If "God" is mystery, there's no pointing to God

Religion is strange. Most faiths teach that God, or whatever the highest divinity is called, is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, incapable of being described in words.

Yet these faiths also aren't shy about using a whole lot of words, concepts, dogmas, and such to tell us what God is like and why it is so important to believe in Him, Her, or It. They want to have their cake of mystery and eat it too.

Obviously there are degrees to which something can be precisely described. We can analyze the chemical composition of a strawberry, measure it, photograph it, write reams about it.

But when I pop a delicious Oregon strawberry into my mouth, that's a whole different sort of reality from all of those descriptions. I can't really describe what my direct experience of the taste of a sweet strawberry is like.

Religious believers are fond of saying that this is the same with God: He/She/It can be experienced but not elucidated. In a comment on this post, I acknowledged that argument yet rejected it.

It's sort of like pointing at a strawberry field and saying, "I can't really describe what the berries taste like, or prove to you that I love their juiciness, but I invite you to pick one, put it in your mouth, and taste for yourself."

However, in this case there is evidence for a strawberry field. Just not the taste. I read Myers as saying that if religion posits supernatural forces which operate in the physical world, this is akin to a strawberry field -- something demonstrable, albeit with effects that are essentially immeasurable.

Absent this sort of evidence, Taoism's and Zen's pointing finger really isn't different in kind from religious dogma, such as a Christian saying "I can't show Jesus' love to you, but if you open your heart to him, you'll discover it for yourself."

Pointing a finger at the moon to draw someone's attention to it (as opposed to a reflection in water, say) makes sense because the moon clearly exists.

However, those who claim that some mysterious gesture, utterance, koan, scripture, ritual, or whatever is a means of pointing toward an experience of what God, or the cosmos, is all about are unnecessarily complicating things.

Why not leave mystery alone?

Why give it a name -- "God," "Brahman," "Tao," "Buddha nature" -- and then say, it's beyond all names and descriptions. What's wrong with admitting, the ultimate reality of the cosmos is a big fucking mystery to me, so I'm clueless.

In the introduction to Karen Armstrong's new book, "The Case for God," she says, "People of faith admit in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem sometimes to assume that they know exactly who 'he' is and what he thinks, loves, and expects."

Well, I'd say more often than sometimes.

Most religious believers aren't reticent about telling us what God, spirit, soul, the afterlife, and other supposedly metaphysical realities are all about. Yet Armstrong challenges this, and is hopeful that mystery can be re-embraced.

We are seeing a great deal of strident dogmatism today, religious and secular, but there is also a growing appreciation of the value of unknowing... There is a long religious tradition that emphasized the importance of recognizing the limits of our knowledge, of silence, reticence, and awe. That is what I hope to explore in this book.

Great. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

However, a well-written and thoughtful Amazon reader review by Paul Fidalgo of "The Case for God" leads me to think that Karen Armstrong's approach to religion is still going to be too religious'y for me, notwithstanding her embrace of mystery.

Armstrong has a particular bone to pick with what we understand today as atheism, most vigorously with the New Atheists, who she says choose the idol-God of the incorrectly-religious to assert the non-existence of.

But Armstrong herself, as many have pointed out before me, defines God out of all notions of existence anyway, leaving nothing to believe in to begin with. Speaking for atheists (if I may for the moment), I think it is safe to say that whether we are talking about a vengeful Old Testament Yahweh or a non-definable, quasi-existent infinite ultimateness of the divine logos, both are equally unprovable, devoid of evidence, and not worthy of acceptance.

Like many of the New Atheists' critics, she complains that they are not sufficiently well-versed in theology, and are therefore in no position to weigh in on the question of God's existence.

This is akin to saying that one cannot assert the nonexistence of the Starship Enterprise unless one has studied every episode of every Star Trek series, earned a degree in startrekology, and published scholarly articles on the debate as to whether resistance truly is futile.

To Armstrong, this rationalist line of thinking shuts out alternate means of arriving at "truths," for Armstrong rests on the also-unprovable notion that truth is a fluid, utterly subjective concept that can be realized by means other than reason. This mindset obviously opens up a formidable can of worms, as any cockamamie "methodology" that someone chooses, and any absurd answers they turn up, suddenly become equally valid.

For Armstrong, there is rational truth and religious truth, and religion--something she insists should be viewed as a discipline and practice rather than a belief system--is equally capable of arriving at truth as science.

What truths religion is supposed to reveal is, of course, not terribly well defined, and one is forced to infer that the correct truths are those that Armstrong has revealed to us; God is too out-there for mere existence, thinking otherwise is wrong, and we should only talk about what God is not, though we're pretty sure it's all about love and tolerance.

Throw in a few dashes of meaningless terms like "the infinite," "ultimate truth," "inner essences," and things that have "no qualities," and you have some idea of what Armstrong is talking about. Or, more likely, you don't.

Comments

[Maneesh]

I think the "mystery" cannot be put into words because it transcends rational thought and therefore language. It has been described by many mystics in paradoxical language, however.

But I believe "God" can be experienced directly through particular spiritual practices. But one must engage in the experiment or injunction of prayer/meditation in order to experience the data that is revealed from such experimentation.

Very few people actually engage in spiritual practice and instead talk a great deal about a God that has very little to do with a direct experience of the "mystery."

The only pointing to God that is useful is a pointing to the practices that over time will result in a direct experience of that which is utterly transcendent of all there is yet is utterly imminent in all there is.

[The Rambling Taoist]

Here's a Taoist answer: All language is shorthand for things we can't adequately describe via words and meanings. So, a made-up word like Tao simply is shorthand for saying something like "that mysterious life force that none of us really understands and is part of all being."

If we didn't have words to signify such things, then our conversations would be even more convoluted than they are now. Imagine having to use the quoted phrase above or something like it every time you wanted to mention the mysterious force of life. It's simply easier to say God, Allah, Tao or the Great Spaghetti Monster.

A second point is that Taoists don't attempt to describe Tao simply because we don't know what the great IT is. In fact, most of us don't think of it as an IT at all.

[George]

yeah these books that try to make a case for God are utterly hopeless, anyone could do a better job with the slightest ability towards rhetoric and logic.

your last 4 paragraphs some it up totally.

the problem with believers is they have not learnt to use their faculties of reason; knowledge of facts of the different theologies; is a completely different animal to intellectual reason and critical thought.

[Adam]

Brian,

It seems that the possibility of a transcendent experience is less problematic than the opportunities for a screwed up power dynamic such a concept affords. The problem is people using the possibility of transcendence as a means of having power over others by claiming knowledge of the ineffable.

Apart from this power dynamic, though, are you really so bothered by the concept of the ineffable?

I, for one, still get off on it. It motivates me—the idea that there is something RIGHT HERE but that is "beyond" words and thoughts and physical forms. Or maybe not "beyond", as beyond implies separateness, but beyond my current perception, perhaps.

[Blogger Brian]

Rambling Taoist, I agree with you about words. We have to use them to communicate effectively with each other. If a word like "God," "Tao," or "Brahman" is used as synonymous with "mystery" or "who the heck knows?" then there's no problem.

It's only when we wrongly believe that we know something about the ultimate nature of the cosmos -- existence itself -- do these words lead us to a restricted, dogmatic, anthropocentric view of things.

Adam, I'm not at all bothered by the concept of the ineffable. Like you, I'm energized by the notion that our limited human cognition and perception are missing something obvious that can be the source of meaning and pleasure in our lives.

As you said, what I object to is the assumption that there is a preferred way to find this mysterious "something," or that the utterly subjective (or almost utterly) can be made into an objective truth that only religions and defined spiritual paths/philosophies are privy to.

[tucson]

Blogger B wrote: "Like you, I'm energized by the notion that our limited human cognition and perception are missing something obvious"

The obvious, non-dualistically...

I am not in front of you or behind you. I am not inside or outside. I am not above or below. I am neither here nor there, neither near nor far. I am not anywhere or nowhere.
Where could there be any 'where' wherein I could be? I have never come so I will never go. I know no before or afer. I am not old and was never young, for whenever could there be a 'when' during which I could be? I am not any thing nor no thing, for what thing could there be that I could be or not be...Since there is no 'I'.

I (for the sake of language) am awareness of all that is aware. I am the seeing of whatever is seen, the hearing of whatever is heard, the perceiving of whatever is perceived, the knowing of whatever is known, the doing of whatever is done.

Because, I am awareness of everything of which any being can be aware. Beyond awareness no thing is and no thing can be anything but awareness. There has never been anything that existed other than as its awareness.

This is the obvious and everyone can be aware as 'it' because awareness is all any being is.

We already know this in the silence of a quiet mind and the absence of a conceptual I-ness. We are always free to recognise this.

This is not presented to initiate a long thread of discussion or debate. It is just writing. If it means something to anyone, fine. If it comes across as pretentious, false, cliche' or just plain crap, that's fine too.

[George]

There is perhaps a case for God, but the religious seem incapable of making it. I doubt one could argue a strong case for a personal god, but there is definitely room for some broader arguements.

Why something rather than nothing?

Why is this something ordered around a dozen or so finely-tuned physical parameters which if only one was slightly out, the universe would not exist?

Why is everything that makes up the something of the universe impermanent instead of permanent or at least some things being permanent?

If causality and order are fundamental to physics, how is this reconciled with the seeming exception of the Big Bang spontaneity and without cause?

Alternatively, if the universe is permanent, how is this exception reconciled with the seemingly general rule of everything else being impernanent?

Is the primordial soup theory really a sufficient explanation for the creation of organic life? I dunno why the creationists focus on the fossil record.

Organised religion is nonsense, but is their an underlying perrenial philosophy or mystical experience at the core of all religions, which have caused virtually every human society on earth to have developed religious beliefs?

Why have we developed a consciousness that has developed a level of self-awareness which agonises over its meaning or value in the universe?

Why have we developed emotions like love that are so strong that they can overcome our strongest biological instict of survival?

We appear to be the only animal that will consider taking our own lives if felt to be without meaning or having lost a loved one or to help a loved one.