Church of the Churchless

What’s up with worship?

Yesterday my wife had a epiphany. Laurel was driving by a church and saw a sign about Sunday Worship. “Suddenly,” she told me, “the whole idea of worshipping God seemed so ridiculous. How do we know that God wants to be worshipped?”

Excellent question. Which presupposes that there is a God at all. So the notion of “worship” is doubly dubious. The good Christians who attend that church believe in a God for whom there is no demonstrable evidence, and they also believe that this God whom they are clueless about loves to be worshipped.

Why? Because the Bible tells them so. And why should they believe the Bible? Because the Bible tells them to. It’s no wonder most scientists eschew religion. Circular reasoning that leads nowhere isn’t their cup of tea.

Nor, mine.

Christianity believes in a personal God who is the absolutely greatest being there could possibly be. This is Anselm’s Ontological Argument. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but regardless, I’ll agree that if God exists, you’d expect that this dude (or dudette) would put pretenders to perfect divinity to shame.

So I picture really good people like the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, or Gandhi being asked, “Is it OK if we worship you?” I’m pretty sure these humble souls would be aghast at the idea. “No, for god’s sake, don’t worship me. Love me, get to know me, be with me—but don’t put me up on a pedestal.”

Yet God does want to be worshipped?

My own adaptation of Anselm’s argument is that if it is possible for you to envision a human being who has higher moral qualities than your conception of God, you’d better rethink that conception.

In his book “Breaking the Spell,” Daniel Dennett addresses the marketability of the two main God hypotheses: God as essence (ground of being, non-anthropomorphic, not in time and space, abstract) or God as conscious supernatural being (who listens to and answers prayers in real time, for instance.) Dennett quotes Rodney Stark:

“There is no more profound religious difference than between faiths involving divine beings and those limited to divine essences,” he [Stark] says, and the latter he judges to be hopeless, because “only divine beings do anything.” Supernatural conscious beings are much better sellers because “the supernatural is the only plausible source of many benefits we greatly desire.”

Ah, now we’ve gotten to the root of worship. It’s an exchange relationship. God asks for praise and devotion; I offer it; God then gives me what I want. Eternal life. A place in heaven. Escape from damnation. Freedom from my sins. Divine wisdom.

Well, I’m with Laurel. The more you ponder the worship game, the more absurd it seems. I’m supposed to kiss God’s ass even though I’ve never seen God. Or his ass. And I don’t even know if this God whom I don’t know likes to have his ass kissed.

For all I know, which I don’t, maybe God hates all this worship stuff and he’s going to kick my ass if I kiss his.

Good luck, faithful worshippers. You might be needing it.

Yes, there are agnostics in dentist’s chairs

Most everyone has heard the expression, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” This assertion has been challenged by the Atheists in Foxholes organization, which points out that many in the armed forces identify themselves as “no religion.”

This morning I proved a related assertion: there are agnostics in dentist’s chairs. Now, I’ll admit that having some crown/bridge work redone isn’t quite as dramatic as being in a Vietnam firefight, as this atheist in a foxhole was.

Nonetheless, when the drilling starts and you don’t know how much pain there will be, you’re looking for support from somewhere.

During my devotional days I’d try to adopt the attitude that a dental visit was God’s will, part of my bad teeth karma. I’d repeat the mantra given to me by my guru and do my best to enter into a relaxed “thy will be done” attitude.

Today I felt just as calm, cool, and collected. Yet the Brian whose mouth was open for well over an hour was an agnostic, not a believer. I felt no need to lean on a higher power. Reality was my mainstay.

“What has to happen is happening,” I told myself. “Accept it.” And I did. I found that it helped to focus on my one-syllable mantra, if only to keep myself from worrying about how much decay would be found once the malfunctioning crowns/bridge were removed.

I couldn’t remember Marcus Aurelius’ Stoic words precisely, but awareness of his general philosophical perspective brought me some peace of mind as I reclined in the dental chair.

Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest. “How unlucky I am, that this should have happened to me!” By no means; say rather, “How lucky I am, that it has left me with no bitterness; unshaken by the present, and undismayed by the future.” The thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have emerged unembittered.

…So here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, “This is a misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”

The Stoics didn’t believe in a personal God. Yet Marcus Aurelius derived great strength and meaning from a philosophy that most people today would call ungodly (and even more, unchristian).

Belief in a higher power isn’t necessary to live life honestly, decently, and courageously. Stoics consider that God is immanent in all created things, but has no separate existence outside them. Thus the strength to endure difficult situations will be found within, not without.

A similar attitude is found among the Atheists in Foxholes advocates. A Newsweek article quotes Master Sgt. Kathleen Johnson, who was about to be sent to Iraq: "A lot of people manage to serve without having to call on a higher power."

I’ve got to go back to the dentist on Thursday for what was billed to me as a simple and likely painless root canal, after which the replacement crown/bridge work can be done. I might be doing some calling between now and then. But it won’t be to God.

It’ll be to VISA to make sure that my credit limit is high enough to pay for the absurdly large amount all this is costing me.

Get your Armor of God PJs

It must be a sign from God. Two days after my Tai Chi buddy Eric tells me about the Armor of God PJs, I watch Bill Maher’s HBO show and praise the Lord!, I see them again.

The message was clear: Rush to armorofgodpjs.com and order a pair. I don’t wear pajamas, but hey, if God tells me to jump, I’ll come down with both feet inside those silky-looking bottoms.

Sadly, I was crushed to learn that all they have are boys and girls sizes. But the website says that Armor of God blankets are coming soon. I can hardly wait to feel safe and peaceful while I sleep, protected by my faith in Jesus.

Except, oops, I don’t have any faith in Jesus. Wonder if the blanket will still work? Probably, so long as my VISA charge goes through.

While I’m on the “onward Christian merchandisers” theme, last night Channel 2 news had a segment on the St. Joseph Statues that people are using to help sell their houses.

I’m a little vague on the theological underpinnings for how the statues work, but all you have to do is bury St. Joseph in the ground with his feet pointing to heaven. Which, I assume, is up. Then you sit back and wait for the offers to pour in.

Given the slow real estate market these days, spending a few bucks on a statue sounds like a bargain. And you can’t argue with the testimonials. (Well, actually I could. But it’s late and I want to go watch some TV, so I won’t).

What if this is all there is?

It’s a joke without anyone around to hear the punch line: “Did you hear the one about the people who based their lives on the assumption that God was real and there was life after death? Then they died, and…”

What?

If there is nothing after death, ha ha! Jokes on them. Except, they won’t be around to be part of the laughter. Neither will I. Neither will any one of us.

Which isn’t all that funny. Nor, all that serious. It’s just what it is: a likely reality.

What’s disturbing is the prospect of so many true believers giving up the chance to fully live what may well be the one and only life they’ll ever get. That’s tragic.

I’ve known quite a few people who lived with one eye focused on their afterlife. Not surprisingly, this left them unable to focus properly on the presentlife. They would forego natural enjoyments—sex, having a child, drinking a glass of wine, movies, sleeping late on Sunday instead of going to church—because they expected the next life to be better than this one if they did the right things.

Well, anything’s possible. But the more churchless I become, the more precious each moment seems to me. If this is all there is, then it deserves to be deeply appreciated. And even if life goes on after death, it won’t be this life, which never will come again.

Either way, life is astoundingly precious. It’s to be savored, not chewed hastily while looking ahead to the anticipated next course.

It seems to me that whatever form of spirituality we choose to practice, it should be life-embracing, not life-denying. This might include shutting yourself up in a cave or a monastery, so long as you feel more alive that way, not less. However, for most of us this means living a natural life, enjoying natural pleasures, doing natural things.

Fundamentalists have a strange notion that if you don’t believe in God, you’re not firing on all of life’s cylinders. My experience is exactly the opposite. The more I accept that I don’t know what happens after death, or what the nature of ultimate reality is, the more vivid and divine life appears to me.

Many times a day now—almost continuously, in fact—I’m blown away with a sense of “Wow, I’m here, doing this, experiencing this, though it didn’t have to be this way, and fairly soon there’ll come a time, after I’m dead, when there won’t be any this to do or experience.”

So I disagree with the whole Christian mindset of “What if the cosmos is all that there is?” The proffered answers to this question reveal a complete lack of understanding of what a considered churchless life consists of (by “considered” I mean thoughtful, consciously chosen, sensitively embraced—not just fallen into for lack of an alternative).

To someone who believes that this is all there is, everything in the cosmos appears infinitely valuable, infinitely worthy of reverence, infinitely marvelous. For so far as he or she knows, there is nothing else to which it can be compared.

To someone who believes that this is all there is, life is of infinite value. Life is to be preserved and enhanced whenever possible, for death is considered to be the stopping point, not an avenue to somewhere else. To die for a higher cause may be admirable, but it isn’t expected to bring any reward other than death.

Thus genuine morality, in my opinion, begins and ends with an acceptance of life as it is known to be, not surmised: short, one of a kind, irreplaceable, a gift from an unknown giver.

Drink deep from this present moment. Intoxicate yourself. The wine of life doesn’t flow from a bottomless bottle. It will run dry one day. Wet your lips while you can.

Plotinus and I make so much sense

Today I made a lot of sense to myself. Per usual. When I heard myself explaining how Neoplatonism relates to Christianity and why not-knowing is the highest form of religion I was totally convinced that I knew what I was talking about.

This afternoon it was nice to have two captive audiences: me, whom I can’t seem to ever get away from, and a man with whom I have a business relationship, who was trying to entice me to sign up for additional services.

We’d never met, as he’d taken over our account from another guy, so this was a get-to-know-you conversation. Naturally he had to ask what I did. “Basically retired now. I’ve been writing books and keeping up my blogs.”

He then made the mistake of asking what I wrote about. This ended up reducing his sales pitch time considerably. Tip: unless you’ve got time to spare, don’t ask a woman who has recently given birth if her child ever does anything cute, and don’t ask a writer what his books are about.

I rolled through “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” and “Life is Fair” quickly, but found myself getting more and more enthusiastic about Plotinus and “Return to the One.” Partly because I knew that as soon as I stopped talking, the effort to sell me stuff would start.

But mostly because I was just making so damn much sense, I couldn’t bear to stop listening to myself. You had to be there (as I was, fortunately). However, I’ll try to recreate some of my 5-10 minute synopsis of what Plotinus, Christianity, and the cosmos is all about.

Plotinus, it’s been said, is “Plato without the politics.” So you’re left with Greek spirituality, minus all that boring stuff about the perfect form of governance. It’s also said that if you add Jesus to Plotinus’ Neoplatonism, you’ve got Christianity.

St. Augustine was a big fan of Plato and Plotinus before he became a Christian. The Gospels are mostly stories and don’t say much about the nature of God, soul, creation, and such. So Augustine took Plotinus’ philosophy, grafted it onto Jesus’ teachings, and voila, a Christian theology.

People think that the Greeks were rationalists. But Plotinus was a mystic and had profound experiences of the divine. He realized that thinking can only take you so far. After that, you’re in the realm of Mystery. For him, that was the One. Christians say, “God.”

Makes sense to me. Here we are, sitting in your office, a teeny-tiny part of a 14 billion year old universe. So far as we know, this is the only life in our part of the galaxy. Isn’t that amazing, that we’re here at all? To me, that’s what a genuine sense of religion is all about: Wonder.

Plotinus taught that it isn’t possible to say anything about God, the One. How could you? Whatever we know is something other than the One, because it is knowable—separate, distinct, dual. God can’t be known. Only approached as Mystery.

If every religion would recognize this, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Christians think they know what God is like. So do Muslims and Jews. Even Buddhists, though they don’t speak about “God.”

I don’t know anything about God. Neither do you. Likely nobody does. If we all could sit down together and honestly say “I don’t know” as one, that’d be terrific. Plotinus reminds us that silence is the best way to worship God. Just being present with…whatever.

Sure seems like that should be One, not more than one. Physicists aren’t searching for theories of everything—just one theory. So God likely is One also. If there are two things, given how the world is so nicely interconnected they have to be united in some fashion. Whatever does the final uniting is God, the One.

Science knows a lot about the very small through quantum theory. Science knows a lot about the very large through relativity theory. But the two theories can’t be fit together so far. Superstrings, that’s a possibility. Vibrating energy. Is that God? Nobody knows.

It’s a mystery.

That seemed like a good place to stop talking. Especially since I was only getting a polite smile in response, not the standing philosophical ovation that my not-so-humble self felt that I deserved.

When some papers were pushed across the desk toward me, I got a glimmer why. I noticed a classy-looking silver ring, on which was emblazoned a cross. I’d suspected that I wasn’t talking with a Wiccan. Suspicion confirmed.

So I had to be content with making sense to myself. Didn’t make a convert to churchlessness today. That’s good, I guess.

If you become a believer in anything, even if that is nothing, isn’t that something? And isn’t belief the essence of religion?

Good questions. Looks like I’ve got to have another conversation with myself.

Emerson’s sacrilegious Divinity School address

On July 15, 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed a class of Harvard Divinity School graduates. He wasn’t invited back to Harvard for three decades. Given what he said, I can understand why.

The complete address can be read here. I’ll share some of my favorite passages:

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be as he may, I can accept nothing.

He [Jesus] spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love.

That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.

It is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings. I have heard a devout person, who prized the Sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, “On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church.”

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, “I also am a man.” Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

Believers, I’m even more deluded than you think

Fairly often I hear from devotees of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who urge me to cease my heretical wanderings and return to the fold, as if I’d run off into a burning building and they’re standing on safe ground with a megaphone calling “Brian, get out of that crazy place and come back to us!”

Well, I picture myself standing right behind them saying, “Chill out, dude. We’re both on the same page here. I’m still 100% devoted to the true RSSB teachings. We just differ as to what true means. If you don’t mind me saying so, it could be that I’m farther from the flames of delusion than you are.”

So, the spiritual brothers and sisters who consider themselves part of the RSSB faithful and hope to wake me up from my churchless slumber are facing a tougher task than they recognize. For I don’t see myself as having strayed from the mystical path. Rather, I feel that I’m closer to the Way now.

Thus I’m either doubly deluded—believing that my RSSB heresy (delusion #1) actually is the true RSSB teaching (delusion #2)—or I’m not deluded at all. Or…neither, which I’ll toss into the “not deluded” category.

Here are some quotations from three RSSB gurus that point to what I mean:

Gurinder Singh: “We should burn the books.” “How do you know that I’m not a fraud?”

Soami Ji: “Unless I see with my own eyes, I will not believe the sayings of the Master.” “Know yourself by yourself, and do not rely on the sayings of anyone else.”

Charan Singh: “May your love of the form culminate in the love of the formless.” “Outward forms of worship are better than doing nothing at all, but we should not spend our whole life involved with these games.”

Need I say more in defense of my faith? No, but of course I will.

Gurinder Singh doesn’t mean that we should literally burn the RSSB books. What I think he’s saying is that conceptual knowledge is far less important than direct experience in spiritual practice.

Yet most RSSB initiates fill their heads with thoughts, images, emotions, and imaginings rather than emptying themselves and becoming receptive to unvarnished reality. I used to do this too, so I know whereof I speak.

I’d sit every Sunday in a satsang hall, adorned with photos of the guru, listening to a speaker read from an RSSB book, which taught that after death the Master would meet the disciple and take him or her to Sach Khand and the lap of God.

I’d feel grateful that I wasn’t a deluded Christian who at that moment was sitting in a church, adorned with images of Jesus, listening to a preacher read from the Bible, which taught that after death Christ would meet the disciple and take him or her to heaven and the lap of God.

Eventually the absurdity broke through. I was decrying religion founded on blind faith, yet I had embraced a religion founded on blind faith.

So I started to focus on what I considered to be the essence of the RSSB teachings. Like Soami Ji’s advice: “Know yourself by yourself, and do not rely on the sayings of anyone else.” Including the Master. Indeed, how do we know that he is not a fraud?

By going beyond the forms with which fraudulence can be concealed. Anybody can talk or act spiritual. We can’t sense the soul (if such exists), just the body, and what the body does.

The guru who initiated me, Charan Singh, advises that love of the formless should be our goal. Amen to that.

I’m taking his advice seriously. I wonder if those who write to me, urging that I return to adoration of the guru’s physical form, to attending well-organized talks, to helping construct and maintain the structures at satsang centers, are as committed to taking Charan Singh’s words to heart.

For a long time I thought that outward forms of worship led somewhere. I don’t anymore.

Life is short. Why spend all of it engaged in those sorts of worshipful games? Charan Singh, I agree with you. That’s why I still consider myself to be your devoted disciple.

Churchless books and sites to explore

One of my most enjoyable blogging benefits is learning what inspires Church of the Churchless visitors. Amazon benefits also, because I’ve bought quite a few books after hearing about them from an email or post comment.

Here are some titles that have come to my attention recently. I’ll also throw in several web sites that either are related to authors of those books, or stand alone as interesting sites to explore.

The Secret of the Golden Flower. Amazon delivered this Taoist/Buddhist meditation guide yesterday. I’m already about half way through this short book. I like it.

The Mind and the Way: Buddhist Reflections on Life. Looks interesting. But struck me as similar to other Buddhist books in my library. Will probably hold off on getting this title until my backlog of unfinished books clears up.

Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self. A lot of people clearly resonate with the author, Suzanne Segal. I’ve read Bernadette Roberts’ “no-self” books, so decided to pass on this one for the time being, as it struck me as Roberts-like.

Emptiness Dancing. The title alone drew me in. This book by Adyashanti is on its way to me from an Amazon-associated seller. I have a feeling I’m going to like it.

Spiritual Humanism. This web site describes Möller de la Rouvière’s philosophy and his book, “Spirituality Without God.” Yes, I’m reading his book too. My big spiritual bet is that when I die and reach the Pearly Gates, there will be a heaven entrance exam that covers material from my metaphysical and philosophical readings.

Christianity Meme. Any web site that calls Christianity “a mind virus that controls human behavior to facilitate its own survival” has to get a thumbs-up.

U.G. Krishnamurti. Not to be confused with J. Krishnamurti, this web site describes U.G. as a “spiritual terrorist” whose message is a “grenade in the brain.” Sounds good. Otherwise, I don’t know much about him yet.

Distributed unconsciousness. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “God,” “Tao,” or “Brahman,” but it seems to be billed as a modern way of describing the ultimate. Who knew? And who knew about WikiReason? I didn’t, until I was led to this site.

The Natural Taoist. Another WikiReason site that I found via the previous link. Based on a quick look, it appears worth a closer reading. I consider myself a Taoist. And natural.

Possible and impossible gods

I’m a firm believer in melding science and spirituality. Any religion or metaphysical system that is clearly at odds with evident scientific facts has no appeal for me.

So the book by Victor Stenger that I wrote about in my previous post, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist,” is right up my alley. It hasn’t been published yet, but today I took a look at a sample chapter via Stenger’s web site.

“Possible and Impossible Gods” is thought-provoking. And Judeo - Christian - Islamic religion-demolishing. Stenger argues persuasively that it isn’t possible for the God of the Bible and Koran to co-exist with what is known about the physical universe.

--The universe doesn’t show any expected signs of design. Scratch a Designer God.
--There’s no evidence that humans have an immortal aspect to them. Scratch a God Who Creates and Saves Souls.
--No independent evidence exists of divine interactions with human beings. Scratch a God of Miracles.
--No violations of physical law were necessary to create the universe. Scratch a Creator God.
--No claimed divine communication ever has been confirmed empirically. Scratch a God of Revelation.
--Evidence shows that humans define morals and human values for themselves. Scratch a Law-Giving God.
--Evil evidently exists. Scratch an Omnibenevolent God.

Now, this doesn’t mean that it is impossible for some higher power, a.k.a. “God,” to exist. It just means that the God most Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe in doesn’t exist. The God who communicates and interacts with people, who intervenes in human affairs, who created the universe through supernatural means.

However, it seems to me that philosophical (as contrasted with religious) Buddhism and Taoism are mostly, if not completely, compatible with modern science.

Living in harmony with the Nature both within and without ourselves — scientific. Searching for the essence of consciousness through meditation — scientific. Accepting that what lies beyond physical matter and energy is a profound mystery — scientific.

There’s plenty of room for spirituality in the house of science. Reality doesn’t have to be shoved out of the window. It’s even possible to envision god living on an inaccessible upper floor.

As Stenger puts it:

When I demonstrate that a particular God is rejected by the data, I am not proving that all conceivable gods do not exist. I am simply showing beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with the specific, hypothesized attributes [of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God] does not exist.

All praise to the Possible Gods. And good riddance to the Impossible Gods.

Science shows God does not exist

Ah, excellent! More support for my Wu Project. Physicist Victor Stenger has concluded that “beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.”

This quote is from the Amazon description of his forthcoming book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.” Provocative title. I’m stoked. Amazon has gotten my pre-order. Just need to wait for January 2007 to have my faithless faith invigorated.

Stenger came to my attention recently when I read a review of his “The Comprehensible Cosmos” in New Scientist. Since I found it difficult to comprehend even much of the one page review, I figured that I’d wait for Stenger’s next book—which appears to be less technical—than plow through this title.

I did appreciate this passage from Marcus Chown’s review, however:

The symmetries that lead to the laws of physics are exactly the same as those that would apply if the universe were completely empty. They are the symmetries of the void.

Wu! And…Whew! Great news. I’ve got this primal fear of non-existence, so it’s comforting to know that the something of this universe is founded on nothing. The seeming emptiness of the void, says Stenger, is the source of everything. Chown writes:

Something came from nothing, he [Stenger] says, because something is more stable than nothing. In the beginning, there was the void, governed by the laws of the void, but the void changed into something more structured—rearranged nothing, if you like—just like featureless water changing into crystalline ice because at low temperatures ice is more stable than water.

It’s nice to know that something is more stable than nothing. Hopefully this means that the something I am now won’t revert to a formless blob of nothingness after death. But if it does, the good news is that I won’t be around to worry about it.

What I find most inspiring about Stenger’s yet-to-be-published book is that science has found absolute no trace—nada, zilch, nicht—of God in the universe. This is the conclusion I’ve come to also, albeit from a more mystical perspective.

After thousands of years of people meditating, contemplating, praying, and otherwise searching for some demonstrable sign of God’s presence, the result is total absence. Zero verifiable evidence has been put on the religious table. All we have are subjective claims, not objective facts.

As Stenger says, this is just what you would expect if God does not exist. It is also just what you would expect if there were a reality beyond the physical that does not interact with materiality other than through the laws of nature.

Either way, religious worship is a crock. Almost certainly divinity never has, nor ever will be, found outwardly in a person, book, icon, or holy place. If it is to be found at all, it will be inwardly—in the depths of the unfathomable mystery that manifests as life, consciousness, existence.

Nothing is what we find when we look within. After thirty-five years of meditation I can testify to that. Yet this nothing may, repeat, may, be akin to, if not identical with, ultimate reality.

Such is the ageless message of great mystics. And it is entirely compatible with the message of the new physics. There’s no God out there. Perhaps, though, there is in here.

Take a browse around Victor Stenger’s website. I like his style. It’s refreshing to find a Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy who also is an adjunct philosophy professor.

Intelligent design believers settle for second-rate God

If I’m going to believe in God, I want to put my faith in a top-notch creative power. The very best. A1. That’s why the God of evolution is so much more appealing than the God of so-called “intelligent design.”

Which doesn’t seem to be a very intelligent divinity. I mean, what kind of half-baked god creates human beings then, according to intelligent design dogma, slaps himself on the head and says, “Oy! I forgot to make eyes that work! Better get going on some redesigning.”

Creationism, after all, has been discarded (publicly, at least) by Christian fundamentalists. Their new Godly poster child, intelligent design, often is considered to co-exist with Darwinian evolution. Up to a point.

That point is reached when random mutations and natural selection are insufficient mechanisms to produce some highly complex feature, such as the human eye. The intelligent designer then supposedly steps in and makes things right.

I’d always thought that this notion showed a lack of faith in God. But it took a letter to the editor in the July 9, 2005 issue of “New Scientist” (which I just got around to reading) to convince me that such is the case.

Vasudev Godbole (how I hope this is his real name!) of Seevetal, Germany writes:

You report that the Smithsonian has cancelled the screening of a film that “ponders ‘purpose within cosmic evolution’”—the idea that has become known as “intelligent design”. One interesting question that no one seems to ask is why people feel a need to adopt this viewpoint.

An engineer who builds a plane that travels from London to New York without a pilot is more intelligent than an engineer whose plane needs a pilot. Yet passengers may feel better in the second type of plane.

Similarly a God who creates evolution, which needs no further intervention, is more intelligent than a God whose creation needs constant supervision and directives. Perhaps some people feel better and more cared for by the second type of God, and then out of gratitude declare this to be the more intelligent.

This psychological problem is at the root of a lot of the hostility shown by advocates of intelligent design (ID) towards those who argue for evolution. This gratitude can become so compulsive, vehement, “holier-than-thou” and even neurotic that the ID-ists start vilifying those who reject ID.

When the evolutionists refuse to buckle under, the ID-ists become even more angry and hate-filled, and wish to take over the state and enforce this “gratitudinal” behaviour and related “holiness” by means of laws or other threats. “How dare you deny or be ungrateful to a caring God?”—that is their bitter-angry question.

They are 110 per cent sure that a God who intervenes every half an hour is more caring than a God who intervenes only at infinity. In the depth of their psychology this is what motivates the ID-ists and drives them to ridicule or demonise the evolutionists.

Much nuisance has emanated from those who wish to enforce gratitude towards their God.

Yes, indeed. This relates to the drive to seek God’s approval that I talked about in my last post. The truly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God of evolution (and of the Taoists, and the Buddhists) doesn’t need our recognition or respect.

The semi-intelligent, shaky, mistake-prone, insecure, devotion-starved God of fundamentalist Christianity does.

So which God should you put your faith in? It’s clear to me: the God of evolution.

Are you religious or spiritual? Take the test.

Often people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Understandable. Religion, after all, has some notorious drawbacks. Intolerance, divisiveness, sanctimoniousness, irrationality—to name a few.

But what does it mean to be non-religious? I’ve just started reading Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” and came across his intriguing definition:

Tentatively, I propose to define religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

Interesting. And persuasive to me. Not least because this definition by a professional philosopher meshes nicely with my “turn on or tune in?” distinction.

Turn-on’ers believe that through prayer, worship, penances, meditation, or other practices it’s possible to ring some sort of cosmic doorbell and grab the attention of a higher personal power. Once you get that being’s approval, you’ve got it made. Next stop, heaven! (or paradise, nirvana, etc.)

Tune-in’ers, by contrast, consider that if there is a higher power beyond the physical, it is universal, not personal. Just as you only have to tune to the right frequency to hear what’s on a radio station carried on public airwaves—no winning of approval from the broadcaster required—so is God believed to be on an open channel (the trick is to find it).

So, following Dennett, there’s a simple test for telling whether you are religious: are you seeking the approval of a supernatural agent or agents?

This could be a god who hears people’s prayers, a departed incarnation of divinity such as Jesus, a living guru with miraculous powers, an angel who watches over you, or any other godly being with whom you believe it is possible to have a personal relationship.

Now, I’m not saying that it is a mistake to be religious in this sense. There may indeed be some higher power who is aware of human petitions to him, her, or it, and who dishes out rewards (and punishments) accordingly.

However, I’m betting against this in my own philosophy of life. For since whatever created creation left us with laws of nature that operate the same everywhere for everyone, it seems that this entity is much more likely to be universal rather than personal.

So I’m much more attracted to Buddhism and Taoism, which essentially are non-religious, than to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which by and large are religious. Meaning, the goal of the former is union with universality, while the latter aim at a personal connection with God.

I’m not out to feel special. I used to believe that, in line with Sant Mat teachings, I was among the “marked souls” who enjoyed a unique relationship with God. It eventually dawned on me that I shared that belief with just about every other religious person on Earth.

Now I’m not religious. And I’m glad for it. I prefer the reality of being part of the human crowd to imagining that I’ve been singled out by God for special attention.

Like so many others these days, I feel that the further I flee from religion the closer I come to spirituality.

Nice to belong with those who don’t belong

I’ve gotten several email messages recently from people who said they appreciate what I’m doing here on the Church of the Churchless. Well, I appreciate the appreciation.

We churchless still feel a need to belong. But it’s a lot more difficult to share a sense of camaraderie with those who aren’t a part of organized spirituality because, obviously, we’re not organized. Nor do we want to be.

So I get a lot of satisfaction from cyberspace pats on the back. I also enjoy, in a different fashion, the occasional missives from true believers asking me to please, please, just shut up!

When I get a request like that I usually think, “if only I could.” For I aspire to being the Taoist sage who wanders silently along deserted mountain trails, his foolish grin saying all that needs to be said.

Not there yet, that’s for sure.

Back in my public speaking days (as contrasted with my current blog speaking days), I’d frequently give talks, a.k.a. satsangs, to fairly large gatherings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) members, a.k.a. satsangis.

Then, as now, my message would stress the need to be scientific, skeptical, sincere, and un-sanctimonious. I’d stress that an ounce of direct spiritual experience is worth a pound of theoretical belief in some supposedly holy book or person.

And I’d do my best to laugh at our ridiculous pretensions to knowing anything about God and ultimate reality, starting with my own. (Standard line: “The easiest RSSB vow for me to keep is the one that prohibits revealing our inner mystical experiences.”)

Usually I’d get about halfway into my 45-minute talk and start noticing a lot of quizzical faces. Frowns too. Not surprising. I was skirting the edge of what many devotees considered heresy. To me it seemed like honesty.

I’d be mildly concerned about how I was coming across until I noticed some other faces with a different demeanor here and there in the audience. Foolish grins beaming at me. I’d foolishly grin right back. A connection!

After the talk sometimes a grin would walk its body up to me and say, “Thank you so much. I thought that I was the only satsangi who felt that way. Now I know I’m not alone.”

I’d reply, “No, there’s at least two of us. Of course, we both may be crazy and wrong. But it’s nice to meet you, fellow deluded heretic.”

As it is still nice.

“God Laughs and Plays” but doesn’t go to church

I figured that I’d enjoy a book subtitled “Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right.” And I did.

“God Laughs and Plays” is David James Duncan’s paean to fly-fishing rather than pew-sitting, to practicing Christian love rather than judgmental hatred, to finding inspiration in God’s natural creation rather than the artificial human dogma found in misnamed “holy” books.

A talented writer like Duncan best speaks for himself. So I’ll shut up and let him do the saying. Here’s some passages that I especially liked:

Intense spiritual feelings were frequent visitors during my boyhood, but they did not come from churchgoing or from bargaining with God through prayer. The connection I felt to the Creator came, unmediated, from Creation itself.

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Following intuition and love with all the sincerity and attentiveness I could muster, I consciously chose a life spent in the company of rivers, wilderness, Wisdom literature, like-minded friends, and quiet contemplation. And as it’s turned out, this life—though dirt-poor in church pews—has enriched me with a sense of the holy, and left me far more grateful than I can say.

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God is Unlimited. Thought and language are limited.

God is the fathomless but beautiful Mystery Who creates the universe and you and me, and sustains it and us every instant, and always shall. The instant we define this fathomless Mystery It is no longer fathomless. To define is to limit. The greater a person’s confidence in their definition of God, the more sure I feel that their worship of “Him” has become the worship of their own definition. I don’t point this out to insult the fundamentalists’ or anyone else’s God. I point it out to honor the fathomless Mystery.

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If you’ve got yourself a little faith community and feel some love and mercy bubbling up in it, why mess with that? Why “structure” it? Why “enchurch” it? Why not just live it and be thankful?

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To judge by the conservation voting records of those the Christian Right supports in Congress, however, the majority of fundamentalists see Mother Earth as a trampoline upon which we must stomp, the harder we stomp the more proud of us God will be, for Earth is fleeting, and only here to launch us toward heaven, so why not blow mountains up and dump them as rubble on top of streams, and why not support, from the pulpits of our so-called houses of God, so-called conservative candidates who conserve nothing but corporate profits reaped through our Armageddon-aimed Earth-stomping agenda?

We nonfundamentalist students of the Bible can think of many reasons not to practice such a “faith”—the words, example, and Person of Jesus chief among them.

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Needing church—which I have to admit I define as “two or less gathered in His Name”…

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A second thing that attracted me to Jesus at age seven: His father was allegedly God; and God had made the world and trees and rivers and stars and mountains and birds and clouds and sunlight and raspberries and animals and snowflakes and wildflowers and wilderness; and even though nobody could prove any of this like, scientifically, I loved the world God had allegedly made so much that it seemed like a good idea to love God, too.

Trouble was, I didn’t. Loving Creation made sense to me the same way that loving, say, Peanut M & M’s made sense. You tossed a handful of Peanut M & M’s in your mouth, crunched down, your tastebuds fired off, and without even trying, Yum! Love! Gratitude! Piece o’ cake. Loving the Invisible God Who’d created Creation, on the other hand, felt more like trying to love the unknown and invisible people who worked at the Peanut M & M’s factory.

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As for my having left institutional religion behind without bitterness: how in the Name of the Lover of field lilies, the poor, the prostituted, and His own murderers, could I be bitter about having traded self-righteousness, pharisaism, judgmentalism, and church pews for sunlit river banks and rising fish and moonrises over Rocky Mountain ridges and the path of intuition and salmon runs and great literature and world Wisdom traditions and abiding friendships and the incessant following of the sweet scent of love?

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I consider the infinite wilds to be the divine manuscript. I hold these wilds to be the only unbowdlerized copy we have of the Book that gives and sustains life.

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The word “mysticism” still means little to me as an experiencer, since everything I experience continues to simply be what it is. But as the beneficiary of certain inner experiences that have guided my life, and as a writer in love with a world in which much of what is visible is abused and much of what is life-giving is unseen, my respect for the word “mysticism” grows if only because, by definition, it shepherds us toward realms in which “what is” is much more than physical.

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If we are ever to rise to new levels of consciousness or to the Beauty that is Truth, we’ve got to describe our perceptions as consciousness truly perceives them. I therefore confess my lifelong love for a wilderness found outside myself, till once in a while I encounter it within.

It’s a wilderness entered, it seems, through agendaless alertness at work, rest, or play in the presence of language, rivers, mountains, music, plants, creatures, rocks, moon, sun, dust, pollen grains, dots, spheres, galaxies, grains of sand, stars, every sort of athletic ball, cells, DNA, molecules, atomic particles, and immaterial forces.

It’s a wilderness that occasionally “inside-outs” me, leading to a Teilhardinian burning and Leopoldian harmony that leave my mind wondrous happy but far, far behind. It’s a wilderness my trusty dog, Reason, will never succeed in sniffing out or chomping up, yet a wilderness I’ve been so long and grandly assailed by that I’ve lost all but comic interest in the dog’s endless hounding and suspect that even he begins to enjoy himself when the wilderness flips us inside itself.

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If I stake my life on one field, one wild force, one sentence issuing from Sinai it is this one: There is no goal beyond love.

One last quote. Concerning the title. From Meister Eckhart, the medieval mystic theologian whose teachings were so truthful he was accused of heresy by the Pope.

Truly! Truly! By God! By God! Be as sure of it as you are that God lives: at the least good deed done here in this world, the least bit of good will, the least good desire, all the saints in heaven and on earth rejoice, and together with the angels their joy is such that all the joy in this world can’t be compared. But the joy of them all together amounts to as little as a bean when compared to the joy of God over good deeds. For truly, God laughs and plays.

With God, from “I believe” to “I know” is a huge step

I was mildly surprised at how strongly I reacted to a comment by “A friend” made on my “Turn on, tune in, or drop out?” post. If you read my response (in the form of another comment), you’ll note a decided tone of what I like to call irony, but others could reasonably term sarcasm.

Pondering my reaction, here’s how I explain it:

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I don’t know,” we’re comrades in unknowing. Grab a chair and belly up with me to the clueless bar.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I believe…,” we can have an interesting conversation. I probably won’t agree with you, but I enjoy learning about other people beliefs, or lack thereof, in a higher power.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I know…,” we are going to have a really interesting conversation. For once you say “know” rather than “believe,” my skeptical radar sets off a Dogma alert! Dogma alert! siren inside my psyche.

I don’t expect reasons for beliefs. They’re your business. Just like sex, whatever turns you on. Go for it. But also just like sex, beliefs need to remain personal if they are to be unquestioned.

As soon as you say, “I believe _____, and you should too,” there’s going to be a stiffening of my argumentative spine. I’m pleased to be given advice by someone who is more knowledgeable about something than I am. However, that something needs to be objectively real, not imaginary.

And beliefs aren’t real, even though lots of religious people seem to think that they are.

Going further, some people actually claim that they know the nature of God or ultimate reality. Now, this requires some serious questioning. A claim like that, why, it’s amazing. I mean, in the entire span of recorded history there hasn’t been a single clearly evident, unquestionable, plain-as-day revelation about God or the divine.

So if you tell me that you know for a fact that God exists, or that God is such and such, or that God is realized in this particular fashion, then I’m going to be super-duper interested in how you’re able to back up that astounding assertion.

I want you to lay your cards on the table. Face up. All of them. Show me your four aces. And let me know in detail, exactly, precisely, how you were able to come up with that winning hand.

Of course, I know that this won’t be possible. If you’re just bluffing, and don’t really know about God, then you’ll be empty-handed. But even if by some miracle you truly are God’s bosom buddy, you still won’t be able to lay any material proof on the table.

I’m pretty confident about that, because nobody else ever has been able to do so, and I’m willing to bet that this run of “busts” will continue.

So, please, please, please. Pretty please with blind faith crumbs on top. If you write or talk to me and go beyond “I believe…” when speaking about God, bring your best stuff. Show me the money, as the saying goes. The proof.

I’ve shared this quotation before, but it’s worth sharing again. To my mind, classics scholar A.H. Armstrong hits just the right tone.

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.

Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is “Does he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or person making this enormous statement.