Church of the Churchless

Service and charity don't need God to be authentic

Back in my true believing days, I used to enjoy feeling that what I was doing was an act of service to my guru.

This, of course, is a decidedly Eastern perspective. Western religions don't have living perfect masters, who often are considered to God in human form.

But Christians seem to feel much the same when they perform charitable acts in the name of Jesus. Just as I did, they get enjoyment from acting with the thought that someone they love is being pleased.

Now that I've entered my churchless phase, I don't believe in the value of seva (an Indian word meaning selfless service) as I did before. As noted in a "Morality has nothing to do with religion" post a few years ago, selfless service has many guises.

Speaking of painting posts in our carport, I said:

I knew that my wife was going to like the new look of the carport. So would anyone else who lived in our house (we're planning to live here for many more years, but, hey, you never know what the future will bring). I put more care into my painting than the job really required, because I had a feeling that the work I was doing could easily live on after me.

So I wasn't doing it just for myself and my wife. Back in my devotional days I would have dedicated this seva (service) to my guru, or to God. However, today I simply painted with the same quasi-selfless attitude of "not for me, but for thee." The only difference is that I didn't personalize or particularize "thee."

Today I had the same feeling as I took advantage of a sunny dry late November day (fairly rare here in western Oregon) to mow and edge the lawn.

Now that I'm sixty-one, I've come to realize that one day there won't be another day for me.

Or at least for the things I enjoy doing around our rural non-easy-care house. This sense of finitude makes simple chores a lot more meaningful, god or guru not being required to produce virtually the same seva sensation I enjoyed for decades.

As I guided the mower around our large yard, I thought, "Eventually there will be the last time I do this. I could die suddenly. Or get infirm slowly. Regardless, most likely I won't know which is the last time. So this could be it. Right here, right now. The last grass mowing time."

I visualized having a massive heart attack, collapsing by the mower just after I'd finished. When the ambulance (or hearse) arrives, the driver says, "Hey, that lawn looks pretty damn good."

Nice. 

Of course, the purest motivation for doing something is just to do it. Or even more, to do it without really doing it (wu-wei). I'm not there, for sure, because I still get enjoyment from knowing that what I'm doing will benefit others.

This is natural. People like to help other people. We're social animals, not lone wolves.

Religions, recognizing this, channel charitable impulses for theological purposes. Doing good works for goodness's sake gets redirected into "act in the name of Jesus" (or the guru).

Sounds nice. But what the heck does it mean?

I didn't ponder this much in my super-seva days. Now, I can't understand why someone -- which included me for many years -- would consider that a divine being needed or wanted something done for him/her/it.

My wife likes our house kept neat, clean, and tidy. When I painted the carport posts, I knew that she was going to enjoy their new look. However, I'd be hard pressed to explain why God in heaven or a guru in India cared what the posts looked like (assuming they knew the posts existed).

Religion makes people do strange things. Irrational things. Unnecessary things.

Watching sports on TV, I frequently see "sky pointing" after an athlete has scored a touchdown, hit a home run, or some other noteworthy accomplishment. It rubs me the wrong way.

So God supposedly is responsible for your athletic prowess? God acted through you, giving you some special dispensation that the guy defending you, or pitching to you, lacked?

Where's the humility in that attitude? Where's the sensation of service to your team, or the fans? It's all about you when you point that finger at the sky. It isn't enough to just toss the football to the referee or run around the bases. You've got to make something divinely special out of a simple natural act.

Which, I realize now, is what I did myself during many true believing years. My sky pointing was inside my head, so it wasn't blatantly visible to others -- as the gesture of a football or baseball player is.

But it was there.

And now it isn't. Thank goodness.

Without God, how can religion be divine?

I thought I'd just thrown twenty bucks down a non-fiction hole.

A few scant hours after buying Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God" (at 25% off!) my wife, who was reading the Sunday Oregonian, said: "You're not going to like this review of the book you just got." 

She was right. Thumbing through the first few pages of the book while considering whether to buy it, I'd focused on Wright's first hand.

On the one hand, I think gods arose as illusions, and the subsequent history of the idea of god is, in some sense, the evolution of an illusion.

That elicited a right on from my churchless non-soul. So I paid less attention to Wright's other literary appendage.

On the other hand: (1) the story of this evolution itself points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity; and (2) the "illusion," in the course of evolving, has gotten streamlined in a way that moved it closer to plausibility. In both of these senses, the illusion has gotten less and less illusory.

I've only read a few chapters so far. I'm liking "The Evolution of God."

But I'm preparing myself to discount the validity of Wright's other hand, which, according to the critical review, lends an air of implausibility to the final chapter.

His assiduous labors into the origins of the idea of God have erected a colossal edifice. In the last 50 pages or so, Wright tosses an undersized and feeble theory over its parapets to justify all this effort. Though it's sure to stimulate a lot of discussion, this is a thoroughly wrongheaded book.

Here's a summary of the theory Wright offers. Human beings, he writes, "are 'designed' by natural selection to be good out of obligations to others, for fear of the disapproval of others, in pursuit of the esteem of others." Cultural evolution -- the passage of human groups from small bands of hunter-gatherers to chiefdoms and then on to states and empires -- builds on the ingredients of this "design" to create a moral economy, which leads to the discovery of "moral truths," which are sanctioned in religious organizations as the orders of gods, or, ultimately, of God, the all-knowing, law-giving, all-powerful Being.

"If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe the growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe -- conceivably -- the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity."

There are a lot of assumptions in that sentence, but the most powerful one for Wright's argument is the assertion that "history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement." Is this the moral improvement that after 5,000 or so years of Western religion gave us Nazism? Wright's arguments are silent on this question, because they have already asserted the answer -- that as a species we're somehow morally superior now to our ancestors wandering out of Africa. How do we know? Because we have found the idea of God. This is tautology, not proof.

Makes sense. But, hey, I'll keep an open mind as I read the book, though I suspect that I'll have the same reaction of the reviewer when I get to the end of it.

Here's another skeptical perspective on Wright's "morality is divinity" thesis. Like most biologists, this guy doesn't see evidence of purpose in evolution.

Check out the comments to that "Morality doesn't equal God" post. They're pretty high quality. And numerous. I enjoyed the pithy one-sentence wisdom of #8.

Morality doesn't prove gods for much the same reason that Christmas presents don't prove Santa.

More religious craziness: a fertilized egg is a person?

Just when I thought Christian fundamentalists couldn't do anything stranger than they already have (like believing the Bible is the literal word of God), up pops a newspaper story about a bizarre ballot initiative in Colorado.

Read all about it in the Washingon Post's "Colorado voters will be asked when 'personhood' begins."

Yeah, that's just the sort of thing that should be decided in the voting booth: when someone becomes a human rather than merely a bunch of embryonic cells.

Don't get me wrong: I'll all for philosophical and moral discussions on this (and any other) deep questions. The thing is, the folks behind the ballot initiative aren't interested in discussion. They want to cram their personal beliefs down society's throat.

That irks me. And it should really irk Coloradoans, who I expect will roundly defeat the initiative this November.

It should become obvious that Colorado for Equal Rights is a front group for fundamentalists and anti-abortionists who are backing this attempt to define a person as existing from the time of fertilization because they want to have the United States governed by their brand of religiosity, just like the Taliban sought.

I took a look at their information sheet for the initiative. It made as little sense as I thought it would.

Because of breakthroughs in science, we know that from the moment of fertilization a unique human comes into existence. We are defining these humans as persons so they will have basic human rights.

Hmmm. I read several science magazines, and I haven't come across that breakthrough. I'm pretty sure the reason is, these idiots are lying.

There's no evidence that a unique human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization. Consciousness is a long ways from coming into being. The only way you could say this is if your religion tells you it's true.

This is the dangerous dark side of religion. People spout inanities because they've heard them from the pulpit, or read them in the Bible, and mistake them for really real reality.

Here's another example of a ludicrous statement from the info sheet:

Basic Biology tells us that once an egg is fertilized it becomes a unique human life and is no longer an egg. We believe that unique human is a person, like you only smaller.

No, basic biology doesn't tell us that. It simply tells us that when an egg is fertilized, the process of becoming a human is underway. If you look at those few cells under a microscope, you won't see anything that resembles you or me.

People are free to believe that those cells are a person, just like they're free to believe in Santa Claus. Or, God. But please, don't ask me to share in your fantasies.

I'm looking forward to Colorado voters smashing this initiative to bits at the ballot box this fall. Hopefully that will quash any more attempts to force this sort of unfounded religious belief onto public policy.

Moral relativism is absolutely great

I love to argue with the Pope. It sends a thrill up my lapsed Catholic spine. The notion that insignificant me has a shot (in this case, a certainty) at out-moralizing the head of one of the world's major religions – marvelous!

Pope Benedict XVI hates moral relativism. I adore it. So who's right and who's wrong?

This is why I win: the fact that this is a serious question shows I'm right. Nobody says that the atomic structure of water has several possible answers. Two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen always is the correct response.

Recently President Bush approvingly quoted one of Benedict's pet phrases back at him.

In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this 'dictatorship of relativism.'

Huh? I've never had any problem with people getting in my face and screaming, It could be this, or it could be that! But fundamentalists like the Pope are always telling me how to live my life.

I'll take the dictatorship of relativism over that of absolutism any day. Apparently he first used these words at a Mass in 2005, before he became the Pope.

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.

A six word summary of my critique: the Pope is full of shit. He's got it completely backward. The height of ego is to consider that you know what's right and wrong – not just for yourself, but for everybody.

To the Pope, abortion is wrong. So is stem cell research. And contraception. Catholicism does its best to push these private moral positions into public policy. How is that not the dictatorship of absolutism?

Speaking of dictators (including would-be ones), Dan Froomkin wrote a great Washington Post column on this subject, "Who's the Moral Relativist?" He points out the absurdity of the Great Presidential Relativist, George Bush, lavishing praise on Benedict for opposing moral relativism.

Yet some of Bush's most defining decisions -- such as launching a war of choice against Iraq and his picking and choosing which laws actually apply to him -- suggest a highly subjective sense of right and wrong. Most notably, he defends the use of interrogation tactics that violate human dignity by arguing that the ends justify the means.

Right on.

Moral absolutism always is just skin deep, because there's no foundation to it. Religions have all kinds of different opinions about what's right and wrong. Ditto for philosophies, ethical systems, and other secular approaches to morality.

So whenever you hear someone like Pope Benedict or President Bush extolling "simple right and wrong," invariably they mean, Simply do what I tell you.

Life isn't simple. Neither is morality. Killing is wrong. Except when it's right. Lying is wrong. Except when it's right. Members of the Bush administration have done a whole lot of killing and lying.

They believe it's right. Others, that it's wrong. We've got a difference of opinion here. It'll be settled through more debate, more elections, more court cases.

Thank god, these and other questions aren't settled by a religious authority. This country was founded on sentiments such as "Live free or die," and "Don't tread on me."

I've got no problem with true believers turning their moral decisions over to a fundamentalist moral code. There always will be people who prefer to act like sheep. Following the leader can appear to be a lot easier than finding your own way.

The Pope, President, and other purveyors of moral absolutism just need to realize that their preachiness needs to end where individual lives begin. In a democracy, laws are how society speaks about right and wrong.

Whatever is said from the pulpit is just a bunch of blah, blah, blah to faithful moral relativists like me.

“I’m right” vs. “I like” morality

It feels so good to be right. Or rather, to believe that we're right – which means that other people must be wrong. This is a big reason religion is so popular. It offers a pleasant sensation of self-righteousness.

There's also a simpler way of feeling good. To just feel good. Janis Joplin sang it.

You know feeling good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

We can just say "I like," rather than justifying our preference with an "I'm right."

What a difference it would make if Christians said, "I like feeling that Jesus loves me and died for my sins." If Muslims said, "I like the idea that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet." If Buddhists said, "I like how the Eightfold Path is aimed at alleviating suffering."

Once we make improvable assertions into a matter of right and wrong, divisiveness necessarily follows. But in everyday life, most of the time we don't make likes and dislikes into moral certitudes.

I happen to hate beans. One of the few Mexican phrases that I know is "Sin frijoles," without beans. I need it to order in a Mexican restaurant. However, it doesn't bother me to see my dining companion happily devouring her frijoles.

Some people like beans. Others don't. Similarly, some people approve of gay sex. Others don't. Yet attitudes toward homosexuality are much more likely to fall into "I'm right" rather than "I like."

The New York Times Magazine recently featured a fascinating essay by Steven Pinker, "The Moral Instinct." Pinker says:

The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave.

Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral ("killing is wrong"), rather than merely disagreeable ("I hate brussels sprouts"), unfashionable ("bell-bottoms are out") or imprudent ("don't scratch mosquito bites").

We need to be careful, then, about getting all high and mighty when our supposedly universal moral judgment really is nothing more than a personal like or dislike. Pinker mentions the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

People don't generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.

So does this mean that morality inescapably is subjective, that right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder rather than some objective Platonic realm of goodness?

Not exactly. Pinker says that while there isn't any sign of "cosmically inscribed Thou-Shalts," a few If-Thens are evident which "point any rational, self-preserving social agent in a moral direction."

One is the prevalence of nonzero-sum games. In many arenas of life, two parties are objectively better off if they both act in a nonselfish way than if each of them acts selfishly.

…The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoned. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me – to get off my foot, or tell me the time or not run me over with your car – then I can't do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours (say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously.

It turns out, then, that "I'm right" runs a big risk of striking at the heart of morality, because it fosters a sense of privilege and entitlement that militates against the Golden Rule'ish balanced give and take described by Pinker.

I used to feel that drinking alcohol and eating meat were wrong. Not just wrong for me, because I didn't like to do these things, but for everybody.

I wasn't horribly moralistic in my tilt toward tee totaling and vegetarianism. But I did consider that I was on higher moral ground than imbibers and carnivores.

Now, not nearly so much. I'm sipping a glass of Oregon Pinot Noir as I write this, having become the person that I warned myself about.

However, I still don't eat animals. I don't like the idea of killing a sentient being to fill my stomach. I wouldn't say that I'm right and you're wrong, though, if you just had a hamburger.

Mostly, we're all trying to do the right thing – morality isn't the special province of any particular religion, nationality, or belief system. I liked this part of Pinker's essay:

At the very least, the science tells us that even when our adversaries' agenda is most baffling, they may not be amoral psychopaths but in the throes of a moral mind-set that appears to them to be every bit as mandatory and universal as ours does to us.

Of course, some adversaries really are psychopaths, and others are so poisoned by a punitive moralization that they are beyond the pale of reason.

…But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground.

Morality doesn’t need a middleman

Doing good. We all want to do it, aside from a small number of people with a highly me-centered worldview. For I see the essence of morality as act toward others as you'd want them to act toward you.

When there's no sense of mutuality, of relationship, of reciprocal give and take, morality (such as it is) is reduced to act toward others however you want. It's all about me, me, me.

So goodness, like Tango, takes two. Otherwise, it's selfishness.

However, most religious believers want to complicate morality by adding in a middleman.

God. Or a stand-in for God, such as Jesus or someone else considered to be god in human form (there are quite a few modern candidates for this honor including Sant Mat gurus and Meher Baba).

The idea is that unless you're doing something for the sake of God or the guru, it isn't really good.

So you could be volunteering at soup kitchens, giving money to charity, and taking care of a sick neighbor. But if you weren't thinking, "This all is for you, _______ [name of divinity]," it wouldn't rate high on the goodness scale.

Pretty strange. Christopher Hitchens' The Portable Atheist includes an essay by George Eliot that critiques the dogmatism of a Christian fundamentalist of her day, a Dr. Cumming. (Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans.) Elliott quotes Cumming:

The "thoughts" are evil. If it were possible to human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter round the heart of an unregenerate man – to mark their hue and their multitude – it would be found that they are indeed "evil."

We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such-like, whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who are marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest moralities of life – by the exercise of the kindliest affections, and the interchange of the sweetest reciprocities – and of these men, if unrenewed and unchanged, we pronounce that their thoughts are evil.

To ascertain this, we must refer to the object around which our thoughts ought continually to circulate. The Scriptures assert that this object is the glory of God; that for this we ought to think, to act, and to speak; and that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there is involved the purest and more endearing bliss.

…If the glory of God is not the absorbing and the influential aim of their thoughts, then they are evil; but God's glory never enters into their minds.

Now, one would expect this sort of fundamentalist message from a Christian.

But Eastern religions can be just as obsessed about thinking of God all of the time, no matter what you're doing (leaving aside the not-so-minor problem, common also to Western faiths, that it's tough to think about something imaginary).

I thumbed through a few issues of a Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) newsletter and found these thoughts from a representative of this India-based spiritual organization.

While working, whatever you do to earn your livelihood or maintain your home and family obligations, remember God and your Master throughout the day as your main preoccupation…Serve others with your spare time and work in the name of the Lord.

When I was hot and heavy into RSSB, I used to try to do this. But as mentioned above, I found it difficult to do. And distracting, because doing everything "for the glory of God" or "in the name of the Lord" is the antithesis of chop wood and carry water.

That is, when I was washing dishes I'd do my best to visualize this as being for the Master's (guru's) benefit. But he wasn't in the house – just me and my wife were.

So adding in an imaginary middleman between me and whatever I was doing eventually came to seem entirely unnecessary, and more than a little weird.

I knew people who'd say, "Thank you, God" or "Thank you, guru" when they'd find an empty parking space on a crowded street. What's up with that? Why not simply pull in and park?

Similarly, some RSSB initiates would go to considerable trouble to travel hundreds of miles, or even halfway across the world to India, in order to do volunteer work for their religious organization.

They seemed to feel that doing good didn't count unless it was done without a thought of the guru in mind, who is a stand-in for God in many Eastern faiths. George Eliot persuasively argues otherwise:

Dr. Cumming's theory, as we have seen, is that actions are good or evil according as they are prompted or not prompted by an exclusive reference to the "glory of God." God, then, in Dr. Cumming's conception, is a Being who has no pleasure in the exercise of love and truthfulness and justice, considered as affecting the well-being of His creatures.

He has satisfaction in us only in so far as we exhaust our motives and dispositions of all relation to our fellow beings, and replace sympathy for men by anxiety for the "glory of God."

…A wife is not to devote herself to her husband out of love to him and a sense of the duties implied by a close relation – she is to be a faithful wife for the glory of God; if she feels her natural affections welling up too strongly, she is to repress them; it would not do to act from natural affection – she must think of the glory of God.

Observing both myself and other God/guru obsessed devotees, I began to see how this misdirecting of natural impulses leads to a three's a crowd syndrome.

Meaning, religious believers reach a point where just about all of their human interactions include a third party: a conception of the divine entity to whom their fealty truly lies. They actually believe that Jesus, God, or the guru is present with them and is aware of everything they're doing or thinking.

Which, of course, also is the case with another supposedly omnipresent being: Santa Claus.

George Eliot speaks about how destructive it is to have an imaginary middle man intrude himself in such a fashion:

The idea of a God who not only sympathizes with all we feel and endure for our fellow men, but who will pour new life into our too languid love, and give firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an extension and multiplication of the effects produced by human sympathy; and it has been intensified for the better spirits who have been under the influence of orthodox Christianity, by the contemplation of Jesus as "God manifest in the flesh."

But Dr. Cumming's God is the very opposite of all this: He is a God who, instead of sharing and aiding our human sympathies, is directly in collision with them; who, instead of strengthening the bond between man and man, by encouraging the sense that they are both alike the objects of His love and care, thrusts Himself between them and forbids them to feel for each other except as they have relation to Him.

He is a God who, instead of adding His solar force to swell the tide of those impulses that tend to give humanity a common life in which the good of one is the good of all, commands us to check those impulses, lest they should prevent us from thinking of His glory.

Well, screw that. And to hell with that God. Or guru.

There's already enough divisiveness in the world. No need to add to it by interposing a conception of a non-existent being between us and what we do.

Grace & mercy or cause & effect?

Over my 59 years I've heard a lot of talk about grace. God's grace. Guru's grace. The word – "grace" – sounds good, maybe because it's what would be said before family Thanksgiving get-togethers.

Someone would utter, "Let's say grace." We would. Then we could eat.

In this sense grace was a predictable prelude to something desirable. But in spirituality and religion grace is much more mysterious.

An Indian word, "mauj," sort of sums it up. It means the will of God or the guru, which often is considered to be one and the same, as in this passage (#23).

One should have faith in the Supreme Being and Sant at [as?] Guru. As far as possible, one should conform to His Mauj (will, please [pleasure?]) and ordainments.

God or His delegate can do whatever the heck He wants. When this divine will is to our liking, it's known as "grace." When the mauj is much less desirable, as in much of the Old Testament (consider Job), it's the theological equivalent of the colloquialism shit happens.

I got thinking about all this after reading more of the previously mentioned notes from a talk (satsang) given by the current Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru, Gurinder Singh.

Meditation is nothing but begging for His mercy…Meditation is begging for His mercy and asking for his forgiveness…the rest is His Grace which will come in His Mauj.

Now, as I so frequently say, I don't know. It could be that the guru (who is the "His" referred to above, being viewed as equivalent to God) has the power to erase karma, sins, and other barriers to spiritual elevation.

However, I doubt it, just as I doubt that Jesus saves in a similar fashion.

And increasingly I'm also distrustful, even repelled, by this talk of grace and mercy. Cause and effect strikes me as a concept that's more appealing and more scientific, not to mention more likely.

I wrote a book called "Life is Fair." It was published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), so we're on the same wavelength when it comes to the primacy of cause and effect in the cosmos.

The difference between us is that RSSB holds out the promise of grace and mercy as a "get out of karma free" card, and I'm not even sure I would want to play such a card if it were handed to me – as well as doubtful that such a card exists.

I talked about this in my Life is Fair post.

So when we look for fairness or unfairness in life, there aren't any objective signs of either. What we find are people who stamp something as "Fair" or "Unfair" on the basis of their subjective perspectives.

How, then, can I believe so confidently that life is fair? Simple. I don't see any evidence of the privileged position that unfairness requires. There's no Fairness King or Queen who can sit on his or her throne and proclaim, "This is fair; that is unfair."

What we do have is a demonstrably interconnected universe where no thing, living or inert, stands alone.

Grace and mercy require a disconnected dualism. Cause and effect require an integrated unity.

I like the notion of cosmic oneness more than twoness, just as I like the saying "we're all in this together" more than "each to his own" (though I use both of them depending on my mauj).

Consider a "fair" roulette wheel in Las Vegas. The physical laws of motion determine where the ball lands after the wheel is spun.

The gamblers place their bets with the understanding that they're all standing on a level playing field. The roulette wheel doesn't divvy out "grace" or "punishment." It just does what it does.

Spin, with the ball falling fairly in accord with universal laws of cause and effect.

I like to win. But I wouldn't enjoy making money from a roulette wheel where the outcome was fixed by the casino management.

Yet most religious people have no problem believing that they're going to get special treatment from God or a guru. They look forward to cutting to the front of the salvation line through divine grace and mercy, undeserved as this may be.

I've said that salvation isn't so serious to me anymore. Especially if it comes unfairly.

As Patrick Henry might have said, if he was me, "give me cause and effect or give me death." I suspect I'm going to get both.

And that isn't a bad thing. (As if I have a choice about it.)

Finding my inner self in a light beer

It was a moment of clarity. Not exactly a kensho, but what do you expect from a Miller Chill? Very little, according to a scathing review of this lime'ized light beer that garners a whoppingly low 1 percentile drinkability ranking.

However, I didn't know this a few days ago when Jerry, the husband of my wife's sister (my brother in law?) asked me if I drank beer. We were sitting on the deck of his rural central Illinois home on a hot end-of-summer day, surrounded by corn and soybean fields, being serenaded by cicadas.

For most of my adult life the answer would have been simple: "No." Initiated into the mystic-religious faith of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) at the age of 22, I obediently followed an injunction to not consume alcohol for over thirty years – with a single slip-up at a high school class reunion that was too freaking weird to get through without a stiff drink.

But was I really a non-drinker? I didn't drink for all that time. That's different, though, from being a teetotaler.

What I mean is, was I not drinking because I truly believed that this was wrong for me to do? Or was I abstaining because I wanted to follow a rule that was a requirement for becoming a member of a religious group? In short, did my moral sensibility spring from within or without?

When Jerry asked me the question I equivocated only slightly. "Yes," I said. "I guess I am. I hardly ever drink beer – last time was on Super Bowl Sunday, just to feel like a part of male America. However, I don't have anything against it."

In that moment I answered honestly. As I said in "I've become the person I warned myself about" (probably my favorite blog post title), I used to believe differently.

I've become the heretic that I used to warn myself about, one of those who thinks for himself and doesn't follow the party (or Master's) line simply because the word has come down from on high, "This is how it should be done." Yes, I start with this. However, if that turns out to be more efficacious than this, I make the change. Such is the way of science. And also of nature. Flexibility. Adaptability. Openness. Evolution.

Reading those words, most satsangis (RSSB initiates) would consider that I've lost my way by charting a course to a Miller Chill. I understand why they'd have that attitude, because it was my own for three decades.

Yet tossing down what barely tasted like a beer at all, which is why Miller Chill is called a beer for people who don't like beer, I didn't feel like a heretic, an apostate, a fallen disciple, or indeed like anyone special at all.

I just felt normal. A guy sitting outside on a hot day shooting the breeze with the other men at a family reunion while the women-folk got dinner ready, just as God and the Tao intended. (I liked the Miller Chill, by the way; but then, I don't like beer very much).

I'm not espousing drinking. Or, not-drinking. All I'm doing is encouraging an independent, think-for-yourself, intuitive approach to morality.

Figuring out what's right and wrong isn't rocket science. Each of us knows. For us. Not for anyone else. You've got to be loyal to yourself, not to a group. Otherwise morality is just paying shallow lip service to externally-imposed rules.

Some hamburgers were being grilled on the same deck where I sipped the Miller Chill. There's no way I'd eat animal flesh unless I was on the verge of starvation. I was a vegetarian before I became a RSSB initiate; I was a vegetarian after I became a RSSB initiate; I'm a vegetarian now; I'll probably be a vegetarian on the day I die.

Not eating meat springs from an inner moral sense. I don't need anyone to tell me or remind me that this is the right thing for me to do. When it came to not drinking wine or beer, on the other hand, I'd need to resort to platitudes from the RSSB "party line" to justify my continued abstinence:

Drinking alcohol leads to a man's (or woman's) downfall. No, believe me: a single Miller Chill or glass of red wine doesn't lead anywhere, other than to a mild feeling of relaxation

Drinking alcohol makes it impossible to meditate with a clear consciousness. Well, not in my experience. It was impossible for me to meditate with a clear consciousness before I started having a glass of wine in the evening, and it still is.

Whoever or whatever we are, deep down beneath the frothy foam of our individual egocentric attributes, I'm pretty sure that "drinker" or "not a drinker" isn't going to describe our innermost being.

The person who decides whether to drink a beer or not – ah, now we're getting closer to the Real Thing.

Which everyone knows has nothing to do with beer.

Morality has nothing to do with religion

Thanks to Middle Earth Journal, I learned about an exchange between Michael Gerson and Christopher Hitchens concerning whether religion is necessary for people to act morally.

Gerson started it off with his "What atheists can't answer." With a title like that he should have known that an answer would be forthcoming. In fact, it took Hitchens just a day to come back with "An Atheist Responds."

Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, is a tough guy to argue with. In this case, though, a middle school debate team could have handled Gerson with one argumentative hand tied behind their collective back. That's how lame Gerson's feeble attempt to link religiosity with morality was. He ended with:

Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.

This form of "liberation" is like liberating a plant from the soil or a whale from the ocean. In this kind of freedom, something dies.

I've re-read these paragraphs several times. I still can't figure out what Gerson is talking about. He grants that people are innately moral. But then he says that if our capacity for morality is natural, rather than God-given, somehow human existence becomes meaningless.

As I pointed out in my "Morality comes from nature, not God" post, there's nothing chancy about evolution. So to say that our desire to be moral is a "cruel joke" – that's what's funny. Gerson seems to want to impose his theological fantasies on reality, anthropomorphically arguing that something is wrong with nature because everything and everyone dies: people, planets, suns.

Hitchens, on the other hand, gets morality right. This is my favorite part of his atheist's response.

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time -- awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

Today I finished up painting some supports that were added to our carport to better assure that it remains standing after the Big One (earthquake) that will hit the Pacific Northwest someday. Which points to one reason not to believe in God.

I haven't spent one nanosecond praying to tectonic plates to spare us from devastation. There wouldn't be any point. They're going to do what they have to do. But if I believed that God was in charge of everything that happens here on Earth, I'd be seriously pissed with the dude if He allowed an earthquake to trash our house.

Why, my Internet connection could be lost for weeks. That really would make life meaningless.

But I digress. My mean reason for bringing up the carport was to relate my frame of mind as I went from post to post with my paint can and brush. I enjoyed the work, aside from a few awkward moments balancing on a shifting woodpile while trying to get to a just-out-of-reach board.

I knew that my wife was going to like the new look of the carport. So would anyone else who lived in our house (we're planning to live here for many more years, but, hey, you never know what the future will bring). I put more care into my painting than the job really required, because I had a feeling that the work I was doing could easily live on after me.

So I wasn't doing it just for myself and my wife. Back in my devotional days I would have dedicated this seva (service) to my guru, or to God. However, today I simply painted with the same quasi-selfless attitude of "not for me, but for thee." The only difference is that I didn't personalize or particularize "thee."

I just painted the best I could. When I'd finished with the supports I decided to paint a white electrical cord brown that interfered with the feng shui of our earth-toned carport. I could have finished with the cord hanging from the rafters more quickly if I hadn't painted both sides of it – including the top that's only visible to bats (and they can't see, right?)

How would believing in God or a divine being have made a difference to what I was doing? My actions, thoughts, and feelings would've been the same regardless. People who want to do good will act morally whether they're religious or not.

Their religiosity just becomes an extraneous add-on, a God-made-me-do-it explanation that sounds righteous but is totally unnecessary.

Like Hitchens said, there isn't any ethical action that could be done by a believer, but not an unbeliever.

True culture of life has to be godless

Religious types—Christians, mostly—like to talk about a "culture of life." This is shorthand for being against abortion, death with dignity, stem cell research, and other supposedly anti-life policies supported by godless secularists like me.

I see things just the opposite. Religiosity is what's destructive of living life fully, devotedly, appreciatively, reverently. Here's why.

Virtually every religion holds that earthly existence is just a prelude to something better: heaven, paradise, nirvana, god-realization. The life we're living now is to be looked upon as a springboard that hopefully will bounce us in the direction of divinity after death.

Back in my science fiction reading days I enjoyed Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" series. The main character's goal was to reach the headwaters of a huge river. It was tough going. Eventually he discovered that when he was killed, he was instantly reborn along the river.

As I recall, sometimes upstream, sometimes downstream. Regardless, the man didn't fear death anymore. He'd give up his life willingly to have a chance of fulfilling his quest.

Just like Islamic suicide bombers. And Crusaders. And every other religious fanatic who considers physical life to be of little value compared to the non-bodily state that awaits the faithful after they take their last breath.

They are the extremists. But even religious moderates comfort themselves with thoughts like, "No matter how bad things are now, they're going to be better when _____ [Jesus /God/ Buddha-nature/ Krishna/ Guru/ Jehovah/ Allah/ otherwise fill in the blank] embraces me in the next life."

With one eye on the afterlife, how is it possible to give this one the respect it deserves?

We're up to 3,500 deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. This is just one of many "killing fields" around the world. Darfur, Afghanistan, North Korea, AIDS stricken Africa—what makes it so easy to read about people needlessly dying here, there, everywhere without slamming the newspaper on the table and crying This is fucking insane!

I'd say because in most of us there's a lurking (or up front) notion that when a person dies it's not really the end for him or her. It's a bad call, but the game still is going into extra innings.

Well, what if it isn't? What if each of us gets only one chance to experience life? What if every hour, minute, or second subtracted from a life span is gone forever? What if this moment, right here and right now, is so unbelievably precious — because another one can't be purchased for any price — it's impossible to place a high enough value on it?

This is where a godless outlook leads: toward a genuine culture of life. This life. Not the next one. What could very well be (and probably is) the only one. For me, for you, for everybody.

From this perspective a potential life doesn't have nearly as much value as an actual life. A nascent embryo isn't a conscious living being; someone paralyzed by a spinal cord injury is. So embryonic stem cell research is part of my culture of life.

As is allowing people to decide for themselves how they want to die. Death with dignity and doctor-assisted suicide when death is imminent (blessedly legal in my great state of Oregon) also support a culture of life. Religious superstitions shouldn't play a part in social policies, neither in end-of-life care nor anywhere else.

Abortion is a bit more problematic. I've got no problem with early-term abortions. When a developed nervous system is lacking, so is the consciousness necessary for human existence.

Here also a balance must be struck between respecting a fully-formed life and a nascent life. A pregnant woman knows what her life is all about; a several-week old fetus doesn't. The woman's personal ethical choice trumps anyone else's, because she is living her life directly.

Again: this is a culture of life.

No one who believes in an afterlife can maximally reverence presentlife. Divided loyalties preclude a whole-hearted commitment to the reality of is, because could be drains energy, commitment, and attention.

A culture of life thrives in godlessness and is deadened by religiosity. Choose your philosophy of life accordingly.

When it isn’t good to do good

Before I put away the RSSB newsletter that was the focus of my last post, I wanted to address the curious case of when doing good isn't really a good thing.

At least, if you've adopted a fundamentalist mind set. I'm familiar with that mental condition, because it was an integral aspect of my psyche for many years.

What happens is that your religious faith becomes the lens through which life's experiences are filtered. Everything takes on the hue of the dogmatic teachings that you've assimilated.

So in Sant Mat (my experience has been with the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch of this movement), seva or service is considered to be important. This basically means "volunteering." But since the seva is done for the guru, or on his behalf, the work takes on a special taste.

Bhakti (devotion) flavored. There's nothing wrong with that. Selfless service in a spirit of love is good. However, if we limit ourselves to only serving people under the auspices of a religious group, this is limiting.

Quite a few RSSB disciples think nothing of driving hundreds of miles to perform weekend seva at one of the centers built by the organization, such as those in Petaluma, California and Fayetteville, North Carolina. That's admirable. But is it any different from performing a secular sort of service closer to home?

Apparently, judging from what I read in the May 2007 newsletter. Vince Savarese wrote that the sense of separation from God and the guru comes from our own ego.

This force in the mind is what urges us to enjoy old habits, create doubts, cause frustration. In contrast ego also directs us to achieve great noble ambitions, do good deeds, achieve noble goals for ourselves and society.

The more I thought about it, the stranger that statement came to seem. Savarese praises oblivion, which I assume means complete union with God. What should you do until you're obliterated, though?

Again, RSSB puts great emphasis on doing good deeds on behalf of itself—the organization. If this is a manifestation of ego, then why are disciples urged to contribute money, help construct buildings, organize local weekly meetings, and many other activities?

Because the good works done for the guru are considered to be of higher value than good works done for other people. Christians have it all over Sant Mat in this regard. Most preachers urge their flock to give of themselves to the poor, needy, and infirm. By contrast, I rarely, if ever, recall a RSSB speaker encouraging the faithful to volunteer time and energy for any cause other than RSSB.

The result, from my years of observation, generally produces more egocentricity among disciple sevadars, not less. The oh-so-special good works done for the oh-so-special guru create an oh-so-special feeling of, well, specialness among the faithful.

I know, because I had those feelings for several decades. And I knew many others with a similar attitude of "It's so wonderful to be serving God incarnate! I'm the selfless servant of the guru, which puts me at the foot of the Lord!"

It's hard to be humble when you're so close to the highest divinity. I'm happier now just being a run-of-the-mill do-gooder, helping out where and when I can, not considering that I'm any better or worse than any other volunteer.

My wife just got back from walking over thirty dogs at the Salem Humane Society. That doesn't count for much in the eyes of Sant Mat, but it sure does for me. And for a bunch of canines who had been cooped up in their kennels and needed to go.

Life is fair. Here’s why.

About ten years ago I wrote a book called "Life is Fair." That was back in my fundamentalist days, when I was pleased to toe the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) party line on karma, vegetarianism, and most other doctrinal matters.

But you know, I still believe that life is fair. Just not for the same reasons that I expounded in the book.

I got to thinking about life's fairness when someone emailed me a few days ago, asking if "Life is Fair" still was being sold. He'd noticed that it wasn't listed on the RSSB (a.k.a. Science of the Soul) web site. I checked and was told that the book was out of stock.

So I have to assume that it's still being sold with my name on it, notwithstanding the fact that I've come to be viewed as a heretic by the RSSB powers-that-be.

My own perspective is that I'm still 100% devoted to the true Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings. I've simply decided to let go of ritualistic religious fluff that has nothing to do with genuine mysticism or spirituality.

I'm also much more willing now to say "I don't know." So I'll say it: I don't know whether much of what I wrote in "Life is Fair" is true. Such as, whether this depiction of the Fairness Machine reflects how the cosmos really works.

(I'll upload my final Word version of the manuscript for those who want to read all or part of the book. It's 3.8 MB, due to the cartoons. The Fairness Machine chapter starts on page 82. The cartoons scattered through the pages are worth the book's modest price, which in this case is zero.)
Download life_is_fair.doc

I don't know whether reincarnation is a reality. I don't know whether there is another dimension to the cosmos where karma is stored for dispensation in other lives. I don't know whether what happens to us in the life each of us is living now is partly due to our actions in previous incarnations.

Yet I still believe that life is fair. It just seems much more likely than the obverse. By "fair," I mean there's a reason for things. They don't pop out of nowhere, miraculously or randomly. Even the laws of quantum physics, where randomness is an integral aspect of the subatomic world, have a foundation in well-formed mathematics.

When people say, "life isn't fair," they're speaking anthropomorphically or personally. What they usually mean is that stuff happens that shouldn't, in their opinion. Babies are born blind. Tsunamis strike villages without warning. Bad things happen to good people.

But unfairness doesn't exist without a privileged position, either human or divine. Here's a personal example from the Homo sapiens side.

I head into town (Salem, Oregon) this afternoon from our rural home five miles outside the city limits. My wife has warned me that they're back to paving the road adjacent to some new subdivisions. Ever the optimist, I still leave at my regular time, figuring that my good karma will produce a "Slow" rather than "Stop" sign when I get to the flagger.

I'm wrong. Half a dozen cars are lined up ahead of me. I wait. And wait some more. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. No traffic is coming through from the other way either. Then, there is.

Unfair! I say to myself. I'm in the group heading into town for important business, like, in my case, exercising at an athletic club. The cars breezing past me likely are heading home.

Of course, the rational part of my brain (what little is still operating after a quarter hour of fuming) is thinking, "The people who got to pass through the work area first are feeling good that they're finally moving. That seems fair. So how could this delay be both unfair to me and fair to them?"

Well, because I'm me and they're them. And the guys operating the paving equipment, who have to stop every time traffic drives through, probably have the attitude, "Geez, it'd be a lot fairer if we could get the job done without so many interruptions."

So when we look for fairness or unfairness in life, there aren't any objective signs of either. What we find are people who stamp something as "Fair" or "Unfair" on the basis of their subjective perspectives.

How, then, can I believe so confidently that life is fair? Simple. I don't see any evidence of the privileged position that unfairness requires. There's no Fairness King or Queen who can sit on his or her throne and proclaim, "This is fair; that is unfair."

What we do have is a demonstrably interconnected universe where no thing, living or inert, stands alone. I'll quote myself, from the Fairness Machine chapter of "Life is Fair."

The main thing to remember about the law of karma is common to all laws of nature—the equal sign. Remember this, and you will know most of what you need to know about karma. To say "Life is fair" really is the same as saying "Life = some chain of causes and effects."

… We already know the end result, because this is us right now: our health, our wealth, our family, our friends, our beliefs, everything that makes up what we call "my life." What we don't know is what produced all of this. So we are left with only an answer, a solution to some unknown set of equations: My life right now = x + y + z + ….

There's a lot in my book that I don't agree with now, or at least am unsure about. However, the notion that there are causes for everything evident in this physical world still makes good sense to me.

Those causes are the reason I believe life is fair. The workings of the Fairness Machine that is our universe likely aren't how I described them. But the machine itself is undeniable: it's all around us, and indeed is us.

We don't know how the contraption works from the inside. The outside, though, is clearly evident. And it's product is: fairness. Cause and effect. Interrelatedness. Seamless connections. Quoting myself again:

Gravity controls the motion of all the trillions of celestial bodies in the universe. Gravitational forces guide the motion of everything in space, from microscopic specks of interstellar dust to giant galaxies.

Now, is there a big computer somewhere that keeps track of the incredibly complex dynamics in our unimaginably vast cosmos? No. And there isn't any earthbound computer which can come close to the precision of nature that keeps every heavenly body perfectly related to every other heavenly body. If one entity changes, such as a star exploding or an asteroid hitting a planet, then everything in the universe adjusts to this event instantly and automatically [note: I shouldn't have said "instantly," since gravity acts at the speed of light].

Gravity is a fascinating reflection of the higher metaphysical law of karma. This all-pervading force of nature illustrates a point that applies equally well to material and spiritual states of reality: the laws of nature are self-executing and self-balancing. "Self-executing" means they operate continually in every corner of the universe. There is no stop button that allows us to temporarily halt their workings.

Again, I'd quibble with myself about some of what I said in those paragraphs. However, the main thrust of my argument still seems unarguable to me. Somehow the universe functions as a whole, effortlessly weaving actions and reactions into an ever-changing tapestry of causes and effects.

I may not like what I see or experience. I may call it "unfair." But there's no evidence of unfairness when I look at things from the perspective of the entire universe (insofar as I'm able). The cosmos, a unity, doesn't have a privileged position. It's positionless, being everywhere and everything.

This leaves divinity as the other possible source of unfairness. If there's a Zeus who arbitrarily casts thunderbolts of suffering down upon some, while bestowing capricious godly favors on others, that sure would be unfair.

Where's the evidence of such a being, though? There isn't any. Not a whit. Which is fine with me. I'd like there to be a god who makes things peachy-keen for me, because I'm so obviously deserving of peachy-keenies. But that's much different from a god who just does whatever the hell (or heaven) she wants.

I'm happy being a tiny part of the whole that is our universe, all mixed up with other parts. I used to enjoy feeling that I was a special part, chosen by God to enjoy divine favors. Now, that strikes me as horribly unfair.

In the end, though, what do I know? I could be wrong about everything, including what I just said.

Maybe only Dilbert has the answers.

[Update: This "Life is Fair" piece from the Stanford Daily ends up with pretty much the same conclusion as I do. The author exhibits a pleasing cynicism. I like his opening line, since it reminds me of me: "When lying in bed late at night, alone and without easily available pornography, I sometimes turn my enormous brain to contemplating the nature of existence."]

Morality isn’t what God wants

Here's a thought-provoking passage from Plato's "Euthyphro" that you can throw into your next coffeehouse conversation about the meaning of life (you do have them, don't you?). Socrates says:

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

This is the Euthyphro dilemma. I ran across it for the first time while reading "The Top 10 Myths About Evolution." The authors, Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan, were making the point that morality is a natural inclination of humans, not something imposed by divine command.

It's sort of difficult for me to fathom which side of the Euthyphro dilemma Plato comes down on. Guess that's why it's called a dialogue rather than a monologue.

But wiser minds than mine (namely, the collective wisdom of Wikipedia) say that Socrates demonstrates the absurdity of holding that something is good because it is beloved by God (or all the gods, if you're a polytheist). As Smith and Sullivan say:

The problem with this view is that whether an action is wrong (or right) becomes completely arbitrary. God could have said that killing and stealing are morally right, and then those actions would be morally right.

Of course, this whole question of whether God loves what is already holy, or makes it holy by loving it, presumes that a God exists. To my mind that resolves the Euthyphro dilemma right off the bat, since there's no evidence of God. Case closed by virtue of irrelevancy.

However, supposed God substitutes do exist. Gurus, priests, clergy, imams, and other religious authorities claim that they know what God wants us to do. Holy books, the same.

So it's worth considering whether Socrates gets the better of the argument. I think he does. The notion that whatever God (or his stand in) wants is okay to do makes morality a matter of divine whim. It leads to crazed fundamentalists flying planes into buildings and devotees drinking poison-laced Kool-Aid.

In my case, it led me to not drink even a drop of alcohol (aside from a single lapse at a high school reunion) for more than thirty years. The guru who initiated me back in 1971 prohibited the imbibing of alcoholic beverages. So I took the non-Socratic route, viewing this command as worthy of being obeyed not because it made moral sense, but because it had been commanded.

With more than a little chagrin, I remember going to an artsy function during my fully devoted days and running into a fellow Radha Soami Satsang Beas initiate. He was holding a wine glass in his hand. I looked at him as if he were wearing the Devil's horns.

Not outwardly—I understood the need to maintain an air of detached "Hi, nice to see you." But inwardly I thought, "Oh my, another fallen soul."

And now I am one, having just taken a sip of my nearly-nightly glass of red wine, which I've concluded confers enough antioxidant and coronary benefits to warrant breaking my 1971 vow of abstinence (along with my first wife, I've also broken our 1970 vow of "till death do us part"; moral conceptions change, along with marriage partners).

Looking back, what surprises me is how fully I bought into Euthyphro's flawed view of piety:

Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.

Socrates points out this would mean that the gods get some benefit from certain actions or beliefs. They are made more "dear" by piety and seemingly disturbed by impiety. But if a god (or guru) is perfect, how could this being be affected by what someone does or doesn't do?

I used to believe that I'd let my guru down if I had a sip of wine, or failed to put in every minute of the time that I was supposed to devote to meditation every day. I should have read "Euthyphro" earlier (though it wouldn't have made an impression on me during my fundamentalist period).

Now I resonate with the scientifically-minded Smith and Sullivan. Morality isn't imposed from outside. It springs from within.

We're left with morality being independent of God in the same way that arithmetic and logic are independent of God…But notice that, because morality is independent of God, we can recognize the same reasons for not killing and not stealing that God recognizes [again, assuming that God exists], although our thinking is certainly slower.

We recognize the irreversible harm caused by killing as a reason not to kill, and we recognize the unfairness of stealing as a reason not to steal.

Because morality is independent of God, both the believer and the nonbeliever are in the same boat when it comes to making moral choices. So we can see that one does not have to believe in God in order to be a genuinely moral person.

Morality comes from nature, not God

Why do people do good things rather than bad things? One of the worst answers to this question is, “Because God has told us what is right and wrong.” A much better answer is, “Because nature has evolved us to be this way.”

Such is the hypothesis of those like Marc Hauser, a Harvard biologist, who propose that Darwinism is a better route to understanding human morality than theology.

Thanks to a comment by benandante on a recent post of mine I learned about Hauser’s book, “Moral Minds” (this New York Times review probably requires registration, but if you haven’t signed up yet for the NYT website, you need to evolve your cyberspace tastes).

I haven’t read this book. However, in Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” he refers to it in a “The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good?” chapter. Dawkins says that Hauser’s message, in his own words, is:

Driving our moral judgments is a universal moral grammar, a faculty of the mind that evolved over millions of years to include a set of principles for building a range of possible moral systems. As with language, the principles that make up our moral grammar fly beneath the radar of our awareness.

So as the NYT book review says, there can be many different moral codes—just as there are many different languages. Yet the core of both morality and language is hard-wired into us genetically.

This means that God is needed to explain how human morality came to be just as much as God is needed to explain how the human body came to be. Namely, not at all. Darwinian natural selection does just fine as an explanatory mechanism in both cases.

In his book Dawkins frequently reminds the reader that evolution is by no means “chancy.” It’s just the opposite. There’s always a reason why some traits persist and are passed on to future generations while other traits fall by the genetic wayside. Nature knows what it is doing.

And nature does it naturally. Thus to my mind one implication of Hauser’s and Dawkin’s evolutionary perspective is that it usually isn’t necessary to consciously agonize over moral choices.

For it seems that morality is like sex: we have an inbred natural urge to do what needs to be done. In short, trust yourself. Which should lead to our getting along with other members of our “tribe,” for this has lots of advantages, whether we’re living in six million years B.C. or the twenty-first century A.D.

Further, even though it seems that there wouldn’t be any evolutionary reason to identify positively with those outside of our immediate kin group, Dawkins argues that some of our Good Samaritan urges “are misfirings, analogous to the misfiring of a reed warbler’s parental instincts when it works itself to the bone for a young cuckoo.”

He says:

Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual’s psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale [reproduction].

I am suggesting that the same is true of the urge to kindness—to altruism, to generosity, to empathy, to pity...We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise able to reproduce.)

There’s no need for the traditional Ten Commandments and other moral codes that supposedly were communicated from on high. Yet studies have shown that people around the world do generally agree about what is right and wrong. Evolution has caused us to be this way.

Dawkins suggests that a New Ten Commandments is called for. He offers up this example that he found on an atheist website. It makes a lot more sense to me than the Old Ten Commandments.

(1) Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

(2) In all things, strive to cause no harm.

(3) Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

(4) Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

(5) Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

(6) Always seek to be learning something new.

(7) Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

(8) Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

(9) Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

(10) Question everything.

Gangaji, Eli, and Neo-Advaita hypocrisy

Ah, nothing like a guru-student sexual affair to spice up a churchless blog. Through my friend Randy’s “Gangaji’s Pinprick” and “More on Gangaji and Eli Jaxon-Bear” posts I’ve learned about some Neo-Advaitan hypocritical failure to practice what you preach.

Understand: the hypocrisy is what bothers me about spiritual teacher Eli, who is married to fellow spiritual teacher Gangaji, having a three-year affair with a much younger female student. Affairs happen. Usually they should remain a private matter.

Some of the commenters to an Ashland (Oregon) Daily Tidings story about Jaxon-Bear’s affair wondered why this was newsworthy.

Well, I agree with a Ron who said, “When you have an Ashland-based group that has some national prominence, and that is a spiritual organization whose leader gets caught with his pants down, so to speak, that's news.”

(Another commenter called Ashland “ten square miles of land surrounded by reality.” Neale Donald Walsch of “Conversations with God” fame, the subject of my previous post, also lives in Ashland. Along with other gurus. I love this quirky southern Oregon town, noted for its Shakespeare festival, which is about three and a half hours down I-5 from where I live.)

Coincidentally, if there is such a thing, yesterday I had coffee with my philosophical friend Patricia. She’d brought along the most recent issue of “What is Enlightenment?” It featured a critical article about Neo-Advaita that I found interesting: “Who’s Transforming Anyway?”

The author, Tom Huston, describes his youthful descent into the craziness of this New Agey teaching that we’re all already enlightened; we just don’t know it. Concerning Andrew Cohen and the editors of “What is Enlightenment?” Huston says:

No matter how effective a mystical teaching Advaita might have been in India’s ancient past, its newborn Western child, Neo-Advaita, seemed to be missing something significant. Isolated from its Eastern religious and historical context and taught as a quick-fix, no-frills contemporary path to spiritual enlightenment, they noticed its tendency to ignore traditional values like ethics and the cultivation of personal integrity.

Gangaji is one of the Neo-Advaita teachers mocked in Jessica Roemischer’s related previously-published piece, where Stacey Heartspring encounters the post-modern craze of Neo-Advaita. Here’s a typical Neo-Advaita bit of blather from Gangaji:

There is nothing that keeps you from the realization of your inherent, permanent, present freedom except your imagination that somebody or something is keeping you from that.

Neale Donald Walsch, who by and large echoes Gangaji’s and Eli’s outlook, says pretty much the same thing:

It’s not really a question of stepping into an experience so much as it is allowing it to flow through us more fully and more completely. It is quite possible for anyone to do that without any sort of training, without any particular sort of discipline, without any study, but with just a willingness to have the experience. And the first step is to allow the possibility that it could occur, because of course if you don’t think it could occur, then it cannot.

Well, fine. I haven’t realized my “inherent, permanent, present freedom.” But it’s possible that Gangaji and her hubby Eli have.

She’s written a book that promises to reveal how we all can “directly experience the perfect radiance of who you really are.” And at this very moment spiritual seekers are enjoying the “rare gift of being with Eli in an advanced setting for ten days.” So we have to assume that Gangaji practices what she preaches about desperation:

Find who is feeling desperate. The feeling of desperation only continues because you assume that you are, in fact, something that the feeling is hooked on to.

Hmmmm. I wonder why Gangaji and Eli had to go through a three month separation to resolve their differences if neither of them is a “something” that can be hooked by negative feelings, and if, as fellow Neo-Advaitist Tony Parsons says, “all concepts of good or bad, original sin, karma or debt of any kind are products of an unawakened mind.”

Eli and Gangaji, who somehow spoke as one voice in this interview, say:

Each of us needs to experience the ignorance, to find the place of fundamentalist certainty, fear, aggression, and animal territoriality, and to discover what is deeper. What is deeper is the next stage in the evolution of the human. It is the transcendental realization that you are not limited to human animal-ness. I do not mean merely to understand this, or to believe this, or to hope this is so, but to directly realize it for oneself. This requires the willingness to turn one’s back on personal identity as a male or female human animal.

Yet a student of theirs says that Eli is a “sexual predator who abused his power in the most egregious way.” Sounds pretty animalistic to me.

I’ve got no problem with men or women acting like animals. That’s a big part of what makes sex enjoyable. What ruffles my avian feathers is when a religious or spiritual figure pretends to be something that he or she is not, or says one thing and does another.

Another proponent of Neo-Advaita, Francis Lucille, says that “the only sin is to take yourself for a sinner.” I don’t agree with that point of view, but it is admirably simple and clear.

If it is true, though, then there wouldn’t have been a need for the Gangaji Foundation to issue an apologetic letter to their community of followers.
[Update: This letter has been removed by the Foundation. However, emails from the Foundation relating to the scandal still can be found at another web site.]

What was initially seen as a matter between adults is now recognized to be a betrayal of the teacher/student relationship and an abuse of power. A trust with the larger community also has been broken. This is an important revelation as real harm is being experienced by the student and is being fully acknowledged. The repercussions of this betrayal are reverberating in ways that were never imagined, but are very painful.

Tom Huston describes how he awakened from the relativistic nightmare of Neo-Advaita that, for a time, passed for spiritual truth in his excessively nihilistic eyes. There’s a valuable lesson for all of us here: fundamentalism doesn’t only come in the guise of traditional religion.

Tell it like it is, Tom:

Night after night, day after day, I’d storm Zen Buddhist forums, atheist forums, Christian forums, and even Natalie Portman fan discussion forums with my proselytizing passion for the Neo-Advaita way. “You morons think you’re real? Try this,” I’d say, as I dished out the intoxicating truth that renders human beings and their concerns into utter irrelevancy.

…“If all is One, then nothing is wrong,” said the notorious murderer Charles Manson. And while I didn’t actually kill anybody as I spread my love of Neo-Advaita far and wide, I probably did as much damage as one can with words alone, subverting all beliefs, trouncing all opinions, actively denying all values, hopes, and dreams—and loving every second of it, as I savored my absolute power over all relativity.

Yesterday Patricia and I talked about the big difference between thinking that you’re an enlightened spiritual person and actually being such. Passionate Neo-Advaita advocates, like all true believers, are prone to confusing the two. Thinking so doesn’t make it so.

If you claim to have turned your back on being a human animal, having a lengthy sexual affair with one of your students is just a touch contradictory (to put it mildly). Still, it’s always possible to take heart from a saying that my friend Hans is fond of repeating:

No one’s life ever is completely wasted. He can always serve as a horrible example for others.

The virtue of a Playboy philosophy of life

No, I don’t read it just for the articles. But frequently Playboy does feature thoughtful articles on one of my favorite subjects, the relation of religion and science.

For example, the April 2006 issue had “Faith & Reason” by philosopher Michael Ruse. Several other writers threw in their two cents on the subject. My favorite was comedian Lewis Black, who offered up some pithy advice about how to handle intelligent design believers.

The concept of evolution doesn’t take away from the concept of God. You’d have to be out of your mind not to see through the bullshit. You can buy into both without a complete loss of rationality. I’m not going to change their mind. There is no reasoning with these people—because they don’t reason.

We have the facts in carbon dating and fossils. I have tried to be nice, but I am exhausted. Fossils, fossils, fossils. I win. They really exist, and they are not the devil’s handiwork. Facts are fucking facts.

Yes, they are. What I like about the Playboy philosophy is that it recognizes when a hand of facts needs to be laid on the table, and when it’s OK to keep it hidden.

In the private realm, the only fact you have to be concerned about is your own experience. Like to have sex with the opposite gender? That’s a fact. Like to have sex with your own gender? That’s a fact. The end. In my life I haven’t spent even one second trying to justify to myself or anyone else why I’m heterosexual. Homosexuals have a similar right to simply say, “This is who I am. End of story.”

Ditto with other private preferences, moral or otherwise. I prefer vanilla ice cream. You like chocolate. No problem. Each to his own. (However, every time my wife makes Brussels sprouts she asks if I want some and I say “No, I don’t like them.” She then says, “But they’re good for you.” I reply, “I still don’t like them; I’ll have a salad instead.” It’s our little ritual.)

Disturbingly often, though, religious types forget that their beliefs are just that: beliefs. They’re private preferences about how to look on the mysteries of life: whether God exists, what happens after death, why bad things happen to good people, and such.

Nobody has the answers to such questions. More precisely, nobody can prove that they have the answers. So for practical purposes, nobody has the answers. Similarly, I can’t explain why I like vanilla ice cream and can’t stand Brussels sprouts. I just do. So don’t try to tell me why I should feel otherwise, because there’s no “why” to tell.

Similarly, don’t claim that the theory of evolution is a fraud or stem cell research is morally wrong unless you have a better reason than “Because I say so.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. I learned that on my elementary school playground.

Evolution and stem cells are objective public realities, not subjective private preferences. You don’t need a reason to have sex with whatever consenting adult you choose to hook up with. But if you want to influence public policy or public education, you damn well better have a good reason to back up your stand.

Or shut up. Public discourse is for people willing to exchange viewpoints, not engage in one-way moral diatribes. Daniel Dennett puts it nicely in his book, “Breaking the Spell.” This is a lengthy quote, yet well worth reading.

I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because “that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs …] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh …]” should be seen as making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.

The argument for this is straightforward. Suppose I have a friend, Fred, who is (in my carefully considered opinion) always right. If I tell you I’m against stem-cell research because “my friend Fred says it’s wrong and that’s all there is to it,” you will just look at me as if I was missing the point of the discussion.

This is supposed to be a consideration of reasons, and I have not given you a reason that I in good faith could expect you to appreciate. Suppose you believe that stem-cell research is wrong because that is what God has told you. Even if you are right—that is, even if God does indeed exist and has, personally, told you that stem-cell research is wrong—you cannot reasonably expect others who do not share your faith or experience to accept this as a reason.

You are being unreasonable in taking your stand. The fact that your faith is so strong that you cannot do otherwise just shows (if you really can’t) that you are disabled for moral persuasion, a sort of robotic slave to a meme that you are unable to evaluate. And if you reply that you can but you won’t consider reasons for and against your conviction (because it is God’s word, and it would be sacrilegious even to consider whether it might be in error), you avow your willful refusal to abide by the minimal conditions of rational discussion.

Either way, your declaration of your deeply held views are posturings that are out of place, part of the problem, not part of the solution, and we others will just have to work around you as best we can.

Reasons. Know when to hold them; know when to show them. In the game of private religion, you can keep them to yourself, if you have any at all. But if you want to play in the public square, you'd better be prepared to show your best stuff.

Revel in your selfishness

Everybody is selfish. Meaning, we all do what makes us happy. You, me, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, the Pope, everybody. No exceptions. All that distinguishes us is how directly selfish we are.

This is the big aha! I got this morning while reading another Anthony de Mello book, “Awareness,” that the great god Amazon recently delivered to my door. As I noted in my “Be a spiritual rebel!” post, I love de Mello. The love affair is deepening as I dig into this new writing. He writes:

I’m saying that ordinarily everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything. When you do something for the love of Christ, is that selfishness? Yes. When you’re doing something for the love of anybody, it is in your self-interest.

I’ve always been suspicious of people who claim that they “live to please the Lord.” Or the guru. Or their spouse. Or their children. Or whoever. Give me a break. People live to please themselves. We’re selfish creatures. Always have been, always will be.

It’s hard-wired into our consciousness; it’s the way things are. A friend is fond of saying, “We’re pleasure-seeking missiles.” I like the image. Whatever source of pleasure attracts us most strongly, zoom, our happiness homing system causes us to fly right up its tailpipe.

True, often it seems like people behave unselfishly. But if being unselfish didn’t make them happy, they wouldn’t act that way. So, unselfish people are selfish too, because they’re out to make their selves happy. If saintliness made saints miserable, would it be a virtue?

De Mello, a Jesuit priest who knows the games religious people play, puts it this way in “The Masquerade of Charity.”

Let me summarize what I was saying about selfless charity. I said there were two types of selfishness; maybe I should have said three. First, when I do something, or rather, when I give myself the pleasure of pleasing myself; second, when I give myself the pleasure of pleasing others.

Don’t take pride in that. Don’t think you’re a great person. You’re a very ordinary person, but you’ve got refined tastes. Your taste is good, not the quality of your spirituality. When you were a child, you liked Coca-Cola; now you’ve grown older and you appreciate chilled beer on a hot day. You’ve got better tastes now.…But you’re getting your pleasure all the same, except now it’s in the pleasure of pleasing others.

Then you’ve got the third type, which is the worst: when you do something good so that you won’t get a bad feeling. It doesn’t give you a good feeling to do it; it gives you a bad feeling to do it. You hate it. You’re making loving sacrifices but you’re grumbling. Ha! How little you know of yourself if you think you don’t do things this way.

If I had a dollar for every time I did things that gave me a bad feeling, I’d be a millionaire by now. You know how it goes. “Could I meet you tonight, Father?” “Yes, come on in!” I don’t want to meet him and I hate meeting him. I want to watch that TV show tonight, but how do I say no to him? I don’t have the guts to say no. “Come on in,” and I’m thinking, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put up with this pain.”

It doesn’t give me a good feeling to meet with him and it doesn’t give me a good feeling to say no to him, so I choose the lesser of two evils and I say, “O.K., come on in.”…That’s the worst kind of charity, when you’re doing something so you won’t get a bad feeling. You don’t have the guts to say you want to be left alone. You want people to think you’re a good priest!

Self-deception of this sort cuts at the heart of genuine spirituality, which must be based on truth. It leads us to put on a false smile and utter “Praise the Lord!” when we know damn well that this whole hypocritical show has only one purpose: to praise ourselves. How am I coming across? Did the congregation see me acting humble? Should I utter my silent prayer more loudly next time?

Cut the bullshit. Revel in your selfishness. Be happy because you’re happy. Discard the fiction that your joy in life is to serve others. You’re out to please yourself.

Proudly proclaim your allegiance to the Selfish Club. It’s six billion strong, membership granted at birth to every soul on earth, and growing daily.

A Playboy moral lesson

The January issue of Playboy arrived a few days ago. It’s been sitting on the kitchen counter where we dump our mail, as I haven’t had time yet to give the magazine the concentrated attention that it deserves.

However, Playboy’s mere presence has stimulated me to blogishly contemplate a somewhat surprising subject: morality. Of course, when I turn the issue’s pages my mind surely will turn in other directions.

But for now I’m interested in the feelings that I have whenever I walk by the counter and glance at the cover. Rightness. Honesty. Sincerity. Truth. I'll explain, since I realize that those four words are difficult to associate with a man’s Playboy subscription.

I had never subscribed to Playboy until last November. Then, in an act of defiance to the supposed “values voters” that exit polling indicated were responsible for electing Bush to a second term, I decided to invest $12 in a year’s worth of moral turpitude (a dollar a month, what a bargain).

Naturally I’d enjoyed looking at Playboy over the years. I’d say “reading,” but what man does much of that? Whenever I had the chance to pick up an issue, I’d eagerly do so. Thus all this time I was a Playboy fancier who wasn’t a subscriber.

It wasn’t the small subscription price that kept me from enjoying the magazine monthly. Rather, it was a split between two Brians. There was the me who liked to look at photographs of beautiful naked women, and then there was the me who was reluctant to admit to himself and others how much he liked to look at photographs of beautiful naked women.

The first “me” was honest; the second “me” was hypocritical. I could tell the difference between them when a Playboy ad would arrive in the mail, stimulated, no doubt, by my purchase of a single issue (August 2003) that featured Jenna and Heidi, two attractive contestants from the Survivor reality TV series. (Laurel and I are big fans of Survivor. I couldn’t pass up the chance to delve beneath the surface, so to speak, of this show.)

So whenever I’d get the mail and see a Playboy catalog, that would be the object of my attention as I walked back to the house. Scientific American. TIME. National Geographic. They could wait.

In short, I was a Playboy “reader” who didn’t read Playboy. Not because I thought there was anything morally wrong with doing so—there just was a discrepancy between the person I really was and the persona I wanted to project to the world.

I’d wonder, “What will the mailman think if I get a subscription? What if friends come over and see a copy lying around the house? Will this besmirch my reputation (such as it is)? Will I appear to be a fifty-something guy who likes to leer at young babes (which I am)?”

Eventually the ridiculousness of these wonderings hit home. I am who I am. If some aspect of who I am feels absolutely right to me when I’m alone in my subjective I-am-ness, then I shouldn’t worry about how it looks to those who see me from the outside.

Morality should spring from within, not without. As I noted in my “Talking with a churchless Christian” post, often we feel guilty about doing things that shouldn’t generate any guilt in us at all. The guilt is produced by social pressure (or more accurately, our perception of social pressure).

Religions frequently are the source of obsolete moral injunctions that continue to be accepted by people not because the codes mesh with their inner sense of right and wrong, but because it is more socially acceptable to run with the herd rather than follow your own moral compass.

I’m still a long way from being free of unproductive fretting about how other people regard me. But Playboy has helped me lighten my load of hypocrisy.

There shouldn’t be a big divide between what we feel is the right thing to do and what we’re actually doing. Nor should there be a marked divide between our private sense of morality and how we present ourselves in public.

This is why PostSecret is so popular, even though the postcard confessions are anonymous. It’s healthy to let out honest truth that has been held within.

Keep religion, individual morality out of lawmaking

It was a joy to read an article with this “right on!” title in yesterday’s Salem Statesman-Journal. Mary Ridderbusch is just 18, a recent high school graduate who will be attending the University of Oregon in the fall. But she’s wiser about religion and politics than most adults— and certainly the entire Bush administration.

I’ve attached her article in its entirety as a continuation to this post, since the Statesman-Journal’s free access to stories fades away after a week and I want people to be able to read Ridderbusch’s thoughts for a lot longer than that. She’s an excellent writer, knowing how to jump right into her subject:

One cannot legislate morality. These should be words to live by for the U.S. government. I hold a particular distaste for the legislation of religious beliefs and for the defense of this practice. “America is a Christian nation.” This claim is overused and overgeneralized.

I’ve frequently echoed her ideas in my politically-oriented Church of the Churchless posts. As I said in “Religious values have no place in politics,” we live in a real physical world, not in an abstract realm of faith-based ideas. Lawmaking has to be based on facts and values that flow from experience of a shared reality. Otherwise, democracy and individual rights are a sham.

Recently there was a lot of controversy in Salem about whether a historic black walnut tree should be cut down. Debate was vigorous and often heated. However, I didn’t hear anyone argue that because fairies live in the tree, it should be kept alive. That would have been a ridiculous argument for saving the tree, right?

Yet Ridderbusch points out that without a similar improvable belief in a unseen entity, the soul, stem-cell research would be a non-issue. Religious faith muddies the waters of political debate for it isn’t possible to have moral clarity when you’re blinded by fundamentalist preconceptions that have no grounding in the real world.

In the same vein, creationists are fond of saying that “evolution is just a theory,” which is what global-warming deniers say about climate change. This reveals a complete misunderstanding of what “theory” means in science. A letter by Roger Plenty in the August 27-September 2 issue of New Scientist says:

If educational institutions were required to label books “Evolution is only a theory,” as George W. Bush recently suggested, it might be a good idea to add a further label with a definition of “theory.” The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives “a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment and is accepted as accounting for known facts.”

Science and politics both have to be founded on facts. When faith-based beliefs are substituted for shared experience of the real world, society is in trouble.

Many thanks to Mary Ridderbusch for warning of the danger the United States faces from religious moralists who want to shove their personal views down the throats of everyone.

Talking with a churchless Christian

Last Tuesday I spent two pleasant hours talking with a Christian philosophy professor, Thomas Talbott. Tom teaches at Salem’s Willamette University. We were introduced by philosopher/artist/writer Patricia Herron, a friend who was instrumental in getting me thinking about this here Church of the Churchless back in August 2004.

Pat, Tom, Don (a friend of Toms) and I got into lots of deep stuff during our conversation at the south Salem Beanery. Though my neurons were flying on the caffeinated wings of a grande vanilla latte, I really didn’t need any artificial stimulation to stay focused on the fascinating topics that we covered. Here’s a sampling:

God is love—all love. Tom has written a book called “The Inescapable Love of God” whose title just about says it all. He believes in the doctrine of universalism, a.k.a. universal reconciliation. In the first chapter of his book Tom says, “Against the many religious doctrines that appeal to and cultivate our fear, I shall urge upon my reader this simple proposition: Contrary to what we might fear, the Creator and Father of our souls—the Lord of hosts and King of kings—is good.”

Hallelujah! The good news Tom brings is that everyone ultimately will be saved, Christian and non-Christian alike. When I asked him to confirm that this included my pagan soul, I liked his answer: “Sure. In fact, you might be closer to salvation than I am.” Now we’re talking. I could get behind a Christianity that lets you be saved without becoming a Christian.

Divinity starts on the high end of humanity. I told Tom that I liked the notion that God is all love, because I’ve always believed that a God who isn’t as good as a decent human being isn’t worth having faith in. I mean, it’d be taking a cosmic step backwards to worship a judgmental, punishing God who arbitrarily plays favorites, since lots of people here on earth manifest superior qualities.

I’d suspected that this view of mine wasn’t original (what view is?), and got that suspicion confirmed when I read the first 25 pages of “The Inescapable Love of God” (a free PDF sample). For Tom says the same thing on p. 8:

“I knew instinctively that I could never worship a God who is less merciful, less kind, less loving than my own parents, but that is just what I seemed to encounter in the mainstream of Western theology: a God who, though gracious (after a fashion) to some (the elect), refuses to will the good for others (the non-elect). And I could not imagine my parents refusing to will the good for anyone.”

Of course, it isn’t just Western religions that have an exclusionary policy concerning who gets to ride on the God train back to heaven. The Eastern mystical group that I’ve been associated with, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, believes that unless you’re initiated by a “perfect living master,” you’re doomed. Nonetheless, my poor doomed wife, whom I like to call my lovely infidel, isn’t losing any sleep over this. According to Tom, her peaceful slumber is absolutely warranted.

Why is God so well hidden? I told Tom that I liked his omnibenevolent conception of God. However, if God cares about us so much, why is God so hidden from both our physical and spiritual eyes? A good parent doesn’t stay in the bedroom all of the time with the door closed, leaving his or her children to fend for themselves. How can we have a close relationship with God when there’s nobody evident to relate to?

Tom had a short answer: “God doesn’t care if we know that he exists. He wants us to learn how to love each other, and all else that has been brought into existence by God. To love the Son is to love the Father. We all are Sons of the Father, not just Jesus.” Not bad. I don’t know if this really is true, but the basic notion intuitively appeals to me. If earthly existence is a sort of school, then God, the headmaster, isn’t concerned with how much we know about him, but rather with how well we learn the big lesson of life—love.

However, I replied that if God is love, then getting a great big infusion of God-realization into my soul seemingly would both (1) enable me to know the nature of God, and (2) teach me what love is all about. On the other hand (my Libra-ness keeps coming out) I also observed that any creative force which can form an entire universe in the big bang and keep it banging away for fourteen billion years, with many more billions yet to come, probably is a tad too powerful for my psyche to touch directly. Some insulation between us and God is necessary, which could explain God’s invisibility.

You’re a sinner! I got a flavor of good old traditional fire-and-brimstone Christianity after I shared an example of how I had strayed from one of the commandments of my own spiritual group. Without missing a beat Tom thundered out, “You’re a sinner!” With a smile, of course. I’m tempted to tell you what I said, but for literary reasons I want to let the denouement of this story wait a while, building up some dramatic tension before my confession is revealed (don’t get too excited; my sin is pretty tame by modern sinning standards).

Tom spoke about a similar experience from his conservative Christian high school days. He says in his book that “at my high school, a good Christian was identified as someone who does not smoke, drink, dance (roller skating was ‘iffy’), play cards, or attend Hollywood movies.” However, after Tom became more heretical and independent he went to a John Wayne movie with a friend from another high school.

They enjoyed the movie. After it ended they were walking down the sidewalk when some of Tom’s Christian classmates approached from the other direction. “What are you up to?” the classmates said. Tom was tongue-tied, but his friend—unaware that going to a movie was a Christian no-no—blurted out, “Oh, we went to see a John Wayne movie.” Tom said that as soon as those words came out of his friend’s mouth he felt like everything inside of him shriveled up into a wad of shame.

Such is the power of a religious group. One moment you can be on your own doing something innocent that feels perfectly fine; the next moment group pressure, either inwardly or outwardly imposed, can leave you feeling like a horrible sinner. One action; two ways of looking at it.

I threw out for discussion my Desert Island Theory of Morality. The theory isn’t fully formed yet, since I made up most of it on the spot there at the coffee house. But it’s something I have thought about now and then—such as when I fantasize Angelina Jolie appearing on my doorstep, dressed in as little as my fantasy will allow.

I say “will allow,” because fantasies are situated in some sort of context. For example, Angelina and I are somewhere; I’m somebody—married or not married, much as I am now or wildly different. Now, my Desert Island Theory of Morality comes into play in this fashion: I imagine that I’m on a deserted island similar to that of the “Lost” TV series. I’m disconnected from every aspect of my current worldly life. And there’s no chance that I’ll ever be reconnected to that life again.

I’m starting fresh. No religious group to belong to. No family to be a part of. No job to work at. No friends to associate with. I’ve already got the necessities of life on the island, such as food, water, and shelter, but anything else above and beyond that will have to wash up on its shores.

Such as one day, praise God!, Angelina Jolie. And the same merciful power that brought her to me has instilled in her a passionate desire for a 56 year-old graying man. Double praise God!! The moral question becomes: what to do? What is right when you’re absolutely on your own (well, aside from Angelina), free to make your own moral decisions without having to worry about what other people think or how they will react to what you decide to do?

This is an interesting question. It’s too involved to explore in any detail here. I’ll simply observe that much of morality involves a concern with how our actions affect other people. Such is absolutely appropriate. I believe in marital fidelity. Almost always infidelity, when it’s discovered, causes pain to the offended spouse. One person’s pleasure shouldn’t be bought with another person’s pain.

But Tom’s anecdote about going to a movie points to the craziness of feeling guilty for doing something that should be guilt free. Often the only reason we feel guilty is because we’ve been illogically taught to feel that way. Religious and other social institutions have a vested interest in keeping firm control of their members. For if people feel free to follow their own well-calibrated moral compass, they also may feel free to leave the confines of the group that has established boundaries thou shalt not cross.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about thirty-six years. It would take a lot to get me to eat an animal. If that desert island had fruits and vegetables to keep me alive, a refrigerated container full of filet mignon and a French chef could wash up on the beach and I wouldn’t have the slightest interest in it. Really. I believe that the more our morality can be inwardly grounded rather than outwardly proscribed, as my vegetarianism is, the better.

Anyway, it was a delight to talk with Tom, Don, and Patricia. Near the end of our conversation, when I asked Tom if, given all his heretical views, he still considered himself to be a Christian, I liked how there was a slight stammer as he said, “Um, ah, yes, I am.” I could be wrong, but he seemed to be mentally defining Christianity in his mind (as a college professor should), deciding whether what he believes could reasonably be called Christian.

Tom is a churchless Christian, the best kind.

On deciding for oneself

I’ve enjoyed reading David’s comments on my “I is a humble word” post. One of the points he makes is that people shouldn’t take a guru’s statements—and, by implication, those of any other spiritual leader—as ex cathedra (infallible).

David argues cogently that Charan Singh, like many mystic masters, conveyed contradictory messages to different people. For example, (1) laws should be obeyed and (2) do this illegal thing. So, he says, “Which one is the ex-cathedra, eh?”

Good question. There seem to be two ways of approaching an answer.

One is to consider that each of the contradictory pieces of advice was perfectly suited for the person being advised (which allows a devoted disciple to continue to believe in the “perfect living master”). The other is to accept that ethics and morality are relative concepts, and gurus are as enmeshed in relativity as are the rest of us (meaning, they don’t have a fix on absolutes concerning worldly life).

David describes some examples of how Charan Singh’s advice appeared correct from the inside, the point of view of the advisee, but could have seemed wrong from someone else’s perspective.

He concluded with a statement that I heartily agree with: “Please do not make master into another pope.” No, I certainly don’t want to do that. One pope already is too many. Like David, I have no problem with viewing the guru, or any other spiritual leader, as someone who offers advice about how to live in the world which people can take to heart, or not, depending on whether the advice makes sense to them.

All of us need advice from an expert from time to time, whether this be an accountant, doctor, lawyer, auto mechanic, dietician, psychotherapist, or spiritual leader. When this happens one on one, person to person, it’s difficult to call that sort of advising absolutist or ex cathedrist.

However, here’s where I differ with David. When a collection of supposedly purely personal advice is formed into a book, as was the case with the letters to disciples in “Quest for Light” by Charan Singh, then the obvious intent is for this advice to be promulgated widely far beyond the original individual recipient.

It’s as if I were to ask a financial advisor what mix of investments would be most suitable for my personal situation. He writes me an answer—“Basically, 60/40 in stocks/bonds”—and then publishes verbatim that same piece of advice in a newspaper column without mentioning that it is suitable only for people like me.

In this situation, which is almost exactly comparable to that of “Divine Light” and many other similar what-the-guru-said books, you’d be hard-pressed to come to any other conclusion than that the advice giver intended his advice to be generally applicable. If this weren’t the case, then the financial advisor wouldn’t have written the column and Charan Singh wouldn’t have authorized publication of the book.

It is true that devoted disciples often make “popes” out of spiritual leaders who would rather not be elevated so highly. But it also is true, as with Charan Singh, that the mantle of infallible perfection is willingly accepted once it has been proclaimed.

As a final note, I’ve been reading an interesting book by Charles Freeman, “The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason” (note the “review” by Freeman himself on this Amazon page, written in response to other reader reviews; Freeman practices what he preaches, open-minded rational exchanges). The central theme of the book is that the rise of Christianity thrust the Western world into a dark age after the Greek intellectual tradition was abandoned.

This morning, in a chapter about Paul, I read:

When Paul composed responses to his communities in the turbulent and confused years after Jesus’ death, years that Paul believed were a prelude to the imminent second coming, he could hardly have expected that they would be given the status of universal and authoritative truths and be used in contexts totally different from those in which he had written them.

One consequence of Paul’s elevation as a theologian was to shift the emphasis away from his personality, yet it is certainly arguable that his own psychological needs defined the distinctive teachings that he preached to his communities and should be central to any study of him….He appears never to have married and to have been ill at ease with sexuality, above all homosexuality.

This is what happens over and over with religious writings: they get elevated from the personal to the universal. Paul can’t be blamed for his letters being enshrined as dogma after his death. But when a spiritual leader allows such to occur during his or her lifetime, then much of the responsibility for fostering a climate of moral absolutism has to fall on that leader.

When I got divorced some sixteen years ago, fundamentalist disciples of Charan Singh would mail me copies of pages from his books where he had spoken about the sanctity of marriage and the wrongfulness of divorce. I didn’t appreciate this intrusion into my personal life. I knew what was best for me, my now ex-wife, and my daughter much better than anyone else did.

I’m not saying that all fundamentalists are so judgmental. Many, hopefully, understand that love is a greater good than judgment: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Of course, you can also find lots of admonitions in the Bible to judge. Contradictions abound in every holy book, as the wonderful Skeptic’s Annotated Bible makes clear. Each of us has to make up our own mind about spirituality. Otherwise, it’s roll the dice and take your chances with someone else’s gamble on God.

In defense of uncertainty

This month TIME essayist Charles Krauthammer wrote a piece called “In Defense of Certainty.” Well, I’m certain that Krauthammer is wrong. He thinks that it’s entirely appropriate to publicly advocate political views founded on religious belief.

Actually, it’s entirely inappropriate to do this. Last year I wrote about why religious values have no place in politics, arguing that “you can’t debate with someone who doesn’t have a defensible reason for why they believe what they do. You can’t debate with someone who responds to a reasoned argument with ‘Because the Bible says so’ or ‘Jesus condemns sinners.’”

Religious belief is a conversation stopper. That’s why it is so injurious to political discourse. People who are absolutely certain that they are right aren’t interested in listening. All they want to do is talk. Preach. Proselytize. Pontificate. Since they can’t offer rational reasons for their political positions—faith isn’t rational—the simple question “Why?” is viewed as an attack.

More accurately, questions which follow the religious believer’s answer to the initial “Why?” are considered to be unseemly. For example, I ask a True Believer “Why do you think that gays shouldn’t be able to marry?” I am told, “Because homosexuality is a sin.” And that supposedly settles the matter.

Now, from my point of view that response doesn’t end our conversation; it’s just the beginning. I want to ask follow-up questions. Lots of them. “What do you mean by sin?” “Who decides what is sinful?” “How can you be sure that what you think is a sin, really is?” There are all kinds of directions our conversation could go. Naturally I’d be asked questions too and would have to defend my own answers.

Krauthammer completely misses the point when he says, “Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unhealthy religiosity.” No, it is just the opposite: the religious believers are the ones trying to win political arguments by default, not the secularists.

When someone tells me, “I’m certain,” and he really means it, that’s the end of our discussion. I’m not going to waste my time trying to engage him in an open debate when his mind isn’t open. If he believes that everything written in the Bible or some other holy book is true, and no matter what facts I bring up he quotes scripture to me, I’ll walk away from this one-sided conversation. He doesn’t want to talk with me; he wants to preach to me.

Krauthammer sings the praises of moral certainty. Yet moral certainty only is a virtue when there are good reasons for holding an ethical position. Blind, thoughtless, unquestioning moral certainty is more likely to be a vice than a virtue, because ethics requires a delicate sensitive touch—not a ham-fisted slam on the table and the cry “Believe!”

I’ve never belonged to a genuine fundamentalist religion, thank God. But over the decades I’ve associated with many people who have treated the utterances of a guru in a fundamentalist fashion. That is, they accepted as gospel what the guru said even when it didn’t make sense. Now, I’ve got no problem with this display of blind faith when the supposed gospel truth is purely spiritual with no political implications.

However, every time I read this passage in “Quest for Light,” a book containing extracts from letters written by an Indian guru, Charan Singh, I’m reminded of how simple-minded fundamentalism is as likely to be found in Eastern mysticism as in Western religion. The guru wrote:

Please remember that anything that is against Nature is always improper and inadvisable. Nature has created the two sexes for the continuation of the species and for the satisfaction of the sex instinct within proper limits. If we go against it, it means we are doing something unnatural of which the laws of Nature do not approve. Homosexuality is contrary to all laws of Nature and no decent society approves it. The act is humiliating and degenerating not only in the eyes of others, but also in the eyes of those who are involved…There are no habits which we cannot break if we have the will and determination to do so.

There are many untruths and irrational conclusions in that paragraph. It makes no sense. Yet because the guru said those words, many (if not most) of his disciples took them seriously. Their desire for spiritual certainty led them to accept without question statements that should have been met with an emphatic, “What?!” Every sentence in the quotation above begs for deep questioning. And then, in my opinion, rejection.

I understand the appeal of certainty. I’ve fallen into the trap of the True Believer myself. I once thought that questioning the pronouncements of a guru would be detrimental to my spiritual progress, no matter how ridiculous those statements were when viewed in the lights of reason, compassion, and scientific facts.

Now, I’ve concluded that uncertainty is an always-open door. Uncertainty allows us to escape from the confines of rigid beliefs that have no basis in reality.

I’ve come to believe in the power of don’t know. When in doubt, doubt.

Animal lovers don't eat meat

I usually don’t pay much attention to human interest stories, but the tale in our local newspaper of how Salem residents rallied to protect a mother duck and her brood of 10 ducklings moved me.

The duck nest was in a bush next to a downtown office building. Employees from nearby businesses kept the nest safe until the ducklings hatched, then they and other people protected the mother and newborns as they waddled their way across busy streets all the way to the Willamette River. One passerby even let himself be lowered headfirst into a storm drain to rescue two ducklings who had fallen in.

This tale of so many people taking the time and trouble to aid some ducks made me think, in a clichéd but sincere fashion, “It helps restore my faith in human nature.” It reminded me of my wife’s rescue of some city ducks a few years ago, though I have never questioned Laurel’s love of animals and dedication to making their lives better.

Such as by not eating them. We’re both proudly churchless and don’t believe that morality can, or should, be proscribed in any sort of “Ten Commandments” form. However, like almost everyone we don’t think that people should harm others. So the Golden Rule that is reflected in the teaching of every world religion, treat others as you would want to be treated yourself, seems to be an excellent universal ethical guide.

As vegetarians, we consider that the meaning of “others” includes animals. So the good people of Salem who helped the ducks get to Minto-Brown Island garner a hearty round of moral applause from us. We wonder, though, how many of these folks went home that day and ate meat for dinner while they told their family about how they had helped save the ducks.

As I wrote in my “Dozen desperate ducklings dodge death” post, “it was fitting that vegetarian Laurel saved the ducklings, because it would have been the height of hypocrisy for a meat-eater to feel self-righteous about helping them, when he or she would be eating other animals for dinner the very same day. Plain fact: anyone who isn't a vegetarian isn't an animal lover, no matter what they say. You don’t love animals by killing them.”

That last line sounded a bit harsh to me when I originally wrote it, and it strikes me the same way now. But I still have to agree with what I said, no matter if it offends some meat-eaters: You don’t love animals by killing them.

I try not to be a holier-than-thou vegetarian. It doesn’t bother me to be with people eating meat and I don’t look down on people who eat meat. I loved meat myself until I was about twenty-one. At the time I was still eating fish. During a trip back to my mother’s house from college she served me a prawn. I remember looking at it curled up on my plate and thinking, “That animal once was alive, and now it’s not, because of me.” Since then, for thirty-six years, I haven’t eaten a bite of meat.

For that prawn made me realize that I was part of the demand for animal flesh that causes fish, cows, chickens, sheep, turkeys, ducks, pigs, and other creatures to be killed. Many people consider meat-eating to be one of the pleasures of life. Well, I don’t like the thought that my pleasure comes at the cost of someone else’s pain, whether that someone is a person or an animal.

Some years back I wrote an opinion piece for the Portland Oregonian, “Vegetarians, honk your horns,” about why protesting fast-food restaurants is a better cause for a moralistic crusade than is picketing adult shops. Granted, there are some victims in the porn industry, but the meat industry causes much more pain and suffering—both to the animals that are killed and the people who eat them.

If meat was a drug, it would be illegal. Or at least highly regulated. Almost every meat product would be marked with a sticker: “Caution, may greatly increase the risk of death from heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases.” And if the cautionary sticker included animals’ point of view, the list of negative effects would be longer: “Consumption of this product results in severe pain, panic, and distress to those killed in its making.”

I’m happy that 11 ducks were saved in Salem last Monday. I just hope that the people who saved them were moved to consider whether animal lovers can also be animal eaters. In my opinion, you’re one or the other. A dog or cat lover would never consider eating Fido or Fluffy. So how can someone who claims to be an animal lover eat animals?

Be loyal to yourself, not a group

Most people look upon loyalty as a virtue. We value loyal friends, loyal citizens, loyal workers. But when is loyalty a vice? I’ve been thinking about this question ever since I came across a paper by philosopher Laurie Calhoun, “A Critique of Group Loyalty.”

I’m a pretty loyal person. I don’t drop loyalties on a whim. I’ve been getting my hair cut by the same woman, Betsy of Hair Headquarters, for 28 years. My first marriage lasted for 18 years and now I’ve been married to Laurel for 15 years. I’ve had a Casio watch on my wrist for as long as I can remember.

And I’ve been faithfully attending meetings (a.k.a. “satsangs”) of the same spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), for 35 years. I take commitments seriously, especially spiritual commitments. When I became a member of RSSB I took a vow to meditate two and a half hours a day (yes, really), be a vegetarian, not imbibe alcohol or drugs, and, rather vaguely, “live a clean and moral life.”

Religious groups or churches usually expect that members will adhere to some sort of standards. Even Unitarians, though theirs is basically an appealing “respect all standards” standard. If there wasn’t any way to distinguish “believers” from “non-believers,” you wouldn’t have a defined spiritual system.

However, belief and non-belief isn’t a strict dichotomy. There are shades of gray. You can kind of believe in something, just as you can kind of share a group’s beliefs. People often continue belonging outwardly to a “church” (using that term to mean any kind of religious organization) after they’ve stopped belonging inwardly.

In a recent issue of The New Yorker Archbishop Charles Chaput, of Denver, was quoted as saying, “We’re at a time for the Church in our country when some Catholics—too many—are discovering that they’ve gradually become non-Catholics who happen to go to Mass.”

The same is true of every other church. Just because you’re sitting with a group listening to a sermon doesn’t mean that you agree with what is being preached. So, why do you stay? Often, because you feel that you should be loyal to the group. So, why should you be loyal?

Laurie Calhoun says, “In spite of the positive connotation of ‘loyalty,’ the concept is itself morally neutral, and remaining loyal to a group whose values one does not share is irrational.” She adds, “Loyalty involves a commitment to go along with one’s group, even when the group’s action is something that, left to one’s own devices, one would not have thought to do. In other words, loyalty is supposed to provide an extra reason to do what one would not otherwise do.”

Group loyalty is different from individual loyalty. When I gave examples of how I’ve been loyal, only my membership in RSSB involves a group loyalty of the sort Calhoun is speaking about.

For example, I keep getting my hair cut by Betsy because I want to. If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t. There’s no group putting pressure on me, either outwardly or inwardly. Every time I call Betsy up and make an appointment, my hair-cutting action is totally consistent with my hair-cutting belief. I believe that Betsy is a good haircutter and I have her cut my hair.

When it comes to questions of ethics or morality, though, I have to decide whether I choose to answer these questions myself or to accept the answer of an outside authority. Calhoun says, “An ethics by authority responds to the fundamental principle of moral philosophy—‘What should I do?’—with a simple, univocal answer: ‘Do what you are told to do.’ The voice of some institutional (e.g., familial, religious, governmental, educational) authority is accepted as a moral authority.”

The problem with this approach, she says, is that we never have truly solid grounds for believing that another human being is a moral sage. Many people accept that someone else (such as the Pope, or a guru) is better attuned to the “word of God” than they are themselves. So they submit to what this person says to do morally rather than to what they would consider is right, if left to their own devices.

In other words, loyalty to a group ethic is valued more highly than loyalty to one’s own sense of right and wrong. A religious group almost always has its moral compass pointed at supposedly unquestionable ethical standards; if a member’s personal morality turns in a different direction, how can this conflict be resolved?

Calhoun has a simple answer: “The rational approach to conflicts between one’s own moral conscience and one’s group is to defer ultimately to one authority alone, namely, one’s own conscience.” As an academic, Calhoun likes to use words like “rational.” But the approach she suggests has a strong intuitive appeal also. Basically it comes down to follow your heart, because you’ll go off course if you do anything else.

In her paper Calhoun lays out the logical reasons for following one’s conscience when a person’s intuition about a policy conflicts with the prevailing opinion of his or her group. If you go along with the group, then whether the group is right or wrong (assuming there really is a “right” and “wrong” when it comes to moral issues), you fail.

You fail because if you go along with the group, whether it is right or wrong, you aren’t acting with moral and intellectual integrity. Basically, your loyalty to the group is stronger than your loyalty to the truth—the truth of your own conscience. Because you don’t want to incur the consequences of going against the group (ostracism, condemnation, etc.), your outward actions betray your inward inclinations. Even if you’re doing the right thing, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, and motive is all-important in morality.

Calhoun says, “When should we dissent from the policies of our groups? Precisely and only when they conflict with our deepest convictions and values. If a policy is sound, then we should support it. If it is not, then we should not support it… A group is not good simply because it is a group…Although religions may appease the human need for security, they become irrational when they begin to erode people’s fundamental values.”

And she ends with this statement:

“We have found that the prioritization of loyalty over one’s fundamental convictions and values is, at best, irrational and self-delusive and, at worst, dangerous. To describe a human being as ‘loyal’ is not to pay him a compliment.”

After many years of unquestioning group loyalty I’m now trying to do my best to determine, in acts either great or small, what my own conscience tells me to do. For if I’m not acting true to myself, its not worth doing.

Thumbs down to the new Pope’s moral absolutism

I have some Catholic qualifications for criticizing newly-elected Pope Benedict XVI’s stance on moral absolutism: I was baptized and had my first communion, after which I flamed out on Catholicism (around the age of ten) before being confirmed.

At my first communion I had trouble swallowing the wafer. It stuck to the roof of my mouth and I started coughing. I still remember feeling panicky, wondering what sort of mortal sin it would be to spit the body of Jesus onto the church floor. Eventually I got the wafer down, but God had sent me a message that I’ve never forgotten: don’t easily swallow the Catholic faith—or any religious teachings, for that matter.

All I know about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, or Pope Benedict XVI, is what I’ve learned since his election. But this is enough for me to give his philosophical stance on truth a big “thumbs down.” Previously Ratzinger had served as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be called the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition back in the not-so-good old days of the 1500s.

Now, I can’t hold Ratzinger responsible for the Inquisition. Yet the absolutist Catholic dogma that Ratzinger strongly supports was the foundation for all of the Inquisitorial atrocities committed in the name of God.

Ratzinger believes that Christianity is the only true religion, and Catholicism is the only means to salvation within Christianity. He also believes in objective truth (I have no argument with him there), yet holds that Christ is the ultimate and definitive reality for men in the world (I do have an argument with him here).

If Christ is the epitome of objective truth, why can’t everyone recognize this? The truths of science hold sway across the world, among trained scientists at least, because the laws of physical reality are known to be the same for everybody, everywhere, irrespective of their personal beliefs. But religious, moral, and ethical “truths” are as much open to question now as they were in the days of the ancient Greeks.

Except in the minds of fundamentalists such as Ratzinger, who mistake subjective scriptural assertions for objective universal reality. There is no evidence, none at all, for the Church’s claims that it alone has a clear understanding of moral truth—for example, that contraception is wrong, gay marriage is a sin, abortion can’t be justified, and capital punishment is a no-no.

Neither Ratzinger nor any other theologian can point to indisputable facts in the world out there that support a stance of moral absolutism. Nature leaves very few clues, perhaps none at all, about how human beings and other highly evolved animals should act. We know a lot about how people do act, yet the philosophical gulf between “should” and “do” is immense.

Given that there are so many differing opinions about what is right and what is wrong, I’m on the side of pluralism. When there isn’t any convincing proof that one set of moral standards is better than another, it makes sense to let people find their own way down life’s multitudinous choices of ethical paths.

However, Ratzinger considers religious pluralism equivalent to moral relativism. He has come to the false conclusion that if people are left to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, chaos will result. Ratzinger thinks that there is only a single source of objective moral truth, the Catholic Church. If you don’t get your morality from the Holy See, you’re trading in counterfeit goods.

By contrast, wiser theologians understand that pluralism isn’t the same as relativism. Here are some principles of religious pluralism contained in the above-linked article:

“1. The religions of the world affirm an ultimate reality which they conceive of in different ways and which both transcends the material universe and is immanent within it.

2. Whilst in itself ultimate reality is beyond the scope of complete human understanding, in its relation to humanity many claim to have experienced its presence in diverse ways, including great individuals in supreme revelatory moments that have given rise to the world’s religions, including the great world religions.

3. The great world religions, including their different and at times incompatible teachings, are as totalities of scripture, history, tradition, paradigmatic figures, rituals, creeds and forms of spirituality, authentic paths to the supreme good.

4. The world’s religions share many basic values, for example, love, compassion, justice, honesty, treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself.

5. There are however forms of religion, including some based in the great world religions, which are misused for purposes contrary to those values.

6. Each person must follow his/her conscience. Therefore the possibility of conversion is part of the human right to religious freedom.

7. In the present century the traditional assertions of an exclusive possession of absolute truth repel rather than attract many people who seek the wisdom that religions, and other explanations of the ultimate meaning of life, have to offer.

8. Hence, from a pluralist point of view it does not make sense in the contemporary world to try through missionary activities to convert the world to one’s own tradition.

9. Interreligious dialogue, as conversations among people who wish to learn and benefit from one another’s inheritance and insights, should be the normal way for religions — and ideologies — to relate to each other.

10. Within this dialogue a paramount need is for the religions to heal any historic antagonisms between them.”

Now, my Church of the Churchless preference is to make reality my religion, which does away with the need for religious pluralism altogether. One reality, no religion. But so long as religions exist, religious pluralism is certainly much preferable to religious absolutism. When there is no objective evidence that any spiritual path leads more directly to God than any other, it’s best to keep your traveling options open.

John Allen, Jr., who wrote the article listing the 10 statements of pluralistic faith, says that “the list, especially points seven and eight, also helps explain why defenders of conventional Christological and ecclesiological positions find the [pluralistic] model worrisome.”

Yes, it is indeed worrisome to defenders of the Doctrine of the Faith that spiritual seekers might dare to think for themselves and come to the conclusion that the key to unlocking the ineffable mystery of God isn’t the exclusive possession of any religion, and that converting to a religion is like picking up a fresh pair of dice at Las Vegas: the odds are still overwhelming that, in the long run, you’re going to lose.

The wisest course of action is not to gamble. Neither with your money, nor with your soul.

Invest your effort in finding the truth about God the only place where it can be found—within yourself. That’s a bet worth making.

Evil: made by man or God?

“Evil” is a word much in fashion after 9/11. Bush loves to use it, as in “we will root out the evildoers,” but if he was asked to define the term, I doubt that he’d be able to do it. This isn’t a knock on Bush, because last Thursday three philosophers spent an hour on PBS’s “Philosophy Talk” discussing the nature of evil. Even they didn’t come close to agreeing on an answer.

The two hosts of Philosophy Talk were joined by Peter van Inwagen, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame. He said that there is a distinction between “radical evil” and “bad things.” Examples of radical evil are Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, people who are way over at the dark end of the good-bad scale. The things they do are truly horrific, not merely bad—like stealing, parking in a handicapped space, needlessly killing an animal.

It was generally agreed that natural disasters can’t be called “evil,” even the tsunami that killed over 150,000 people. Yet a man or woman who brutally killed just a few people could. The main difference between nature and humankind is that men and women supposedly have free will, while nature just acts, well, naturally. No one gets angry at tectonic plates for shifting and creating an earthquake. But if an evil genius could willfully produce a massive destructive earthquake, the outrage would be incalculable.

Free will, then, seems to be a prerequisite for evil. Absent free will we just have bad things. If a large fir tree fell on my house during a windstorm that would be a bad thing. If someone with a chain saw willfully caused the tree to fall on my house, that would be an evil deed. At least, so argues common sense and the law.

However, the philosophy talkers raised some points that blur the distinction between “natural” and “willful” disasters, especially if you believe in God. Prof. van Inwagen, a Christian, argued that even God, an omnipotent and omnipotent being, can’t know what people will do with their free will. This helps explain why God, who also is considered to be omnibenevolent, created a universe that now contains so much evident evil.

In the Christian view, the progenitors of humankind were given free will and then made bad choices. This caused a separation from God which made things even worse. Now we supposedly have been left to our own devices, which includes evil-doing, while God watches from afar, unwilling or unable to eliminate the bad stuff in our world. We made our own mess, and now we have to deal with it.

There are many problems with this theological premise. If you’ve got a high tolerance for philosophical argument, ponder the “Evil” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Or as much of it as you can understand, if you’re not familiar with symbolic logic. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

What properties must something have if it is to be an appropriate object of worship, and if it is to provide reason for thinking that there is a reasonable chance that the fundamental human hopes just mentioned will be fulfilled? A natural answer is that God must be a person, and who, at the very least, is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good.

But if such a being exists, then it seems initially puzzling why various evils exist. For many of the very undesirable states of affairs that the world contains are such as could be eliminated, or prevented, by a being who was only moderately powerful, while, given that humans are aware of such evils, a being only as knowledgeable as humans would be aware of their existence. Finally, even a moderately good human being, given the power to do so, would eliminate those evils. Why, then, do such undesirable states of affairs exist, if there is a being who is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and very good?

What one has here, however, is not just a puzzle, since the question can, of course, be recast as an argument for the non-existence of God. Thus if, for simplicity, we focus on a conception of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, one very concise way of formulating such an argument is as follows:

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn't exist.

It’s hard to refute this argument. Once we conceive of God as a person who is “very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good,” it’s almost impossible to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of such a being. This is why I strongly lean in the direction of an impersonal monistic God—One without a second. For if there truly is God and also what is not-God, then the contradictions laid out in 1-7 above are virtually inescapable.

On the Philosophy Talk program it was pointed out that even seemingly natural disasters like earthquakes can be traced back to God. For if God created the universe, He/She/It also created plate tectonics and all the other laws of nature that cause earthquakes to happen. So there is a divine intentionality behind even the “blind” destructive forces of nature, which perhaps is why they often are called “acts of God.”

My personal suspicion is that what we call “bad” and “good” happenings are just that: things that simply happen. They are caused, but the ultimate causes are difficult, if not impossible, to discern. This means that a judgmental word such as “evil” is, as several callers to the program argued, a way of rationalizing feelings of anger and of compartmentalizing people/events that we don’t understand.

Once Osama bin Laden is labeled an “evildoer,” we don’t have to try to comprehend his inner nature. We just have to try to kill him. Yet bin Laden himself calls America evil. One of the hosts of Philosophy Talk observed that half of bin Laden’s message that was released around election time was rantings and ravings, but half made pretty good sense. But if we write bin Laden off as someone qualitatively different from ourselves, evil with no hint of goodness, then he can be objectified as a Satanic thing rather than a Human person.

I don’t use the words “evil” or “bad” very often. If someone asks me about a movie that I didn’t enjoy very much, I’m much more likely to say “I didn’t like it” than “It was bad.” Not liking means that the movie scored low on my personal good scale. It lacked goodness. This is quite different from considering that it reeked with badness.

Plotinus, my favorite Greek philosopher, held that there is nothing but the Good, or God. However, the Good can manifest in an infinity of ways, from One all the way to essentially zero—just as heat ranges from absolute zero to as high as you want to go.

“Cold” isn’t the presence of something; it is the absence of heat. Similarly, my wife and I both believe, along with Plotinus, that “evil” isn’t anything real in itself; it is the absence of good.

Maybe the word itself contains a clue to its meaning. Spell it backward: LIVE. So long as we live, there will be evil. Until we are One.