally written in 2006 for the subject “God and the Natural Sciences” at Melbourne University’s History and Philosophy of Science department.
“Some Nineteenth century Christian Darwinians were scientifically and theologically successful in reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian theology.”
Darwin’s ideas have been greatly debated over the years, but most of all his theory on natural selection, cited by Gould as the means by which these favourable variations are acquired, and thus, after long periods of time new species created. “Natural selection is a process by which biological populations are altered over time, as a result of the propagation of heritable traits that affect the capacity of individual organisms to survive and reproduce.” This caused issues for many, especially those for whom ‘special creation’ was the preferred method by which new species were created. For many, God had been exiled from the process of creation and, if one accepted Darwin’s arguments, there seemed to be no plausible theological alternative but to hold a Deistic or Atheistic point of view.
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