Church of the Churchless

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 L