Category: spirituality?!?
I grew up with no religion, so please be patient with my puzzlement.
I'm no atheist -- I have no beliefs one way or another about supernatural beings since I don't understand what a supernatural being would be like and, most likely, I would not recognize one if it started communicating with me. I wouldn't know it from an alien, a genie, a devil-in-disguise, some evil entity that insists on being worshipped, or a magical racketeer who promises good things if I light candles to it and pray, a fantast who threatens me with imaginary punishments and is willing to save me from them on the condition that I believe that he's actually god, or just a phantom of my crazy imagination....So I'm not an atheist. I just don't know what to make of people's beliefs about the supernatural.
And I actually like religions, or some religions. They've got mystery and mysticism, beauty and glory, pageantry and morality, great stories, and often a long and colorful account explaining what we're here for and why we die etc. and even humor (a camel passing through the eye of a needle -- was that one hump or two?), and lots and lots of great art and music. But the doctrines -- that's where I get flummoxed.
I'm not fond of critics who take pot shots at religious doctrine. It's such a cheap and easy target. They're like bullies. Non believers should treat religious doctrines delicately. Religions are important to their adherents. Let's have some -- well if not respect, some polite diplomacy and human fellow-feeling appreciation. Judgement is never illuminating or educational. I grant that Hitchens did clever and entertaining work raising the moral and social downsides of religion, and Dawkins really just feels that believers are limiting themselves and would benefit from the wider and wilder imagination of the sciences. But Harris? Bully.
Studying religions anthropologically, you find that the theological doctrines are mostly not what's important to the adherents. A religion is more a community identity and normative practice than a theology. Anthropologists seem to agree on this. Adherents are more concerned about proper behavior, ancestors' disapproval, spirits and ghosts, punishments and fears. I get the sense that the only people who really care about whether God exists are the atheists. For them, it's existential -- if God exists, then no more atheist!
It seems to me that for an atheist, the first question should be not whether the god exists, but why should humans ever be able know the god? Does it want you to know about it, and if it does, why isn't it obvious to everyone?
Btw, the answer can't be "its existence is obvious already by the argument from creation" because the argument from creation proves God doesn't exist: the premise is that everything that exists must have a cause, the universe exists, therefore something must have caused the universe. If that causer exists, then it must have a cause (ad infinitum). And if it doesn't have a cause, by the premise, it doesn't exist. Taking it logically and seriously, the argument from creation proves that God does not exist. So its existence is not obvious at all. And if it doesn't want us to know it, why are we making up so many stories about it from place to place, time to time?
I'd venture a probability contrary to Pascal's Wager: no matter what you believe about deities, none of it matters at all. It's all beyond knowledge. Here's another one: there are so many gods and religions, the likelihood that any one of them is real is extremely small, and believing in any one risks the wrath of the real one, so you're better off pleading ignorance. Besides, how could anyone know the supernatural?
Aside from the god theology, among the oddest religious beliefs are intelligent design and the afterlife, two notions that seem most puzzling, or, to be less euphemistic, incoherent.
I get the design part of "intelligent design" but the design doesn't seem intelligent or even intelligible, so why is it called "intelligent"? My goal is not to defame but rather to suggest that religion should embrace the sciences, not reject them. Religion would be much more beautiful and convincing and spiritually valuable if it did. I want to show that religion trying to play science leads to blasphemy. I'm going to be plain, now, because there really is a blasphemy problem here that needs to be confronted.
Is there something intelligent in having buttholes throughout the animal kingdom? And constant pissing and crapping across the beauty of nature? Is that some deep mystery like the mystery of existence, of the universe, like why there's something and not nothing? The great butthole mystery? I don't mean to be irreverent. On the contrary, anyone who attributes the ubiquity of the butthole to the deity is surely beyond irreverent. It's more like blasphemy. Yes, I fully agree that it is a mystery, a mystery indeed, given an omnipotent creator with such a propensity for the butthole. It's an unintelligible propensity. This so-called intelligent design raises more questions than it answers, and this question in particular can only have absurd and embarrassing answers. Maybe it's our fault. If we celebrated and worshipped the butthole, maybe it would make more sense to us. After all, de gustibus non est disputandem, there's nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so. We've been neglecting the sacrament of holy crap.
I must be missing something. I find it incomprehensible that anyone could believe in so-called intelligent design and believe that it is intelligent, since it's so unintelligible and uninformative. It's often observed that members of a community are expected to subscribe to absurdities as a way of indicating solidarity and trustworthiness -- if you'll say anything for the group, you can be relied upon by the group. But surely they don't expect outsiders to believe this in-group willful nonsense? But they do -- that's part of the solidarity and trust. What a mess of a species we are, playing social games not just with habits, norms, dress and such rites, but even with information and knowledge. That's crazy. Maybe AIs can do a better job at being a cognitive species.
Natural selection, on the other hand, gives us this extraordinary explanation of the how and why of all things butthole. And it provides an appearance of intent or goal without actually intending or having a goal. That is, it gives us the sense of guidance, value and merit without any intelligence at all. It not only explains the pervasiveness of the butthole, but also why we don't find it aesthetic (surely even butthole lovers don't find them pretty). Isn't that the beauty of natural selection? The world appears intelligent without intended design or intelligence? It's kind of amazing, almost miraculous.
So much for so-called "intelligent" design. It explains nothing, and raises unanswerable questions, blasphemous questions! Not even an atheist would accept "God loves buttholes". Religionists have got to have a better answer.
Please notice that it's not the atheist who raises the butthole problem. It's the intelligent design advocate who raises it. That guy is a blasphemer! It's the intelligent design advocate who believes God loves buttholes. I firmly believe that no god with any dignity would create a world of buttholes. And please don't misunderstand me -- the problem is not buttholes, it's that intelligent design raises more questions than it answers, including this embarrassing blasphemy. The answer to the butthole question is answered by Darwin. So if you believe in God, why reject Darwin when he's got your way out of "God created the butthole" problem? Why aren't the religionists grateful to the 19th century English taxonomist?
What about the afterlife? Now, if natural selection gives us all our emotions & drives to support our survival and replication, what exactly happens in the afterlife? If all the emotions are driving us to survive, once we've unsurvived, what are these emotions for? Is heaven a state of non emotion, like the long sleep of the Lutherans? Or is it perpetual bliss like crack without the hangover down? Is crack-high now the ultimate goal?
Apparently so. In heaven we marvel and adore the greatness and beauty of the deity's design and love. Now, here the butthole problem is the least of it. I mean, I can imagine icons of buttholes, the adoration of the hole, the mystery, replete with incense, holy water and a veil of gauze. It's a lot harder to do all that with the problem of evil and "nature red in tooth and claw".
I can see why people want to believe in heaven. We all want to bring back dead loves. But it makes no sense. Do we meet them again as they died -- bombed to bits by Israeli ADF -- or at some choice moment of the past? Their choice or ours? Sounds so much like wishful thinking you'd almost want to conclude that this whole afterlife thing is just that: wishful thinking. Ya think?
It seems to be characteristic of humans that we think only so far as we want something -- like confirmation bias -- and once we've got the idea or evidence we're looking for, thinking abruptly stops there.
A young friend asked me about the stories of the dying who, as they faded off from the world and into the infinite, saw their dead relatives, and remembered this when they were resuscitated. Well, what do you think you'd have in your mind's eye as you fade to death if you believe in the afterlife populated with your most indelible memories, namely your dead relatives? There isn't even a mystery here.
It's all beautiful and gratifying and hopeful and inspiring and loving and joyous ... as long as you don't think too hard. Maybe we shouldn't think so hard. Maybe life will be better if I believe that my favorite cousin is still out there somewhere watching me write about him. (It actually makes me sadder -- because that happy wishful thought is followed immediately by disappointment that actually, he's nowhere and most especially, not here and I can't even tell him so, I'm alone with that knowledge unable to share.) I even have my own version of a heaven I'd be willing to pass eternity in: As You Like It's Forest or Arden, a crew of random fellow travelers thrown together with an uncertain future and lots of problems to solve. As long as the problems keep coming, and the exiles too, I'd be engaged and rapt maybe forever with good company. And it would make perfect sense that no one there would be annoying or stupid or disrespectful. Kinda like Peter Pan's Lost Boys or a band of hunter-gatherers, but with lots to read and tools for scientific research.
Again, I do like some religions a lot -- the mystery, the ritual, the pageantry, the music, the art and architecture, the inspiration, the glory and grandiosity. I'm an admirer of all those dynamics. It's just the doctrines that don't cut it, and when people take those seriously, or promote them, that's when I lose patience.
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