Life, The Universe, and Spirituality

Like many people, I tend to mentally divide my life into periods. There are different classifications involving mental, social and physical phases, with some overlap. One such classification, something that I never really had a name for before, but for the purpose of this post I will call it my view of the big picture. It has gone through a couple of different stages. What I mean by my view of the big picture is a combination of my views on the Universe in terms of the materialistic, rationalistic and spiritual. It also includes how I think about what the rest of humanity, both historically and currently, has to say about these things.

Definitions are important here, so for the purposes of this post, when I use the term “spiritual,” I am referring to beliefs and feelings indicating that there are forces in operation within the Universe that are beyond the realm of the scientific method and that these forces exhibit a tangible and noticeable effect upon our everyday lives and/or our fate after we are deceased. I know that there are much more expansive definitions of this word. In fact, I often use these more expansive definitions myself, but for clarity I will stick to this limited definition here.

What I would call the first step in my path to my current view of the big picture was reached more or less as follows: I grew up in a household that espoused the Catholic religion. Furthermore, many of our friends were members of various Christian denominations or were Jews, who espoused a belief in God in various intensities. In addition, a significant percentage of adults around me expressed a belief in other supernatural phenomena such as ghosts, premonitions of the future, etc.  Most of these adults did not generally attempt to justify their belief systems through reasoned discourse. Instead, they were generally uncomfortable by the act of questioning. I was exposed to some dissenters, however. There were several adults who questioned the existence of God as well as of supernatural phenomena.

Very early on, I began to gravitate towards the skeptics, and I began to read books and watch television programs that advocated scientific and analytical thinking. I began to question religion as a spiritual basis underlying the Universe and eventually settled into what I would call strong agnosticism trending towards atheism. As time went by, I moved closer to an atheistic worldview. This is what I like to think about as my first major step in formulating my view of the big picture.

Like many people I know, I settled into what I would call a rationalistic and scientific thought system. This was not the cold and mechanistic viewpoint that Western popular culture all too often painted as caricatures. Instead, I was, and still am, bursting with awe at the wonders of the Universe and strive to find my place in it. Furthermore, I always held to the firm conviction that the things that make life worth living were human values such as kindness, love, morality, dignity, etc. and that human beings needed to be valued.

However, like many adherents of similar worldviews, I held, if not with contempt, a lack of respect and a wariness for views of reality that tended towards the spiritual and that relied heavily on faith. Occasionally, I was even downright hostile.  Unfortunately, for myself and for others with similar mindsets, this led to a kind of “us verses them” mentality. I, of course, identified with the rationalists. “Them” were the folks who were more spiritually inclined.

My view of human history was common with non-believers.  It was the story of rational people being mercilessly persecuted by religious fanatics. I saw religion and spirituality constantly at war with the truth and those who sought it.  Throughout history, skeptics were persecuted, murdered and tortured by religious people. Religious texts were, at best, benign fairy tales and, at worst, guideposts to a horrendous morality.

Then, there came the second big intellectual step for me. No, I did not convert; nor did I surrender my firm beliefs. Instead, I realized that the world was not such a simple place after all. The state of things is not so black and white.

My moving into this next level did not displace my core beliefs, though it did eliminate some of their sharp edges. I am still a rationalist, and I do not believe that any kind of spirituality can describe any of the hard facts underlying the Universe. Nor do I believe that a balance between science and spirituality can tell us anything about the nature of reality. I do, however, despite my disagreement with a good portion of the various worldviews, know that I can learn a lot when interacting with people who have a more spiritual outlook than myself. Of course, examining our history and culture in terms of religion and spirituality is also a valuable endeavor.

 One of main things that led to my changed outlook was my realization of just how complex the world is. An illustration of such complexity as it relates to this topic is best drawn by a series of examples. Below are more or less random thoughts that I believe will illustrate my point.

For instance, though I find that some of the moral systems espoused in some revered religious texts to be reprehensible, other moral teachings have represented in vital ways posts and cornerstones of human ethics. Though I find some of what is advocated in the Old Testament and in the Koran abominable, to their credit, modern believers almost universally, consciously or unconsciously, reject such immorality. Personally, I know folks whose faith has helped spur them into very noble acts. While religion has often repressed science and rationality, during the Dark Ages the Catholic Church was instrumental in preserving knowledge and culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche, with some justification, grouped Christianity and other religions in with liberal democracy as well as as with the human tendencies for pity and the desire for equality. The famous philosopher and some thinkers who came after him were contemptuous of these beliefs and rejected them, labeling them as a “slave morality.” I find myself siding with the adherents of religion on this one.

 My fellow secularists are very quick to point out how war, murder, rape, torture, etc. have been perpetuated in the name of religion throughout history. They have, but we often forget that at other times, particularly during the French Revolution and under Communist regimes, folks who claimed to be adherents of a rational worldview carried on all sorts of oppression with just as much ferocity and barbarity as the religious fanatics. I still believe that, generally, the path to a better world leads down the path of secular humanism, but as the above illustrates, it is not so simple.

 While such folks seemed to be sparse during my childhood and adolescence, the world is full of believers of various faiths or thought systems who think a lot about their beliefs and who argue for them using logic and reason. Some of these people are a lot smarter than I am. In addition, there are also many out-of-the-box thinkers out there that do not easily fall into any one category or another in regards to these beliefs.

 Of course, as a person who prides himself on being open minded, I must also leave the door open to the possibility that I may be wrong about a lot this. When I look at people with contrary views, I see a lot of compelling arguments being made by very bright people.

 So exactly what is my modified view of the big picture? I believe that the reality of the Universe, as well as our lives, can only be explained by using scientific methods. I strongly doubt the existence of God, but I acknowledge the possibility.  However, while it has spurred plenty of horrific acts, religion and spirituality have at other times done plenty of good. Adherents of reason and rationality, while having a net positive effect on humanity, have also done terrible things. People of faith and believers in spiritualism, just like non-believers, represent the spectrum of intellect that ranges from the unthinking to the brilliant.

Human history, culture and our systems of thought are rich and vast. Engaging in too much overt hostility and being closed-minded about such a great part of this aspect of the world and humanity is not the path to personal enrichment. I am in no way advocating that anyone give up his or her personal beliefs, convictions or morals. I am advocating that people learn and strive to interact with the portions of the world and culture that we fundamentally disagree with.

The above represents personal observations. Many of my readers have very different beliefs and may thus conclude that I have reached the wrong conclusions. However, I hope, at the very least, to impart the sense that the world is a complicated place. Those who stand on opposite sides of the fence have a lot to learn from one another. Generalized opinions of religious, agnostic or atheist folks, as well as the histories and cultures that accompany such beliefs, are often too simplistic. While our core beliefs are important to us, they need not stop us from understanding the nuance and complexity inherent in the world. By looking at other worldviews from time to time, we can all be exposed to a more comprehensive view of the Universe in which we inhabit.

Dedicated to my sister Olivia, one of the skeptical bright lights of my childhood.

The Bible and the Koran

I have read and reread at least twice, all the books of the Bible. I have read the Koran twice and will likely go back to it at some time in the future. Since I will be sharing some of my opinions on these texts, in future blogs, I think that this would be a good time to present some of my general thoughts concerning these books.

It goes without saying that almost everything in the Bible and the Koran is of enormous significance. Much of it is brilliant literature. Many of the ideas invented and presented on its pages have played a vital part in the development of human ideas and philosophy. These works are a cornerstone in the great palace of human thinking. Both books are filled with wonderful, as well as terrible ideas. Any person, who wants to understand the world, would do well to read and to attempt to understand what is contained here.

However, as a source of truth about the physical world, I barley believe a single word contained in these works. While Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, etc. were likely real persons; their depictions in these books were fictional. These were interesting, compelling and magnificent characters; but they are essentially products of someone’s imagination.

I am essentially an atheist. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion has a fun little scale where a person can compare their beliefs on the existence of Deities. The scale runs from 1 to 7, with a sore of 1 representing the view that one is 100% certain that God exists and a score of 7 being 100% certain that she does not.  I come out as a 5 or 6 on the scale of 7. Dawkins would classify me as leaning towards being a de facto atheist.

If there is a God, there is not doubt that he, she or it, is not the very small and petty Divinity described in most of the world’s holy books. The more one learns about the natural world, Biology, Physics, Astronomy, Cosmology, etc., the more trivial and less important the God that man created in these fictional works appears to be. In the unlikely event that a supreme being exists, it is a God of Math and Physics. He is a creator of Black Holes, Quantum Physics and the double helix. She is not likely to be helping people to walk on water or build wooden arks and she is certainly not getting angry if people do not believe in her or draw pictures of her “prophet”.

I also find it difficult to use these writings as any kind of a moral compass. There are superbly great ideas contained here, but there are just as many terrible ones. It has become almost a cliché to say now, but it is true, that Yahweh of the Old Testament was more often then not, a petty, vain, frivolous, yet often very entertaining monster. The Koran espouses some very good things, such as toleration for Christians and Jews, almost as often as it advocates horrendous things, such as intolerance for many other belief systems or the enslavement of women. The God of the New Testament is certainly more beneficent that either Yahweh or Allah, but he is has similar moral issues such as threatening punishment for dissenting opinions as well as the tendency to support slavery.

I also find it impossible to view the Bible (or the Koran if we look at the Islamic text as a “Sequel” of sorts) as a coherent work. The God of the Old Testament is obviously not the same character as described in the Gospels. The God of Saint Paul, for that matter is very different from Jesus or his father as depicted in the Gospels. The philosophy of Ecclesiastes seems to be incompatible with just about everything else found in either the Old or New Testament. Allah of the Koran is different still.

Analyzing these Holy Books as literature, philosophy, and diverse works of cultural importance, and not as absolute truth, or as a single philosophy, is the only rational and coherent way to explore them. Examining these enormously significant works as such is vitally important, if one is to gain a minimum level of understanding of the world.