-Matt

What follows was reproduced exactly from the original document available to me. No changes have been made in any way.

I’ve thought for a long time about what kind of philosophy would allow people of pretty much any point of view to find common ground on which to agree so that they can begin discussing their beliefs. While many people attempt to have dialog with those of dissenting opinions, it often ends in bitter hostility. The reasons for that are too numerous to list, but I don’t think many will disagree with me that a good number of people seem either unwilling or unable to really consider points of view that dissent from their own.

I think this happens, more often than not, because people of all kinds of beliefs don’t realize the provisional, non-rational propositions upon which their beliefs are founded. I have heard numerous theists and atheists, for example, arguing for the existence or non-existence of God by appealing to the same evidence that they see in the world, but evidence for which they interpret very differently. The theist sees in the world the ordered and purposeful providence of God; the atheist sees the systematic, but blind forces of Nature. How can two people make such diverse and antithetical deductions from the same experiences?

It’s almost as if the two people are talking about different worlds. How can two people who see things so differently begin to talk on a level of discourse on which they can hear one another out and have understanding, even sympathy, for the opposing point of view WITHOUT that understanding and sympathy being a concession to the dissenting point of view? Is there such a common ground?

“REAL THINGS”

I am proposing that yes, there is. Just as certain principles of language are universal, where particular rules of grammar, syntax and so forth are concrete and do not fundamentally differ from one language to another, so I think there is a basic way of experiencing life that is virtually universal to all humans, and upon which people of differing opinions can meet together on a level playing field: a point of view that both acknowledges the other person’s beliefs and respects the FACT of that person’s beliefs without necessarily ASSENTING to or ENDORSING those beliefs. But before getting to that, we have to do some analysis and deconstruction.

One of the timeless rhetorical ploys in Western debate is the appeal to Reason. Although what constitutes “rational” or “logical” will differ from one person to the next, almost everyone adheres to a system of propositions from which derivative beliefs arise as a result of those propositions. To Westerners (who are my assumed audience for this example), this basic reliance on Reason is the common grounds on which we reside. To say that any particular point of view is “illogical” is to say that such a view is not built on the grounds of Reason, and therefore invalid, as it stands, to be considered as an accurate description of reality. It’s so common and universally accepted that we don’t question it’s validity.

Accompanying this belief in Reason is the dominant view in our culture of Positivistic Empiricism. That’s a fancy academic term that philosophical people use to confuse you into thinking that they’re smarter than you and therefore they must be right (kidding!). It’s essentially the belief that “real things” are the things that we can experience with our physical senses. The application of this philosophy can be seen most clearly in Science. I commonly hear people talk about Science as somehow being more of a “real” academic discipline than others. Most people unconsciously buy into the idea that Science gives us knowledge of “real things” because it only analyzes those things which we can experience with the senses.

The belief that physical things are the only objective “real things” arose largely from the Enlightenment (mostly 1700s and slightly onwards), a time when great thinkers started to advocate ways of explaining and experiencing the world that were systematic, methodical, and definitive. What’s resulted from years of this philosophy’s evolution is the general belief that what we see, touch, hear and so on is “objective,” while our thoughts, emotions, spiritual beliefs and so forth are “subjective.” In other words, your experiences through your physical senses are experiences of things “out there” in the real world, while your imagination, thoughts, beliefs and so forth are experiences of things “in there,” inside your mind, the constructed world that you feel and, to some degree, create and project onto the “real world.”

Because this way of thinking is ingrained in us from culture, we often unconsciously filter our experiences through this philosophy without realizing that we’re doing it. It’s almost like a computer firewall that lets certain things in and keeps other things out. When I see the sun rise over the water, my firewall lets this information through and saves it a folder that I label “real things.” But when I feel moved by the sunset, or feel like I’m experiencing some sort of transcendence coming through the setting of the sun, my firewall pops up with a message saying, “A subjective experience has tried to access your hard drive. Would you like to continue?” Depending on my other beliefs and philosophies, I may go ahead and let it through, or I may relegate it to the “Undecided” folder and think about it later.

It’s a very common idea for people to think that this is really an objective way of thinking because it’s the default that they naturally gravitate toward when they’re confused. More often than not, I think, people have been trained, through the habitual, post-Enlightenment conditioning that pervades our culture, to think about life with this particular slant and that’s why they hold these views a priori. I’ll come back to this idea later.

Coming back to the belief in Reason as the measure by which reality is judged, I want to challenge this idea. Upon closer examination, I think it is definitively certain that this belief in Reason as the measuring stick of “real things” is unsustainable, being every bit as arbitrary a belief as anything else. Let me elaborate.

ILLOGICAL VS. NON-LOGICAL

I start, for example, with the world of dreams. The logic of the dreamworld is non-logic: one thing is not necessarily derived from another in the ways that we are accustomed to. There’s no logical reason that every door in my house leads to a tornado, or that my family turns into a pack of lions that run after me, or that I am abducted by space aliens that resemble co-workers: there need be not fit relation between these various experiences, except, perhaps, by an emotional thread along which those dreams may run. But for all intents and purposes, dreams do not function in what we call a “logical” manner.

Compare these experience to our waking hours. When we awake from a nightmare, we are immersed back into surroundings that are familiar, among phenomena over which we can exercise a degree of control, and where many things remain predictably constant. But I would like to point out that these experiences aren’t fundamentally different from dreams. The primary difference is one of CONTINUITY. What we have in our waking hours is essentially the same experience as a dream, but with the tremendous different that it doesn’t randomly alter in nature; where there is continuity between one moment and the next; where relationships between one experience and another show predictable patterns of behavior; where there is a degree of constant cause and effect; and where general patterns of relationship between ourselves and the world are discernible enough for us to manipulate this world.

The primary difference between the dream and our waking hours is not, I suggest, that one happens definitively “inside our minds” while the other happens “out in reality.” The difference is that, while a dream drifts from one experience to the next with little to no continuity, our waking experiences behave in predictable patterns that we can depend on and utilize to our advantage. The dreams are random, whereas the waking world is (at least far more so) continuous.

But does “continuous” and “predictable” necessarily equate to “real”? That is the question that is rarely asked, but whose answer is often assumed in our culture: we take it for granted that this waking life is “real” because it behaves “logically.” But when we analyze Logic itself, we find that Logic is merely our observations of the various connections that we discern between the phenomena we’re experiencing. But our experience of these phenomena are not in and of themselves logical.

It will be helpful here to make the distinction between the terms ILLOGICAL and NON-LOGICAL. The concepts are related, but very different, and it is necessary to keep them distinct. To say that something is ILLOGICAL is to say that a certain proposition is held to be true, while a counter proposition, which is contradictory to the first, is also held to be true. For example, the statements “My wife is in this room,” and “My wife is not in this room,” are illogical if you try to say they’re both true: they’re mutually exclusive. One can’t be true if the other is true.

To say something is NON-LOGICAL is to say that something does not follow in accordance with the normal patterns of sequential continuity. For example, in a dream, you open a door, which had previously led to another room, but now opens upon a waterfall. There’s nothing inherently contradictory about this event. You simply expected one thing, but got another. It may contradict the pattern you thought you thought you had discerned from opening the door earlier when it led to the bedroom; it may contradict your prediction that you would find the bedroom behind this door when you opened it again; but this experience doesn’t set itself against a contradictory proposition. There is no discernible cause-effect pattern, and thus no logic. But it doesn’t contradict a counter-proposition that is held to be true at the same time, hence why it’s NON-LOGICAL rather than ILLOGICAL.

To summarize, “illogical” means “contradictory,” while “non-logical” means “not conforming to the rules of logic.” Something could be both illogical and non-logical, but the concepts are distinct.

Having dealt with that distinction, I want to make the assertion that it is demonstrably clear that when we accept things as “real” because they’re “logical,” and when we dismiss things as “non-real” because they’re “non-logical” (remember the distinctions above), this whole philosophy is completely arbitrary. The world is, when we have broken down all of our concepts and definitions into the smallest constituent parts until we can go no further, ultimately an experience that is no more objective or logical than anything else.

To understand what I mean, take a simple example: a tree. If I were to ask you what a tree is, you would probably talk about wood and sap and leaves and so forth. But suppose we kept pressing the question and tried to break down each one of those constituent parts into even smaller parts—such as the wood of the tree. You could break that down into its constituent parts, which you could break down even further, until we had cells, then the elements, then molecules, then atoms, and all the way down until we had what physicists call the “quark” and philosophers call the “monad”: the basic building block of all material substances, or the smallest thing into which everything can be broken down.

IT’S JUST THERE

Now comes the final question: what is a quark/monad? The definition you get is circular: it’s the one thing that makes up everything else. But let’s forget about “everything else” for a second and focus on this thing by itself. What is this “quark” without everything else? There is no definition. There is no logical explanation. Here it is: that’s that.

Follow the implication of this idea. Quarks, which are essentially indescribable and unexplainable, are the things that make up everything. Therefore, everything, at it’s core, is an ultimately indescribable and unexplainable phenomenon. There is no ultimate rational explanation to why yellow is yellow, or why broccoli tastes like broccoli, or why water feels watery: here it is. The “realness” of things is not ultimately relying on Reason, but on experiences which, at their most basic level, we simply accept we are having and label them “real.” The numerous phenomena we experience can be broken down into more phenomena, which multiply into more and more distinct concepts in our minds until eventually we hit a dead end of our definitions and simply name this “thing”—this thing that is simply there, and that’s all the explanation we have. We accept that it exists for the same reason we accept that anything exists: it’s just there.

Yet, while it might be a perfectly true statement to say that “real things” are “just there,” I want to stress that this is NOT A LOGICAL EXPLANATION: it is an EXPERIENCE. The logical aspect of these particular experiences arise from our observation of the relationships between things. Logic, then, is not really like the ground we stand on. It is more like a series of bridges that connect one experience to another. But there has to be something that is “just there” in the first place for logic to even begin to function. Until two distinct things are “just there,” Reason and Logic do not even exist. There’s nothing rational or logical about a dot in a vacuum, for example. The logical aspect only arises from our analysis of the comparative relationship between the dot and something else. The dot, by itself, is neither logical, illogical: it just is.

If you want to put it one way, what I am saying is that when you think of each individual thing in your experiences in and of itself, then you get something like a dot in a vacuum. The world is made up of these “dots,” of things that we accept are there simply because we experience them. There is no explanation for how or why these things exist. Here they are. So our most basic experience of life is not really rational or logical at all, but experiential—and ultimately, non-logical.

On what basis, then, can someone objectively say that the only “real things” are those things that act and behave rationally or logically? What reason do we have for accepting the validity of “logical” experiences over the “non-logical” ones? Is there any definitive evidence to show that Logic itself is an adequate criteria by which to judge the validity of our experiences?

Let’s imagine the unthinkable for a moment and suppose that the logical world is actually the illusion, and the world of dreams the concrete reality. I’m not suggesting that this is actually the case. But I am saying that there’s no absolute, objective argument against it; I am saying that I think it is demonstrably certain that no evidence can be brought forth that gives definitive credibility to our physical sensations over our dreams, or emotions, or imagination, or any experience whatsoever. I take for granted that my mind acts upon my passive will while I’m asleep so that I “dream.” Could it not be doing the same thing while I’m awake?

REASON IS NOT KING

Our resistance to this line of thought will likely arise from a desire to ascertain control over our lives. Logic gives you a kind of power over yourself and the real world. You may not be able to hold the Universe in your hand, but you can hold it in your mind’s eye, even if only as an abstraction. Logic can give you definitions, methods, syllogisms, derivatives, correlatives, tautologies, and allow you to understand and interact with (what you believe to be) “real” things, even if only in your little corner of the vast Universe. And this desire to maintain and exercise control over that one small corner is, I believe, at the heart of people’s reluctance to acknowledge the arbitrariness with which Logic is assumed to be absolute.

More often than not, our sensations in dreams are as passively experienced as our sensations when we’re awake. That is, in dreams, we experience things happening to us—we are not (at least not at a conscious level) MAKING things happen. Sometimes, we have less control over ourselves in our dreams than in real life. What if the “logical” world, which we assume to be real, is actually the mind’s retreat from the diverse and irrational TRUE reality, and an immersion into the false construction of rationality and logic that we are subconsciously creating? What if the waking world is the fake world? Is there any truly objective, absolute evidence that could be presented that shows that anything exists outside your own mind?

I say very firmly: no. There isn’t. There is, in fact, no way to be certain of anything besides the fact that you are having a certain experience right now. Even your memories of things in the past could be reduced to a mere experience you are having right now. You may just be subconsciously creating memories to remember. How do you know? You don’t. And that’s that. All you know right now, for absolutely certain, is what you’re experiencing AT THIS MOMENT.

This position is called “solipsism”: the belief that the only thing that you can know for certain is that you’re experiencing something right now. Many people appeal to this idea, in roundabout ways, when trying to deconstruct someone else’s beliefs. “How do you know? How do you know?” If you follow the train of thought down to it’s root, you find that you really don’t know anything is factually certain outside of your perceptions. And given that this is the case, you can’t know anything for sure exists: not Jesus, Allah, Zen, carrots, furniture, your spouse, your parents, not even the bowl of cereal you ate this morning. Nothing at all can be held to be “real” with any absolute certainty because absolute certainty cannot be ascertained: there is no way to know for absolutely certain that we have experiences of real things outside our minds.

At this point, it would be easy to let go and meander aimlessly through life wondering about everything; you live your life, I’ll live mine, let’s just get on with this confusing world until we die (or will we?). But I don’t think that this is all there is to it. I’m not content to stop here. I believe that there is a criteria that can be universally agreed upon IN PRINCIPLE and IN PRACTICE by which we can consciously live and gauge our decisions, even in the absence of absolute certainty.

APPARENCY

While it is true that we can never have absolute certainty, and that we must always keep our minds open to the possibility of absolutely anything and everything, and while an infinite number of paths for our life are open before us, we must choose one path. Life forces us to do it. Even within the Solipsist position (i.e. I don’t know anything is real besides my own experiences), there is clearly more going on than simply “here is one experience, now here is another.” What we do know is that, even though the experiences we perceive are transient, we experience a degree of continuity from one moment to the next. We perceive that our actions have lasting effects, illusory or actually, upon the world that we experience, and that our decisions have consequences for other things, for other people that we perceive, and for ourselves.

Regardless of whether we can know for sure if particular things are real or not, there are varying degrees of APPARENCY in our experiences. That is, there are some things that appear to us as being more “real” or “external” to ourselves than other experiences. Even if I can’t know for sure that the car I see driving toward me is more real than the daydream I’m having of walking on a sandy beach, the car APPEARS to me as being more real than the daydream and I move out of the way. And we make decisions based on which things seem apparent to us, as is only reasonable. Why would you believe something you don’t see? The apparency with which I experience a thing, then, must be regarded as a criteria for how I decide to react to it.

The problem with this proposition is obvious: what qualifies as “apparent”? I could say that it’s “apparent” that Santa Clause is sitting on my knee eating an ice cream cone. You might even say (Heaven forbid it) that there is some sort of divine being who created the world. You could say absolutely anything was apparent and then hold that up as what you’re going to believe.

Here is where a reliance upon reality has to kick in. Not only do I have to judge what is apparent to me, but I also have to judge what I think is apparent to other people. This is essentially what you’re doing when you find someone is lying. What they’re saying contradicts what you believe is apparent both to you and to them, and thus you make a judgment that they are not speaking what is really apparent to them. Likewise, we have to make similar judgment calls when discussing various things with other people.

To take the famous mathematician/atheist Bertrand Russell’s example of a supposed teapot orbiting the galaxy in space, I would acknowledge that he’s perfectly right in saying that there’s no way to disprove that such a thing is happening. And granted the Solipsist position, we are admitting that anything is possible after all, even a teapot orbiting in space. But it is apparent to me that this is not the case, and it is apparent to me that Russell did not think it to be the case. So the point is moot, and a redundant restatement in light of the everything so far because WE ARE ALREADY GRANTING THAT ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, and that nothing can be verified for absolutely certain. Given this, what we are left with is apparency as a gauge for what is real and what is not. Thus, if neither of us believe that a certain proposition is apparent, then there is no point discussing it.

In principle, only those things that are apparent to a person really matter in discussions. One caveat in civil discussion between two people of differing beliefs thus emerges: the discussion must be limited to those things that people actually believe. To bring things into the discussion that a person doesn’t find apparent helps nothing, except insofar as a legitimate analogous relationship exists. But if neither you, nor I believe in Santa Clause or orbiting teapots, what help do these examples serve? We must stick to those things that are apparent to at least one of us.

Someone at this point might deride me for saying that I’m only explicating what people are already doing on a daily basis without thinking about it. “Duh, Derek. Of course people only consider things they experience.” And such a criticism is right. What I’m talking about is really nothing new. Notice that the Apostle Paul makes an appeal to “revelation” in the first chapter of Romans when he says that God’s divine nature and power is “clearly seen” through what has been created and “perceived since the foundation of the world.” There is no argument here: Paul assumes that his readers will look to Creation to discover the validity of what he is saying. And in some ways, that’s all one can do. How else could I definitively prove that the color green exists without pointing at it and saying, “See? Here it is.”

Really, what I’m suggesting is nothing innovative at all: we must live by what seems apparent to us. And at some unconscious level, I think most people are doing exactly this. It’s common sense, isn’t it? Won’t I naturally gravitate to that which seems the most real to me?

That last question is one that I want to elaborate on. Our intentions are not always so pure. We’re not all as objective as we like to think. There are falsities which we may subconsciously substitute for apparency for a myriad of reasons. There are two crucial areas I would like to draw attention to: (a.) experiences “in the mind,” and (b.) our biases from desires.

UP HERE, OUT THERE

You remember when I wrote above about the “firewall” that filters our experiences by letting physical sensations in as “real things,” but questioning other experiences as suspect. Given that all things are equally unknowable from a purely logical standpoint, I want to open up the possibility that there are in fact many things in our experiences of the world that we screen out through habit, but which could possibly give us insight into reality.

I mentioned earlier that we often relegate our experiences to “real” and “not real” based on whether they come through our physical senses: the physical experiences are happening “out there,” and all others are happening “in here” within my mind. That’s not quite true. Assuming that human anatomy and our nervous systems are legitimate, what we experience (so we deduce from scientific observation) is that the [supposed] external world makes an impression upon our body, which causes a particular electrical charge to run through our nervous system to our brains, which is then translated into sensation that we experience.

But notice that, strictly speaking, this sensation is not of something OUTSIDE my body, but INSIDE. I am not feeling the actual computer that I’m typing on. I am feeling my brain’s translation of electrical signals running through my nervous system that I assume is caused from the computer’s impressions upon my body. And not only is it happening in my mind, but it’s not even the actual physical objects that I experience. It’s impressions of impressions that the object has made on my body, translated multiple times over, and finally deduced in my brain. Literally every physical sensation I have is experienced “up here,” and it’s not even the actual physical object that I experience.

Nevertheless, the physical sensations I experience are those things that are apparent to me as being real. But if we are to legitimate that these are possible “real experiences” that are happening “up here” in my mind, why could not those other things I experience “up here” also be glimpses of real things? Going back to the example of a sunset, is it not possible that, when I the sense some Other Thing, some transcendence as the Sun sinks into the ocean, could this not be a legitimate “real thing” that’s being impressed upon me from “out there”? Our physical bodies may give us sensations of objects, but it’s in the mind that those sensations acquire MEANING, and the meaning may itself sometimes be detached from the object and experienced as a longing for something else. We’re trained by our Western scientific mindset not to allow those sorts of things in as “real knowledge.” Yet, what if they are?

I raise this question in part because of an implicit argument that is regularly leveled against God when spiritual people (not all Christians, mind you) say that they “see God,” which of course they mean in metaphorical sense. But many dissenters will respond to this as if the person making such a claim were giving a literal description. “Where is God?” the dissenter will say. They ask in the same way as they would ask, “Where is the North Star?” But God, if a God exists, isn’t a physical object that you can point to. That doesn’t mean, however, that he isn’t apparent in some other way—perhaps on a different level of experience that we’ve been trained to screen out of our thinking.

Another argument that may be leveled against the idea of imagination and the mind’s eye as legitimate accesses to real things is that they are less apparent than physical sensations, which I will readily admit. We may experience the heat of the sun on a blistering day without feeling any sort of transcendence over it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that these less apparent things aren’t legitimate. If I have extremely good hearing, but extremely bad vision, what I perceive with sight might not be as accurate as what I perceive with hearing. But that doesn’t mean that the things I experience when I hear are real and the things I see are false. It means I have to be careful about how I interpret the things that I see more carefully.

Likewise, the imagination could be impaired in a way that makes the impressions we perceive through it less potent than our physical sensations. But does that make them unreal? Not necessarily. Just as we take for granted that some physical senses are better than others, and yet still legitimate, so the imagination may be a dulled, but legitimate insight into reality. And just as one physical sense gives one kind of sensation, and another gives a wholly different sensation, so perhaps our imagination can give us a wholly different insight (however imperfectly) that our physical senses cannot.

Like all things, it’s an open-ended question. But the important thing is to engage the question and wrestle with it rather than simply relying on the default of our culture’s “firewall.” Are these things apparent to us or not?

I’M BIASED, YOU’RE BIASED

The second area I want to deal with is in the problem of biases. It’s often touted that real academics and scholars are the objective ones, while many other groups (particularly political and religious people) are biased, agenda-motivated, and so forth to the point that what they say and believe cannot be trusted. I’m not denying that political and religious groups are often biased and agenda-motivated, and some are far more so than others. But the idea that anyone can be on some sort of truly neutral ground in regards to a particularly loaded issue is a pernicious lie that, more often than not, is bolstered to endorse the opinions of the person who makes this claim. I want to analyze this whole area a little deeper and hopefully expose the ways that I think we all have to be careful about how our desires and biases influence our beliefs.

From the spring of our basic life views flow a multitude of derivative views that impact the specific ways we live in and interact with the world. In other words, the general philosophies that we hold are translated into specific applications in regards to the unique particulars that we encounter in our daily experiences. There’s no room to do justice to the complex and diverse channels of these applications, but I believe we can break them down into two basic groups that I would like to call “enabling consequents” and “disabling consequents” of beliefs.

What I mean by “enabling consequents” are the implicit freedoms and privileges that are afforded a person due to a particular belief or set of beliefs. For example, if you believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with expressing your sexual desires so long as no one is hurt by it, you’re enabled by that philosophy with an arbitrary choice to have multiple sexual partners outside of marriage if you so desire.

A “disabling consequent” would be just the opposite: the prohibitions and restraints that result from the implications of a particular belief or set of beliefs. To use the same example of sexuality, if you believe that sexual desire should only be expressed within the confines of marriage, then you are disabled by that philosophy from having multiple sexual partners outside of marriage even if you so desire.

The vast majority of beliefs have both consequents that are enabling and disabling at the same time. The belief that “all men are created equal” results in both an implied freedom from tyranny and oppression, but it also puts moral and ethical responsibilities upon your shoulders.

Virtually every belief we hold entails multiple levels of enabling and disabling consequents, some of which are more desirable than others. To some extent, the desirability of some consequents and the unattractiveness of others undoubtedly have some bearing on what we believe. If I believe in a God or the Supernatural/Metaphysical, I may have all variety of disabling consequents upon my life like not getting drunk (or not drinking at all), not having sexual expression outside of marriage, not being selfish, giving some time and resources to help others, etc.

Yet, my belief in a God may also enable me to hold on to the hope that I will live forever in a paradisaical state, experience a range of ecstatic emotions while I worship that I believe are rooted in something bigger than myself, give a righteous justification to my anger against whomever or whatever I happen to feel “God hates,” and to encourage those things “God loves,” pray to a being who I can believe hears me, loves me and controls everything, to believe that I will see dead relatives again, and more.

On the flip side, not believing in God or the Supernatural/Metaphysical entails certain disabling consequents like I can’t pray to an all powerful being, I have to live with the fact of my mortality and one I won’t be here, I can’t root my emotions in anything but chemical reactions and so forth, and a burden of responsibility for myself rests completely on my shoulders with no guarantees. However (in contrast to the religious person above), I may be enabled to live as I choose, select what people I want in my life without feeling obligated toward anyone, enjoy myself in whatever acts I happen to find fulfilling to myself, arbitrarily choose a morality that happens to suit my tastes, abrogate my responsibilities if I so choose, and do pretty much whatever I want, so long as it’s within my power, because there’s no one to answer to but me.

There are whole ranges of enabling and disabling consequents for beliefs. And there’s no doubt in my mind that “the whole package,” if you will, has some bearing on what we believe, regardless of whether it’s true or not. I may be an ascetic that engages in prayer and meditation for hours on end, but I believe I’ll reach Heaven. I may be a hedonist who thinks there’s no greater purpose to life, but at least I’m in control. The Christian writer C.S. Lewis said that before he believed in any God (he didn’t start believing in a God until his 30s), he was perfectly happy because he didn’t want there to be a God. He wanted “to be left alone.” Many people want to be left alone. Other people don’t.

We all have biases and desires that play into our philosophies and I think it is crucial to ask this question in regards to assessing our beliefs or our reaction to someone else’s beliefs: how does my desire to maintain certain enabling consequents, and to demolish certain disabling consequents, play into what I believe? I suspect a lot more than we often realize.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the desire for a particular belief(s) necessarily entails those beliefs are false or less real simply because I want them to be true. Hawaiian Pizza is no less real because I’m hungry. My wife is no less real because I love her. My goal isn’t to expose a facade that masks all of our beliefs, but to point out that we have a vested interested in our worldviews insofar as they promote things that we want to be true, and result in certain desirable, but derivative propositions that are contingent upon the validity of that belief(s). My beliefs, no matter what they are, are never neutrally held. Most of the time, they are promoting an overall lifestyle that I want to have. These vested interests need to be put out on the table if we’re going to be honest with ourselves about what we believe.

In case anyone disagrees with me that we have a vested interest in our beliefs, let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose that your beliefs are wrong and the beliefs of, let’s say, Westboro Baptist Church are true. We cringe at the thought. Many people would say (I have heard people say) that even if such a God was real, they wouldn’t listen to a tyrannical, bigoted, misanthropic God such as that. Ahhhhh, but notice what such a dissenter is really saying. This reaction betrays the kind of unwillingness to accept the ACTUAL proposition that is being presented. A person responding this way to the Westboro Baptist Church God assumes, whether explicitly or implicitly, that their unwillingness to bend the knee to such a God would be justified.

What the dissident means is either that this God is not real, or that a system of good and evil doesn’t exist (and thus there is no truly just reason for this God to punish people for behavior It deems aberrant), or—and I think this is most often what people are saying—that they would be in the right and this God would be in the wrong. This position is often reinforced by rhetorical appeals to a general, common-sense philosophy of our culture.

But that wasn’t the proposition being proposed. Such a person is not acknowledging the supposal as it is being given. Suppose, for a moment, that the Westboro Baptist Church really, truly was in the right. Suppose that when you drank alcohol, any alcohol at all, there was some absolute principle against which you were judged and found guilty. Imagine that your antagonist attitude toward this God was, in reality, not a good thing (like most people like to think), but an erroneous opinion; that anyone who disagrees with Westboro really is bad, evil, selfish, a sinner, and at whatever point that anyone differs with this system, God and his believers are completely in the right and everyone else completely in the wrong—not in a relative sense, but an absolute one.

“I could never serve that kind of a God,” I’ve heard numerous people say. And this betrays exactly the point I’m trying to make: we are invested in what we believe. We WANT our opinions and beliefs to be correct because they uphold a view of the world that, ultimately, we find desirable. To suggest that Westboro Baptist’s beliefs are true, as well as all of the disabling consequents of their system, is almost too much to bear. Once we become aware of those consequents, and aware that the alternative belief or set of beliefs that we hold has a series of consequents we find agreeable, then we now have a vested interest in this alternative set of beliefs.

How much does the desirability for certain enabling consequents effect how strongly we hold to our essential belief(s) from which they are derived? I leave that an open question because it’s not something that anyone could definitively prove. I doubt that most people, regardless of their beliefs, can tell how much these desirable consequents effect their choice to adhere to one set of beliefs over another. I think it does help, however, to meditate on just what is motivating our convictions: reasonable arguments, or wishful thinking?

I stress, though, that to be vested in something is not necessarily a bad thing. It means you have something important enough to be vested in. But it can go overboard. As an extreme example, there was a group of heretics in Christian history called the Gnostics who believed that once you had “faith,” which they defined as a revelation of a certain system of gods and so forth, then what you did on Earth did not matter at all. As long as you were of a “spiritual” nature, then you would experience eternal bliss after you died in a spiritual, non-physical existence, regardless of your actions. Some groups were known to engage in orgies and drunkenness, do whatever they wanted, and none of that mattered because they were “spiritual”: they were derived from the spiritual bliss, and to that bliss they would return.

If that is not a belief system with enabling consequents, I don’t know what is. We look at them and think, “How ridiculous. Clearly, their desire for this aberrant lifestyle was the determining factor in what they believed.” And that raises an interesting question for the accuser: why do you believe the things you do? Do you want to see dead relatives again? Do you want to get drunk with friends on the weekends? Do you want a powerful being to hear you and take care of you? Do you want to be left alone? Do you want there to be an absolute morality? Do you want there not to be? Do you want control of your life? Do you not want to take responsibility for you decisions? What is it that’s driving you? To understand these motivations in our thinking is not to concede that our actions and behaviors are inevitably determined by them. On the contrary, to some degree, it liberates us from them.

OPEN MINDS ON NARROW ROADS

I’d like to end this with a picture. All of us are wandering about this world, moving down the ways of life with winds and bends at every turn, adjusting to things that come our way, and yet always maintaining a general course. At all times, we are walking with open minds on narrow roads. We may not be able to definitively prove that the road we’ve chosen is absolutely correct. We may not be able to say that we are completely objective in choosing our path. There is, in fact, nothing that we can say for absolutely certain except that this is the path we’ve chosen.

But we have to choose. There is no standing still. Life forces us to make decisions, to move on. Whether we choose to engage life, or let it slink by around us, that’s a decision. There is no neutral ground at which you can say, “I’m choosing to disengage for a while.” That’s an illusion—a privilege we wish we could have, but we don’t. If you’re alive, you’re engaged in the world. You’re holding to some standard, some principle, some belief about reality that the way you live your life is affirming. You can’t passively sit back and think about it. You’re moving somewhere. And it’s somewhere specific.

At every moment, I walk down a narrow road. That road may change, but here I am right now, moving with all of humanity toward the Future. I am living one life, and not another; believing one thing and not another; moving down one path, and not a million other paths. I can’t just meander down one road or another unintentionally: where am I going and why?

At the end of the day, although we have to admit that there is no way to objectively say anything for sure, we have to go with what’s apparent to us as real. And the entails considering everything around us. We must keep an open mind as we walk down each narrow road that we choose. We all have our aims, our goals, our agendas, our beliefs that are oftentimes incompatible, and that’s inevitable. We may be open to being wrong about the path we’ve chosen and critically assess whether it’s the right path or not. But here I am, and there you are. Can we not disagree—even adamantly disagree, affirming our beliefs over others—and still listen to one another as we’re walking these paths side by side? Can’t I listen to you with a critical and open mind, weighing what you say with the possibility that it will alter my course, and still continue for the moment down the path I’ve chosen? I think there is no other way.

Worst of all, while it opens up a radical prospect by acknowledging the authenticity of other voices, postmodernist thinking immediately shuts off those other voices by ghettoizing them within an opaque otherness, the specificity of this or that language game. It thereby disempowers those voices (of women, ethnic and racial minorities, colonized peoples, the unemployed, youth, etc.) in a world of lop-sided power relations. –David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity

Before I begin, let me first state this essay (?) is foremost a history of the transition in my own personal thought, and not, as I would normally write, a (pure) philosophical exploration. That said, feel free to both assess and comment on the philosophical aspects of this piece. Indeed, there are several voices that I’d be greatly interested in hearing from, so if you have thoughts, throw them out there. Ideas are social, founded in discourse, and weak when not challenged by others.
The path of postmodernism is a tempting one for any who have trudged the same roads the entirety of their lives. The walker sees off to the side a new path, takes it, and realizes that this new path is beautiful, perhaps not of it’s own innate accord, but because the walker has grown tired of the same scenery. The walker continues to discover new paths, seeing the beauty in each, until s/he finally claims “They are all of equal nature, intrinsically beautiful; indeed they are all of the same nature, who am I to say which is the better path?” In being so taken with the newness of things, the postmodernist begins to back away from any hard claims of ‘better’ paths, instead s/he is content to wander along, experiencing the beauty of each path, without having one for his/her own.
I think it’s a scant held secret that I found myself fully immersed in the world of postmodernity for several years. In the rejection of the conservatism of my youth (perhaps my ‘younger youth’ would be a better term), postmodernity offered the quickest route to the possibility of freedom from the same chains of thought that held me narrow sighted and immutable, and I jumped aboard that ship setting sails for shores unknown to me at the time. The years took me from a believer (in Deity) to an agnostic, from a neoconservative to libertarian to post-liberal, from convinced I knew (and was uniquely qualified to tell) absolutes to positive that of both the unimportance of and my personal inability to utter most absolutes. It is this last point, of absolutes, that I found myself hitting a breaking point.
I mentioned, via the briefest twitter/facebook status, several weeks ago that I was growing increasingly discontent with postmodernity; I felt I could no longer continue on a path in which any truths were treated as the same as any other truths. Indeed, I think many of my friends from that journey hold some personal level of disdain in the possibility that (their) ideas of justice are impugnable, but assert the postmodern relativism that they have found personal comfort in. The (unintended) consequence of the acceptance of the validity in cacophony of ideas results in the taming of ideas. It takes the revolutionary thought and castrates it, defanging it and making just another piece of the strand. Ultimately the postmodern ethic fails to allow the assessment of the validity of each idea on it’s own merit, it instead encourages acceptance for pure acceptance’ sake.
In the end, the system finds itself entirely unsustainable. This is a known problem within postmodern circles, though it’s not openly acknowledged. Instead the conversations always circle the idea of “what is to come” after postmodernism. It’s more than just the realization that systems change, that thoughts gain hegemony and lose it, but it is, I think, a verbal manifestation of the postmodernist realization that the system (or lack of system) cannot hold them, sustain them, or give them any sort of hope.
Sometime within the near future, I’ll talk about where I find myself now, as a pragmatist, but this is about all I have time to put out there at the moment. –Comment, disagree, whatever, let me know what you’re thinking.

I affirmed the need for doubt yesterday, and in my own life doubt led to a fair be of deconstruction. I went from having established and set moral, theological, and social “laws” in my late teens and moved to a place where I doubted each of those systems. Sometimes I would question each in turn, sometimes I would sit and wonder if I actually trusted any belief I had ever established in my life. In essence, I spent a couple years deconstructing the entirety of my life, it was a time in which no established part of me was safe. I think the aspect of questioning everything terrifies a lot of people, but, again, for me, it was refreshing, invigorating, and a part of my life that I really value.

During that time I was reading a lot by a(n infamous) Post-Modern Irish Philosopher, Pete Rollins, who called deconstruction the lava that keeps the flow of ideas going. I remember a conversation I had with my now estranged wife while driving around on day, at the time about how I didn’t think there would ever be a time in which systems were ever going to be rebuilt in my life, nor that systems should exist in any life. I look back on that time as my life-anarchy stage, because a lot of systems I had inherited or picked up along the way were “off mark” (that’s being charitable) I wanted to throw out the entirety of them, a baby with the bathwater sort of issue. In essence, that’s exactly what I did, I overturned most of my life, holding on to only a few pieces from the construction I originally stood on (or under?)

Here I am, now several years removed from those comments, and my views on Deconstruction have changed more than I thought would happen (isn’t that always how it goes?). I still value the art of deconstruction and doubt, but now I’ve begun the art of constructing. I know the objections I would have had several years ago, but I now see that you cannot ever actually “stay” within the world completely deconstructed, you will always have some foundation from which to work, whether acknowledged or not.

I now stand at a point where I have begun reconstructing my life, I look around and see the scattered bits and odds and ends from my life previously deconstructed and can now comfortably sit and say, “Does this piece fit? Is there reason for this to be included? Do I value this?” and so on. Nick Fiedler talks about a similar act in his book (which you should buy). Nick talks about looking over his beliefs and deciding which ones to bring along as he and his wife, Leslie, begin their world tour. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the act of deconstruction while retaining structure.

It is this attitude that I take with me as I begin the art of reconstruction while holding to deconstruction and doubt. Each piece should be constantly assessed to see if it fits (understanding that the criterion for “fitting” also change), taken out if it does and kept if it doesn’t. That part is easy, the harder part is keeping the pieces that challenge the “core” that I use to assess the other pieces by. This is the true heart of constant deconstruction.

Most people, I think, are unwilling to live with that sort of uncertainty. They either need God to exist or not exist, they need to have some solid ground to start from, some dichotomous point of entry into a deeper theological or philosophical place. For me, it’s the uncertainty that invigorates me, I no longer seek certainty, no longer feel comfortable stating anything, philosophically, in a place of certainty. Both the atheist claim that god doesn’t exist, and the mystics claim that god absolutely exists bothers me. Even now, I won’t sit here and say that I’m going to sit where I am for the rest of my life, I won’t deny that tomorrow I could embrace the certainty of the non-existence of god, nor the certainty of god. Of course, I don’t think I’ll ever sit anywhere with certainty, even if I once again sit in the mystic camp, the existence of (a) god will likely continue to be dubitable to me.

I think most of my friends that have had conversations with me about certainty become a bit perplexed at my comfort with uncertainty. I remember a rather large discussion I had with a couple friends several years ago about doubt and faith, even back then I felt like true faith required some level of doubt, stories of doubting Thomas be damned. I still hold to that point, we, as humans, need to explore our ability to live a healthy life of doubt. My friends that still reside in Church owe a fair bit of their philosophical undergirding to Descartes, the master of doubt, yet still insist that doubt isn’t healthy, that not everything should be doubted. No, I must use Descartes own phrase, de ornnibus dubitandum, everything must be doubted. Instead of insisting that there are those things that should not be doubted, our teachers (be they parents, clergy, professors, or friends) must encourage that all doubts should be explored. If you doubt god, then doubt god, don’t let another tell you that you must have the certainty that god exists. Indeed, it is that which we hold to most strongly that we should doubt most highly.

It is the sign of not only a good philosopher, but of a good intellectual, to actively engage with the framework of doubt around the ideals they hold most highly. When I meet anyone that cannot explore the possibility of either their religion or their politics as being wrong (not in the sense of absolute right and wrong, but in the sense as “what if my current standpoint were ”false“) I find myself railing against them. I realize that many people aren’t at the level in which they can explore doubts, but I begin hoping that they are helped to a level in which they can begin to doubt. (This is all in the assumption that doubt is indeed healthy, a supposition which itself must be doubted!) I think it shows the ultimate level of self acceptance when one opens up to the realm of systematic doubt.

I’ve rambled for a bit now, I think I’ll call it a day here, and pick up tomorrow (maybe) with the side effects this lifestyle has had on me (politically, mostly).

—-

The argument always went: “Look how intricate the world is, see the many requirements to sustain life, and how they happen without our effort? See if one little thing changes, like the salinity in the oceans, everything falls out of balance. How can you look at that and not see an intelligent designer behind it all?”

I long held to this argument, one of my favorite teachers, Rob Bell, was a proponent of this argument in his DVD (lesson? Sermon? Talk?) “Everything Is Spiritual.” It seemed to make sense to me, and I guess on some quasi-logical level the “Go for the best explanation, even it if isn’t 100% conclusive” argument swayed me. God, then, must have been the designer of the world, for the amazing intricacies and beauty of nature supposedly call his name. I think it often growing up it was said “The sunrise is God’s signature.” Cheesy, but it gets the point across.

I have no problems admitting to the beauty of the world, indeed my next tattoo (to complement my now ironic YHWH tattoo, that says “I am not lost” underneath it) will be “Mono No Aware”—the English pronunciation of a Japanese phrase meaning “the ahh-ness of things,” since this world is full of moments that fill us with the feeling of “ahh,” such as a beautiful sunrise, or this sunset I captured the other day driving down the road.  But do these really speak to the existence of a creator? Derek actually responded to this claim a bit the other day, so I’ll defer this point over to his comments, and address the subject from a different standpoint—one of acceptance.

Taking that God is the designer, the question becomes, where does the so-called design stop? Can you get god “off the hook” for the deaths, destruction, wars, and famines prevalent all over? For if god is the designer of it all then these things are necessarily part of god’s design, or perhaps it’s best to say, the result of god’s design. To borrow the argument from Russell, if an inventor designs a machine that goes horribly wrong, and then inventor is prescient enough to know that the machine will hurt, maim, destroy, or in any way inflict damage upon others, then it is the designer who should be held to account for the failures of the design. We similarly hold designers of buildings, bridges, and vehicles that fail to understand the flaws and failures in their design to account when the magnitude and gravity of the failure of the design is made apparent. Can the designer then be called “good” if s/he knows full well the ramifications of the failure yet continues to put the design out there?

To be fair, an open deist would argue that god didn’t have the foreknowledge of the current situation thus cannot be held to account, but the deists rely on the argument of “first cause,” which I’ve already addressed, so even they cannot put forth any sort of convincing notion of god. (More on this last sentence latter, so all of you stop thinking I’m some atheist clinging to black and white definitions of everything.)

Thus I stand now with my previous foundations for the belief in a deity lain bare and shown too weak to hold such a weighty notion.

When I first started moving beyond my theism, I still held to two definitions of God, the first as designer and the second as original cause. I know several of my emergent friends have remarked on the poverty of the proofs for God, but for some time the thought patter of Aquinas’ original cause sustained my ever decreasing belief in God. I viewed original cause as the stronger of these two arguments, yet now in retrospect, I think they are both weak in dissimilar ways. If you don’t hold to any notions or proofs of god (I think most theists do, they simply don’t acknowledge their reasoning as a proof), then this post really won’t do much for you; it’s simply a chronicle of my transitory state.

As to the theory of First Cause, this seems to be the natural standpoint of most Christians, especially those defending notions of young earth creationism, indeed it appears that any Christian that has had any sort of apologetics training immediately turns to Aquinas when faced with the question of God. I understand why, this argument appears to have a logical core which is strong enough to place tenuous belief upon, however, I see two lines of reasoning as to why this argument fails in the end.

The first, assuming that first cause was indeed true, the argument does not do anything but implicate a designer, and speaks nothing to the God of any religion. First cause could then, in essence, have simply been a completely evil entity (which would seem to make more sense, more on this later), it indeed does not require God to be good by any means of the term (though this does beg the Socratic “what is piety” argument). Thus, if taken as valid, the argument does not prove any conclusions regarding God other than the existence of an entity capable of existing outside of cause.

Second, the argument takes the assumption that there must be a cause to everything. This argument, at its core, requires a standpoint of hard determinism, which has fallen far outside of favor in more contemporary circles (of course, it is still strongly held within a large portion of Christianity itself), and clings strongly to the notion that everything must make sense. (Interestingly, those who hold to first cause then must shut the door on any sort of compatibilism, a point which, I’m sure, many of those I have carried this discussion with would refrain from admitting.) Without delving too deeply into the arguments of determinsim/compatibilism/free-will, I’ll simply state that the logical implications of such an argument (hard determinism) do not follow contemporary understandings of the workings of the world, and thus make a poor foundation for “god.”

I spent a bit more time on causality then I had originally intended (perhaps the amount of time was predetermined by a long chain of events that stem from a single cause, and all add up to writing six hundred words about cause?), so I’ll leave design for tomorrow. As always, comment away.

—

For most of my life I have clung to certainty, often in a vain attempt to feel secure in the world that is, at its core, innately insecure. I grew up certain of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, absolute truth, because I needed these things. The world needed to be orderly and neat, it needed to work for some grand design and purpose, I needed there to be a God.

The more I’ve grown up, the more I understand the innate disorder in the world. While, at many levels, things follow upon a central chain of causality, but at the same time, I’ve seen things that are far outside of the comprehension of order. I’ve seen both good and ill come outside of order; I’ve read a story about an enlightened individual that sacrificed himself to break the “orderly” understanding of violence. I’ve read other stories of “senseless violence”, in which the perpetrator had no cause to inflict pain,  (BTK killer, anyone?), yet did so.

Then I began to move away from my modern need for absolute truth, and towards a postmodern understanding of truth. I am not implying that postmodernism ultimately leads to an agnostic/atheist understanding, many of my postmodern friends are devout believers in (a) god, I am simply stating that my view of god was influenced by my understanding of truth.  I began to understand the world more in terms of contradiction (which, I likely picked up from my eastern philosophical influences), than absolutes, and saw less and less the need for order.

For quite some time after I began to understand the world in new terms, I held to God. I held to things like the vast number of requirements needed for the world to continue on as reasons for an intelligently designed evolution, and things like the argument of first cause to explain how “it” all got started.  I think, however, at some level I realized I was beginning to make excuses to hold on. I started moving ever more towards simply admitting that there may be a god, but I don’t know, and I won’t state either way conclusively.

I was having dinner with a friend one night, when I finally started voicing the questions I had been playing with in my mind for a while. “What if the world just doesn’t make sense? What if there is no point? Do I need a god to give my life meaning?” In my mind, I was saying no to all these questions. My friend and I had a little back and forth over it, and then I started to dwell on the subject more after that night, until I finally jumped ship a couple weeks ago.

I think I’ll have to expound on this a bit more, it’s a rather broad subject to poke around, and this post is more of a “here’s how I got here” than any sort of defense of my opinion.

As always, the better conversations happen in the comments.

I like the Jesus my friends talk about, the one who cares about people that most people don’t care about. I like the Jesus that hangs out with the rejects, the losers, the weak, the unclean, because I see myself in all of these categories. I like the Jesus that challenges others to set the world upside down, the Jesus that responds to the conventional approaches of inequality with wit and brilliance, the Jesus that makes those that come down on others look inward. I like the Jesus that showed the weakness of violence. This Jesus naturally attracts and intrigues me; this Jesus draws me out of my self, and (apologies) fucks up my world.

My facebook religion status is “Read Franny and Zooey.” If you haven’t read this brilliant little treatise on mysticism and religion (ok it’s a novel, but still a treatise), then I humbly ask you to do so. I’d say that “Franny and Zooey” is one of the biggest literary influences on my life, it’s powerful, provocative, and enlightening. But, allow me to share this little passage,

“[Jesus is] only the must intelligent man in the Bible, that’s all! Who isn’t he head and shoulders over? Who? Both testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls – but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody.”

This is how I’ve felt about Jesus for a long time. This is how I think a lot of people feel about Jesus, from all religions and philosophical systems. So, when Russell began his critique of Jesus, my mind reeled. After a bit of reading, I realized Russell and I were talking about two completely different versions of Jesus. Russell’s Jesus was still held captive by the stagnant, classist interpretation that has been prevalent since Constantine. (God, I think I invoke the ills of Constantine far too often)

Which brings me to the question Andrew posed; why do I consider myself “not a Christian”

First, I think the term has become and is becoming increasingly more unhelpful. While for many years a Christian to me meant a real true Baptist that held to the core theological positions such as total depravity and pre-millennial dispensationalism, because I was taught true Christians believed these things. Next I learned that it was OK not to believe these things, as long as you held Jesus is Lord and Savior and Fire Insurance, so my idea of the term Christian broadened. Then my own understanding of Christianity changed, and I started seeing Christianity in plenty of people that would never call themselves Christians. For the most part, however, I think when someone uses the term Christian, the mental connotations are that of a narrow minded evangelical. Thus the term both fails to cover me and to actually draw a circle big enough for those who are in it.

Second, I’m not quite certain that I should be placed within that terminology. I don’t hold that God must exist (or does exist). I simply don’t know if an entity we would call God exists, but this idea, that God must and does exist, I think is central to Christianity (again, using the Term in the generally widespread understanding of it).

If you want to call me a Christian because I try to follow Jesus, then go for it. Personally, I’d rather be done with the word, it bears too much baggage.

Why would I pick up “Why I Am Not a Christian?”

Questions about God and the nature of things have been the ever looming monster in my life, a battle of inward dialogue I have been having with myself since my first tepid steps outside of the box I was given as a child. For several years (as evidenced by the general thought patterns represented within this blog) I was comfortable working within the inward questions of my own Christianity.

The first question that occupied my mind was that of Hell, then I moved towards soteriology, followed by scriptural integrity, authentic Christology, chasing the dream of the early church, and postmodernism within Christianity. (you can follow this path of questioning via reading this blog chronologically) Somewhere along this path the inward agnosticism I had always battled began to emerge and the real struggle for my faith came. Whereas my previous questions only served to strengthen the resolve of my faith (by alleviating the certainty derisive to the true nature of faith), this new foreboding question was targeted at the very structure of faith itself.

I continued to partake in a group of freethinking Christians (though after my world blew up I stopped going for a while) known as an emergent cohort, and still largely considered myself part of the Christian populace, and for all intents and purposes a Christian (whose tenor I haughtily viewed as somewhat more authentic than that of others who were unwilling to face questioning and critical views of their systemic beliefs). I sit now, in the faux wooden chair and the throwback decor of my favorite coffee shop, and now openly confess that I am no longer a Christian.

Even know typing those words brings the sense of magnitude instilled in me by my teachers, and I begin to work through the ramifications of such a statement.

I should begin making clarifying statements here.

I was reading through “Why… Christian” today, in the aforementioned coffee house. The text opens with a lecture, by the same name, given by Russell to the National Secular Society somewhere in the late-20′s. Russell opens with a series of criticisms on the various “proofs” for God, Causality, Natural law, Design, Morality, and so forth. All of these criticisms I read with my now standard critical approach (I tend to run an inner dialogue with the authors I read, questioning them in the margins and highlighting a multitude of passages that any casual reader of a text after me would think I simply love the color orange) until I began to reach his criticisms of Jesus, this is where I began to feel an inward increase of vigorous objections and felt something within what we would term the heart (of course the ontological distinction becomes necessary between the heart as the vascular organ and the heart as perhaps the second player in the ever going struggle for control of the will).

Thus I must come to state where my current position interplays with the large majority of my readers, Christians.

I now view my position as that of an outsider, yet a friend. Where I do not share Russell’s belief that the entirety of religious systems are detrimental to the progressive and beneficial evolution of humanity as a whole, I instead hoist up what I see as beneficial examples of religion as that which should be sought after heartily by those still within those systems, and mimicked by those outside. When I see the social justice of Christianity played out, my heart is drawn to such displays, and when I see the detrimental side of the interplay between religion and politics my heart is spurned.

It is my high view of Christ which keeps me connected to Christianity, and my high view of the social justice of Christ which keeps me connected to Emergence (which is in no way a statement that those outside of this system [and those inside must forgive my usage of the term system] as the only expression of social justice, instead it is the expression I see which most promotes social justice as a necessary core tenant).

Thus, here I am again, fully appreciative of the phrase “Friend of Emergent.” And take comfort in the knowledge that I’ll still be able to carry on in that “conversation,” I look forward to the continued interaction with my local cohort friends, and the renewed interaction with my online friends (probably many of those don’t follow the RSS anymore, so that may be a while).

I’ll probably spend the next while clarifying my position on the subject, but as always, the comment section loves questions.

“Students! Do not practice buddha-dharma for your own sake. Do not practice buddha-dharma for name and gain. Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain blissful reward. Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain miraculous effects.

Practice buddha-dharma solely for the sake of buddha-dharma.

This is the way.”

-Dogen

I often wonder what would Christianity look like if the practice didn’t promise some end benefit or gain. Would our treatment of the other be different if we our treatment derived from a simple desire to act justly, not for some perceived benefit, but simply for a love of justice? Or perhaps if we followed in the way of Christ not for some heavenly reward, but simply for the beauty of the way of Christ itself?

I’m reminded of my favorite of Rollin‘s parables in “The Orthodox Heretic“, in which you arrive to the pearly gates to discover that Satan has cast out God from heaven, and you are left with the choice, do you stay in Heaven with Satan and enjoy it’s beauty and loveliness, or do you join God in hell?

In this parable we are left no choice but to accept that we either do things for their reward, or for the love of the thing itself.

Just as Socrates would have spent his entire life searching for the answer to the question of “What is Piety” simply for the love of asking questions itself, we should then pursue that which we love for the sake of the thing itself, not for some later benefit.