Church of the Churchless

Pros and cons of faith, nicely expressed

To have faith, or not to have faith. This is a big question.

I was pleased to see a thoughtful comment interchange between Spence Tepper and Appreciative Reader on a recent post of mine, "The most amazing thing about religions is that everybody believes they're right."

Here's how Spence Tepper views faith: quite positively.

Hi Appreciative Reader!
Great comments. Thank you for posting a moment of rational thought here.
I suggest that everyone, Atheist, blind adherent, "Faithful", or Mystic, has a built in psychological tendency to believe they are generally right.

Who doesn't think they are right?
And if we are wrong, we want to get to the right, right away. Because error costs us personally, and others around us.

I work in organizational change, and the most difficult enemy to helping people see that there is indeed error or waste, is the status quo. The daily habits of people reinforce their entire system of belief, and disbelief, whatever that is.

A few very intelligent people can look at data showing a problem and respond constructively.

For most, the data has to be built and rebuilt. And if they can convince their collegues not to look at it, or if they do, to say "well, the timing isn't right."...any number of excuses, they won't make progress.

If this is how the world responds to hard data, obviously, the chances for "belief" are nearly non-existent.

People are often driven to a system of belief by great hardship, or by pure desire to do or be something other than what they are. They are pushed internally into it.

And that makes for an audience ripe for exploitation.

But if we are built for some system of belief, and if, in some cases, like Meditation, it is clinically good for so many, then perhaps system of belief, system of faith isn't wrong at all. It just depends on what you choose to believe, what you choose to hold faith in.

A town of Pentacostal Christians I knew for many years held that faith was more important than evidence. Faith was a sign of character. Faith in the midst of doubt.

When a child died in a tragic auto accident, the desire to question "why" or to claim the world was not worth living in, arbitrary and cruel, to stop functioning, stop living is strong. The capacity to have faith that somehow life was worth continuing, that we should all be kind to one another and move forward, that there was a greater power watching over even the child who died, their soul, were powerful psychological tools that kept these people moving forward in difficult, horrific circumstances.

That was when I stopped criticizing them for being ignorant.

Posted by: Spence Tepper

And here's how Appreciative Reader views faith: mostly negatively.

Hello, Spence. I too have come across that particular argument IRL [In Real Life].

That faith is an end in itself, and that faith in the face of situations where faith appears insupportable and fantastic, is an even greater virtue than when faith is ‘easy’. Which, when you stop a minute to think about it, is a fascinating piece of sophistry (or rationalization, depending on who is making the argument, the exploiter or the exploited, the priest or the “flock”).

I realize that you made that point in a specific context, one particular example of how one does one’s best to bear with situations and circumstances that appear to be unbearable. Specifically, the death of one’s child. And perhaps no one who has not actually experienced that is really qualified to speak of it! I myself haven’t, so perhaps I amn’t qualified either, but still, to complete what I was saying:

You know, it occurs to me that to use faith to tide over such difficult times is exactly akin to using drink or even stronger narcotics to get over some difficult situation. Using narcotics works in the short run, no doubt about it. And when nothing else seems to work, using narcotics may seem like a good idea. Especially when the use of narcotics is already accepted by society.

(Here’s what I meant to convey by that last sentence: When someone is faced with some tragedy, we would probably still not support their use of hard drugs in order to cope, because the use of such drugs is not sanctioned by our society ; however, since the use of one particular narcotic, alcohol, happens to be freely accepted by our society, therefore we would probably ‘understand’ if someone who’s received difficult news turned to hard drink in order to cope.)

Thus, perhaps, with faith?

(That is, perhaps we’re pre-programmed to look at conventional faith with a benign eye, much as we do with alcohol, simply because faith in established religions is so ubiquitous, so “accepted”? We may not have been as supportive if they had turned to, say, a faith healer who took their money to perform rituals under a full moon, while assuring them that their child would be benefited and even happy in some other world as a result, or pretended to speak with their dead child’s soul in exchange for money paid, yet the solace offered and received might have been just as real, given faith.)

Using faith (faith in things that don’t exist) in order to cope, which is what you’re referring to, appears to me exactly similar to using narcotics.

Sure, it works in the short run. But, just like narcotics, it soon becomes the proverbial monkey on one’s back. For one thing, it is addictive. For another, it eventually shows negative effects that cumulatively end up far exceeding the effects of the original ill that one believed it would help assuage. Of course, when something truly horrific, like losing one’s child, befalls someone, then if they decide to turn to hard drink or to hard drugs in order to cope, perhaps we have no right to judge them.

(Not that one is ever really justified in presuming to “judge” someone else, ever, but you know what I mean.)

And who knows, perhaps some strong-willed individual may indeed end up using narcotics wisely, using it to dull the edge of their anguish in the face of unspeakable tragedy, and then after a while weaning themselves off it. If used thus, one can hardly fault them. But how many are actually that ‘wise’, and how many are able to use their particular poison (drink, or narcotics, or faith) as judiciously?

(And also: if someone were indeed that strong-willed and wise and self-controlled, might they not perhaps be able to try to cope with their misfortune without the use of narcotics in the first place?)

I realize even as I type this, now, that I’m not saying anything at all new. Still, the fact that this equating of religious faith with opiates is a cliché fully a century old, does not take away from the aptness of the comparison. Faith and religion are exactly like opiates and narcotics. Like narcotics, they do soothe and offer comfort, and that comfort may seem welcome when times are trying. But they carry their own cost. Cost to the individual, as well as cost to society as a whole.

From your many comments on this site, I do know your own personal ideas about faith (as it applies to yourself). You use faith as an instrument to aid you to “go inside” and explore, yourself, what there is to explore. I am in full agreement with that approach. That isn’t blind faith, that is only conditional trust, in fact not even that, it is merely, well, using a crutch in order to see if the crutch does help one walk better, carefully and gingerly at first, and with greater confidence as you find, first-hand, that the crutch does help to hold you up.

(And I suppose that, if you found from your personal first-hand subjective experiments that the crutch did not in fact hold you up, you’d then be open to giving it up.)

I wouldn’t argue with that kind of a watered-down version of faith (as long as that faith did not lead you to do things that are, in themselves, objectionable). As you’ve often pointed out on this site, that kind of t hing is very similar to the methods of science. But I’d say that your kind of faith is very very rare : perhaps one in a thousand … no, one in ten thousand … not even that, probably an even smaller fraction of those who have faith, actually see faith in that light, the way you see it.

For most others (including, probably, the Pentecostal Christians in your particular example, so bravely battling their horrific situation), faith equals blind faith, and is no better than some deadly narcotic that momentarily dulls the pain but can -- and often does -- end up consuming their whole life.  

(Sorry, that turned out to be a very long-winded comment. Thing is, you’d made an excellent point, and my first reaction was to agree with what you’d said, about faith being ‘acceptable’ in the particular situation you spoke of. But then I thought I could see what appeared to me to be the flaw in your reasoning. Not that I’d ever presume to judge someone who tried to cope with the loss of their child in whatever way they saw fit, with drink or drugs or faith, but I’m afraid this does not really work as an argument in favor of faith per se. And I wanted to present my thoughts here, for what they’re worth, without sacrificing nuance for brevity.)

Posted by: Appreciative Reader

The most amazing thing about religions is that everyone believes they're right

Religious people believe in the miraculous.

Atheist me finds a different sort of miracle embedded in religiosity: the fact that almost everyone who embraces a particular religion is highly confident, if not absolutely certain, that their particular faith is The True One. 

Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and followers of many other creeds (including the Eastern mystical/spiritual teaching I followed for many years, Sant Mat) -- with just a few exceptions each devotee considers that somehow they've been fortunate enough to find the truth about an ultimate divine reality, while billions of people who believe otherwise are sadly deluded.

This  makes possible the atheist saying:

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Now, religiously-minded people might point out that in science alternative theories may compete with each other. True enough. But there are ways to determine which scientific theory is most correct.

Such doesn't exist in religion, or we wouldn't have thousands of faiths (Wikipedia says about 4,200) competing with each other for thousands of years with no demonstrable evidence of which, if any, speak the truth most truly.

In "Religious believers, what if you're wrong?" I included some questions posed by James Lindsey in his book, God Doesn't, We Do. These are well worth pondering by religious believers.

-- What if you, believer, are right about there being a God but picked the wrong one? 

-- What if you're right about God but picked the wrong religion to worship Him, as Muslims, Jews, and Christians mutually claim about each other?

-- What if you're right about God and your religion but wrong about which denomination, sect, or church has it right?

-- What if no demomination or person has figured it out correctly yet?

-- Can you, in your little corner of faith, in your tiny denominational box, shaded by your own personal perception, interests, likes, and dislikes, really be so sure that all of these billions of others have it wrong and that you have it right?

-- What if you are wrong about God's existence?

-- What, then, are you doing with some or much of your life?

-- How much time and effort are you wasting chasing fairy tales out of a book that is ancient literature turned social-control manual?

-- What are you doing to yourself, to your psychological well-being, when you must constantly lie to yourself about your worldview, which does not match your view of the world anywhere you look without relying on rationalizations and contortions of facts?

-- What are you ignoring or failing to learn about the world or yourself because you think you already have answers or because you want them less than your cherished beliefs?

-- What are you doing when you support inhuman social policies, hold back education, suppress healthy expressions of sexuality, oppose beneficial measures in regards to sexual health, deny others their basic human rights, curse the names and lives of your enemies or go to war with them, vote for idiotic politicians because you like their beliefs, held without evidence, enough to act without regard of their backwards ideas on key matters of policy?

-- What are you asking from those of your friends, your family, and your community who do not believe and yet are currently all but forced to listen to and to pretend to respect your religious beliefs, delusional rambling, misplaced thanksgiving, and unflattering solipsism?

-- What actions and thoughts do you deny or attempt to deny yourself on the grounds of your faith, activities and mindsets that might bring enjoyment, pleasure, meaning, or fulfillment to your life?

-- Which of those do you do anyway, needlessly hating yourself for it even while you do it?

-- What do you do only because you hope for bonus points with your imagined creator, selfishly trying to improve the chances that you will get your reward?

No need to have a "calling." Just live your life.

Someone emailed me a link to a short essay on the Secular Buddhist Association site, "What's your  calling or purpose in life?" I like the author's conclusion: there's no reason to feel that you have a special calling.

After all, where would that come from? 

The notion of a calling or purpose in life presupposes that such exists somewhere outside of the person's own mind, that somehow we're supposed to identify what we're meant to do with our life as if that was a law of nature akin to gravity or electromagnetism. 

Or maybe a better analogy is finding our life's compass, which would point us in the direction we're meant to go. But again, this presumes that there's a "magnetic" purpose that is separate and distinct from our everyday choices about what to do.

Here's an excerpt from the essay that makes a lot of sense to me.

I feel fortunate where I am now in life. I have no desire to look for purpose in my life. I don’t feel the compulsion of a calling. I am content to follow this journey we call life and see where it leads moment by moment. It is a feeling of peace, of openness that I didn’t have while being driven by goals, by a calling, by a purpose in life. I’m relieved to have dropped such notions, and for me they really were notions, and instead just be in whatever life brings each day.

I worry when I hear “spiritual leaders”, people regarded as sages and full of wisdom, speak in terms of finding purpose, finding your calling. What if there is no purpose? What if you don’t have a calling? Are you going to be the dog chasing his own tail? Do we have to have a purpose? Does our life have to have “meaning?” I think we should asks ourselves what we really mean by all that. What is driving the need for meaning?

That’s not to say there is something wrong with goals or direction, intent. Having short term goals and direction is useful, as long as we aren’t clinging to expectations, as long as we are open to changes and shifts that will inevitably occur. Life can throw a rock in the waters of resolve at any minute.  Expect change, because change is the norm.

Maybe it’s ok to be without purpose or calling and see what life hands you.

 

Buddhism doesn't believe in a soul, which is fine with soulless me

During my religious days I took solace in feeling that I had, or was, a soul that would survive my bodily death. Now, I'm more attached to truth than to fond beliefs, even when they feel good. 

So I enjoy many Buddhist writings (just not the ones that talk about reincarnation and other supernatural stuff). 

Back in 2012 I resonated with Owen Flanagan's naturalistic take on Buddhism, as I wrote about in "Buddhism says I'm a soulless Heraclitean river. Cool!"

So everything is changing. Including me, you, beliefs, brains, selves, Mt. Everest, ants, galaxies, subatomic particles, who is ahead in the latest presidential poll. Heraclitus sure seems to have gotten that right.

If we hope to base our happiness, our well-being, our satisfaction, on something immutable, unchanging, and eternal -- that hope is going to be still unfulfilled on our death bed. Better to accept that we're all Heraclitean rivers in a Heraclitean universe. 

By contrast, I heartily disagreed with an attempt by an author to misleadingly cram the soul into Buddhist teachings. His book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas deserved the title of my blog post: "RSSB 'Buddhism' book distorts Buddhist reality."

I'm fine with books which accurately describe a religion or philosophy, and then attempt to show how its tenets relate to some other belief system. But it deeply irks me when an author distorts a religion or philosophy in order to cram it into the confines of his/her favored world view, like RSSB's Sant Mat.

After reading only one chapter, I can tell that this is what K.N. Upadhyaya is up to with his "Buddhism" book. It was difficult for me to recognize the Buddhism that I've come to know (and sort of love) in his discussion of how Buddhists look upon soul and God.

Over and over, Upadhyaya cited the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, Hindu holy books, in his effort to show that the Buddha's teachings basically are the same as Hinduism's central tenets of atman (soul) and Brahman (God).

Well, if the Buddha was so up with Hinduism, why did he head off in a different spiritual direction? I'm no expert on Buddhist lore, but I've always thought that the Buddha was critical of Hindu dogmatism and urged his followers to leave all of that supernatural theorizing behind.

I thought right. More evidence of this is coming from Stephen Bachelor's new book, "After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age."

Bachelor says that he's trying to recover the Buddha's original teachings before they became hidden under layers of dogma and confusion. After all, the Buddha, like Jesus, never wrote anything. So what we have in the Buddhist canon are oral traditions that  must imperfectly represent what the Buddha originally taught. 

The earliest Buddhist writings, Pali, seemingly would come closest to those teachings. Further, Bachelor tries to separate out influences from Brahmanic/Hindu philosophy -- which do posit a soul (jiva)  that can unite with God, or Brahman.

I'm about halfway through After Buddhism. Here's some quotations I've come across so far on the subject of whether the Buddha taught about soul.

A topic upon which Gotama refused to comment was whether body (sarira) and soul (jiva) are identical or different. Sarira refers to the inanimate matter of which the body is composed rather than the living and breathing body (kaya). The term later came to denote the bones and material relics of deceased monks and saints.

Jiva (a cognate of the English "quick") is, by contrast, the animating principle that "quickens" dumb matter. While this kind of dualism is in keeping with the Brahmanic view that soul is essentially other than the material world, neither term has a central role in Gotama's lexicon.

He refused to get drawn into speculation about the relation between body and soul, nor did he consider such a dualistic distinction a useful starting point for understanding human experience.

Gotama likewise considers consciousness to be inseparable from the rest of the physical, emotional, perceptual, and intentional bundles of which it is an integral part. He makes the point emphatically: "Though someone might say: 'Apart from form, apart from feeling, apart from perception, apart from inclinations, I will make known the coming and going of consciousness, its passing away and rebirth, its growth, increase and expansion' -- that is impossible."

In contrast to widespread Buddhist beliefs to the contrary, he refuses to grant consciousness any separate or privileged status within experience.

...By implication, for Gotama there can be no such thing as "pure" consciousness, an unconditioned or pristine "knowing" that exists independently of the phenomenal world of discrete physical things and mental processes. 

...To consider awakening in terms of the workings of the five bundles marks a departure from Brahmanic orthodoxy, where the goal of the path is to achieve union with a transcendent and unknowable consciousness or God. If nothing else, Gotama's emphasis on the five bundles points to a practice that from the outset is engaged with the specificity and diversity of the world of human experience rather than seeking an ultimate truth that lies hidden from view.

Non-religious people believe in weird stuff also

This isn't a big shocker, really. But it was still surprising to read that people who don't believe in God actually are more likely to hold other unfounded beliefs, like aliens visiting Earth.

So says psychologist Clay Routledge in a New York Times piece, "Don't Believe in God? Maybe You'll Try U.F.O.s."

People who do not frequently attend church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts as those who are regular churchgoers. The less religious people are, the more likely they are to endorse empirically unsupported ideas about U.F.O.s, intelligent aliens monitoring the lives of humans and related conspiracies about a government cover-up of these phenomena.

An emerging body of research supports the thesis that these interests in nontraditional supernatural and paranormal phenomena are driven by the same cognitive processes and motives that inspire religion. For instance, my colleagues and I recently published a series of studies in the journal Motivation and Emotion demonstrating that the link between low religiosity and belief in advanced alien visitors is at least partly explained by the pursuit of meaning. The less religious participants were, we found, the less they perceived their lives as meaningful. This lack of meaning was associated with a desire to find meaning, which in turn was associated with belief in U.F.O.s and alien visitors.

When people are searching for meaning, their minds seem to gravitate toward thoughts of things like aliens that do not fall within our current scientific inventory of the world. Why? I suspect part of the answer is that such ideas imply that humans are not alone in the universe, that we might be part of a larger cosmic drama. As with traditional religious beliefs, many of these paranormal beliefs involve powerful beings watching over humans and the hope that they will rescue us from death and extinction.

Well, I know quite a few atheists who don't believe in U.F.O.s or ghosts. This includes me and my wife. We get along just fine without either religion, or irrational fact-free substitutes for religion. 

I'm not saying that everything we believe is true. Far from it. We simply do our best to put our faith in what is known to exist within the natural world, rather than embrace supernatural entities or far-fetched physical phenomena such as alien visitations.

I agree that we humans have a strong drive to find meaning in our lives. However, there are plenty of ways to do this other than those mentioned in in Routledge's essay. 

Family. Friends. Volunteer work. Art. Civic activism. Politics. Nature. Gardening. One's profession. Writing. Meditation. To name just a few.

Routledge says we have a quest for significance. Agreed. I just disagree that believing in a religion or U.F.O's is a good way to feel that our lives have meaning. How about working to make this world a better place? Isn't that a significant thing to do?

How I became disillusioned with a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Today Arjuna left an intriguing question in a comment on my post, "Why I stayed with a religion for 35 years."

Hello Brian, I trust you are well?

May I ask a question and if you don't wish to reply - please don't. In what ways did you begin noticing Gurinder Singh was just as imperfect as the rest of us?

This may help this soul as I need closure on the above question.

Regards
Arjuna

I'm pleased to reply to you, Arjuna.

Here's some experiences that come to mind. Understand: my memory about some details of what I'll describe below regarding Gurinder Singh Dhillon is sort of hazy, since many years have passed. But I'm quite confident that the basic message of what you'll read is correct.

Gurinder Singh

Irritation with a manuscript. l heard this story from someone who either had written a draft of a book to be published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB, the organization headed by the guru) or had brought a draft written by someone else to the guru. Regardless, I was told that when the person entered a room where Gurinder Singh was meeting with several people, he picked up the draft and threw the stack of papers at them. 

I had the impression that the guru was angry about the manuscript. As you might expect from the way ardent disciples act around the guru, the person who told me the story seemed to feel that what Gurinder Singh did was justified -- maybe as some sort of lesson that the person needed to learn. 

However, this story disturbed me at the time, and it still does today. If anyone else had done what the guru did, a CEO of a company, say, we'd say "He acted like a jerk." I no longer believe that a guru's negative actions should be interpreted generously. If a guru acts badly, let's just say it like it is -- acting badly. 

Upset with a photo being taken. In the 1990s Gurinder Singh began visiting the United States. Since I was learning karate at the time, I ended up being assigned to security seva (service) when the guru gave talks in Palm Springs, California. I remember being with the guru and other people when he was walking around the venue, an auditorium complex. I believe Gurinder Singh had just visited the child care area.

We were outside on a walkway when the guru saw someone quite a ways away taking a photo of him. At this time the guru had a strict rule, no photographs. But the person taking the photo was on public property, as was Gurinder Singh. Nonetheless, some RSSB security people dashed over to the person with the camera and demanded that they surrender the film (this was before digital cameras).

In retrospect, this was a ridiculous demand.

Like I said, the guru was out in public. It is totally legal to take photos of people in a public place. Yet for some reason that I still don't understand, Gurinder Singh was adamant that no photographs be taken of him, and if any were, the photo had to be destroyed. Now I'm bothered both by the fact that the guru had this attitude, and that his devotees (of which I was one, back then) were so willing to comply with anything the guru wanted to have done.

Jiti Khanna's resignation as an RSSB representative. On another visit, Gurinder Singh visited Vancouver, B.C. Once again, I got to do some security seva. Mostly I, along with other volunteers, hung out at the place the guru was staying, a home belonging to Jiti Khanna, who was the RSSB representative for British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (where I lived, in Oregon; I wrote about a charming episode with Dr. Khanna in "From Sant Mat to Buddhism.")

It was a fascinating experience.

Back then I was very devoted to the guru. One night I was assigned to stand outside the window of the room where Gurinder Singh was sleeping. At 3 am I recall wondering what the heck I would do if a van, say, pulled up with armed Sikh separatists who wanted to do the guru harm. I figured that the only thing I could do was try to stop them, even though I couldn't, because it would be too shameful to have failed to try to protect the guru, even if I lost my life.

Anyway, I thought it must be wonderful for Jiti Khanna and his family to be hosting the guru in their house -- getting all up close and personal with him. So it was quite shocking to hear that soon after Gurinder Singh's visit, Dr. Khanna resigned as RSSB representative and reportedly became a Buddhist. I have no idea what led him to do this. It just struck me as strange that after having some intimate contact with the guru, Dr. Khanna did what he did.

What did Jiti Khanna see in Gurinder Singh? I don't know. But if he had seen a God in Human Form, as the guru is supposed to be, seemingly he wouldn't have resigned his representative position and turned to Buddhism.

Life is Fair cover screwup. I spent several years writing a book for Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the Indian spiritual organization currently headed up by Gurinder Singh, who succeeded Charan Singh. I agreed to write Life is Fair after being told that one of Charan Singh's wishes before he died was to have a fairly short book that described the karmic rationale for being a vegetarian. 

Since Charan Singh was my guru, I felt this was a wonderful opportunity to do some volunteer service in the name of my guru. I ended up traveling to India to finish up the book with the help of Faith Singh, who was in charge of the English language books published by RSSB. 

After I got home, the process of publishing started. I recall that I got an email from one of the volunteers working in the Publications Department that there was a problem with the first batch of books, several thousand copies I seem to remember. Gurinder Singh, had personally chosen the type of paper for the cover. But it turned out to be too thick, so it was difficult to open up the pages of the book. 

When I got a copy of the book and saw the problem with the cover, I had the thought, "But how could this happen if the guru is supposed to be a Perfect Living Master?" However, at the time I believed that whatever the guru did had some deeper meaning, even if his action appeared imperfect. Now, though, I consider that Gurinder Singh just made a mistake with the cover.

So here's four stories that are some of the reasons I became disillusioned with the guru.

As I said in the above-linked post, I also was bothered by seeing that disciples/initiates who had the closest contact with Gurinder Singh appeared to be no more "spiritual" than me or any other ordinary person.

Is God a Taoist? Sure. This dialogue about free will proves it.

My atheist mind goes back and forth between Taoism and Buddhism when I try to decide which secular version of these philosophies appeals the most to me.

Since I'm heavy into Tai Chi, which basically is Taoism expressed in human movement, I've got an inclination in that direction. Taoism also resonates with me because its writings often are considerably less serious than the Buddhist variety. 

In large part this is because Taoism really doesn't have anything comparable to Buddhism's enlightenment or satori. Nor does Taoism have dogmas akin to the Four Noble Truths. Its a lot more free-flowing, unstructured, and light-hearted. 

(Yes, I realize that Zen Buddhism has many humorous stories in its lexicon, but these often involve not-so-funny stuff like being hit over the head with a stick, and the fact that the point of the stories is Serious Enlightenment gives them a heavier tone than, say, those attributed to Chuang Tzu.)

This morning I picked up one of my favorite Taoist books, Raymond M. Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent." I've written about the book before here and here. 

In fact, I just noticed that the first "here" link deals with the same subject in Smullyan's book -- free will -- that enthralled me so much again today.

Oh, well. Since I just re-read the Is God a Taoist? chapter, I guess it is fitting that I'm re-writing a post about how free will is discussed in that chapter.

In short, marvelously. 

What I like the most about Smullyan's writing is that sometimes, like this time, it leaves me baffled. Meaning, I can follow him up to a point. Then he leaps over a conceptual edge that has me staring over the cliff, wondering where the hell he disappeared to. 

That was the feeling I had this morning after I read the excerpt below.

Which I thankfully was able to copy from someone who shared the entire Is God a Taoist? chapter on one of those wonderful web pages that look like they date from close to the dawn of the Internet. Since "The Tao is Silent" was published in 1977, that isn't surprising in this case.

What perplexed the logical side of my mind was Smullyan's final statement in this excerpt: "A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity."

I sort of get what he means. And I sort of dou't. 

Maybe he means that every conscious being is going to feel like it/he/she has free will. Or maybe he means that the freedom in free will arises from the fact, as Smullyan says before, that "you" and "nature" are a continuous whole, so the question of whether we control nature or nature controls us is moot.

(This makes me think of Janis Joplin's freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. However, since I actually have no idea what Joplin meant by this, it's difficult to use that lyric as an explanation for what Smullyan means by what he said.)

Anyway, here's the excerpt from Smullyan's book that I enjoyed re-reading so much. Again, I liked this not because I could completely comprehend what he meant, but because I couldn't. 

Mortal:
   I don't know. Do I have free will?

God:
   Yes.

Mortal:
   Then why did you say I shouldn't have taken it for granted?

God:
   Because you shouldn't. Just because something happens to be true, it does not follow that it should be taken for granted.

Mortal:
   Anyway, it is reassuring to know that my natural intuition about having free will is correct. Sometimes I have been worried that determinists are correct.

God:
   They are correct.

Mortal:
   Wait a minute now, do I have free will or don't I?

God:
   I already told you you do. But that does not mean that determinism is incorrect.

Mortal:
   Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren't they?

God:
   The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could "determine" your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.

Mortal:
   What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!

God:
   You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, "In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!" Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.

Mortal:
   So you really claim that I am incapable of determining to act against natural law?

God:
   It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase "determined to act" instead of "chosen to act." This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement "I am determined to do this" synonymously with "I have chosen to do this." This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you.

But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the "you" and the "not you." Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you.

Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the "force." In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.

Mortal:
   You said a short while ago that our whole discussion was based on a monstrous fallacy. You still have not told me what this fallacy is.

God:
   Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!)

Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like? I think that one thing in your life that has so misled you is your having been told that I gave man the gift of free will. As if I first created man, and then as an afterthought endowed him with the extra property of free will. Maybe you think I have some sort of "paint brush" with which I daub some creatures with free will and not others. No, free will is not an "extra"; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.

Trump administration's push for religious liberty rooted in "Fantasyland"

The United States is a Fantasyland. And not just any old Fantasyland -- people in this country probably have the most fantastical beliefs of any country in the world. 

This is the core message of Kurt Andersen's marvelous book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History." It's more that 400 pages, but if you want a short overview, check out an Atlantic piece, "How America Lost Its Mind."

I've only read the first part of the book. But already it's offered up fresh insights into a familiar topic on this blog, the ridiculousness of giving subjective religious beliefs way more credibility than they deserve by politicians.

For some of my posts on this subject, see here, here, here, and here.

A few days ago right-wing wacko Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal agencies to give more credence to religious beliefs that conflict with established law. This is a totally amazing quote from his memo.

“Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law,” Sessions wrote. “Therefore, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, religious observance and practice should be accommodated in all government activity, including employment, contracting, and programming.”

WTF?! 

It's totally absurd for the Attorney General to say that "no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law."

As I've noted before, why should only religious faith get a free pass from United States laws?

Frequently people who drink a lot have faith that they can drive just fine. Shouldn't they be absolved from a ticket or jail time if they're caught driving drunk? What difference is there between a Holy Church of Drink All You Want Because God Loves This and another church that believes it is OK to discriminate against gays?

The above-linked article says:

“This guidance is designed to do one thing—create a license to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others, sanctioned by the federal government and paid for by taxpayers,” Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration, said in a statement. Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, accused Trump of furthering a “cynical and hateful agenda” and said the memo “will enable systematic, government-wide discrimination that will have a devastating impact on LGBTQ people and their families.”

Here's some quotes from Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland that shed light on how the United States became such a wacked-out country, a nation that elevates unfounded personal beliefs above reasoned, factual, evidence-based conclusions. 

It's really sad that we've come to the place where our Attorney General says it is absolutely fine to discriminate against someone if you have a religious belief that is OK to do this. Again, why is religious belief elevated above other sorts of beliefs? As Andersen notes below, the root of our current Fantasyland lies in Protestant beliefs from the 1500s.

But many branches have grown from this root. Like the Attorney General's memo. Andersen writes:

Why are we like this?

That's what this book will explore. The short answer is because we're Americans, because being American means we can believe any damn thing we want, that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else's, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause and effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

...In other words: mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled.

...Out of the new Protestant religion, a new photo-American attitude emerged during the 1500s. Millions of ordinary people decided that they, each of them, had the right to decide what was true or untrue, regardless of what fancy experts said. And furthermore, they believed, passionate fantastical belief was the key to everything. The footings for Fantasyland had been cast.

...As we let a hundred dogmatic iterations of reality bloom, the eventual result was an anything-goes relativism that extends beyond religion to almost every kind of passionate belief: if I think it's true, no matter why or how I think it's true, then it's true, and nobody can tell me otherwise. 

That's the real life reductio ad absurdum of American individualism. And it would become a credo of Fantasyland. 

We need to honor the brokenness in ourselves. And, in others.

This morning I listened to a wonderful guided meditation on my Calm app about the chips and cracks of our experience. Tamara Levitt ended the meditation with the words I've transcribed below. I couldn't help thinking about how this applies to supposedly "broken people" like the homeless in Salem.

Actually, as Levitt says, the Japanese art of Kintsugi shows that healing brokenness results in more beauty, not less. Human flaws produce a tapestry that can't be reproduced, being the product of our unique experience.

So rather than extolling those who seem to "have their act together," perhaps we should revere the broken, the cracked, the fallen, the bruised. And when we can, do our best to mend both ourselves and others without worrying if the repair job isn't perfect.

For beauty, in Kintsugi, lies in flaws, not perfection. Here's my transcript -- perhaps imperfect -- of what Tamara Levitt said today.

Today, I’d like to talk about the beauty in our flaws. When we experience something difficult, like heartbreak or a failed business endeavor, our reaction is often to see ourselves as cracked or flawed. 

And we’re conditioned to think that when something is broken, it has less value. So our instinct is to ignore or cover up our hurt. 

But what if we shifted our perception? What if we viewed our flaws with appreciation, even seeing them as beautiful?

There’s a wonderful Japanese art form where artists mend broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer. It’s called Kintsugi, which translates of golden joinery. 

When a teacup breaks, or a vase cracks, Kintsugi embraces the brokenness. The pieces are meticulously mended back together, highlighting the cracks instead of hiding them. 

Brilliant golden tendrils now hold the pottery together, resulting in a beautiful unique piece that can never be reproduced. 

So rather than trying to erase the hurts of past relationships, or cover up mistakes in a past venture, why not approach our brokenness with a sense of reverence. 

Mending pieces of ourselves with delicate filaments of gold. The next time you feel broken, remember the art of Kintsugi. 

Hold your grief with tenderness, your mistakes with forgiveness, and your frustrations with patience, 

Honor the scrapes and scruffs, the chips and cracks of your experience. As Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”