Church of the Churchless

Desiring God isn’t a proof of God

Oh, my God! I'm absolutely loving "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality." So much so, this morning I finished it, fueled by a strong cup of pre-meditation coffee and the joy of reading good writing.

As I said before, Andre Comte-Sponville has a wonderful approach to spirituality.

I started to say "in spite of the fact that he's a philosophy professor," but there's no spite involved here. Comte-Sponville's book springs as much from his life experience as his philosophical experience (assuming there's a difference between life and philosophy, which, really, there isn't – living includes everything).

There's so much that I like in these 206 pages, it's hard to know what to choose as a blog subject. Here's a rundown on a subchapter that made me go Oh, yeah, so true: "Desire and Illusion."

First, some personal sharing, because it relates to what Comte-Sponville is getting at. My parents divorced when I was just a few years old. I had no contact with my father until my mid-30s. No phone conversations. No letters. No visits.

Just a Christmas card, most years, with a small check and a single word: "John." Not, "love, John," or anything else. Just his first name.

So my father was a lot like God to me as I was growing up: unseen and unknown.

I believed he existed, because my mother told me a few things about him (not much, though). And I wanted to know him, because I felt that I was missing something – a lot, actually – by not having a father, like the rest of my friends did (divorce was much rarer in the 50's and 60's).

I'd lie in bed as a kid, talking to God, asking why I didn't have a father and requesting that one be sent to me, ASAP. But no response. From God, or my father. Until events led to me seeing my father for one hour.

Here's what I said at the end of that post:

When the door shut behind me and I started walking down the corridor to my rented car, I was so happy. Not happy that I had finally gotten to meet my father—happy that I would never have to see my father again.

Which I never did.

Moral to this story? If there is one, it's that fantasies aren't reality and what you get in life often is better than what you want in life. Growing up, I wanted my father. When I was grown up, that one hour with him taught me that I was hugely better off fatherless.

Now, we could psychoanalyze the relationship between my physical-father and Godly-father desires. But, let's not. Believe me, I've done a lot of that over my 59 years, and it doesn't lead to much. Everybody's childhood was screwed up somehow.

That's the nature of life, of reality, of existence. Imperfection. Suffering. Desires, some fulfilled, some unfulfilled.

Here's the beginning of Comte-Sponville's "Desire and Illusion" section:

Yes, I desperately wish that God existed, and I see this as a particularly convincing argument not to believe he does. This is only apparently contradictory. To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist? Personally, I would go even further and admit that I would definitely prefer that there be a god. This is just why, in my eyes, all religions are suspicious.

Isn't it amazing, a remarkable stroke of luck, the good news that every religion brings us: fulfillment of our deepest human desires is precisely how the cosmos has been fashioned, if we follow the tenets of a particular faith.

Now, what does religion tell us – and the Christian religion in particular? That we shall not die, or not really; that we shall rise from the dead and thus be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; that justice and peace will prevail in the end; and, finally, that we are already the object of an infinite love. Who could ask for more? No one, of course! This is what makes religion so very suspicious. As the saying goes, it is too good to be true!

If there's anything I've learned in my nearly six decades of life experience, it's that life doesn't always (or even usually) give me what I want. Hmmmm. I recall hearing that sentiment before.

Yet religions tell me that this evident fact actually is an illusion. I can have what I want; I just need to belly up to a particular religious bar and be served a divine drink that, Wow!, takes all my troubles away. Price: submission, faith, obedience.

What a deal! Like Comte-Sponville says, it seems too good to be true. For a good reason: almost certainly it isn't true.

I threw in "almost." I have to, just as Comte-Sponville does. Nobody knows whether God exists, what happens after death, if some religion really does have a corner on the Ultimate Truth market. We're simply talking about the preponderance of evidence here.

And that points to a different way of looking at life.

What I care about is not my own advantage, but truth – and nothing can guarantee that the two go hand in hand. Indeed, it is rather unlikely that they should, given the particular nature of my advantage and the universal nature of truth.

…Given an alleged reality that nothing attests but which corresponds to our most powerful wishes, we have every reason to suspect it of being the expression of those very wishes, and indeed (as Freud says) directly derived from them – to suspect it, in other words, of having the structure of an illusion.

…An illusion [quoting Freud] is "a belief derived from human wishes" – a desiring credo, you might call it, or a credulous desire.

…Thus illusion is not a particular sort of error; it is a particular sort of belief. To be deluded is to believe that something is true because one wants it to be true. Humanly speaking, nothing could be more comprehensible. Philosophically speaking, nothing could be more dubious.

Anything is possible.

My father could have turned out to be a sterling example of male humanity, simply one who, for some mysterious reason, chose to distance himself from me for some thirty years and engage in seemingly uncaring behavior (like never paying child support to my mother).

Likewise, God could turn out to be real, a being who loves us and will take care of us in every respect after we die, assuming we win his favor beforehand. Maybe God has his own reasons for not fulfilling our desires now. Maybe the cosmos really has been designed for our eternal, but not temporal, satisfaction.

Maybe. But it's doubtful.

"We are inclined by nature to find it easy to believe what we hope for, and hard to believe what we fear," Spinoza wrote in his Ethics. "Whence," he added, "the superstitions by which men are everywhere dominated." All the more reason to be wary of our beliefs, when they start resembling our hopes too closely!

Are you God? Take the test.

Lots of people believe that God can manifest in a human form.

So, why not yours or mine? Speaking for myself (though if I'm God, I'm really speaking for everybody), I'm hugely attracted to the notion that I'm worthy of worship.

Unfortunately, other people aren't as attuned to my potential divinity. Notably, my wife. For eighteen years I've been trying to convince her that the way I load the dishwasher is The Way It Should Be, by divine decree.

For some reason she can't recognize my husbandly perfection. So today I was excited to see a post on the Radhasoami Studies forum, "How to Tell Whether You Are God," anticipating that it could convince my wife that I am.

Big letdown. I scored zero. Here's the test.

Some individuals on this forum may have difficulty discerning whether
or not they are God in Human Form. The following easy test should
help you determine this.

1. Can you fly through the air, without an aircraft? Tornadoes don't
count. If you feel you can do this, try flying from home to New York
City to Los Angeles and back home, to confirm your capability in this
regard.

2. Can you dematerialize and rematerialize at any location, at will,
instantly? Try hopping to Istanbul, Belfast, Moscow, Toronto,
Auckland, Delhi and Ulan Bator.

3. Are you omniscient? Get the closing prices for all stocks on the
major US exchanges for the coming week, and post them on an
investment web site, in advance. Ask the readers to see whether you
are God in Human Form.

4. Can you resurrect the dead? Try resurrecting 14 famous people who
have died in the past year, and while you're at it, cure the medical
conditions (including old age) that caused their death. Then hold a
press conference in which you present them. Make sure to have a
medical doctor present to take DNA samples to confirm their identity.

5. Can you post to the Internet without using a computer? Try it.

6. Can you time-travel? Bring back some extinct species for the
perusal of scientists.

7. Can you materialize objects at will? Go to a homeless shelter, and
materialize one million dollars in $20 bills for each resident.

8. Are you perfect in mind and body? Take an IQ test and see whether
you get the highest possible score. Time how long it takes for you to
run a mile.

9. Are you invulnerable, like Superman? Try going through a wood
chipper.

Scoring: If you pass all the tests, if you are not God, at least you
are a contender. If you missed any questions, sorry!

Though this test is humorous, it's got a serious side. There really are people walking around today who believe that they are God. Many others revere a living human being who is considered to be an incarnation of God.

Yet godly characteristics or abilities are nowhere to be found. That's why I enjoyed this post by ratnagarrao. If God has come down to our level, shouldn't there be something miraculous in the air?

Of course, we can redefine "God" so that the meaning is equivalent to the qualities of whoever claims this title. I've been taking this approach when I tell my wife that how I load the dishwasher is the ideal way it should be loaded.

Then, after I see her shake her head, I step back and let her rearrange the plates, cups, and wine glasses.

Jellyfish and God, the differences

Main difference: jellyfish are real.

I'm so certain of this, today I sat for two hours on Maui's Napili Beach, watching terrific large boogie boardable waves from the sand, passing them by because of jellyfish warning signs that had been posted.

Having just invested a lot of time in pondering jellyfish, much more than I've ever done before, I've been trying to fathom what cosmic significance this dangerous sea creature (whose sting toxin supposedly is seventy-five percent as powerful as cobra venom) has for my spiritual development.

Assuming it has any at all. But it's no fun to go the nada route, so I'll assume my frustrating perch on the beach contains some sort of message for me.

What struck me, watching the waves crash into Napili Bay, is how virtually every beachgoer respected the warning signs – and, likely, word of mouth "jellyfish" messages.

Big waves usually bring out big wave players. Boogie boarders. Surfers. Bobbers. But today there were very few; none out where the waves were breaking; some close to shore. A big difference from other large wave days.

Lots of people consider science to be an unreliable way of knowing truth, compared with religion. However, when it comes to assessing the risk of venturing into water where jellyfish warnings have been posted, almost everybody uses the scientific method.

Including me. Sitting on the beach, desperately wanting to paddle out and catch some waves, I ran through the costs and benefits of taking a chance on the warning being spurious.

I pondered what little I knew about jellyfish. I talked the situation over with another man whose boogie board was sitting high and dry.

I remembered the Hawaiian adage, "If you don't see locals playing in the waves, usually there's a good reason why; don't be the first person out surfing or boogie boarding unless you're sure you know what the conditions in the water are."

In the physical world, by and large there are good reasons to go with the factual crowd. Studies have shown that group assessments of a situation are more accurate than the average person's (this is why the stock market is a decent predictor of the economic outlook).

So there I was, someone with a blog whose tagline is "Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence," sitting on the sand – going with the jellyfish warning-believing crowd.

Because material isn't spiritual.

When I know something is dangerous, and I've been told that this something has been sighted nearby, it makes sense to avoid it. If I see almost everyone else around me doing just that – staying away from it – my concern tends to be confirmed.

On the other hand, belief in God or other supernatural beings is a lot different. The beach could be plastered with "Warning: Devil in the water" signs, and I'd laugh right by them on my way into the ocean.

Yet the strange thing is, so many people believe them. Like, the Bible. Whereas they'll use logic, reason, and common sense when it comes to deciding whether to venture into a Maui bay, when it comes to religion blind faith rules.

Why don't believers go in the water even though a jellyfish warning is posted? Won't Jesus protect them? Supposedly he's going to save their souls after they die. Can't he save them from a jellyfish sting while they're alive?

Seeking answers to these questions, I checked out www.God.com this evening. I was curious to see which of the world's religions had the rights to this primo domain name. As I could have guessed, it was Christian evangelicals.

There's only six Q and A's on the web site, way less than the questions in my mind. One was germane to my jellyfish situation, though.

I am going through countless problems in my life. It seems to be one thing after the other. I pray every day that God will help me, but He doesn't seem to listen or do anything. Why doesn't God answer my prayers?

My problem precisely. Why the hell did God combine beautiful waves in Napili Bay with a jellyfish warning, when I've been praying for another day of good boogie boarding all week?

The answer started off in an discouraging fashion.

Sometimes when you pick up the telephone receiver to call someone, you find the line is dead. If you ignore this and just talk into the telephone anyway, will the person at the other end hear you and respond?

No, they won't. Because the line is dead and I'm talking to myself. If the God.com web site had ended its answer on this note, that would have been cool – a verification of my churchless leanings.

But it went on to explain why we don't get a response.

It is not that God cannot hear your prayers or that He does not want to listen; the problem lies in the individual: "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you."

Well, I'd consider this possibility if someone could show me God's face so I'd know what I'm separated from.

When I got back to our room I turned on my laptop, fired up Google, and found lots of images of jellyfish. Shouldn't God be at least as well-known as the Portuguese Man of War?

I found an earlier jellyfish warning that blamed the West Maui problem on southerly winds, which is the meteorological situation today. That's a reasonable explanation for why I was separated from the waves.

However, God.com didn't do nearly as well in explaining what I have to do to get together with God. Supposedly He won't listen to me until the barrier of my sins is broken down. Until that happens, my prayers are useless.

I need a relationship with God. Then He will pay attention to me. And how do I get our relating going?

To establish that relationship, you must first believe without any doubt that God exists.

Oh, come on, dude! The Bible says you created jellyfish, but I know way more about their existence than yours. That's crazy. How about showing me some skin (or whatever form you have)? Then I'll start believing in you.

At least a little bit.

The Mystical Mind of God

Last week I got a present: an email from someone who attached a wonderfully written essay, "The Mystical Mind of God."

I asked for permission to share it. Whatever you wish, came the reply, though please, if you do decide to do something, leave no footprints to my door.

So the author is anonymous. Here's the piece in Word and PDF formats. It's thoughtful and well worth reading.

Download the_mystical_mind_of_god.doc
Download the_mystical_mind_of_god.pdf

I enjoyed…

--the emphasis on Western mystics and thinkers, who tend to get short shrift in mystically-inclined writings

--how the author weaves together insights from theology, philosophy, psychology, and science

--the nicely fashioned prose, reflecting a pleasing blend of seriousness and "lightness of being"

--the observation that The Cloud of Unknowing was "written anonymously by a late fourteenth century monk (anonymous because his skin wasn't fireproof)."

--that the path to God begins and ends at an accessible point: now

Regarding the last point, I don't know if it's true. But it sure seems more plausible to me than all the religious teachings that would have us wend our way to God through time and space.

What do you think?

Skepticism is genuine faith

Fairly frequently people question, Why this Church of the Churchless blog? I've got an email in my "to reply" file that asks just this.

Why be critical of religion? Why discuss the believability of theological tenets, including those of the group to which I belonged for thirty years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas? Why place articles of faith under the looking glass of reality?

Because truth is worthy of veneration.

Now, some people consider that there is no such thing as objective truth, that reality is whatever we consider it to be. There's, well, some truth to this.

But you see – I've just made my point. Even the statement "there's no objective truth" has some truth content, or why say it?

For me it comes down to where my allegiance lies. I'm a semi-serious sports fan, paying special attention to the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers, two colleges within fifty miles of my home.

Depending on how well a U. of O. or OSU team is doing, I'll identify with it for a while. When the team wins, I feel good, because I've won also in some crazy sense. Losing, not so pleasant, for the same reason.

However, my genuine commitment is to the game, not teams. I enjoy the physical and psychological drama of sports, the ebb and flow of an event, how games are won and lost in such entertaining and interesting ways.

Other people are attached much more to a particular team, just as a religion attracts adherents for whom certain dogmas are the be-all and end-all of spirituality.

They aren't committed to the game of finding truth, but to identifying with a group that claims without justification to be the winner.

I say "without justification" because there's no proof that any religion or spiritual path is more in tune with a metaphysical reality than its competitors.

That's why four years ago I said on my other blog, "Heresy is heretical."

Usually we think of heretics in the realm of religion, not of science. Someone who disagrees with a well-accepted scientific "truth" (using this word advisably, since all scientific truth is open to refutation) usually is considered to be wrong, not heretical. And if a truth, or law of nature, isn't well-accepted because it hasn't been scientifically proven, then heresy is unthinkable; when there is no orthodoxy, there can be no heresy.

I've been enjoying the comment discussion on my "Playing fair with words" post. Some has dealt with the issue of believers feeling superior to non-believers, because they've been chosen for God's team.

In the case of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, people attending a gathering were classed as either "seekers" or "satsangis," depending on whether they'd been initiated into the fold or not. The obvious implication was that once you became a satsangi, you'd found.

Problem is, there was precious little evidence that anything uniquely godly, spiritual, or mystical had indeed been found by the chosen initiates – who supposedly were destined to join the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization because eons ago they'd been "marked" by God in some mysterious fashion.

I don't believe in that proposition anymore, even though I'm supposed to be one of the blessed chosen souls. But I've got faith. Faith in truth.

Faith that somewhere, somehow, someday – and that "where," "how," and "day" is here and now, as well as there and then – humankind will come closer to the truth about ultimate reality.

How do we get there? By questioning, being skeptical about hypothesized truths until there's reason to embrace them

I quoted this passage from A.H. Armstrong, a classics scholar, in my earlier post. It resonates with me as much now as it did then.

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion. Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to "Thus saith the Lord" is "Does he?," asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic "testing to destruction" of the claims and credentials of the person or persons making this enormous statement.

Nicely said. Deifying a human opinion indeed is blasphemy, if God exists. Blessed are the skeptics, for they shall inherit genuine truth.

No, Virginia, Santa Claus is just as unreal as God

I've managed to only read the dreadful "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" piece a few times in my 59 years. It pops up each Christmas day in every newspaper that I've subscribed to. I notice it, but rush on to more important stuff – like the comics and sports page.

Today I decided to see if I could read this response to an eight year old girl, first published in the New York Sun in 1897, without getting sick to my churchless stomach.

I suspected that this syrupy drivel wouldn't go down so well now that I've become much more of a religious skeptic. I was right. My granddaughter is just nine months old, but I'm going to warn her parents now: Don't ever let her read this crap!

Understand, I've got nothing against Christmas. Except everything about it that has to do with Christ.

If people would just leave out the whole ridiculous fantasy thing about a guy being born of a virgin and forced by his father in heaven to die miserably on a cross because some chick ate an apple a long time ago which pissed God off so much he had to sacrifice his only son to make things right, then we could celebrate the holidays in a fine fashion, just as the pagans intended before Christians and Big Business messed things up.

Here are my comments, in red italics, on Francis Church's attempt to keep Virginia O'Hanlon believing in both Santa Claus and God.

-----------------------------------

"Dear Editor: I am 8 years old.
A good age to start learning about reality.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
They're catching on to truth. Good for them.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
We've come a long way from this blind belief in media reporting. Thank god. Except if there really was a good god, Fox News wouldn't exist.
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
The truth. This is what Virginia wants. But she gets bullshit.

"Virginia O'Hanlon.
"115 West Ninety-Fifth Street."

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Otherwise known as "The Enlightenment" and the "Age of Science." They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. Compared to what? In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Ah, the B.S. begins. Could this "intelligence" be, perhaps, just maybe, God? Methinks that's what Francis is getting at.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Horrible reasoning. What logical connection is there between a fat man in a red suit who slides down chimneys and love? Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. Highly debatable. I sort of suspect that if all the children in the world vanished, that'd have just a bit more effect on things than if belief in an imaginary man went away. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. So tell me, Francis, how much enjoyment would you have with no senses and no sight? That's called a coma, basically. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! Well, gosh, I don't! And probably Virginia doesn't either. Do children have to believe in everything imaginary to get a glimpse of your fabulous "eternal light"? You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. So how does anybody know about them? Oh, right. They imagine them. But how does this make them real? Dude, get real. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. Well, if anybody can, I'd bet on you, Francis. But I don't want you infecting children with a belief that the unseen and unseeable is more important than the seen and seeable. That way lies fundamentalist religious madness.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. You lived before "atom smashers" (particle accelerators) Francis, so I'll give you a bit of a pass on this falsity. Still, even back then you knew that science was revealing all sorts of previously unseen wonders. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. Faith. Finally, the word comes in after Francis has softened Virginia up. Accept an unseen Santa Claus and it isn't much of a leap to embrace…

No Santa Claus! Thank God! Oh, yeah, now we're getting down to it! God! And what do people say about God? he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. Hard to tell who the "he" is now. Santa Claus, or God. Francis tries to merge the two, knowing that if children give up a belief in one imaginary unseen entity, there's no telling what other blind faiths will bite the dust next.

-----------------------------------

Today I also read a wonderful essay posted at The Daily Kos, "A Dog at Christmas." This is a tale I'd much rather have my granddaughter hear. It's mostly about how dogs – and wise humans – don't pay attention to the fantastical aspects of Christmas, just what they can sense and see.

A sample:

This of course all makes perfect sense, as my dog is not Saved, and would therefore have no reason to suspect Christmas was anything more than another day. Dogs have yet to have anyone die for their sins, and are therefore, according to most theologians, banned from heaven along with all other animals, plants, rocks, and the vast majority of human beings. I have never tried to explain heaven to my dog, and am not sure I could if I tried: aside from the language problem, I have my doubts that my dog would even accept the basic premise. Dogs tend to be literal creatures, not prone to belief in anything they cannot smell, hear, see, or bite.

You can explain the concept of cow or skunk or deer or snake all you want, but the dog will not understand any of it until it suddenly happens upon one or the other of them in a field. Ah ha!, the dog will say. This is something new! And then the dog will classify it according to the very simple and entirely sufficient rules passed down by dogs from generation to generation. They will file it away in the parts of their brains that organize things into bigger than me or smaller than me, dangerous or not dangerous, delicious or not delicious, and so on, and then get on with their lives.

So I am not sure that a dog would understand the central concept of heaven, which is that God is so magnificent, magnanimous, and kind that He created an entire universe for us, surrounding a planet of immeasurable nuance and beauty, with more hidden meadows and grand vistas and deep, river-carved canyons than any one of us could explore in a hundred lifetimes, and He gave us existence itself, and that he is furthermore so magnificent, magnanimous and kind that He then devised a plan to save some of us from this selfsame miserable rathole of a universe he created and put us somewhere else, upon our death -- a place of brilliant light, and fluffy clouds, and absolutely no pain, or frustrations, or sadness, or embarrassment, or surprises, or explorations, or consequences.

Lastly, here's another cynical take on "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Intelligence analysts assess the evidence for God

I wish this would happen – competent, professional, skilled intelligence analysts sitting around a table, sifting through factual evidence for the existence of God, in the same fashion as was done recently with the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concerning Iran's nuclear weapons program.

I'd love to be able to listen to the discussion. And see what evidence would be considered worthy of supporting a "Yes, God exists" assessment.

It'd be slim to non-existent, for sure.

Just as the evidence for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was. Yet the United States intelligence community got that wrong. So why should anybody trust their current conclusion that Iran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003?

Or that God doesn't/does exist?

Well, today I heard Rand Beers of the National Security Network interviewed on talk radio. Beers has extensive national security experience and spoke knowledgeably about how the sixteen U.S. spy agencies did things differently this time.

Basically, they thought things through a lot more independently and critically. Beers said that alternative explanations for intelligence findings were actively explored, rather than trying to fit those findings into prior interpretative frameworks.

Sounds like good advice for anyone assessing the evidence for and against God's existence.

Yes, many have claimed to have received a divine revelation. That's a fact. But there are lots of ways of interpreting it.

I considered a few in my "Who is the guru?" post. By guru I meant anyone who is considered to be God in human form, or at least a conduit for God's messages, which naturally includes Jesus. I noted that Bart Ehrman, a Biblical scholar, says there are four options for considering who Jesus was.

Liar, lunatic, the Lord, or a legend. I added a fourth possibility for gurus: loyalist. Meaning, someone who doesn't speak the truth about what they know (or don't know) about God because it would threaten tradition and an organizational heritage.

Here's what Agence France-Presse (AFP) said in a story about the Iran National Intelligence Estimate:

Senior US intelligence officials said this week they were responding to new information, subjected to more rigorous analysis than in the past, in declaring with "high confidence" that Iran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003.

… And unlike 2002, when US intelligence officials complained of administration pressure to "cherry-pick" intelligence that supported going to war, the intelligence community this time has asserted its independence.

"This is ours," a senior intelligence official said this week, telling reporters that policymakers had no input in the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate, as the assessment is called.

The AFP story says that an expert had reached the same conclusion as the NIE two years earlier – that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons program so it could play by the rules while still maintaining a nuclear "breakout" option.

US intelligence failed to see it [the new Iran strategy] sooner, he said, because it was intent on finding evidence to support the assumption that Iran had a nuclear weapons program.

"But if you don't take that assumption and you look for an alternative explanation, it's relatively easy to find."

Exploring alternatives. Open-mindedness. Critical thinking. This is how truth is arrived at, whether worldly or godly. If a policy pronouncement or dogma is taken on faith, reality gets short shrift.

A bit over two years ago I was fired as a speaker by my spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas. The reason: my writings on this blog were making people uncomfortable.

In my opinion, that's a good thing. The person who is made most uncomfortable by me is, clearly, me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm an inveterate questioner and experimenter. I'm my mother's child, as I wrote about here and here. She loved to debate, to learn, to explore new territory in the boundless World of Knowledge.

She died not knowing whether God exists, or not. Just as we all will. The difference is that most people uncritically accept the religious dogma they've been given rather than challenging it. My mother didn't. She never stopped searching for truth that could be counted on, not merely believed.

This is just what intelligence analysts do. The competent ones, at least.

Question, question, question. That's the only way answers will be found.

Fifty proofs that God is imaginary

Ah, it feels great to have my faithlessness freshened.

Thanks to God is Imaginary, I've been able to browse through cleansing pools of skepticism – proofs (some more persuasive than others) that the Big Guy Upstairs is a figment of religious imagination.

The ones I looked at resonated with me. Proof #11 -Notice that there is no scientific evidence is something I've pondered a lot. It goes along with Proof #43 - Realize that a "hidden God" is impossible.

Impossible for a Christian-sort of religion that posits a personal divinity who's interested in us, at least. For if God wants to be known via miracles, incarnations, and whatnot, then it sure seems like there should be substantive signs of this being's interactions with the world.

In fact, there aren't any.

Prayers come in for especially strong mocking, earning the primo position: Proof #1 - Try praying. Over on a companion web site, Why Won't God Heal Amputees?, I perused the executive summary and noticed "the best optical delusion in the world!."

Yeah, it's good all right. And I've fallen for it myself more than once.

Nice site. I appreciated the Resources for Rational People – a fine compendium of web sites, blogs, books, videos, forums, and such. A cornucopia of non-dogmatism.

Spinoza’s God is Einstein’s God. And, mine.

I'm a long ways – a very long ways – from sharing Albert Einstein's understanding of the universe. But when it comes to Einstein's religious bent, we're almost soul brothers. Just as, I suspect, many other churchless people are.

As described in a TIME article, "Einstein and Faith," in 1930 Einstein wrote a credo called "What I Believe." It ended with this oft-quoted passage about what he meant when he called himself religious.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

However, many people still wanted a simple answer to the question of whether he believed in God. Rabbi Goldstein, an Orthodox Jewish leader, sent a telegram to Einstein: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid. 50 words." Einstein used about half of his allotment.

I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

So what is Spinoza's God? Basically, nature. Spinoza, a seventeenth century heretical Jewish philosopher, didn't want anything to do with a transcendent God who sits up in the heavens and guides the goings-on down here on Earth. His God is immanent in everything that exists.

I'm reading Matthew Stewart's "The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World." Stewart says:

In Spinoza's view, to put it simply, God and Nature are not and never will be in conflict for the simple reason that God is Nature…The "Nature" in question here is not of the blooming and buzzing kind (though it would include that, too). It is closer to the "nature" in "the nature of light" or "the nature of man" —that is, the "nature" that is the subject of rational inquiry.

However, it's easier to point to what Spinoza's God isn't, than to what it is, because the philosopher leaves us guessing about some of God's subtler qualities. However, Stewart says, this much is clear:

Spinoza's God is not the God of Sunday school and Bible readings. It is not the kind of supernatural being who wakes up one morning, decides to create a world, and then stands back at the end of the week to admire his achievement. In fact, God has no "personality" at all: it isn't male or female; it has no hair, likes or dislikes, is not right- or left- handed; it does not sleep, dream, love, hate, decide, or judge; it has no "will" or "intellect" in the way we understand those terms.

Well, if God is Nature, where's the need to add something abstract called "God" to the concrete reality of the natural world? I find myself asking this question quite often, generally to myself. For I'm fond of using "God" to mean the totality of everything in existence.

When I type out or speak that word, "God," increasingly it seems unnecessary to me. Why don't I simply say "reality," "existence," or "cosmos"? It's as if I've broken up with someone once dear to me and I can't bring myself to take her photo off of the bedside table.

If we no longer have a relationship, why am I still relating?

Once in a while I also find myself talking to the guru who I used to believe was part and parcel of my innermost being. Now I don't. Yet out of habit I sometimes have a (one-sided) conversation with him.

Of course, now and then I do that with my mother, who also is dead, and I have almost zero confidence that she's capable of hearing me.

So I'm having to face some contradictions in myself. Which is a good thing. More and more I catch myself when I start to fall back into old anthropomorphic religious habits, such as looking upon really real reality as being something transcendent and apart, rather than right here and now.

Stewart asks:

According to Spinoza, God or Nature causes the things of the world in the same way that the nature of a coffee, for example, causes it to be black. But we do not usually say that the nature of coffee is divine, so why should we say that Nature is God?

In the Ethics [Spinoza's main writing], as a matter of fact, one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance," or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. So why use the term "God" at all?

Looking over Einstein's thoughts about God, religion, and theology, I strongly suspect that he too mostly used the word out of habit and respect for social convention. "God" is a flimsy abstract conception that pales in comparison to the power and glory of nature. Which, naturally, includes us and indeed is us.

Einstein:

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

… A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Some Radhasoami UK Facebook excerpts

There have been some interesting recent comments from Osho Robbins, plus equally interesting comments on his comments.

One of which was mine, where I put up some links to a UK Facebook group that Osho Robbins posts on frequently. (See my June 9 comment on this post.)

I just realized that you have to sign up for Facebook before you can browse around the Radhasoami group. Since that is a bit of a pain, and some won't be willing to do it, I'll copy in one of Osho Robbins' posts (see continuation below) on "The Nature of God--Oneness or Nothingness."

I agree that whatever "God" or ultimate reality is, this supremely supreme whatever seemingly is beyond each and every concept about it.

However, I can't help but wonder whether those concepts include the content of Osho Robbin's post, what I'm writing now, and everything else we can say about what can't be said.

That said, I agree with some of Osho Robbins' take on enlightenment that I found on his web site.

But can you learn the secret of true happiness and living a fulfilled life from Osho Robbins via an intensive two-day workshop? Well, if you go let me know.

Atheists crush Christians at “Does God Exist?” debate

Naturally, it was no contest. There's no way a couple of fundamentalist Christians were going to best the Rational Response Squad on an ABC Nightline face-off over scientific evidence for the existence of God.

(These are the guys who talked me into condemning myself to hell for a free DVD.)

I haven't watched all of the video of the debate, You Tube'd versions of which are available at BSAlert.com. But I've seen enough to agree with the proposition that "the match was a slaughter and Ray and…Kirk [the Christians]...were left bleeding and wounded."

Ray and Kirk weren't supposed to use the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. They claimed they'd provide scientific evidence for the existence of God (the Christian God, I assume).

So I watch the (privately filmed) video of the debate on the Rational Responder web site. And I see one of the true believers, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, holding up a image of the "Mona Lisa," claiming that wherever there is a painting there must be a painter.

Huh? That's the proof? Dude, that's so lame.

Like Sapient, one of the Rational Responders, said, with a painting you can see the canvas, the paints, the brush strokes. You can also meet painters of paintings, take photographs of them at work, talk with them about their artistry.

The universe exists. Existence exists. This doesn't mean that there was a creator of creation. Or that this Master Painter is a personalized being, rather than a universal power.

Sapient asked what the creator of God is. Good question. If an answer were to be attempted, a follow-up would be forthcoming: What created the creator of God?

I've little doubt that a few decades, or centuries, or millennia from now (sooner the better), debates like this one will be viewed as curious relics from pre-scientific times when humans held exceedingly curious notions about the cosmos.

As Christopher Hitchens puts it in his book, "God is Not Great":

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.

It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs).

Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think – though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one – that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.

Until people see the light of reality, instead of the darkness of religion, it's incumbent that those of us on the less shadowy side of the divide challenge those who would keep us mired in superstition, irrationality, and addiction to blind faith.

Courtesy of BSAlert, this YouTube video shows a woman confronting the fundamentalist Christians at the Nightline debate (which was held in a Manhattan Baptist church, not exactly neutral ground).

I love how she refuses to let the believers get away with not answering her question. She notes that they'd just praised how God so wonderfully created the human eye, nose, mouth and such. The woman asks, "What about cancer? How is this part of a perfect creation?"

Excellent question. Which the Christians are utterly unable to answer, except by meandering into some blather about suffering being part of God's plan, and how the Bible tells us that we started off perfect and then fell from grace.

She shakes her head, looks understandably irked, then rises to interrupt the blather and ask her question again. Beautiful. I sorely wish she could be at every press conference President Bush holds. They'd sure be a lot more interesting (and informative) if she was there.

Is God real?

It warmed my agnostic heart to see that this week's issue of Newsweek had "Is God Real?" on the cover. Usually news magazines run religion-friendly puff pieces around Easter and Christmas.

Kudos to Newsweek for asking the tough question. Which, of course, can't be answered.

However, this won't stop hundreds of millions of Christians from going to church tomorrow and glorying in the resurrection of someone who may or may not have actually existed, and is considered to be the son of a God who may or may not be real.

That's too many "may's" for me to take the occasion seriously. Indeed, it's almost comic that after more than two thousand years of fervent believing and God, show us a sign, there hasn't been a definitive one.

So the Newsweek article can quote Rabbi Jacob Heschel as saying:

[God] did not make it easy for us to have faith in him, to remain faithful to him. This is our tragedy: the insecurity of faith, the unbearable burden of our commitments. The facts that deny the divine are mighty, indeed; the arguments of agnosticism are eloquent, the events that defy him are spectacular…Our faith is fragile, never immune to error, distortion, or deception. There are no final proofs for the existence of God, Father and Creator of all.

Jon Meacham, the article's author, concludes: "No final proofs—there it is, the ultimate caveat. Doubt and faith are not at war; they are parts of the same whole."

Astute observation, Jon. The only difference between a believer and an agnostic is that the former isn't willing to admit that he doesn't know whether God is real, while the latter honestly testifies to his own unknowing. This makes the agnostic more honest and humble than the believer.

And possibly truer to God, if such a being exists.

For since no one knows what God is like—surmises and guesses being the currency of every religion—it's just as reasonable to assume that the Almighty is most pleased with the questioning spirit of agnostics who make good use of their God-given rational intelligence rather than naively latching onto nonsensical superstitions.

Meacham writes:

To base one's behavior on a blind acceptance of words put down long ago, however revered those words are, is an abdication of reason and responsibility—and reason and responsibility are, for many believers, gifts from God. Does a Christian in our time really think that, as Saint Paul argued, slavery is divinely ordained?

Every Christian, no matter how devout he or she may be, picks and chooses what to believe in the Bible. An agnostic like me does the same. I simply choose not to believe in the passages that tell me I have to believe in them. That's like going to a used car lot and having the salesman tell you, "Every automobile here is in great running order, trust me on that."

I'd rather kick the tires myself, thank you. Self-substantiating claims such as "We know Jesus died for our sins because the Bible tells us so" have a truth value of precisely zero for me.

There's also a debate between pastor Rick Warren and atheist Sam Harris in the Newsweek issue. Harris runs argumentative circles around Warren, in my utterly personal opinion.

For example, Warren notes that when Jesus says "I am the only way to God. I am the way to the Father," he is either lying or he's not. Well, of course he is. So what? Harris points out that "many, many other prophets and gurus have said that," which is absolutely true. Jesus has a lot of company when it comes to claiming to be the only way.

Warren also fell back onto the frequently heard "atheists are just as dogmatic as believers." No, they're not, Rick.

Atheists and agnostics are firm in their commitment to not accepting a theological proposition as being true unless there's some solid evidence for it. This is entirely different from having faith in dogma that lacks any experiential, observational, or even logical support.

No one knows whether God is real. Atheists and agnostics know that they don't know. Believers pretend they do. Like Socrates in Plato's Apology, this gives the sincere not-knowers a leg up on the pretenders. Socrates speaks of a man who had an undeserved reputation for wisdom:

Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him.

More than slightly, I'd say. A lot more.

God-shaped hole is as big as our beliefs

It's a poetic notion: there's a God-shaped hole at the heart of my being. That's why I'm always restless, continually looking for something more, ceaselessly trying to find the very thing that will fill my cup of happiness to the brim.

Catholic theologian John F. Haught speaks about this supposed urge for the infinite in a What is Enlightenment? interview (January-March 2007 issue).

Sometimes people ask, "What is the evidence that the infinite exists?" For Augustine and for many religious people throughout the ages, the best evidence is the utter restlessness of the human heart. You could extend that also to the restlessness of the intellect itself.

We all realize that no matter how much we know, there is yet more to be known; we all realize that no matter how much we get in life, how much we have, how much we possess, we are never fully filled up by it. So there is, in a sense, a God-shaped hole at the heart of our being. That's what Augustine was saying—our hearts are restless until we rest in the infinite.

No, that's an unjustified assumption. It's truer to say, "Our hearts are restless until they are at rest."

I know this, because I frequently experience short-lived restlessness reliefs. When I take the first sip of a vanilla latte. When I start watching a new episode of "24." When I pause to look at the full moon over Spring Lake during a nighttime dog walk.

I don't feel like I'm being filled with the infinite in these moments. Quite the contrary. I've immersed myself in the concrete here and now. Resting on that firm foundation, I feel at peace.

For a while. Haught correctly points to the evanescence of my Ah, so good states of being. As soon as the closing credits of a "24" episode flash across the screen, I'm wishing that it were already the next Monday night.

The root of my restlessness is, of course, my belief that in seven days "24" will resume its progress as scheduled through Jack Bauer's terrorist-fighting day. I anticipate a projected future and want it to happen now. Since the future comes in its own sweet time, a "24" shaped hole forms in the heart of my being, where it stays until 9:00 pm on another Monday rolls around and I'm once again contentedly sitting in front of the TV.

Add together all of my unfulfilled desires, and to the religiously minded that's a "God-shaped hole." However, to its credit this Christian web site notes that Pascal (one of the original sources of this concept) speaks of the universal seeking for happiness, not God.

Many people, including Pascal, believe that only God can permanently fulfill the yearning of a restless heart. Since our desires are limitless, only infinity is capable of filling the happiness void that always seems to be either right with us or just around the corner.

Well, here's another way of looking at the situation: when we assume that God is the missing piece to the puzzle of our lives, we're just adding one more unfulfilled desire to an already lengthy Want List. High-definition television, remodeled bathroom, ten pound weight loss, satisfying romantic relationship…knowing God.

A happiness hole is formed when what I want and what I have don't coincide. Making coffee in the morning, I think "Got to get the newspaper." But I haven't finished with the coffee yet. So I feel a tinge of restless anxiety: I'm already behind on the day's to-do list!

However, that restlessness is my own creation. It isn't a God-shaped hole. It's a Brian-shaped hole. When I focus on simply measuring out the organic ground coffee and filling the carafe with reverse osmosis-purified water, I don't feel a lack in my life.

After all, my life is always being fully lived. There's never a void in my life that needs to be filled with living. If there were, I'd be dead. Which is a void of a whole other nature.

So whenever there is a difference between what is actually happening, and what I believe should happen, a restlessness born of unmet expectation begins to whirl away in my psyche. The motion forms an is-should gap that I interpret as something wrong, a problem to be solved, a flaw needing fixing.

When the should side includes "be filled with God," that gap widens. Instead of simply lacking a newspaper, or the next "24" episode, I've got a seriously sinking feeling that I'm missing the most important thing in existence. Even worse, I lack any reliable knowledge about where to get my God infusion.

So the God-shaped hole at the heart of my being is as big as my unsubstantiated beliefs about God. It'd be crazy for me to believe that I'm missing out on a television program named "Happiest Show on Earth" when such doesn't exist. I could spend all day fruitlessly looking through the TV Guide, worrying that I'm missing out on some great entertainment.

Or I could watch what is actually on the air. And enjoy Robert Bly's versions of Kabir poetry. (Some people hate Bly's tinkering with Kabir, just as Coleman Barks' freestyling of Rumi ticks others off; I like this poem, no matter the source).

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no towrope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.

Does God exist? Science says no.

Proving (sort of) that no-god has a plan for my life, on Friday the mailman delivered two ungodly packages that I’d been anticipating for quite a while: Victor Stenger’s new book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis,” and the free DVD, “The God Who Wasn’t There,” I got for sending myself to hell via the blasphemy challenge.

Back in August I wrote about an advance description of Stenger’s book that led me to pre-order it. Good decision. I’m several chapters into “God: The Failed Hypothesis” and am enjoying a physicist’s scientific demolishing of the God hypothesis.

Stenger’s central thesis is that if God exists, there should be evident signs in the material world.

My analysis will be based on the contention that God should be detectable by scientific means simply by virtue of the fact that he is supposed to play such a central role in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans.

I’ll write more about the lack of evidence for God after I’ve finished the book. From what I’ve already read, though, it’s clear that Stenger has his evidentiary ducks in a row and succeeds in knocking down God’s presence in the physical universe.

But who is the God being debunked? For Stenger it is the Judeo-Christan-Islamic God, which gets a capital “G” in the book to differentiate this hypothesized divinity from other possible gods.

Here’s Stenger's listing of the attributes of the God that there is no scientific evidence for:

1. God is the creator and preserver of the universe.
2. God is the architect of the structure of the universe and the author of the laws of nature.
3. God steps in whenever he wishes to change the course of events, which may include violating his own laws as, for example, in response to human entreaties.
4. God is the creator and preserver of life and humanity, where human beings are special in relation to other life-forms.
5. God has endowed humans with immaterial, eternal souls that exist independent of their bodies and carry the essence of a person’s character and selfhood.
6. God is the source of morality and other human values such as freedom, justice, and democracy.
7. God has revealed truths in scriptures and by communicating directly to select individuals throughout history.
8. God does not deliberately hide from any human being who is open to finding evidence for his presence.

When I reached page 41 and read these attributes of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God (which sounded pretty accurate to me), I thought, “Hmmmm. This sure sounds like the God of Sant Mat also.”

Sant Mat (which means “teachings of the saints”) is usually thought of as an Eastern religion, since its roots are in Sikhism and Hinduism. The branch of Sant Mat that I joined in 1971, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is headquartered in India, where most initiates live.

Yet the eight attributes of God listed by Stenger describe the divinity worshipped by Sant Mat almost as well as they depict the Christian God.

This reflects the fact that some Eastern religious practices assume a personal dualistic God who stands apart from the cosmos, while some Western mystics (such as Meister Eckhart and Plotinus) wholeheartedly embrace a monistic godhead, the One.

When I signed on with Sant Mat, I was attracted to what I thought was an alternative to the anthropomorphic Judeo-Christian-Islamic God who looks down upon the world and chooses to intervene in human affairs when he feels like it, saving some souls and condemning others.

Eventually, however, I saw the similarities between this seemingly “Eastern” mystic path and the traditional monotheistic religions. RSSB was big on pointing out that the guru who led the organization was the living counterpart of dead and gone Jesus, a messenger from God who serves as a link between fallen humanity and the highest divinity.

Well, as I frequently say: maybe. But now I lean toward Stenger, who writes:

The scientific argument against the existence of God will be a modified form of the lack-of-evidence argument:

1. Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
2. Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence.
3. Look for such evidence with an open mind.
4. If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist.
5. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist.

There are different god models, though. The personal dualistic God hypothesized by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Sant Mat is one divine option; the universal non-duality of Buddhism, Taoism, and Neoplatonism is another possibility—one that fits much more comfortably with a scientific worldview.

In my book about Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher, this passage had a ring of truth for me as soon as I wrote it. It still does.

Some people believe that they have a personal relationship with God. Thinking like Plotinus, we might ask them: “Does this mean that God is a person? Or does it mean that you are a person?” Perhaps it is possible for my relationship with the One to be markedly different from the One’s relationship with me, because I am a minute part of creation and the One is the whole of creation.

Eliminate the middleman between you and God

It’s usually advisable to eliminate the middleman. He won’t like it. But if there’s no reason to keep him around, dump the guy. He adds extra overhead.

Especially if he’s standing between you and God. Or more accurately, if you believe he is. For given that the evidence of God’s existence is extremely scanty, it figures that a belief in the need for a middleman or mediator between humanity and divinity rests on even shakier ground.

Like, quicksand.

I used to buy cars the old-fashioned way. And hated it. You know the routine. Find a car you like. Talk to a salesman. Tell him how much you want to pay. Then cool your heels while he supposedly goes off to try and talk his boss into accepting the deal.

You never see the boss. All you see is the salesman dejectedly walking back into his office, telling you “Man, I’m sorry. I argued for you, but my boss says the dealership would be losing money if he accepted your offer. So this is what he’s willing to sell the car for…”

And so it’d go. Of course, the salesman wasn’t really on my side. Nor, I suspect, did he ever talk with his boss. He probably had a cup of coffee and joked around with his buddies for ten minutes, then plastered on a fake dejected look before he tried to suck more money out of me.

But at least I knew the car I wanted was real, even if the middleman game was fakey. With “God” (a placeholder term, the way I use it, for ultimate reality), I neither know that my envisioned object of desire exists, nor that a mediator between me and God serves any purpose.

I don’t need a mediator to connect me with unicorns, fairies, or leprechauns. I can imagine them all on my own, thank you. No assistance required. Yet for some reason there’s a strong demand for a mediator between people and God, even though the middleman never delivers the goods.

Nice work if you can get it. It’s no wonder there’s never been a lack of prophets, gurus, priests, shamans, and all the other members of the God-human mediator class. If I could make a living by serving as a middleman between people and a being who I never had to prove even existed, much less actually show face to face, that’d be sweet.

I could even keep on with my go-betweening after I died. That’s what happened with Jesus. Countless Christians still consider that he’s striking a bargain for them with God: Jesus died for their sins. Since Christian theology says that you never get to talk about the deal with the Boss directly, believers have to take the word of the Salesman on faith.

My biggest problem with the God-human mediator business is this: the whole notion is founded on duality—separation. Jesus is considered to be the mediator between two estranged parties, God and humankind. Similarly, in Sikhism (and offshoots such as Sant Mat) the guru reunites separated ones with God.

However, a central thrust of modern science is that unity lies at the heart of reality. Physics speaks of the space-time continuum and quantum connectedness. It seeks the Theory of Everything, not Theories.

So it’s difficult for me to believe that the spiritual realm, if it exists, is more disconnected than the foundation of material existence. But this is what religions would have us believe.

Somehow we’ve supposedly gotten way out of touch with a distant God, and there’s no getting us back together without the aid of a middleman who says, “Listen, have I got a deal for you…”

In his book “Grassroots Spirituality,” Robert Forman says that wholeness is one of the hallmarks of a spiritual (as contrasted with religious) way of relating with the world. Speaking of the fresh ways of communing with the cosmos that are sweeping the world, he writes:

In short, the traditional western “transcendent” model of God is no longer operative in the Grassroots Spirituality Movement. Its Ultimate is reminiscent of the omnipresent, immanent yet infinitely extended vacuum state of quantum physics, more like an “It” than a “He” or “She.” In “It” “we live and move and have our being.”

…This sense of an “indwelling” One has an implication for our religious structures. If we each are gifted with an indwelling spark of the One, then we have no need for some mediating figure like a priest or a minister. For “It” is already available to each of us.

Nor do we need an intercessor, for it’s available to us by merely letting go of our attachments. If we’re each connected to the All through some deep inner wellspring, then no one of us is more connected to “It” than is any other.

Make your own deal with God. Eliminate the middleman. In the end, there might not even be two ends to ultimate reality. With One, there’s no middle. Nor a middleman.

But if you still want a guru (and have a broadband connection), I have a recommendation for you.

When nothing is something: God

In my last post, I focused on a plagiarized passage that I found in a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. What’s more interesting and significant than the plagiarism, though, is what this misquoted quotation from W.T. Stace points toward:

Nothing. Which he, along with many other mystics and mystically inclined writers, equates with God.

Even the plagiarist, J.R. Puri, seems to agree. For after he steals Stace’s words to speak of a state of pure consciousness that has no empirical content other than itself, consciousness aware of consciousness, Puri says:

And this self-realization is often eventually spoken of as God-realization.

In “Mysticism and Philosophy” Stace himself says this after the passage that I quoted previously:

Since the experience has no content, it is often spoken of by the mystics as the Void or as nothingness; but also as the One, and as the Infinite. That there are in it no particular existences is the same as saying that there are no distinctions in it, or that it is an undifferentiated unity. Since there is no multiplicity in it, it is the One. And that there are no distinctions in it or outside it means that there are no boundary lines in it between anything and anything. It is therefore the boundless or the infinite.

The paradox is that there should be a positive experience which has no positive content — an experience which is both something and nothing.

In Robert K.C. Forman’s book about Meister Eckhart that contains the plagiarized passage, Forman says that for Eckhart the birth of God’s “son” within the soul is a Birth of emptiness within. Eckhart says:

The soul should give Birth to nothing inside herself, if she wishes to be the child of God in whom God’s Son shall be born—in her nothing should be born.

More Eckhart on the same theme:

It appeared to a man as in a dream—it was a waking dream—that he became pregnant with Nothing like a woman with child, and in that Nothing God was born, He was the fruit of nothing. God was born in the Nothing. Therefore he says: “He arose from the ground with open eyes, seeing nothing.”

Below Forman summarizes Eckhart’s core mystic thesis that nothing needs to be done to realize God; what is needful is to undo one’s preoccupation with things and thoughts.

As we have seen, for Eckhart God shares a ground with the soul’s ground, and He has so shared it since man’s preexistence. But in “ordinary” experience, in which man is attached to various cognitive objects, the soul attends to the powers and through them to the external world.

As a result, his thoughts bubble incessantly, and what he perceives as “his” needs enthrall his attention. Activities cover over this place “like a mist over the sun.” By looking in the wrong direction, outward instead of within, the religious “overlooks” this “place” within himself, and hence attends not to God but to the creaturely.

…God is the nothing, is in the nothing, and it is God who is “born” when one is “pregnant” with nothing.

Pretty darn simple. And scientific, the way I look at it. The great mysteries that science has not yet been able to fathom are existence, life, and consciousness. The roots and nature of each are hidden in the depths of…who knows? For we human would-be mystery-unravelers are conscious, existent, and alive.

We’re trying to unravel what we are, a snake swallowing its own tail proposition.

So, as I mentioned before, for many years I’ve enjoyed the plagiarized passage in Puri’s book because it points to the ultimate mystery: me. And you. Each of us is a bit of the grand cosmic Mystery that we’re trying to understand.

It makes sense that we start with what we’re already in direct contact with, existent living consciousness, rather than some distant God. And if unity is at the root of it all, then “us” is going to be the same as “cosmos” anyway.

What bothers me about J.R. Puri, apart from his plagiarizing, is that he shies away from the implications of Stace’s statement that consciousness empty of empirical content is identical with the One—God.

His devotion to the RSSB teachings, which emphasize the necessity of a guru for god-realization, causes him to say a few pages later:

The real object of human love must be the Perfect, the Absolute. And it is through such love that salvation can be attained… But—and it is a crucial but—the all-pervasive, formless entity of God cannot be the object on which our feelings can be fixed or attached.

And what cannot be within the range of “feeling” cannot be within the scope of love. Indeed, for such an entity we cannot be sure even of His existence, let alone His love or worship.

…The master [guru] is the manifest form of the Lord, and it is the manifest form that can be the object of love. And if God can only be realized through love, the master is an indispensable link for God-realization.

Huh? On page 59 Puri said that the self-realization of pure consciousness is equivalent to God-realization. That is, the ultimate reality often called “God” is realized by achieving a state of inner emptiness in which nothing is present but the ground of being—the One.

Yet on page 90 he says that emotional attachment to a particular form of God, the guru, is essential. Actually, Eckhart and many other introvertive mystics (such as Plotinus) taught that attachment to material or mental forms is not only inessential for higher understanding, but an insurmountable hurdle.

A main reason I’ve soured on the RSSB approach to meditation is that it takes such a roundabout route. The meditator’s goal is to unite his or her consciousness with the formless One. But getting there supposedly is facilitated by filling one’s mind with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and imaginings of the guru’s physical form.

That never made much sense to me. Now it makes no sense at all. I’m too old to take roundabout detours. I very much want to know ultimate reality (assuming it is knowable). The shortest and quickest likely way—that’s for me.

I often think about the very f