Khrishna and Arjuna 


To continue our brief essays on the values taught by some of the world's major religions, and the behaviors that the values foster in the religion's adherents, let's now consider Hinduism. 

I have read the Gita in a couple of translations, but I admit right off that my understanding of Hinduism is pretty elementary. Still, there are values in it that I like. 

God is in all living things, and we should be striving to re-establish contact with that awesome consciousness. That belief ought to enjoin us to a reverence for life, meaning, hopefully, a reverence for this Earth and her ecosystems. There is something there for the whole world to learn and practice, if we aspire to being good people. And a society that lived in harmony with its environment, if we could form one in India or anywhere else that truly lived by this prime value, would have a much better chance of surviving the next hundred years of our species' history on this planet. We, as a species (and the Hindus are guilty here too), in our greed, are cooking this Earth. As the scientists keep telling us, this can't go on. Or rather it can, but if it does, we are going to begin to suffer consequences, for sure serious and perhaps horrible, all over and soon. 

Vegetarianism and even veganism seem to me to be excellent ideas as you will know if you have read around on my blog. Our respecting higher life forms and not killing them for food is a spiritual practice, but it is also replete with health benefits, and benefits for the whole planet. It takes twenty times as much land, for example, to produce a kilo of potatoes as it does to produce a kilo of beef, The China study also demonstrated, conclusively I think, that eating animal protein is a major factor in the risk of one's getting all kinds of diseases, including heart-attack, stroke, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, and many others. A society that stopped eating animal protein would be a healthier society, on average, than any of its competitors, gaining in productivity and reducing its health care budget by orders of magnitude. 

On the other hand, the ideas of karma and reincarnation scare me. If you are working out your karma over many lifetimes, then the conclusion to be drawn and that is drawn, is that some of your fellow citizens are worse off than you are because they are paying for past sins. They were born into the untouchable class because on the grand scale, this time around in life, that's what they deserve. That one may make rationalizations that justify ignoring the poor around one easy, but it is not right. Deep inside it is very offensive to me. Some people suffer through no fault of their own because they were born into poverty and any explanation that excuses us from acknowledging that is, to me, cosmically wrong. This way of thinking may have granted a degree of stability to Hindu society for eons ("Hang in there through your misery. If you bear suffering well, you will get promoted next time around"). But in modern times, it is beginning to sound more and more like rationalization and bafflegab. We have simply seen too often in history all over the world that most suffering is unnecessary. So many diseases have been cured that once were considered simply part of the human condition. So many practices in farming have made food production rise dramatically and made the suffering that had happened in the world because of malnutrition seem like nothing more than pointless waste.

Then there are all the hazards of polytheism, but those I've already discussed so I'll leave it to you if you want to go back a few posts and check out what was said about the dangers of polytheism hidden in Christianity.

And there are many more aspects to Hinduism, that have both good and bad effects on the long time survival odds that a society gets from living the Hindu way. Too many for me to do more than touch on here. It's enough just to say that Hinduism, like all of the others, has it graces and its faults. As does each one of us. The biggest thing to learn is that we must not stop trying. We can learn from each of them and each other, and we can still build a better world.   

Values, I say again, foster patterns of behavior in millions of people over thousands of years. We see this best when we focus on the values and history of a given culture. The Persians. The Romans. The British. And so on. When we look at the social/cultural evolution of whole societies in this way, what we are trying to discern is how those people's values affected their survival probabilities. How well did they survive through the threats and opportunities of their history, how much of their success was due to their cultural programming, and how much was just luck. 

In fairness, since I had a go at Christianity a few days ago, I should dissect some parts of the value system prescribed by Islam in the same way. Let's consider a few of the distinctive beliefs and values of Islam.  

Muslims are directed, by one of the "pillars" of Islam to pay a tax in every community in which they live that must be spent on caring for the poor. Not to fix roads, install public lighting, build parks, or pay police. Care for the poor. That one seems admirable to most people in the West. As I said in an earlier post, that kind of behavior on a society-wide scale makes the likelihood of that society's surviving improve. People in that kind of a country stick together even during hard times. The odds of revolution go down, the odds of vigorous resistance to invaders go up. 

Muslims also must not make what the Old Testament of the Christian bible calls "graven images". No statues or paintings of Allah or Mohammed, or even people or animals for that matter. This one, I believe, draws a clear line between what we place monetary, material value on and what is beyond such valuations. Don't put high value on things. Under Islam, the way believers view moral and spiritual matters is in an utterly separate category from the concerns of daily life. The point is that we are not to get attached to stuff. Things. Really living one's spiritual practice requires that one give one's deepest loyalty to the ideals of one's religion, not its buildings, statues, or gem-encrusted chalices. And the even deeper danger is in the clergy themselves. If church leaders begin to feel proud of their "stuff", then ordinary folk, without even being aware of it, absorb this materialistic world view. The erosion of ordinary people's moral codes and the replacement of loyalty to those values with loyalty to gems, gadgets, garments, and gain then becomes only a matter of time. The society whose members are commanded to cut that kind of thinking out of their heads will hang together more effectively over the long haul. They share because no one attaches excessive amounts of importance to material things anyway, again binding the community's citizens to each other more tightly.

The Koran tells believers that each of them must answer for how he or she has lived life when the day of judgement comes. There will be no foisting of responsibility onto one's parents, teachers, imams, bosses, or anyone else. In the general society, each person's accepting responsibility and becoming his or her own chaperon and disciplinarian has value for the community. Once this thinking gets into the head of each child, he or she will not need to be watched by parents, teachers, policemen, or anyone else. Community efficiency, again, works to increase the community's survival odds. 

Note that I am not saying that all Muslims live up to these values. They are only exhorted to do so, and when they manage to live these values even some of the time, the survival odds for the whole society go up. From all we can tell from history, Muslims were living these values quite a bit more universally and sincerely than were Christians, from Mohammed's time right into the 1600's. At that point, they seemed to lose a major part of their confidence and integrity as a society. Why this was so is still an intriguing mystery for historians. 

But I haven't so far dealt with the big one that we in the West hate and fear. The Koran tells the true believers that they can fight and kill their enemies as proof of their piety. That one we in the West do not like the sounds of. Now the Koran does say in a couple of spots that Muslims are only supposed to do this kind of fighting and killing if a foreign force invades their land and drives them from their homes. Only then, Muslim scholars are eager to tell Westerners, are the "faithful" allowed to kill other human beings. "Allah does not love aggressors." 

This value or belief is directing Muslims very clearly to stand together if they are invaded and that policy has obvious value for the survival of the larger society. But it sounds very amoral to us in the West. Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek when someone slaps their face. He wouldn't even fight back when they came to take his life. Mohammed is saying something more like: "When they come and drive you out of your homes and kill some of your family or neighbors, then all bets are off. Then you can kill them to the last man if need be, and Allah will approve." 

That there are imams who want to go from defense over to the offense and convert the whole world to Islam at the point of the sword we all have seen too clearly. But then again, if there are imams trying, probably unconsciously, to make themselves feel more important, well ...so did the Christian leaders during the Crusades and so do many of them today. There is nothing new here. The whole grim process is sad, foolish, wasteful, cruel, and wrong. But it is very human nonetheless.  

Be

Standing silent, in the twilight,

By the path where lovers linger,

Here among the fragrant cedars,

Hear the river insects murmur;

See the fading sky reflected,

On the rippling, blue-gray waters;

            

Weave the quiet, dark sensations,

In and out of … who? Who am I?

Can I see me? Can I be me?

Standing silent in the twilight. 

Christianity has its big flaw, namely its basic polytheism, the same flaw that ironically Abraham was trying to remedy long before Christ's time. But it is important for our clear thinking about values and their sources to recognize that Christianity, as a system of thought and of living, also has some large strengths. It has lasted roughly two thousand years, and its clear predecessor, Judaism, has lasted at least a thousand more. 

My own model of human history argues that each meme complex/culture shapes the social behavior of its carriers and that the behavior then directly controls the survival odds of the society programmed by that meme complex/culture. From this model, one can easily infer that any values-system that has lasted over a hundred generations and grown in numbers of adherents must have some strengths. That value-system must foster behaviors in its adherents that work in the real world, or the generations of believers would have dwindled away and died out long ago. 

Christianity has many strengths, but let's talk about just three for now. 

In the first place, Christians are urged to downplay the importance of material things. Jesus said a camel would get through the eye of a needle before a rich man got into heaven. From all accounts, he himself had few-to-no possessions and wanted none. True, the churches all over the world are great hoarders of stuff, but their rationalizations for this materialism ring hollow even in the ears of small children. They lose credibility with their followers any time they visibly grow in materialism. It is too clearly not Jesus' way.  

And philanthropy has become a respected tradition in most Western societies. We tend to respect wealthy people much more when they give generously to the needy of their communities and of the world. And many of them do. Even bosses of organized crime consolidate their grips on their communities by giving to the poor. Is this guilt or human decency? Whatever we see as the motive, charity was certainly not a virtue practiced by many. if any, in pre-Christian times. Charity meant a few shekels to the beggars on the sidewalk when one was feeling good. Organized charities before Jesus were all but unknown. 

Charity, even at a very basic level, helps to knit a society together more tightly and to reduce the odds of a revolution breaking out even in hard times. At the same time, it improves the odds that the society's citizens will close ranks and pull together, even fight side by side, when threatened by a tyrant, especially if the tyrant can readily be painted as an enemy of the very Christian values that make a compassionate, sharing way of life possible. Thus, the survival odds for the tribe and its way of life are raised. 

A second big strength of Christianity is its insistence on our trying to extend our empathy for other human beings beyond the circle of our families or our tribes. All other human beings are our brothers and sisters, and I must grant every one of my neighbors the same consideration in all things that I would wish to see granted to myself if the positions of myself and my neighbor were reversed. This is Jesus' Golden Rule in its simplest form, and every child can understand it. "How would you feel if you were in her shoes?"  

When we show respect and kindness even to outsiders, we proselytize for our way of life on the subtlest level. It was far more the decency of the priests and ministers, than the pain inflicted by the soldiers, that caused Western values to spread. 

In the calculations of cultural survival, one of the best defenses a society and its way of life can have is a good offense. In cultural terms, the priest did far more damage to the culture of the aboriginal community in which he set up chapel and school than any of the soldiers or traders ever did. But in an objective analysis we are also driven to admit here that he did a great deal of good for the spreading of his own Western way of life. 

Perhaps a side note is in order here. Like it or not, let us say clearly here that Western values now run this planet. Walmart, McDonald's, and so many like them are everywhere now. Almost everyone at the U.N. wears Western garb to the General Assembly. 

On the other hand, the big majority of us in the West are ready to try our best to educate and integrate - other cultures with our own and our own with other cultures. We know -implicitly today, I think - that we can't go on in the future as we have in the past. War, rapacious capitalism, and cultural imperialism have to stop.  

It is not a nice picture of Western imperialism we are painting at this point. But I contend that it is a real one, and it is only by looking at things as they are that we have any hope of learning how societies work and so of empowering ourselves to use our knowledge wisely and to do better in the future. To gradually move into a global way of life that is simply more efficient: a way of life for all of us that is vigorous, but that still has set war aside for good. Hard. Not impossible.   

A third large strength of Christianity, probably its largest strength, is the personalness of the Christian way of relating to God. This was Jesus' big breakthrough. "Don't pray in a rote-memorized, public, superficial way. Instead, talk to God as you would to me." And there is the crucial thing that Jesus did. He made each adherent's way of relating to the divine and thus, to the values of his religion, personal. At the same time, he created for every citizen a form of therapy that enabled them to let off the hurt and frustration of living in close communities with fewer blows being struck. It doesn't work perfectly all of the time, but one shudders to think of what life was like for so many ordinary folk, living without the restraint of compassion or the outlet of prayer, before Jesus' time. He gave us a way to let the poison out. 

Violence, especially domestic violence, once was the rule. But gradually, over generations, people are learning a way of life in which they don't take their frustrations out on each other. They talk out their problems, or they talk to God and calm down. All of this makes complex, industrial society with all of its forms of alienation a little easier to bear. That trend again raises the odds of the Western way of life surviving and growing more vigorous each generation.     

Granted, in modern times, many in the West are losing or have lost their faith in God. But the numbers and sincerity of believers have wavered about before. What is important to see is that we are part of a two thousand year old human social trend and that the values that have given us our present complex and affluent way of life are the ones that Jesus taught. Love your neighbor. When that gets hard, talk to God. You'll get a lot of anger out of your system, and once you calm down, you'll start to see ways that your family's problems or those of your whole society can be eased, reduced, and finally eradicated. Love and a privately accessed back-up system that supports love in every human heart and renews it even when events do not - these have served us well. They have enabled the progress we have made so far, and they are what must see us through if we are to survive at all.   

But to close, let me re-iterate the major point made in my last post, and integrate it with what is being said in this one: Jesus was not a god. He had a spark of something in him that seems divine to us even now. But it was only a bigger spark, or flame if you like, than lies in the rest of us. He differed from you and me in degree, not in type. Worshipping Jesus as a partner-God is a way of going down the broad road to perdition. Definitely the wrong direction. We can feel a personal connection to God without viewing Jesus as God too. We were instructed to talk to God as we would in private to a good friend. That we can do. And it works. 

A way of talking to God in private and with total candor, that is the big gift that we got, as a whole species, from Jesus. It made, and it still makes, our salvation from the hell called "war" possible. 

The rest is up to us.   

A few lines a day, perhaps, are reasonable over the next few weeks. My main point is made. If you wish to discuss the reasoning on this blog, email me at <drwendell49@gmail.com> . I'd love to hear from you, and I promise that I will reply within a day or two at most. 

But to business. 

I think this is a good point at which to ramble through parts of some of the world's major religions in order to explain why I don't belong to any them. Unitarianism, in spite of what many people see as its vagueness, or wishy-washiness, is as much of a traditional religion as I am willing to embrace. But it makes good sense to me. 

It is the dialogue about spiritual matters that is most precious, not any one dogma. The freedom for each individual human being to find his or her own path to the deity or universal consciousness, and to live a life informed by courage, wisdom, freedom, and love in a personally designed balance, is sacred. At minimum, that personal balance should allow other people to go their own way, as long as they are letting you go yours. The old saying in English is: "Live and let live." Thus, the changes we want to bring about in our society we should try to accomplish by rational persuasion, no matter how long or difficult that path may seem. 

But what of the world's major religions? If I'm right about the connection between moral values and human social behavior and thence to human survival, then can I deal with some real cases? Can I offer evidence and argument to show that the tenets of some of the world's major religions threaten our species' survival over the long haul? 

Consider Christianity. It's single biggest flaw is the exact one that the Muslims insist they could never compromise with. In fact, it is the main point of the Koran. Jesus is not divine. God has no partners. The whole idea of any splitting of the sacred is dangerous for human society over the long haul. Why? Because when people divide up their idea of universal consciousness, that is, the sacred, they are well on the way down the road to dividing up their moral code. In any form of polytheism, there will always be the opportunity for the spoiled kids in the family to try to play Mom against Dad or Dad against Mom or Grandpa against both of them. 

What I mean is that Christians very easily, naturally, and humanly slip into equivocating their way to treating non-Christians as lesser beings. This comes from believing that people who don't think Jesus was a god aren't quite as good or as morally considerable as those who do. Under this thinking, if I, as a Christian, treat you cruelly, well, you aren't a Christian. It doesn't matter as much as if I did the same thing to one of my Christian neighbors. That thinking, if it were deeply entrenched in the head of some powerful leader in the West, could pull our species into a nuclear war, the catastrophe we must avoid at all cost. That kind of thinking is indeed dangerous.  

Jesus never claimed to be divine. He claimed to represent the best version of divine wisdom that was circulating in the world at his time. He said that if people wanted to be saved, they had to follow him in the sense of emulating his compassionate and non-materialistic way of life. 

The leaders of the early Christian church invented the "man-god" concept. They did so, consciously or unconsciously, because the net result was that they could then insist that Jesus, the divine one, had passed the mission to establish his church to his favorite disciple, who had set up the church of Rome, and passed on this sacred mission to its leaders. The church's edicts from then on were therefore, supposedly, above any humanly-made laws or arguments. 

This thinking, by so many Christians in all later sects, that they have a lawyer with contacts in the eternal court who can get his clients a deal, is prevalent right into our time. There are some in virtually every denomination of Christianity who will assert flatly that one cannot get into the blessed afterlife unless one has accepted the divinity of Jesus. A man.  

This specialness that only comes with being saved, and that makes Christians unique, was used to justify all sorts of crimes all through history, including, glaringly, the pogroms conducted against the Jews and the Crusades. "We're better than they are. They won't convert even when given every reasonable chance. They deserve whatever happens after that." 

Of course, other religions have used similar arguments to justify their similar crimes. But it's Christians I am talking about in this essay. They are no better and too often, they are smugly confident that they really are. We all have to get over this "us-them" nonsense. 

The polytheists in every form - including Christians because that's what they are - have over and over found moral rationalization a little too easy. Athena can get you a deal with Zeus. Freya has pull with Odin. You have a coterie of judges on an archipelago of moral codes, and you can navigate among them. And Jesus can get you a deal with the Father.  

Of course, I admit that Christians are often very likable people. I have several Christian friends. I don't make this case to them unless they ask why I can't be a Christian. But if they do ask, I also don't hold back out of concern for their feelings or for courtesy's sake. This matter is too important to equivocate over. But once the point is made, I can let it go. Meme complexes - what we usually call "ideas" - can survive on their own. They just need to be put into the meme sea and set free. 

And yes, I really believe that. Almost all humans, given the chance to weigh matters carefully and privately, can think quite soundly for themselves. It just takes time. On the small, medium, or global scale, hope for humans only runs out when we stop trying to talk to each other. 

If you, dear reader, feel that this logic can be disputed, please, write to me at the email address above. I will post all rhetorically sound replies. 

And in any case, have a nice day.    

                                       

Chapter 16.                          Part D

                    

                                                               Pierre-Simon de Laplace

In the scientistic atheists' view, believing in such a God is simply excess baggage. It is a belief that we might enjoy clinging to as children, but it is extra, unjustified weight that, in modern times, only encumbers the thinking and active living that we have to do in order to keep increasing our knowledge and keep living in society like responsible adults. Theism, atheists say, pointlessly hobbles both Science and common sense. Or as Laplace famously told Napoleon, “Monsieur, I have no need of that hypothesis.”

               

            Centuries earlier, William of Occam said that the best explanation for any phenomenon is the simplest one that still suffices to explain what we're trying to explain. Newton reiterated the point: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." (8.) The method of Science tells us that if we can explain a phenomenon by using three basic concepts instead of four or five, the three pronged tool should be the one that we choose. 

            Belief in God - or at least the God that might or might not permeate this consistent, entangled, material universe, which seems to be a kind of self-aware - according to atheists, is a piece of unneeded, dead weight. In our time, under the world view of modern Science, the idea has no content. It can, and should, be dropped. As the hardest atheists say, it is time that humanity grew up.  

               

            What changes all of this is our acquiring the cultural model of human evolution. Under it, values are real, humanity is going somewhere, and whether we behave morally or immorally really does matter, not just to us in our limited frames of reference, but to that consciousness that underlies the universe. That presence, over millenia, aids the good to thrive by maintaining a reality in which there are lots of free choices and chances to learn, but also a small, long-term advantage to those that choose to be venturesome and learn to be brave, wise, and loving.

               

            This, for me, is the third big idea in my overall case for theism. Moral realism. Seeing moral values as being connected to the material universe in a tangible way. 

This model, which shows the role of morals in the human mode of living,  shakes everything else atheists claim to know. Under this model, there is no doubt about one thing: our survival-probability-maximizing programs – i.e. our moral values – are our guides for finding safer paths, as a species, through the hazardous patterns in the movements of matter and energy in the physical universe itself. 

  

Therefore, belief in the realness of moral values is not trivial in the same way as the belief in the consistency of the universe is not trivial. Both beliefs have an effect, via the patterns of behavior they foster, on the odds of our surviving as a species in the real world.

In short, the presence that fills the universe doesn't just maintain and feel. It also favors those living entities that follow the ways that we think of as "good".

It cares. 

          In my own intellectual, moral, and spiritual journey, I was a long time admitting even to myself that by this point I was gradually coming to believe in a thing that was, essentially, a kind of universal consciousness. God.

               

        Fifteen billion light years across the "known" part. Googuls of particles. About ten to the seventy ninth power electrons alone, never mind quarks, and, perhaps, strings. Consistent, aware, and compassionate, all over, all at once, all of the time. And these claims describe only the pieces of evidence that we know of. What might be before and after, smaller or larger, or even in the other dimensions that some physicists, in their cutting-edge theories, have postulated?

       

Every idea about matter or space that I can describe with numbers is a naive children's story compared to what is meant by the word "infinite". Every idea that I can talk about in any of the terms that name bits of what we call "time" is what I have to set aside when I use the word "eternal". For many of us in the West today, formulas and graphs, for far too long, have obscured these points, even though most scientists freely admit that there is so much that they don't know. Newton said: "I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." (9.)     

               

            What is this ineffable thing that we are trying to grasp? Does God have a consciousness vaguely like ours? The evidence of modern Science suggests such a consciousness would have to be as much beyond our kind of consciousness as the universe is beyond us in size. Infinite. Trying to grasp this concept - more now, in the Age of Science than in any previous era - strikes us numb.   

          

            The belief is no longer trivial in more personal ways as well. If I truly believe in the axiom on which my model of Science rests – i.e. the constancy of natural laws – and also in the relevant models of reality that Science has led me to – i.e. the “aware” nature of the universe and the values-driven, cultural model of human evolution – then, to even maintain my claim to being rational, in my own eyes, I must live my life in a moral way. I must choose to act in a way that views my own actions as rational, not as the mere wanderings of a deluded, self-aware, absurd animal. That absurd worldview, truly believed and lived, would inevitably lead to madness or suicide. 

And the theistic view, when it is widely accepted in society, has large implications for the activity called "Science" itself. A general adherence in society to the way of thinking called “theistic” is what makes sub-communities of scientists doing science possible. Consciously and individually, every scientist should value wisdom and freedom for reasons that are not uplifting or inspired, but merely logical. He or she knows that figuring out how the events in reality work is personally gratifying. But much more importantly, each scientist should see that this work is done most effectively in a freely interacting community of scientists supported within a larger, democratic society.

Most of us in the West have become emotionally attached to our belief in Science. We feel that attachment because we've been programmed to feel it. Tribally, we have learned that our modern wise men, i.e. our scientists, being able to do research and share findings with each other is helpful to the continuing survival of our branch of the human race. Of all of the sub-cultures within democracy that we might point to, none is more dependent on the basic values of democracy than is Science.

Scientists have to have courage. Courage to think in unorthodox ways, to outlast derision and neglect, to work, sometimes for decades, with levels of determination and dedication that most people in most walks of life would find difficult to believe. Scientists need the most sincere form of wisdom. Wisdom that counsels them to listen to analysis and criticism from their peers, without letting egos get involved, and to sift what is said for the insights that may be used to refine their methods and try again. Scientists require freedom. Freedom to pursue Truth where she leads, no matter if the truths that one finds are startling, unpopular, and even threatening to the status quo. And, finally, scientists must practice love. Yes, love. Love that makes one treat every human being as an individual, another being whose experience and thought may prove valuable and informative to one’s own. 

Scientists recognize implicitly that no single human mind could hold more than a tiny fraction of all there is to know. They have to share and peer-review ideas, research, and data in order to grow, individually and collectively. 

                                                           photo of pluralistic group at President Clinton's Initiative on Race 

Scientists do their best work in a community of thinkers who value and respect each other, who love each other, so much as a matter of course that they have ceased to notice another person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Under the values-driven, cultural model of human evolution, one can even argue that creating a social environment in which Science will arise and flourish is literally why democracy was invented.     

               

            But for the purposes of this book, all of this digression into the ways in which Science rests on the same values that enable democracy is just that: digression. The main implication of this complex, but consistent, way of thinking is more general and profound, so let's now to return to it.   

The universe is consistent, aware, and compassionate. Belief in each of these qualities of reality is a choice, a separate, free choice in each case. Modern atheists have long insisted that there is more evidence and weight of argument by far for the first than for the second or third. My contention is that this is no longer so. Once we see how values connect us to reality, the choice, though it still remains a choice, becomes an existential one. It defines who we are.  

               

            Therefore, belief in God emerges out of an epistemological choice, the same kind of choice that we make when we choose to believe that the laws of the universe maintain. Choosing to believe, first, in the laws of Science, second, in the findings of the various branches of Science, notably the self-aware universe implied by quantum theory, and, third, in the realness of the moral values that enable democratic living (and Science itself) entails a further belief in a steadfast, aware, and compassionate universal consciousness.

 

                               

Belief in God follows logically from my choosing a specific way of viewing this universe and my integral role in it: the scientific way.

         

            The problem for the really stubborn atheist, who refuses to make this choice is that he, like any other human being, has to choose to believe in something. We have to have a foundational set of beliefs in place in order to function effectively enough to be able even to walk through the day. The Bayesian model rules all that I claim to “know”. I have to gamble on some general set of axiomatic assumptions in order to move through life. The only real question is: “What shall I gamble on?” Reason points to the theistic gamble as being not the only choice, but as being the wisest, of the epistemological choices before us.

            The best gamble, in this gambling life, is theism. Our reaching that conclusion grows out of our analyzing the evidence. Following this realization up with the building of a personal relationship with God, one that makes sense to you as it also makes you a good friend - that, dear reader, is up to you.

            (And now, to close, two characters enter and begin a Socratic dialogue.)

            (Scene: a sidewalk cafe in Vancouver, Canada. A UBC graduate student, Flavius, known to his friends as "Flux", is sitting having coffee and relaxing in the spring sunshine.  Serendipitously, his friend, Evo, another grad student, strolls past. Flux recognizes him and calls out.)

            Flux: Evo! Evo, you subversive element! Over here! 

            Evo: (drawing near) Well, well. The quarry you see when you don't have a gun. What mischief would you be plotting? Wait. I'll get a coffee. (goes to counter to order)

            Flux: (muttering to himself) Hmm. Just the guy I wanted to see. I think.

            Evo (approaching with his coffee in hand and sitting down): So, what's up?

            Flux: The truth is ...that I've been getting more and more obsessed in the last few weeks with the whole debate over the existence of God. And over moral relativism, and whether we need God to be good. Whether people in general do, I mean. Not you and me. We are so good we're excellent. That's an axiom. (laughs awkwardly)

            Evo: (glancing at a girl going by) I can resist anything but temptation. But seriously, folks.

            Flux: (looking glum) It is serious, actually, this moral thing. These days, I can't seem to think of anything else. Almost everyone I talk to at the uni despises religion, but none of them has a way of deciding what right and wrong are. It's all relative they say. Then, I say they're committing humanity to permanent warfare, probably annihilation, when they make remarks like that. They shrug and tell me to grow up. We're doomed, my friend. Humanity is doomed, even if it is a nice day. (laughs darkly)  

            Evo: Are you sure you want to start this conversation? I have a lot to say on the subject, you know. And, after all, I am older and wiser than you are. (laughs)

            Flux: Ah, be serious. You're six months older than I am. But ...yeah, I know you've thought about this one. Which makes me ask - if you're okay with talking about it - do you still believe in God?

            Evo: I do.

            Flux: I know we've had this talk before, but your answers didn't really work for me. But you're saying you still believe?

            Evo: Yes. (pause) I don't buy most of the world's religions, or priests, or holy books. But the answer is, basically, yes.

            Flux: Still.

            Evo: More than ever. When did we last discuss this stuff? At that party at the lake?

            Flux: Yeah. That was it. And you haven't changed your mind? At all?

            Evo: No. (pause) The short answer is "no".

            Flux: What's the long answer?

            Evo: How much time do you have?

            Flux: It's Friday afternoon. I have no place I have to be till Monday morning. Come on. Seriously. The whole issue is weighing me down.

            Evo: Well, how about you ask questions, and I'll try to answer them.

            Flux: Alright. So personally, you do, in your most private heart of hearts, really believe in God?

            Evo: Yes.

            Flux: What was the crucial moment or crucial logical step, or whatever you call it, for you?

            Evo: No one moment. No one step. No epiphanies. I came to it gradually for a lot for reasons, backed by solid logic and evidence. Later, it did get personal. It's in my "heart of hearts", as you put it. I call my own kind of religion "theism", which isn't a very original term, but I just want to be clear that I think every person has to work out his own way of conceiving of God and relate to that personally in his own good time. I came to believe that moral beliefs can be based on what science is based on, namely, the facts of empirical reality. That view, moral realism, led me by gradual steps to think that we have to design a moral code that is acceptable for all people, and then live by it, and learn to live together. Gotta do these things if we're going to survive. So I got motivated to think very hard for a while. I arrived at two conclusions: first, that moral values do name things that are real; and, second, that the core belief in the moral code that will enable us to survive is theism. In other words, moral realism logically entails theism.

            Flux: Alright, wait a minute. Right there. I'm not gambling on whether my coffee is in my hand right now. It's there. I'm certain of it.

            Evo: No, that fact statement is not a certainty, even if you think you're certain of it. Human senses can be fooled. That's what "The Matrix" is about.

            Flux: Alright. I take your point.

            Evo: Every belief is a gamble, even our belief in science and the scientific method. The smartest of smart gambles is theism. Believing in God. Not so I can improve my odds of getting into some dimly imagined afterlife, but so I and my kind can survive here on Earth. So we can handle what the future is going to throw at us. Navigate the hazards. Once I proved my version of a universal moral code to my own satisfaction, from there it was a series of small steps to the core belief in God.

            Flux: But you must have periods of doubt. Surely.

            Evo: I used to. But they've almost gone. Mostly because I keep answering the doubts inside my own thinking. Over and over. I've seen all the doubters' moves. I can whip 'em. (laughs)

            Flux: So ...what then? Your belief, in your head, your theism, is constantly fighting for its life?

            Evo: Pretty much. All beliefs in all heads have to fight to survive.

            Flux: But you don't worry that one day the theism in your head is going to lose?

            Evo: I don't know for sure that I'll never lose my faith, but the signs are that it's pretty durable.  

            Flux: And yet you love science?

            Evo: Absolutely. Science is God's way for us. For humans in general, I mean.

            Flux: Were you ever an atheist?

            Evo: Oh sure. I look back on it now as a phase I had to go through. Eveyone does. Some don't ever get out to the other side, that's all. Other side of that atheist phase, I mean.

            Flux: You don't worry that what you see in the real world is ...only what you want to see?

            Evo: I see science and the theories of science, Flux. Testable. Replicable. They, and all the experimental evidence that supports them, keep telling me, more and more, God is there. Real.

            Flux: But you did have periods of doubt?

            Evo: Oh, yes. For twenty years. And then I only came around a few years ago to believing I ought to believe in God. That it was a smart gamble. And that everything in life is a gamble in the end. Even the most basic things you trust, like not just science, but even believing your hands are at the end of your arms because you see them and feel them there. Sense data. But for a long time, that smart theistic gamble wasn't personal. Not personal like you love Marie or your mom and dad. It was only cerebral. I believed in believing in God, but I didn't believe primally, if you get my meaning.

            Flux: Oh, yes. I get your meaning. So what changed?

            Evo: I started meditating. Every day. Half hour or so. Sometimes, twice a day.

            Flux: Did you take a course?

            Evo: Yes.

            Flux: Which one?

            Evo: I'd rather not say. Check around. Find one that works for you. Then it'll feel like it's yours.

            Flux: That's fair. And then what? God just arrived?

            Evo: Basically, yes. I realized one day that I was hearing an "inner voice". Not a great way of putting it, but close enough. In the time when I was trying to control every detail in my life, I was going nuts. When I learned to accept handling just the details that my conscience - God's voice in my head - told me were mine to handle, my responsibility - like, where I was "response-able" - then I got good solutions just as I was coming out of my meditation, or right after. It was a way of thinking about God that made sense to me. Let God - the universe, if you like - talk to me. Then, I'd get some quiet, excellent, answers. Like a presence was hovering by me and nurturing me. That's not very dramatic. But it's how I experience my personal sense of God. Like I love my kids. Or my dad. Personal. First, for large, evidence-backed reasons, and only then, second, for constant, internally felt ones.

            Flux: (studying his friend closely) And it still seems like a rational decision to you?

            Evo: More than that, Flux. I think we're all, as a species, going to have to come to some form of moral realism, then theism, if we're going to get past the crises that are coming. Getting rid of nukes. Fixing the environment. Moral realism is the only option that has any chance of working. Nobody trusts the so-called "sacred texts" or the priests anymore. Most don't trust personal epiphanies either, no matter how intense the events feel. We know it's too easy to see what you want to see. First, we want models that fit our observations of empirical evidence, over and over. And moral realism, for me, is that kind of true. It's a model of reality that fits the facts of history and of daily life.

            Flux: You think science proves that God exists? I know people who'd laugh out loud at that. 

            Evo: They don't see History or Anthropology as a sciences, Flux. And they don't examine the basic foundational assumptions of science. If they did, they'd reconsider their opinions.

            Flux: So tell me. For you, what are the moral values that are grounded in empirical reality?

            Evo: Humans have gradually evolved responses to entropy, over billions of people and thousands of generations. The cultures that emerge may vary from era to era and place to place, but every one of them is a balance of courage and wisdom. Those values are our big-scale reponses to entropy, the "uphillness" of life. Other balanced systems of ideas and morés built around freedom and love are our responses to quantum uncertainty. All four values inform the software of all nations that survive because they shape how people in a nation behave and that connects them to survival. And those basic qualities of adversity and uncertainty, remember, are built into our universe right down to the atoms and quarks. Those qualities are everywhere, all of the time. We've learned to respond to them, not as individuals, but as tribes, over centuries, with societies built on those four prime values.

            Flux: Those are some pretty large and vague moral principles to build a culture around. A lot of radically different societies could be constructed that all claimed they were brave, wise, and so on.

            Evo: Which is only to say how free we are, Flux. But notice my system is way different than saying that moral values are just arbitrary tastes, like a preference for vanilla shakes over chocolate.

            Flux: I think I see where you're going with this line of thought. We could build an ideal society or something pretty close to it, couldn't we?  

            Evo: We've been working our way toward that realization for, arguably, two million years.

            Flux: These moral values, the way you describe them, must have been worked out over a long time, and also a lot of pain then, right?

            Evo: Pain and more importantly, death. Which is why we're taught to respect values so much. Some really bad mistakes, our accumulated wisdom keeps telling us, we do not want to re-visit.  

            Flux: Here's a mental leap coming at you. How would the kind of ideal society that you envision - brave, wise, free, tolerant - evolve, without war or revolution? How would it resolve an internal argument over some major social issue?

            Evo: Like capital punishment, say?

            Flux: Whoa! Quick answer. But, yeah. Not the one I had in mind, but a good example actually.

            Evo: Reasoning and evidence. Gradual consensus-building. Scientific studies. Calm persuasion. The facts say it doesn't work, you know. Capital punishment.

            Flux: How so?

            Evo: Oh, countries that get rid of c.p. see their murder rates go down, not up. It doesn't deter potential killers. Just the opposite. It makes them determined to leave no witnesses. To any crime. And then capital trials drag on and on 'cause juries don't want to make a mistake. In the end, it costs more to execute an accused killer than to lock him up for thirty years. Long-term studies say so.  

            Flux: What if he lives a really long time?

            Evo: In my system - barring exceptional circumstances - he'd still stay locked up. But most of them die in under twenty years. They're the kind of men who live unhealty lifestyles. Fattening foods. No exercise. Booze. Drugs. Cigarettes. Fights. They don't last in prison or out.

            Flux: But even if, say for the sake of argument, he only lasts twenty years in prison, that's a long time. Guards to pay, meals, medical supplies, entertainment ...it's gotta add up.

            Evo: Not as much as killing him does, by, like, nearly three times, Flux. The studies say so. And on average, the killers only live about seventeen years after going into prison.

            Flux: I'll look it up when I get home. But back to our point ...you think we can solve everything by debate and compromise.

            Evo: Based on reasoning and evidence, Flux, but the answer is "yes". And long endurance, sometimes. Just not war. The Soviet Union went from being an unstoppable super-power to gone in my lifetime. With no global conflict. I'll never doubt the transformative power of endurance again.

            Flux: I think I'm beginning to see your point a bit. You see moral guidelines as being grounded in the physical facts of reality?

            Evo: I've made that case for myself, and some others, over and over. Entropy and quantum uncertainty are built into the fabric of reality. As long as I'm in a universe that is characterized by those qualities, then courage, wisdom, freedom, and love will be virtues. That picture, for me, anyway, is more reliable than my senses. It's eternal. I'm 99.999 percent sure.   

            Flux: And that proves for you that God exists?

            Evo: That and a couple of other main points. Even our assuming that the universe stays consistent from place to place and era to era is an act of faith, Flux. No one can prove the future will go like the past. We haven't been to the future. But we take it as a given that the universe is that kind of consistent. Science wouldn't make any sense under any other first assumption. Then, I get direction from today's cutting edge science - quantum physics. All the particles in the universe are what physicists call "entangled", you know. Which just means that the universe is a kind of aware.

            Flux: What, like I'm aware?

            Evo: As far beyond your and my awareness as the universe is beyond us in size. Yeah, that's a hell of a statement. I know full well what I'm saying. But look at the evidence. Let me say it all at once, as plainly as I can. The first step to theism is believing in the consistency of the universe. The second is believing in the awareness of the universe. The third is moral realism, which means believing that courage, wisdom, freedom, and brotherly love - the Greek word "agape" - steer us into harmony with the particles of matter, from quarks to quasars. Those three big beliefs - in universal constancy, universal awareness, and universal moral truth - when they're added together, say to me that this universe is a single, aware, caring entity. This aware universe is "God", if you like that term. If not, that's okay. Call it by whatever name works for you.

           

            Flux: Cold sort of caring, don't you think? There are a lot of cruel things in life.  

           

            Evo: No, it just looks that way to us sometimes. But it's unreasonable and unfair for me to ask God to pardon me from getting cancer or meningitis or whatever, if the dice roll that way. God loves it all, all the time. God loves the avalanche that buries the careless skier who skis out of bounds. God loves malignant cells and meningococcus bacteria just as much as God loves me. We may learn how to change the odds, to cure meningitis or prevent cancer, but in a universe that is balanced and free, those scientific advances are up to us. Our brains evolved to solve puzzles exactly like those ones.

            Flux: You know there are people who get the consistency-of-the-laws-of-science assumption, even the quantum entanglement-awareness one, but leave you right at that moral realism step.

            Evo: Oh, I know. They keep trying to find some other way to extract principles of good and bad from the natural world. A lot of people don't want God. They want to be in charge. (laughs)

            Flux: Other species - chimps, squirrels, and so on - find altruism on their own, you know.

            Evo: And the next thing to ask is: what kind of a universe rewards those animals' finding and practicing altruism? That dodge is no dodge at all. It only delays answering the moral question.

            Flux: Alright, I see why you say that. Your moral values would seem moral to aliens on other worlds. Do you dislike people who keep, as you say, "dodging" the moral realism question?

            Evo: Not at all. As long as I can see that they're trying to live lives of courage, wisdom, freedom, responsibility, love, I love them. They may get old and die and never say that they believe in anything like "God", but I don't care a bit. I still love them. Believe in God? Hey, if they try hard to live decent lives, for me that's enough. But believe in God? By the evidence that shows on the outside of them - which is all science cares about, by the way - they actually do. Do believe, I mean. They just sentence themselves to a lonely existence inside. Which is their choice, of course. But I still love them.

            Flux: They'd tell you that viewpoint is pretty condescending.

            Evo: They have, many times. It's still okay. We can live together in peace. And still make progress and survive. That's all that really matters. (pause) But we must choose to live. Surviving's not a given. So we need a system of ethics in order just to decide even simple things, minute by minute, day in and day out, about every object and event we meet up with. Good or bad? Important or trivial? Take action or not? What are my action choices? Which choice looks like the best gamble in these circumstances? The most efficient moral code will be the one that's laid out so that our decisions are quick, efficient, and accurate. Consistent with the facts, short and long term. A central organizing concept, i.e. a belief in God, is just efficient. At least to start with. It's only after a lot of work in yourself that it becomes personal. But it is first of all, just ...efficient. It gets results.

            Flux: Your picture isn't very comforting, you know, E. The mental space it offers is pretty bare.

            Evo: I know, I know. I'd be a liar if I offered you easy grace. You first have to choose to be responsible for your own life. Then, so many other challenges come. But they'd come anyway. It's just that if you choose to bow your head and take the beatings fate dishes out, without trying to figure things out and to improve your odds of health and happiness, your life will be even worse. You have to choose to choose, and even then life is going to be rough. God's a hard dude. But I'm okay with seeing God as a pretty hard dude. To make something out of nothing, he has to be. A balance of forces makes something out of nothing. And in that picture, God made us free, Flux. Whether we choose to rise to the challenge, to live bravely and creatively, is up to us. Out of the labor, we make ourselves and then our society, and if we're really good, we teach our kids to do the same. Hopefully, even better.

            Flux: You don't believe in miracles, do you?

            Evo: "Only in a way" would be my answer there. I think events that look miraculous happen. Things that look like exceptions to the laws of science. But they turn out later to have scientific explanations. For me, everything I see around me all of the time is the miracle. What's it doing here? Why wasn't there just nothing? And then the living things in the world are much more miraculous, and then ...a baby's smile ...you know what they say. It doesn't get any better than that.

            Flux: Is there a church you could belong to? Are you pulled to any of them?

            Evo: That's another question that you need to answer for yourself. That's what freedom asks.

            Flux: Any you hate?

            Evo: Nearly all of them. Priests make up mumbo-jumbo to take away people's ability to think for themselves. It's easy with most people because they want security. But there's no such thing. Not in this lifetime. That one I'm sure of. Maybe they don't consciously make it up, but they do make it up. The priests, I mean. It gets them a slack lifestyle so they gravitate to rationalizing ways to protect that. Over generations, the lies just keep getting worse. No, I'm not big on organized religion.

            Flux: Would you call yourself a dreamer? A starry-eyed optimist?

            Evo: I seem that way to some people, I'm sure. My view of myself is that I look at the long haul. I'm interested in that first. Then, what energy I have left over, I can give to the small, confusing ups and downs of everyday matters. I guess some would call me a dreamer. But cynics are cowards to me. It's the dreamers who have courage. And once in a while they turn out to be right, you know. (laughs) 

            Flux: I better let you go, E.. I've kept you long enough. I was just feeling ...down ...you know.

            Evo: You're not keeping me from anything that matters as much as this talk does, Flux.

            Flux: Alright. I'll take that as being sincere. Actually, knowing you as long as I have, I know it is. Thank you. I'm feeling ...I don't know ...hopeful, somehow, right now. Actually ...I think I get it.  

            Evo: Welcome home, Flavius, my friend. Welcome home.     

                                                   Here the Great River Now empties into the sea;

                                                   Here the babbles and roars of Duality cease;

                                                   Every echoing gorge, every swirling façade,

                                                   Is dissolved in the infinite ocean of God.                                                       

                                                                                                  (Author unknown)    

   

Notes 

1.Maxwell, Nicholas; "Is Science Neurotic?"; World Scientific Publishing; 2004.

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_in_early_cultures.

3.http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~mmagouli/defmyth.htm#Functionalism.

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_mythology.

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement.

6. Allday, Jonathan; "Quantum Reality: Theory and Philosophy"; CRC Press; 2009; p. 376.

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism#.22Quantum_flapdoodle.22

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

9. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton