19. Is God Good? - Part 3
This is the nineteenth article in the series From Particles to Angels. If you are interested in this article you should read the previous articles in the series in order, beginning with the first (On Happiness).
We saw that storm gods were a common feature of ancient religions. We might for instance see similar representations of the Mesopotamian god Hadad (Adad, Haddad) also known as Iškur (Sumerian).
The name of the Sumerian god Enlil means "Lord Storm". Below we see Enlil's son Ninurta chasing the monster Anzû with raised hands holding thunderbolts.
So too the Canaanite gob Baal wields the thunderbolt.
The Hittite weather god who wielded the thunderbolt was called Teshub.
In Norse mythology Thor is the god of thunder and lightning. The Celtic god of thunder who wielded the thunderbolt was called Taranis. The Baltic god of thunder is called Perkūnas. The Slavic god of thunder and lightning is called Perun.
In Hinduism, Indra is the god of lightning, thunder, storms, rains and river flows. In the image below, Indra holds the Vajra (thunderbolt) in his raised right hand.
In Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism a "Mahasiddha" is a tantric master. There are eighty-four Mahasiddhas, of which one is called Ghantapa (the "Celibate Bell-Ringer"). Below we see a statue of the (celibate?) Mahasiddha Ghantapa. In his raised right hand he holds a Vajra, and in his left hand he holds a bell, ringing it no doubt.
In Chinese mythology, Leigong (雷公) is "Lord of Thunder". His wife Dianmu (電母), also called "Leizi", is "Mother of Lightning". The Mayan rain deity Chaac wielded a "lightning axe".
Yahweh's storm god and lightning wielding powers appear occasionally in the Bible.
"When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground." (Exodus 9:23)
"On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain." (Exodus 19:16-17)
"He made darkness his canopy around him—the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded." (2 Samuel 22:12-14, see also Psalm 18:11-13)
"He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind. Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders from his pavilion? See how he scatters his lightning about him, bathing the depths of the sea. This is the way he governs the nations and provides food in abundance. He fills his hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark. His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach. At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place. Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding." (Job 36:27-37:5)
"The clouds poured down water, the heavens resounded with thunder; your arrows flashed back and forth. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked." (Psalm 77:17-18)
"He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet. He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning." (Psalm 78:47-48, see also Psalm 105:32-33)
"Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles." (Psalm 97:2-4)
"He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses." (Psalm 135:7, see also Jeremiah 10:13, 51:15)
"Part your heavens, Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, so that they smoke. Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy; shoot your arrows and rout them." (Psalm 144:5-6)
"Then the Lord will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning. The Sovereign Lord will sound the trumpet; he will march in the storms of the south, and the Lord Almighty will shield them." (Zechariah 9:14-15)
A vision of the prophet Ezekiel continue the storm god imagery, but in place of God are other supernatural creatures.
"I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures.... Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning." (Ezekiel 1:4-14)
Daniel's vision of a supernatural being describes "his face like lightning" (Daniel 10:6), seeming to mean a bright white light. In the New Testament, an angel visits Jesus' tomb and is described in a similar way.
"There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow." (Matthew 28:2-3, see also Luke 24:4)
At another time, well before the crucifixion, Jesus' disciples have a supernatural experience usually referred to as "the transfiguration".
"About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him." (Luke 9:28-32)
Lightning imagery also appears in the Book of Revelation (11:19 and 16:18). What is it about the storm god that has had such appeal? Perhaps it is the ease with which we attribute emotion to it. The sun is a natural god, whose arising each morning is welcomed with grateful relief. But the sun is stable, divine, inhuman, like the sky and the stars and the seasons. The storm has a will of its own. It is angered. It is calmed. It rises like passion and subsides like compassion. It trembles and bellows and is chaotic. The storm is a god for humans. He is one of us, and so perhaps he understands us, and so he might be called on to intercede on our behalf in the face of the abstract gods: the empty sky, the endless night, or death. We have seen that religious imagery tends to overlap. Perhaps more so than a god of the storm, Yahweh is the god of fire and brimstone. When the Jews were led out of Egypt by Moses and wandered in the desert, they apparently walked toward an erupting volcano.
"By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light ..." (Exodus 13:21)
When the tribe of Israel reached the volcano, Moses went up the mountain and obtained the Ten Commandments.
"... they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain.... The Lord said to Moses, 'I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.'... On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled.... Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently." (Exodus 19:2-18)
To understand the spell initially cast by Yahweh, an image search on "volcanic lightning" is well worth doing. When Yahweh destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah it was apparently in a volcanic eruption.
"Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace." (Genesis 19:24-28)
So too, while Moses had the Israelites camped at the base of the Sinai volcano, two of the newly appointed priesthood made an error in a ritual and were consumed by divine fire.
Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. (Leviticus 10:1-2)
Some of the Israelites made the mistake of complaining in the hearing of the Lord.
"Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down." (Numbers 11:1-2)
Others "became insolent and rose up against Moses".
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Say to the assembly, "Move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram."' ... So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing with their wives, children and little ones at the entrances to their tents ... the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households, and all those associated with Korah, together with their possessions. They went down alive into the realm of the dead, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, “The earth is going to swallow us too!” And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.'" (Numbers 16:23-35)
"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." (Deuteronomy 4:24)
Moses' vision of the burning bush (Exodus 3) was also on the Sinai volcano (there called Mount "Horeb"), where he was instructed: "When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." (Exodus 3:12)
The fire references are too numerous to attempt to list. Yahweh demanded offerings of burnt animal flesh and the holy altar of the Israelites was regularly drenched with the blood of thousands of sacrificed animals.
"Take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar." (Exodus 29:12)
See also Exodus 24:6, 29:16-21; Leviticus 1:5,11,15, 3:2,8,13, 4:7,18,25,30,34, 5:9, 7:2,14, 8:15,19,24, 9:9,12,18, 16:18, 17:6,11; Numbers 18:17; Deuteronomy 12:27; and so on. So that the themes of blood sacrifice and incineration were an abiding part of the worship of Yahweh.
There is a more positive way to interpret the burnt offering. That is to compare it to the Sunday roast. It is not unusual to offer food on altars to the god(s): fruit, rice; or incense; pleasing tastes and aromas. But the horned Jewish altar of blood and fire does not convey this impression. There are occasional instances of imagery that might be interpreted as that of a sun god. These are sparse, more often figurative than literal, and regarding light rather than explicitly sunshine.
"When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them." (Job 29:24)
"Let the light of your face shine on us." (Psalm 4:6)
"It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them." (Psalm 44:3)
"You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light." (2 Samuel 22:29)
"he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth" (2 Samuel 23:4)
"and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage" (Ezra 9:8)
"There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its ways or stay in its paths." (Job 24:13)
"by his light I walked through darkness" (Job 29:3)
"Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death" (Psalm 13:3)
"The Lord is my light and my salvation" (Psalm 27:1)
"in your light we see light" (Psalm 36:9)
"Send me your light" (Psalm 43:3)
"You are radiant with light, more majestic than mountains rich with game." (Psalm 76:4)
"Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord." (Psalm 89:15)
"The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment" (Psalm 104:2)
"The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine on us." (Psalm 118:27)
"let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Isaiah 2:5)
"your light will break forth like the dawn" (Isaiah 58:8)
"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn." (Isaiah 60:3)
"the Lord will be your everlasting light" (Isaiah 60:20)
"His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light." (Matthew 17:2)
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
The Judeo-Christian Bible has some beautiful and some sublime moments, as well as some truly barbarous material. There is also a historical development and evolution, from the 5 books of Moses, through the prophets and psalms, and the book of Job, to the New Testament. In the article: In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 we encountered the idea of evolutionary religion. That religion is partly a creation of the biological creature in response to its environment, but grafted onto this at intervals are divine revelations that use the existing evolutionary religion as its foundation, and which in turn accrue folk traditions. In this model, religion is partly handed down from on high, received from deity, and is partly manufactured by human beings. Deity makes periodic adjustments to the creature religion, but also to some extent respects it. Human beings are permitted to participate and to some extent define religion, so that the result is a team effort by God and Man. When people begin to feel their religion is out of date, new revelations or folk beliefs emerge that modify the existing religion, or whole new religions appear. Every old religion was at one time new. So that loyalty to old religion is not the same as loyalty to religion. But it is often the old religions that illicit the greatest loyalty because the possibility of evidence for or against them is long gone, and it is somehow easier to believe in miracles occurring long ago. The old religions also have the advantage of an already existing body of supporters, and may be seen as in some sense having "withstood the test of time". When trying to decide what to believe in circumstances where evidence is lacking, there can seem some security, or at least companionship, in joining the established traditions.
In the Urantia Book section of the article: In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 we saw represented a divine hierarchy of beings consisting of names familiar from the Abrahamic religions of the Middle East. The following comment is made in The Urantia Book.
"In recording the names of these beings of the spiritual world, we are confronted with the problem of translating into your tongue, and very often it is exceedingly difficult to render a satisfactory translation. We dislike to use arbitrary designations which would be meaningless to you; hence we often find it difficult to choose a suitable name, one which will be clear to you and at the same time be somewhat representative of the original."
(The Urantia Book, 18:4.3)
The Urantia Book appears then to map its divine beings to their closest approximation among certain selected religions of Earth. So we might ask, if Jesus is who he seems to say he is, why did he choose to be born in Israel during the reign of Rome? Does it mean that Judaism was the one true religion on Earth at that time, and he came to provide the next instalment in that testament? Or was it rather the best approximation on Earth at the time, of true religion, or had some key or pivotal elements required for the next leap in religious evolution? Regardless of the virtues of the other religions, it's difficult to treat Thor or Vishnu with quite the same seriousness as the Jewish Yahweh. The Middle East resides at the cross roads between North Africa, Europe and Asia. As such, knowledge from all these regions has tended to pass through it, and in turn to be disseminated from it. The Middle East was therefore a pivotal location. The great virtue of Judaism at the time was how its concept of God had evolved.
"And thus the successive teachers of Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be effected on [Earth]: the gradual but continuous transformation of the barbaric concept of the savage demon Yahweh, the jealous and cruel spirit god of the fulminating Sinai volcano, to the later exalted and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh, creator of all things and the loving and merciful Father of all mankind."
The great virtue of the Jewish religion is that it stripped religion down to its essentials and clarified its key point, the one god above all and His love for his creatures. It stripped away the pantheon of the hundred and one gods and goddesses and the soap-opera of their feuds and alliances. It removed the sacred grove, tree, rock, lake, mountain, that made it so that you could not take a hundred paces in any direction without stumbling onto something sacred to someone. It stripped away all the rituals special to every individual god or spirit, and the magical amulets and spells. It stripped away the power of the sorcerer and the awful dread caused by multiplying superstitions that told you, for instance, that you would die if a black cat crossed your path on a Tuesday after breaking a mirror. But in the process it demonised all these things, and replaced a rich and sensuous pantheistic culture with a cultural and spiritual austerity that has become the basis of the modern world. Perhaps it needed to happen that way. But now that the most high god is secure in his place, and science has displaced superstition, we might ease the grip of austerity and permit a grand synthesis of the world's religions such as the Romans once attempted. Valuing what they have in common more than what distinguishes them, and reappraise the incredibly rich religious culture of the people of planet Earth.
I have suggested that we are free to choose a God of our liking and to interpret Him in a way to our liking. But this freedom also has its limitations. It is easy to disregard the Old Testament, and in disregarding it to feel free to make up our own rules. We have even rationalised a way to do the same with the Apostle Paul. But the limitation inherent in choosing any god is that it requires choosing some god. Once we've made that choice and started to accumulate our interpretations we increasingly bind ourselves to a particular god and interpretation. If we disregard too much, what basis do we have for accepting the remainder? What plausibility can we attribute to it? To avoid incoherence and hypocrisy, or a religion void of content, this god, this ideal, will inevitably begin to make demands. Having reached the limit of adapting religion to our desires, we will need for the remainder to adapt ourselves to it, to what emerges, to meet it half way, more or less. Having found something worthy of the cost. Having gone some way to formulating your religion, you are now in a position to "seek" evidence of it. If the assurance: "seek and you will find" (Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9) is true, you have reason to be optimistic. If we can find no evidence for our chosen religion it will simply evaporate after a time, unable to sustain belief. Without some manner of evidence to support your religious views, you cannot be satisfied.... But more than that: how cool would it be to find such evidence? If human beings have a common desire, there should be a religion that corresponds to this. This finds not only god, but humanity. It is here that religion begins to take on an objective quality, and why over time different religions start to say the same things.
"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
(Matthew 7:9-11)
The suggestion to "seek" would seem unnecessary if we were expected to simply accept without question the religion handed to us by our immediate environment. Seeking implies inquisitiveness. "Ask and it will be given to you" is not the same sentiment as: "Just accept what you are given." The religious quest begins with us and our own desire. Swallowing hook, line and sinker the first religion we encounter, or the first version of that religion, sells us short. If your quest leads you ultimately to the religion of your forefathers, it will not be a wasted trip.
Whatever his credibility, Jesus is less easy to disregard because he seems reasonable when unwoven from Paul's views. His excesses are not primitive and harsh, but seem rather like too idealistic an expectation of human nature, and then he permits us to fall short of that standard. No one talks quite like Jesus, which of itself seems fitting. He is persistently gentle and seems focused on an alien vision of what society is supposed to be. In a world that had the Emperors Caligula and Nero, the Middle Ages and eventually the World Wars and who knows what else still in its future, armies rising like tides to march across the countryside to pillage, murder and rape; Jesus is talking about what to do if someone slaps your cheek, or tries to take your coat. It almost seems irrelevant. But seems aimed to nip the problem in the bud so to speak, before it escalates out of control, avoiding violence where possible; through an ideal of civility. Yet he warns occasionally of destruction, so his paradigm is not free of consequence. For Jesus, destruction awaits the "tree that does not bear good fruit" (Matthew 3:10, 7:19, Luke 3:9; compare also Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17), the person who is good for nothing. The kind of world in which his ideals will work is not the world we live in, but the world we aspire to, and those most sincerely following his ideals seem to end up going under the wheels of the train more often than not, as he says: like lambs among wolves (Luke 10:3): just as he did himself. So those who claim to follow him mostly scale down his ideas to implement them.
"Aim small, miss small. If you aim for his shirt button, you might miss by two inches. If you aim for his shirt, you miss by two feet" (from the movie "American Sniper" (2014)). Jesus set a pin point in the future, on the horizon. A far distant principle, a guiding star or light several steps removed from whatever it is we think we should be doing now. For millennia that ideal has dramatically failed to manifest, regardless of professed religious convictions or lack thereof, and while society has yet progressed in leaps and bounds. That pinpoint is there unchanged still for all to see ("like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other" (Luke 17:24)), visible regardless of the shit and turmoil around us; and even from the calm void of consumerism. A few are fixed intently on that point, while the rest wander all over, maybe glancing over at it occasionally to check where they have ended up and how to get back on track.
Islam is younger than Christianity, and very much younger than Judaism, so that it lacks some of the barbaric elements of the Old Testament, nevertheless, in an environment already exposed to Christian ideals, having arisen in the Middle East 500 years after Christ, Islam was an anachronism the day it was born. It offers a monotheistic religion to those who have reason to resent Christianity, due to the sins committed by Christians over the years. Sins currently being repeated by radical Islam. The two religions share many ideals.
"to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess [i.e., slaves]." (Quran 4:36)
"And the retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it, but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation - his reward is from Allah." (Quran 42:40)
"And not equal are the good deed and the bad. Repel by that which is better; and thereupon the one whom between you and him is enmity as though he was a devoted friend." (Quran 41:34)
As in the case of Christianity, it is sometimes difficult to see the ideals of the religion itself, in the practice of some of its most vocal and visible self-proclaimed adherents. Peaceful coexistence rarely making the news. If "God" and "Allah" are two different words referring to the same entity, Christianity can be judged independently of Christians. If Christ came from God, he should be heard in that light, not as coming from Christians. Whether he is a mere messenger or more. What he is, you can judge for yourself based on his words. Human beings do not get to decide religious truth based solely on petty and parochial cultural considerations, treating the word of God as if it is something they own, rejecting every religion but "their own", as if God speaks to them alone. Some religions are better than others, but none has a monopoly on truth.
"The many religions ... are all good to the extent that they bring man to God and bring the realization of the Father to man. It is a fallacy for any group of religionists to conceive of their creed as The Truth; such attitudes bespeak more of theological arrogance than of certainty of faith. There is not a ... religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth. Religionists would do better to borrow the best in their neighbors’ living spiritual faith rather than to denounce the worst in their lingering superstitions and outworn rituals."
(The Urantia Book 92:7.3)
Our leaders, our parents, our God, are expected to stand up to such questioning and scrutiny. Either their actions are shown to be right, or those actions must be otherwise. It is assumed that if God exists, He must be good. The challenge is how to reconcile this assumption with evidence seeming to the contrary. We assume that if He seems not to be good, it must be either because there is something we do not yet understand, some way in which what seems bad is actually good, or we might assume there is something wrong in the way that God has been presented to us.
Logically, there is no particular reason why God must be good. We do not know how God comes to be. Is He the result of some process of evolution, or merely always existent, perhaps somehow necessarily existent? In either case, it seems as likely or unlikely to exist one way as another, in one form or another, as good, bad or indifferent like the universe itself. But we have an intuition and revelation affirming the goodness of God. But what means do we have to determine this? We have simple trust of course, simple faith. In the end, the thought that God is not good is too terrible a prospect to contemplate. In that case it would be better that he simply not exist, and we will take our chances with pure materialism. If He wants to enslave and torment us for all eternity there is presumably nothing we could do about it. So perhaps there is the same inclination as with any powerful and terrifying tyrant or bully, we interpret as good whatever they say is good, to keep on their good side, and we keep our heads down in obedience and pray they will not hurt us, ignoring those around us who are being cast into hell, accepting such a fate as deserved, or at least the way of things.
"Have I displeased you, you feckless thug?"
(The West Wing, "Two Cathedrals" (2001), see the article: On Happiness)
But what means do we have to judge the goodness of God? If the authorities and the texts say He is good, do we just accept that? If there are different texts and different authorities saying different things, different religions, do we just accept the one we were born into, the one believed by our neighbours and assume that is the true one while all the others are false, and go to war to destroy those who call god by other names? Do we have any way to know good from evil?
An intuition of what is right might be implanted supernaturally by a divine Spirit of Truth, or may be a product of natural and social evolution, or only wishful thinking. Can we use that individual sense of right as a judge of written religious revelation? It might be suggested that revealed doctrine is an antidote to the waywardness and unreliability of natural intuition. We want anyone to be let off the hook for anything we would want to be let off the hook for. So that our inner compass is lax and hypocritical. Cruel to our enemies and forgiving to our friends. If moral absolutes exist they may well be counter-intuitive. It may seem wrong to us. Perhaps it is right that we should be taking stubborn sons to the city gates to stone them to death, for the sake of the greater good, and the weak liberality of our ordinary human sentiment blinds us to that unalterable truth. The Christian doctrine of the Spirit of Truth lends legitimacy to individual intuition and Jesus' own words are essentially liberal.
"Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not."
(Qur'an 2:216)
In the course of our lives we might accept many unpleasant truths, yet these are still required to convince us of their legitimacy. They must demonstrate their rightful place within the larger scheme of things. Failing that, they must feel right to us. To us. Who can tell us that God wants something else from us? Perhaps you hate a thing that is bad, and you love a thing that is good. God knows, but your priest may not. In the end, as I have said several times. We choose the God we are willing to believe in, according to our own sense of right. If God is cruel and only terrifies His creatures into submission with the threat of eternal torture, then perhaps Lucifer's rebellion was justified. Perhaps Hell is populated by the kind hearted and the road there is indeed paved with good intentions. One cannot in good conscience accept something for truth only on the threat of torture. Belief in God must include belief in the goodness of God. Beginning with this brute assumption, we reverse engineer the religion of our liking. If you do not like the God someone is trying to sell you, choose another, or make up your own. Trust in Him.
Whether we trust it or not. Whether it is wholly consistent or not. Whether it is right or not. We each of us has a moral intuition. An internal compass that tells us, or tries to tell us right from wrong. An instinct. In Western culture, the hero in our stories tells us to trust that instinct, and to remain loyal to it in the face of external forces telling us otherwise.
"This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
("Hamlet", by William Shakespeare, Act 1: Scene 3 (c.1599-1602))
In the face of a conflict between institutional authority and written revelation and this inner compass what do we do? Who or what do we trust? The representatives of cruel doctrine may claim that we do not have the understanding to know the will of God and must, in accordance with faith, accept what seems wrong to us. We run the risk, in obeying them, of discovering later that these teachers are themselves the devils. In the end there is no logical argument to be made one way or the other. Evolution will decide. Not because there is an objective standard of morality, or because there is a logical deduction leading to it; but because enough people will want to believe it is so. We will see in 1,000 years, if we are watching people stoned to death for adultery, or beheaded for having the wrong opinions. Or whether those who want to impose such penalties have disappeared from the face of the Earth for good, or into prisons or mental institutions. Remembered only in stories as glib villainous caricatures of human beings, fearful of their place in the modern world. Unmourned, emotionally stunted dinosaurs to be taunted and beaten by our heroes, forever after. In a world where compassion rules. Will the future be, instead of intolerance, a lot of singing, dancing, writing, cooking, painting, decorating and invention? A world where learning is cherished and individual distinctiveness is nurtured as the personality contribution of the individual to the world. Will it be subsistence farmers living in rustic huts, or apartment buildings among public gardens? The progress of civilisation seems to be a progress to greater tolerance and liberalisation.
This attitude is not "Biblical". The Bible itself says: "Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord [אֱלֹהִים (elohím)] must be destroyed." (Exodus 22:20). It is sometimes assumed that this statement is aimed only at Jews, but since all the commandments of the Old Testament are addressed to the Jewish race, this makes a rather important distinction unclear. Jesus in any case indicates that his words are for all people, not just the Jews.
"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15)
"I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." (John 10:16)
He also makes the following comments.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." (Two of "The Beatitudes", Matthew 5:7-9)
The Hebrew Bible is much concerned with members of the Jewish race not going after foreign gods (Exodus 20:3, 23:13, 34:14, Deuteronomy 5:7, 6:14, 8:19, 1 Kings 11:1-11, Psalm 16:4, Jeremiah 7:9, 25:6), and modern Christian fundamentalists hold up these passages as evidence of the evil of religious tolerance, and likely take this trend rather as a sign of the end times, a fatal religious and moral decadence. If the goal is peace on Earth and good will toward men, there is no way even to model this within fundamentalist religion. The heaven or paradise of the religious fundamentalist is one achieved by the extermination of the members of every other religion, and among the remnant that is left, to execute anyone who departs from the straight and narrow. It is a cruel and brutal, intolerant, primitive and terrifying community that will endure, changeless, for eternity.
There is plenty of textual support for such a view, for those who wish to believe in such a religion. Those who wish for religious tolerance to be true religion, will simply ignore these passages. If god does not intervene to exterminate all the impure in the world, or if religious fundamentalists do not come into possession of a super-weapon to achieve it, the contest for the Earth will be between two philosophies of living and their adherents. The world will come to be defined not by a divinely implemented or inspired apocalypse, but by whatever the majority of ordinary human beings decides. The Word will be set aside in the name of Love. By a global community ruled by friendship and kindness. Because that is what most ordinary human beings want. To live in peace and safety in a liberal democracy. To make art in a garden and connect with others. The end of religion will have been achieved despite religion. Despite the teachings and guidance of pure and disapproving religious and moral leaders. The contest is between two hearts. The heart that hates and the heart that loves. Some will seek support for their hate in passages of scripture, led there by their heart for justification. It is a grossly antisocial and inhumane goal. Indicative only of an unwillingness to share the world with others unlike themselves. Fundamentalism is an excuse to oppress, torture and kill for those who derive satisfaction from such things. Jesus' own position is given by: "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2). In the end, that is, destruction will be confined to those who desire it for others. While the rest merely go about their normal business. Who live naturally according to the golden rule of liberal democracy: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31).
In the end it is a question of who will dominate: the proponents of modern morality, or the adherents of the old morality. The fundamental contest is not between this or that religion, but between moral evolution and regression. Every religion has its liberals and its fundamentalists, its tolerant and its intolerant. It is if we see the fundamentalists of the various religions rallying to a common cause in opposition to their liberal counterparts that we should worry. Liberals will naturally link up and cooperate. Fortunately, the fundamentalists of the world are a house divided against itself. But if they have ever each of them rid themselves of the liberals within their own ranks, their next step will be to go to war with each other until they or the last of their enemies are dead, or to wage war forever. It is difficult for those who cannot inhabit a world where people disagree with them, to thrive, though they can be replaced by more like themselves, lingering endlessly on the brink of destruction. The only way a society composed of such people can find stability is under tyranny. Which is why the harsh ruler is sometimes embraced. By forcibly preventing anyone from acting on their own initiative, he keeps a kind of peace, and is admired for his strength. All agreed in their admiration of his successful intolerance. The real danger here is the calm, pragmatic tyrant. The one who has a very nice, stable tyranny set up, thank you very much, and who only wants to enjoy it in perpetuity. While the fanatics will go to war against the rest of the world who disagrees with them without thought of consequences, he will not want to start a war he might lose, though he will happily sabre rattle from now till Kingdom come. He does not want to disrupt the stability and security of his kingdom but seeks rather to consolidate and complete it. The short lived fanatics only prepare the ground for such a ruler and he seems at first like a prince of peace. He will join hands with anyone who can help him. So that secular tyranny, theocracy of any breed, and cartel-run state will form an international alliance for mutual defence to protect each other's privileges, soberly defining each other's spheres of influence. Distinguished by their diverse rhetoric, they are bound by a common form, methods and goals. Reasonable tyrants accommodating of anyone not specifically in their way. Seeking a discreet and safe way to spread.
A jungle tribe composed of three people can implement a democracy, and two guys on a desert island exchanging coconuts can implement a free market. Democracy began in a cave when one guy turned to the other three and said: "What do the rest of you think we should do?" We call this act of coordination "leadership". There is not some special level of economic or cultural or technological development required. Only a faith and loyalty to the concept. It fails to eventuate only for the people who do not believe in it. Who fail to act in accordance with it for whatever reason. Tyranny is what comes to fill the void in the face of this failure. It is not something imposed otherwise. Tyranny comes when it is seen as the more plausible option. Tyranny tends to afflict those proud of their cynicism, as if scepticism and high ideals cannot coexist. Democracy is a high stakes, high risk act of trust in the essential goodness and common sense of ordinary people, when encouraged and permitted to flourish. Where this is absent, a strong paternal hand is thought to be the cure for people's waywardness. In this context, high ideals are used instead cynically, for the social manipulation of the untrustworthy masses. To such as these, releasing the people to do as they will in the simple hope that it will somehow all work out though no one can plan or predict how, is an invitation to chaos. So the society squanders its resources attempting to control what cannot be controlled, and neglects the one essential thing that government is properly for, to protect the people from the abuses of concentrated power. This is neglected because paternal hypocrisy cannot be separated from simple corruption. Creating the very horrors they are professing to cure. It is difficult to take seriously the good intentions of a government that prevents its citizens accessing information freely available in the outside world (that is, the world beyond its own borders). The government that fears a popular uprising if the people were to come into possession of information about it likely does not embody the will of the people. If the will of the people is what it honestly seeks to fulfil, their participation would assist more to that end than merely their ignorance of the government's enduring failure. But if a population has made some poor choices for national leadership in the past, and had more than its share of civil strife, the population itself may be reluctant to spin the wheel again. And so instead tolerate a current tyrant, the devil they know, who is not as bad as some others, and who is at least growing the economy soberly not just for themselves, or keeping the gangs on a leash. An impoverished and illiterate populace may be helpless. Once the middle class has grown and the people are educated, they can be trusted not to support another populist who will only return them to tyranny. But as the people grow richer, so does the State. The government goons in the pickup truck with AK-47s now have tanks, missiles, ministries and a network of cctv. And the only political education the people are getting is pro-government propaganda. Still, the nation with infrastructure: roads, energy, banks, schools, media, communications and hospitals, has a better chance of succeeding than the nation without these things. It might even have the sophistication to cross over in a bloodless revolution instead of civil war. That is something to see. Under such a circumstance, a benevolent foreign power plotting a premature regime change may not be welcomed.
As democratic principles seek to assert themselves in more nations, are we witnessing the last days of tyranny, tyranny's "last hurrah"? Or will it always be waiting in the wings to return whenever good becomes lax and complacent, however technologically advanced we become?
Over the course of these articles I have sought to show the commonalities among different religions, not necessarily to suggest that they were independently arrived at, because history is long (and a good story, like the flood, is hard to stop) and there has been much time for the spread of ideas, but to show that certain ideas have universal appeal. Placing more faith in what is common to all human religions than what is unique to one. As members of a church go out to find new recruits, they typically press what is unique about their particular brand of religion and frequently offer the threat that you will surely go to hell unless you join their church. Religion is a mirror held up to our mind. We see our love there, for better or worse. If the idea of a divine trinity gains popularity, people do not throw out their old religion and replace it with the religion where they got the idea; they will rearrange their existing gods into threes. The many aspects of the great serpent, and god's son, the protector of man, finds expression in local forms. The extent to which these commonalities exist is a topic of ongoing contention. What every religion offers is a vision that good is a universal force greater than any Earthly tyrant or catastrophe, and the suggestion that we should throw in our lot with that, to make the vision manifest.
To know right from wrong is no trivial matter, and certainty often eludes us. The danger of being wrong is a terrible and seemingly sometimes unavoidable and ever present threat. Learning right from wrong seems to be one of the primary tasks and challenges of human living, growth, maturation and evolution. If we cannot abide by our own developing moral compass, then it is pointless for us to have one. We can forsake our knowledge of good and evil and accept what others tell us, abandoning our own moral consciousness, Eve's gift to us; and put the apple quietly back on the tree as if nothing has happened.
The value of believing in a monotheistic god is subtle. It is firstly a unifying principle. A pantheon of more or less equivalent deities who vie with each other for dominance seem to represent a kind of pointless and bland existence. What do they do: have barbeques? If we suggest these deities work harmoniously together then they begin to take on the role of organs in a greater whole, and we are moving toward monotheism again. It has been suggested that the natural inclination of reason is to organise disparate particulars into unities. In religion it begins when the pantheon of individually emerging gods are arranged into families, stories and roles; and ends when they dissolve into a single monotheistic entity; as the multitude of disparate physical laws seek to be woven into an all-encompassing "Theory of Everything" (TOE).
God is necessary as a unifying TOE, if such a theory is necessary. No theory of Physics can be a true TOE because it necessarily leaves out much of what exists, everything that does not come under the heading of "physics", most notably people. A true TOE must take account of consciousness, psychology, society and history. This it the role served by a monotheistic God who contains all of this in Himself (or Herself).
A state of being, such as Nirvana does not serve this function. A state of being is incomplete. It requires something to experience that state. If we place ourselves into that state, then all we have is ourselves experiencing a state, and the state is trivialised. If we place another entity into that state and require that entity to be something more than ourselves, then we have returned to Theism. If we say that we become something more by virtue of entering into the state then we become something other than ourselves, and effectively dissolve into that otherness, effectively ceasing to be. The significance of Nirvana for the person who wants to attain it is that it is in some sense a desirable, pleasurable state. Profundity and awe are still a kind of pleasure, a fascination, excitement. For all the talk of freeing one's self of desire, if we do not get something good out of Nirvana then what is the point of it? It becomes so much psycho-babble, philosophical double-talk. We are asked to take on faith that Nirvana is desirable, and we will understand when we are enlightened.
Nirvana does not give the impression of being a social environment. Dissolution into a formless oneness in the end sounds boring and lonely, whatever assertions are made to the contrary. It sounds like nothing to do. Perhaps it is the dream of being God, the centre of the universe, of conjuring worlds by your own will, and populating them with beings and being their God, or entering into their midst and becoming one of them again, perhaps forsaking your godhood, returning to the wheel of life to escape the boredom and futility of Nirvana and omnipotence. Perhaps it is the dream of the passive recipient of perfect entertainment, inert and immobile before a mystic television set delivering the universe into your mind in all its varied intensity. Activity in which you have no stake and no part. Or perhaps you may play the role of guide for souls, leading them to Nirvana, according to your knowledge of its principles, inviting them all over to watch your awesome tv, all plugged in together to a narcotic drip of eternal ecstasy. In the end, a Christian's union with God and a Buddhist's arrival at Nirvana might not be so different, if we suggest union with God as an end state. In the article On Happiness we considered the prerequisites for happiness, and found that they depended in turn on the prerequisites for meaning, and that these were undermined in the face of a final state of being. Of course we cannot imagine the nature of true enlightenment, and it may be that this state is self sufficient, and the state that God is in, and available to us on becoming God, or one with God, the first one there, perhaps, in perfect stasis. It may be that in resolving the various antinomies of reason in "eternity", where "one" and "many" are the same, the beginning and the end are one, and the journey and the destination are one, stasis and activity equivalent, it also removes from the equation of happiness the need to act. It could be that Theism is simply the long way around. That the journey toward God is not eternal, but has an ending in eternity. That ideals and limits are ultimately achievable because god achieves them. If there is nothing separating the god without from the god within, an entity from a state of being. Are we only arguing over partial descriptions of the same thing? Me + my experience is already a duality. Ultimately the same striving for unity that posits the monotheistic god, also posits the dissolution of I and thou. I guess it all comes down to your tolerance for sitting cross-legged for long periods of time. It depends on whether we trust that enlightened mystics are experiencing the metaphysical wonders they claim to be. Whether we think that sitting on our ass alone is what will get us there.
A statement like "all is one" can be interpreted in a number of ways. If it means everything is connected, that is a nice idea, and consistent with what science seems to be telling us. If it means that everything we actually experience is illusion, maya, and that reality is actually one single homogenous unit with no internal distinctions, then that unit is alone and inert; and this is inconsistent with everything we experience or can experience, and is not an attractive idea. If we say: "we are god", this might mean we are like god ("in God's image") and with a potential to become ever more like god. We might say that we are one because we are in Him and He is in us. Or we might assert that we are numerically identical to God. There is not two or more entities, but only one. Not a connected multitude, but a single, solitary entity.
The appeal of Theistic religion is that it is a social sphere, care of perhaps a projected other. Interesting people to meet, things to see, places to go, things to do. Not a world conjured out of your own mind, but from that of some great author. The importance of the other is to take us out of ourselves into a greater world, and to share the experience, the journey, with others. If god was alone and wanted not to be, it would not be enough merely to create other people, he would also create god as an other, as an infinite limit. If Nirvana is social, and we are all floating there together in limbo, then we must think up something to do, like a bunch of people stuck indoors on a rainy day, because there is only us and a limbo responding to our will. A board game anyone? An orgy? The cost of Theistic religion is that it is a world where people have jobs. Nirvana is a product of people's desire not to have a job.
The Nirvana concept might also be applied within the context of monotheistic religion. Some people's conception of an afterlife appears to be a kind of bodiless limbo of communion with God. How exactly they imagine that communion to be is up to them. For these too perhaps the communion is imagined to be identity. It might also be imagined as a kind of ecstatic state: just you and God, or as some kind of telepathic communion with a God loving multitude.
If we imagine that god may not be good, he fails to serve the function for which he was originally posited. This can seem to lead inexorably toward the conclusion that he probably does not exist at all, or if he does, that he is merely some accidental by product of some cosmic nature. A potentially sinful god who might himself require redemption. The psychologist Carl Jung suggested that if god was conscious he would not need us. Thus for him, god was the great "collective unconscious", emerging out of unconsciousness with us.
Aside from a unifying principle god's primary function is to serve as an intellectual and moral ideal. In the article On Happiness it was suggested that it was not enough that we could potentially live forever, we also required a universe that could hold our interest for eternity. If there is no single great god over all, there is nothing to guarantee such a universe. Although the universe might hold the potential for infinite variation and possibility, these possibilities hold the danger of falling either into a few broad and predictable classes, or a more or less meaningless chaos, or a bit of both, such as the universe appears when we are not enamoured with it. A ruling pantheon of gods have nothing in particular to do. The proposition of a monotheistic god is that of a unified being amazing enough to give rise to an organised universe amazing enough to surprise and fascinate us for eternity by expressing unlimited infinite potential. What does the martyr do when he has been through his 70 virgins after only the first 4 or 5 months of the afterlife, and none of them are virgins any more and he still has the rest of eternity ahead of him?
The monotheistic god suggests the odd notion of a lonely god who might create creatures just to keep him company. The pantheon with the Most High god at the apex resolves this by positing a divine family. But when the upper few tiers of the pantheon are claimed to have ambiguous distinctness; that is, when the claim is made that they are really aspects of a single being, such as the Christian trinity or the interchangeable Hindu gods, the distinction between one and many dissolves into the mystery of God. God serves not only as an ideal being, but as an ideal society and universe. The universe is made out of the body of god where his organs serve as parts of society. This in turn suggests the somewhat creepy prospect that we are all destined to dissolve eventually into some kind of shared consciousness like the Borg, but we need not go to this length. The place of the individual in society is already a unity poised within a plurality, which plurality is itself a unity within something else. In fact everything that exists is in some sense a sub-whole of something larger rather than a unity in an absolute sense. Not only is it true that "no man is an island" (from "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" by John Donne (1624)), but neither is anything else. We find the same kind of entanglement in quantum physics. The philosopher Arthur Koestler in his book "The Ghost in the Machine" (1967) referred to such an entity as a "holon" (p.48). The perfect god might arise out of the inherent harmony of nature. Rather we have a kind of telepathic unity where the individual continues to exist, but is not alone, being immersed in some deep and profound communion with other beings, a kind of epic creative harmony.
God serves as an ideal, a point on the horizon or at zenith. He provides somewhere for the individual and society to purposefully go. He is keeper of the secret we cannot know because it will spoil the story. A purpose that must remain unknown and only trust the author that it is grand beyond anything we can imagine or know ourselves. Some refer to this as "a plan", though others dislike this prospect, thinking that it smacks of a limiting predestination, or a contrived and futile game. But we might suggest that such a "plan" is only defined in its broad strokes, such as described in the "Perfection" section above. For instance, we are predestined to begin as children, and if lucky, to grow to maturity and finally old age. But what we do during those predestined phases of being is up to us. So too with the phases of our future, eternal evolution. For some "the plan" is a fascinating story that we are all a part of, everyone a main character in their own story, created by a master story teller. Believing in God means believing in the plan for us. They interrogate events for signs of a plot. Providing a destination in eternity and infinity that can be forever approached and never reached, as the individual and society approaches god by becoming ever more like him: the divine hero. Not a contrived and arbitrary story, but one which is really the unfolding and discovery of reality and its potentials. The discovery of reality and the discovery of God being one and the same since He encompasses all, and the discovery of ourselves and each other as His image. In these scenarios god is the servant of man rather than the other way, the perfect parent from the point of view of the child, except for everything bad that happens. Others prefer to think they are making up their own story, in territory uncharted by any pre-existing entity, and seek the infinite potential within themselves, the sleeping god within themselves.
Nirvana provides no such ideal, ultimately amounting to little more than a weekend or holiday when you've had enough and want to get off of the working weekday treadmill of the (hamster) wheel of life. Then when you get bored of Nirvana you jump back on the wheel for another turn. But the religion of the Most High Buddha does provide such an ideal, like that of any other Most High god, the Buddha who is not us but some awesome other. Not the hallucinogen fuelled adolescent who believes himself or herself to be an enlightened "old soul", who after millions of years of existence on and off the wheel of life, can still think of nothing better to do with their time than text his or her friend his or her latest inane thought.
This is not meant to imply that a moral ideal cannot exist in the absence of a god concept. A hero is a moral ideal, as are people we admire, or the ideal we aspire to ourselves of the kind of person we want to be. But these are partial representations. The god concept is the notion of a moral ideal taken to its ultimate conclusion, so to speak. If the achievement of moral ideals is the goal of evolution, what is the end result if not a celestial kingdom of angels: innocent as doves and wise as serpents?
People often do not like the moralising character of the theistic, and particularly the monotheistic religions, seeing it as an unnecessary infringement of their lives. But moral questions are the problems of living in the real world among other human beings. Theistic religions attempt to address the issues of the here and now. To whatever extent reality may be an illusion, it is not just an illusion, a mistake to be escaped. It is the venue within which we live our lives with others. To whatever extent we might disagree on the answers to moral questions, we do not do ourselves a favour by ignoring or avoiding the questions. Or imagining that one's own actions or inaction has no impact on others because they are "on their own path" and in a reality manufactured by themselves. If everything is an illusion, nothing really matters. In monotheism, things matter a great deal. Everything is heavy with importance. The liberty and boredom of inconsequence is replaced by the burden and angst of consequence. Reality is by definition a shared venue of complex interactions. A machine like karma cannot serve as a moral ideal. Our moral ideal must at the very least be human, and should be much more, more human than human. So that our moral ideal is a personality, a divine person. If we reform our concept of "righteousness", replacing the old self-righteous conservatism with modern liberalism, the concept of a righteous god becomes a powerful assist to civilization. Over the years, Buddha has evolved into a god, and Buddhism into a religion as it attempts to address the problems of living, but the personality and intent of Buddha remains unclear. It is easy to assert that such attributions as personality and intent are meaningless in relation to Buddha, but what sense is there in the suggestion that we should pursue a vacuum of meaning? Which no doubt suggests a retort prescribing non-attachment to meaning, and so on.
There is something incoherent in attempting to turn Buddhism into a religion because its most high god is just some guy who lived 2500 years ago. This raises the question of what was the state of affairs before Buddha lived. Buddhism amounts to ancestor worship, like Shinto. It operates on the idea that the dead go to some other world where they attain supernatural powers that may enable them to influence events in this world, or at least to provide assistance to you when you reach that other world. In ancestor worship, the "gods" are merely the spirits who crossed over before you. Like the Catholic saints. The assumption seems to be that the most ancient spirits will have the most supernatural power, having lived there the longest. So the most high god might be the first man who lived, the Adam. Or if we assume the existence of other worlds with people on them, then the first person to cross over on any of the worlds.
This hypothesis, while not illogical, depends upon the supernatural world providing an appropriate venue for human existence and further development, much as material nature does. We might attribute this fortuitous state of affairs to coincidence, or perhaps some spiritual equivalent to natural evolution: supernatural evolution, and a corresponding spiritual anthropic principle. It lacks the unifying concept of a universal god, and turns the afterlife effectively into just another natural world where beings competitively strive to eke out an existence. What Buddhism introduces over ancestor worship is meditation. It suggests that continued conscious existence in the other world is not automatic but depends upon being "enlightened". When the unenlightended person crosses over, their spirit enters a kind of temporary dream and ends up back in the material world, reincarnated perhaps as a turtle or a woman. Only the enlightened remain in the afterlife to experience nirvana. As the first enlightened soul, Buddha rules in heaven, so to speak. This means that reaching heaven depends upon becoming enlightened, and therefore becoming Buddhist.
Tibetan priests recite the Tibetan "Book of the Dead" over the body of the deceased to help guide them to the light of Nirvana, or at least an improved reincarnation. This treats the other side, the spiritual world, as a kind of jungle. An uncivilised realm where the only guidance comes from the faint voice of a priest on this side. It is also the rationale behind the community paying to support a priesthood. If the spiritual world is populated by ancient spirit beings, everyone who has ever died anywhere in the universe. It should be a city not a jungle. There should be ample guidance on that side, from beings infinitely more qualified to be giving it. The Egyptian Book of the Dead served a similar function, and so does the spiritual medium in general.
While Buddhism has much to recommend it, its varied manifestations and earnest worship of the almighty Buddha represents a striving toward religion rather than an already defined religion. But through the simple act of disassociating the concept of the Most High Buddha from the human prince Siddhartha, it would complete the transition and join the world's religions. The Most High Buddha has already taken up residence in the hearts of many Buddhists, he lacks only official doctrinal sanction. My goal here is not to talk those attached to the Nirvana concept out of such attachment, but rather to explain the appeal of monotheism to those who do not feel it.
"Buddhism in its original form is one of the best religions without a God which has arisen...."
(The Urantia Book 103:9.3)
Monotheism does not preclude that there be a "dark side" to god, but only requires that the dark side serve an organic function within the whole that is ultimately good, as Jewish Kabbalism or the book of Job, or the Hindu Shiva perhaps suggest. But neither does this dark side necessitate a universal devil or Ahriman (as in Zoroastrianism). That is, it does not literally need to suggest an evil deity with powers of universal scope contending with the Most High god for the souls of His creatures. The idea of a universal Devil is at odds with the premise of monotheism, though monotheism can accommodate any number of local devils, natural or supernatural. The universal Devil is a pantheistic concept. It is Odin versus Loki. There is a substantial difference between a god who is a symbol or a metaphor, and a God who is. Whether a Buddhist meditational deity behind which is a mere man, or a Hindu deity behind which is a principle or a process.
The one great pitfall of monotheistic religion over pantheistic is that it replaces many opinions with one. It encourages the view that there is one right way of doing things, whereas a pantheon naturally acts as a community where differing opinions must be accommodated. A pantheon offers a model of a community, whereas the absolutism of monotheistic religion models the all-powerful unquestioned king who defines right and wrong for everyone. Pantheons may have their most high god, but he or she does not always get his or her way, and his or her position may not be secure. While this is a pitfall of monotheistic religion it is not a fatal one. Rather it means we need to be more careful in terms of what views we attribute to such a deity. In the pantheon we leave it to the de facto natural status quo arrived at through contrary opinions cancelling each other out. In monotheism we must imbue God with an innate and intentional tolerance and compassion.
This completes our consideration of the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible. In the next article we look at ideas about Heaven and Hell (not yet posted).
Any comments welcome.
What kind of God is Yahweh?
In the article: In the Beginning: Water - Part 1, we learned about a variety of typical elements and themes in religions from around the world and down through the ages. From that point of view, what kind of a god is the Hebrew Yahweh (יהוה)? The god of the Old Testament. The god of Judaism. The Jewish name for God. In popular culture God is sometimes represented as apt to strike people down with lightning for wrongdoing. This would be typical of a storm god, such as Zeus/Jupiter who wielded the thunderbolt. |
| "Jupiter of Smyrna" c.250 AD |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
We saw that storm gods were a common feature of ancient religions. We might for instance see similar representations of the Mesopotamian god Hadad (Adad, Haddad) also known as Iškur (Sumerian).
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Assyrian soldiers of Ashurbanipal carrying a statue of Adad (also known as Ramman ("Thunderer")),
the god of tempest and thunder.
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(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadad
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The name of the Sumerian god Enlil means "Lord Storm". Below we see Enlil's son Ninurta chasing the monster Anzû with raised hands holding thunderbolts.
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| Depiction of Anzu pursued by Ninurta, palace relief, Nineveh |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninurta
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
So too the Canaanite gob Baal wields the thunderbolt.
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"Stele of Baal with Thunderbolt",
15th-13th century BC
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(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The Hittite weather god who wielded the thunderbolt was called Teshub.
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The Hittite weather-god wielding a thunderbolt and an axe.
Bas-relief at Ivriz
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(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teshub
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
In Norse mythology Thor is the god of thunder and lightning. The Celtic god of thunder who wielded the thunderbolt was called Taranis. The Baltic god of thunder is called Perkūnas. The Slavic god of thunder and lightning is called Perun.
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| "Thor's Fight with the Giants", by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
In Hinduism, Indra is the god of lightning, thunder, storms, rains and river flows. In the image below, Indra holds the Vajra (thunderbolt) in his raised right hand.
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| Hindu god Indra wields the Vajra (thunderbolt), photograph provided to Wikipedia by Nomu420 |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra
where it is available for use on condition that photographer is credited.)
where it is available for use on condition that photographer is credited.)
In Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism a "Mahasiddha" is a tantric master. There are eighty-four Mahasiddhas, of which one is called Ghantapa (the "Celibate Bell-Ringer"). Below we see a statue of the (celibate?) Mahasiddha Ghantapa. In his raised right hand he holds a Vajra, and in his left hand he holds a bell, ringing it no doubt.
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"The Mahasiddha Ghantapa", Tibet Gilded Brass (c.1600-1700),
photograph provided to Wikipedia by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra
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(This image is taken from https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghanta
where it is available for use on condition that photographer is credited.)
where it is available for use on condition that photographer is credited.)
In Chinese mythology, Leigong (雷公) is "Lord of Thunder". His wife Dianmu (電母), also called "Leizi", is "Mother of Lightning". The Mayan rain deity Chaac wielded a "lightning axe".
Yahweh's storm god and lightning wielding powers appear occasionally in the Bible.
"When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground." (Exodus 9:23)
"On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain." (Exodus 19:16-17)
"He made darkness his canopy around him—the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded." (2 Samuel 22:12-14, see also Psalm 18:11-13)
"He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind. Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders from his pavilion? See how he scatters his lightning about him, bathing the depths of the sea. This is the way he governs the nations and provides food in abundance. He fills his hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark. His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach. At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place. Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding." (Job 36:27-37:5)
"The clouds poured down water, the heavens resounded with thunder; your arrows flashed back and forth. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked." (Psalm 77:17-18)
"He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet. He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning." (Psalm 78:47-48, see also Psalm 105:32-33)
"Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles." (Psalm 97:2-4)
"He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses." (Psalm 135:7, see also Jeremiah 10:13, 51:15)
"Part your heavens, Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, so that they smoke. Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy; shoot your arrows and rout them." (Psalm 144:5-6)
"Then the Lord will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning. The Sovereign Lord will sound the trumpet; he will march in the storms of the south, and the Lord Almighty will shield them." (Zechariah 9:14-15)
A vision of the prophet Ezekiel continue the storm god imagery, but in place of God are other supernatural creatures.
"I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures.... Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning." (Ezekiel 1:4-14)
Daniel's vision of a supernatural being describes "his face like lightning" (Daniel 10:6), seeming to mean a bright white light. In the New Testament, an angel visits Jesus' tomb and is described in a similar way.
"There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow." (Matthew 28:2-3, see also Luke 24:4)
At another time, well before the crucifixion, Jesus' disciples have a supernatural experience usually referred to as "the transfiguration".
"About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him." (Luke 9:28-32)
Lightning imagery also appears in the Book of Revelation (11:19 and 16:18). What is it about the storm god that has had such appeal? Perhaps it is the ease with which we attribute emotion to it. The sun is a natural god, whose arising each morning is welcomed with grateful relief. But the sun is stable, divine, inhuman, like the sky and the stars and the seasons. The storm has a will of its own. It is angered. It is calmed. It rises like passion and subsides like compassion. It trembles and bellows and is chaotic. The storm is a god for humans. He is one of us, and so perhaps he understands us, and so he might be called on to intercede on our behalf in the face of the abstract gods: the empty sky, the endless night, or death. We have seen that religious imagery tends to overlap. Perhaps more so than a god of the storm, Yahweh is the god of fire and brimstone. When the Jews were led out of Egypt by Moses and wandered in the desert, they apparently walked toward an erupting volcano.
"By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light ..." (Exodus 13:21)
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"He led them by a pillar of cloud",
illustration from a Bible card published between 1896 and 1913
by the Providence Lithograph Company
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(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bible_cards
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
When the tribe of Israel reached the volcano, Moses went up the mountain and obtained the Ten Commandments.
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| "The Ten Commandments", illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bible_cards
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
"... they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain.... The Lord said to Moses, 'I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.'... On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled.... Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently." (Exodus 19:2-18)
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| "Moses on Mount Sinai", by Jean-Léon Gérôme (c. 1895-1900) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mount_Sinai_in_art
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
To understand the spell initially cast by Yahweh, an image search on "volcanic lightning" is well worth doing. When Yahweh destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah it was apparently in a volcanic eruption.
"Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace." (Genesis 19:24-28)
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| "Destruction of Sodom", from "The Phillip Medhurst Collection" |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sodom_burning
where it is available for use on condition that source is credited.)
where it is available for use on condition that source is credited.)
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| "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" by John Martin (1852) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sodom_burning
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
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| "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" again by John Martin (1852) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sodom_burning
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
So too, while Moses had the Israelites camped at the base of the Sinai volcano, two of the newly appointed priesthood made an error in a ritual and were consumed by divine fire.
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"The Sin of Nadab and Abihu",
illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company
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(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nadab_and_Abihu
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. (Leviticus 10:1-2)
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"Aaron's Sons, Nadab and Abihu, Destroyed by Fire",
engraving by Matthäus Merian (1625-1630)
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(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nadab_and_Abihu
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Some of the Israelites made the mistake of complaining in the hearing of the Lord.
"Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down." (Numbers 11:1-2)
Others "became insolent and rose up against Moses".
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Say to the assembly, "Move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram."' ... So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing with their wives, children and little ones at the entrances to their tents ... the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households, and all those associated with Korah, together with their possessions. They went down alive into the realm of the dead, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, “The earth is going to swallow us too!” And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.'" (Numbers 16:23-35)
"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." (Deuteronomy 4:24)
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"The Wicked Being Swallowed Up in the Ground",
from "Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us", by Charles Foster,
illustrated by Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1897) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bible_Pictures_with_brief_descriptions_by_Charles_Foster
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
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"The Death of Korah, Dathan and Abiram",
by Gustave Doré (1865)
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(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dore_Death_of_Korah,_Dathan_and_Abiram.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
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| "Destruction of Korah Dathan and Abiram", illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holman_Destruction_of_Korah_Dathan_and_Abiram.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Moses' vision of the burning bush (Exodus 3) was also on the Sinai volcano (there called Mount "Horeb"), where he was instructed: "When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." (Exodus 3:12)
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| "Moses Sees a Fire Burning in a Bush", from "Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us", by Charles Foster, illustrated by Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1897) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bible_Pictures_with_brief_descriptions_by_Charles_Foster
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The fire references are too numerous to attempt to list. Yahweh demanded offerings of burnt animal flesh and the holy altar of the Israelites was regularly drenched with the blood of thousands of sacrificed animals.
"Take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar." (Exodus 29:12)
See also Exodus 24:6, 29:16-21; Leviticus 1:5,11,15, 3:2,8,13, 4:7,18,25,30,34, 5:9, 7:2,14, 8:15,19,24, 9:9,12,18, 16:18, 17:6,11; Numbers 18:17; Deuteronomy 12:27; and so on. So that the themes of blood sacrifice and incineration were an abiding part of the worship of Yahweh.
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"Altar of incense, altar of burned offering and the laver",
illustration from "The story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation" (1873)
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(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_temple_items
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
There is a more positive way to interpret the burnt offering. That is to compare it to the Sunday roast. It is not unusual to offer food on altars to the god(s): fruit, rice; or incense; pleasing tastes and aromas. But the horned Jewish altar of blood and fire does not convey this impression. There are occasional instances of imagery that might be interpreted as that of a sun god. These are sparse, more often figurative than literal, and regarding light rather than explicitly sunshine.
"When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them." (Job 29:24)
"Let the light of your face shine on us." (Psalm 4:6)
"It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them." (Psalm 44:3)
"You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light." (2 Samuel 22:29)
"he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth" (2 Samuel 23:4)
"and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage" (Ezra 9:8)
"There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its ways or stay in its paths." (Job 24:13)
"by his light I walked through darkness" (Job 29:3)
"Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death" (Psalm 13:3)
"The Lord is my light and my salvation" (Psalm 27:1)
"in your light we see light" (Psalm 36:9)
"Send me your light" (Psalm 43:3)
"You are radiant with light, more majestic than mountains rich with game." (Psalm 76:4)
"Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord." (Psalm 89:15)
"The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment" (Psalm 104:2)
"The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine on us." (Psalm 118:27)
"let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Isaiah 2:5)
"your light will break forth like the dawn" (Isaiah 58:8)
"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn." (Isaiah 60:3)
"the Lord will be your everlasting light" (Isaiah 60:20)
"His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light." (Matthew 17:2)
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
The Judeo-Christian Bible has some beautiful and some sublime moments, as well as some truly barbarous material. There is also a historical development and evolution, from the 5 books of Moses, through the prophets and psalms, and the book of Job, to the New Testament. In the article: In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 we encountered the idea of evolutionary religion. That religion is partly a creation of the biological creature in response to its environment, but grafted onto this at intervals are divine revelations that use the existing evolutionary religion as its foundation, and which in turn accrue folk traditions. In this model, religion is partly handed down from on high, received from deity, and is partly manufactured by human beings. Deity makes periodic adjustments to the creature religion, but also to some extent respects it. Human beings are permitted to participate and to some extent define religion, so that the result is a team effort by God and Man. When people begin to feel their religion is out of date, new revelations or folk beliefs emerge that modify the existing religion, or whole new religions appear. Every old religion was at one time new. So that loyalty to old religion is not the same as loyalty to religion. But it is often the old religions that illicit the greatest loyalty because the possibility of evidence for or against them is long gone, and it is somehow easier to believe in miracles occurring long ago. The old religions also have the advantage of an already existing body of supporters, and may be seen as in some sense having "withstood the test of time". When trying to decide what to believe in circumstances where evidence is lacking, there can seem some security, or at least companionship, in joining the established traditions.
In the Urantia Book section of the article: In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 we saw represented a divine hierarchy of beings consisting of names familiar from the Abrahamic religions of the Middle East. The following comment is made in The Urantia Book.
"In recording the names of these beings of the spiritual world, we are confronted with the problem of translating into your tongue, and very often it is exceedingly difficult to render a satisfactory translation. We dislike to use arbitrary designations which would be meaningless to you; hence we often find it difficult to choose a suitable name, one which will be clear to you and at the same time be somewhat representative of the original."
(The Urantia Book, 18:4.3)
The Urantia Book appears then to map its divine beings to their closest approximation among certain selected religions of Earth. So we might ask, if Jesus is who he seems to say he is, why did he choose to be born in Israel during the reign of Rome? Does it mean that Judaism was the one true religion on Earth at that time, and he came to provide the next instalment in that testament? Or was it rather the best approximation on Earth at the time, of true religion, or had some key or pivotal elements required for the next leap in religious evolution? Regardless of the virtues of the other religions, it's difficult to treat Thor or Vishnu with quite the same seriousness as the Jewish Yahweh. The Middle East resides at the cross roads between North Africa, Europe and Asia. As such, knowledge from all these regions has tended to pass through it, and in turn to be disseminated from it. The Middle East was therefore a pivotal location. The great virtue of Judaism at the time was how its concept of God had evolved.
"And thus the successive teachers of Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be effected on [Earth]: the gradual but continuous transformation of the barbaric concept of the savage demon Yahweh, the jealous and cruel spirit god of the fulminating Sinai volcano, to the later exalted and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh, creator of all things and the loving and merciful Father of all mankind."
(Urantia Book: 97:10.8)
The great virtue of the Jewish religion is that it stripped religion down to its essentials and clarified its key point, the one god above all and His love for his creatures. It stripped away the pantheon of the hundred and one gods and goddesses and the soap-opera of their feuds and alliances. It removed the sacred grove, tree, rock, lake, mountain, that made it so that you could not take a hundred paces in any direction without stumbling onto something sacred to someone. It stripped away all the rituals special to every individual god or spirit, and the magical amulets and spells. It stripped away the power of the sorcerer and the awful dread caused by multiplying superstitions that told you, for instance, that you would die if a black cat crossed your path on a Tuesday after breaking a mirror. But in the process it demonised all these things, and replaced a rich and sensuous pantheistic culture with a cultural and spiritual austerity that has become the basis of the modern world. Perhaps it needed to happen that way. But now that the most high god is secure in his place, and science has displaced superstition, we might ease the grip of austerity and permit a grand synthesis of the world's religions such as the Romans once attempted. Valuing what they have in common more than what distinguishes them, and reappraise the incredibly rich religious culture of the people of planet Earth.
I have suggested that we are free to choose a God of our liking and to interpret Him in a way to our liking. But this freedom also has its limitations. It is easy to disregard the Old Testament, and in disregarding it to feel free to make up our own rules. We have even rationalised a way to do the same with the Apostle Paul. But the limitation inherent in choosing any god is that it requires choosing some god. Once we've made that choice and started to accumulate our interpretations we increasingly bind ourselves to a particular god and interpretation. If we disregard too much, what basis do we have for accepting the remainder? What plausibility can we attribute to it? To avoid incoherence and hypocrisy, or a religion void of content, this god, this ideal, will inevitably begin to make demands. Having reached the limit of adapting religion to our desires, we will need for the remainder to adapt ourselves to it, to what emerges, to meet it half way, more or less. Having found something worthy of the cost. Having gone some way to formulating your religion, you are now in a position to "seek" evidence of it. If the assurance: "seek and you will find" (Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9) is true, you have reason to be optimistic. If we can find no evidence for our chosen religion it will simply evaporate after a time, unable to sustain belief. Without some manner of evidence to support your religious views, you cannot be satisfied.... But more than that: how cool would it be to find such evidence? If human beings have a common desire, there should be a religion that corresponds to this. This finds not only god, but humanity. It is here that religion begins to take on an objective quality, and why over time different religions start to say the same things.
"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
(Matthew 7:9-11)
The suggestion to "seek" would seem unnecessary if we were expected to simply accept without question the religion handed to us by our immediate environment. Seeking implies inquisitiveness. "Ask and it will be given to you" is not the same sentiment as: "Just accept what you are given." The religious quest begins with us and our own desire. Swallowing hook, line and sinker the first religion we encounter, or the first version of that religion, sells us short. If your quest leads you ultimately to the religion of your forefathers, it will not be a wasted trip.
Whatever his credibility, Jesus is less easy to disregard because he seems reasonable when unwoven from Paul's views. His excesses are not primitive and harsh, but seem rather like too idealistic an expectation of human nature, and then he permits us to fall short of that standard. No one talks quite like Jesus, which of itself seems fitting. He is persistently gentle and seems focused on an alien vision of what society is supposed to be. In a world that had the Emperors Caligula and Nero, the Middle Ages and eventually the World Wars and who knows what else still in its future, armies rising like tides to march across the countryside to pillage, murder and rape; Jesus is talking about what to do if someone slaps your cheek, or tries to take your coat. It almost seems irrelevant. But seems aimed to nip the problem in the bud so to speak, before it escalates out of control, avoiding violence where possible; through an ideal of civility. Yet he warns occasionally of destruction, so his paradigm is not free of consequence. For Jesus, destruction awaits the "tree that does not bear good fruit" (Matthew 3:10, 7:19, Luke 3:9; compare also Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17), the person who is good for nothing. The kind of world in which his ideals will work is not the world we live in, but the world we aspire to, and those most sincerely following his ideals seem to end up going under the wheels of the train more often than not, as he says: like lambs among wolves (Luke 10:3): just as he did himself. So those who claim to follow him mostly scale down his ideas to implement them.
"Aim small, miss small. If you aim for his shirt button, you might miss by two inches. If you aim for his shirt, you miss by two feet" (from the movie "American Sniper" (2014)). Jesus set a pin point in the future, on the horizon. A far distant principle, a guiding star or light several steps removed from whatever it is we think we should be doing now. For millennia that ideal has dramatically failed to manifest, regardless of professed religious convictions or lack thereof, and while society has yet progressed in leaps and bounds. That pinpoint is there unchanged still for all to see ("like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other" (Luke 17:24)), visible regardless of the shit and turmoil around us; and even from the calm void of consumerism. A few are fixed intently on that point, while the rest wander all over, maybe glancing over at it occasionally to check where they have ended up and how to get back on track.
Islam is younger than Christianity, and very much younger than Judaism, so that it lacks some of the barbaric elements of the Old Testament, nevertheless, in an environment already exposed to Christian ideals, having arisen in the Middle East 500 years after Christ, Islam was an anachronism the day it was born. It offers a monotheistic religion to those who have reason to resent Christianity, due to the sins committed by Christians over the years. Sins currently being repeated by radical Islam. The two religions share many ideals.
"to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess [i.e., slaves]." (Quran 4:36)
"And the retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it, but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation - his reward is from Allah." (Quran 42:40)
"And not equal are the good deed and the bad. Repel by that which is better; and thereupon the one whom between you and him is enmity as though he was a devoted friend." (Quran 41:34)
As in the case of Christianity, it is sometimes difficult to see the ideals of the religion itself, in the practice of some of its most vocal and visible self-proclaimed adherents. Peaceful coexistence rarely making the news. If "God" and "Allah" are two different words referring to the same entity, Christianity can be judged independently of Christians. If Christ came from God, he should be heard in that light, not as coming from Christians. Whether he is a mere messenger or more. What he is, you can judge for yourself based on his words. Human beings do not get to decide religious truth based solely on petty and parochial cultural considerations, treating the word of God as if it is something they own, rejecting every religion but "their own", as if God speaks to them alone. Some religions are better than others, but none has a monopoly on truth.
"The many religions ... are all good to the extent that they bring man to God and bring the realization of the Father to man. It is a fallacy for any group of religionists to conceive of their creed as The Truth; such attitudes bespeak more of theological arrogance than of certainty of faith. There is not a ... religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth. Religionists would do better to borrow the best in their neighbors’ living spiritual faith rather than to denounce the worst in their lingering superstitions and outworn rituals."
(The Urantia Book 92:7.3)
Is God Good?
How do we determine if God is good? Are we allowed to ask such a question, or is it sacrilege and a terrible sin to do so? In democracies we are in the habit of questioning the legitimacy of authority, and even feel entitled to choose our rulers, expecting them to do what we want instead of our existence being for their benefit. Our role only to worship and obey them. In Western societies children are permitted to question their parents, and a parent tends to the wellbeing of the child, rather than the child born to look after the parent in their old age, and to bring honour to the family, in respectful and unquestioning obedience. We consider tolerance for criticism a sign of civilisation, and murderous outrage in the face of criticism a sign of egocentric barbarism.Our leaders, our parents, our God, are expected to stand up to such questioning and scrutiny. Either their actions are shown to be right, or those actions must be otherwise. It is assumed that if God exists, He must be good. The challenge is how to reconcile this assumption with evidence seeming to the contrary. We assume that if He seems not to be good, it must be either because there is something we do not yet understand, some way in which what seems bad is actually good, or we might assume there is something wrong in the way that God has been presented to us.
Logically, there is no particular reason why God must be good. We do not know how God comes to be. Is He the result of some process of evolution, or merely always existent, perhaps somehow necessarily existent? In either case, it seems as likely or unlikely to exist one way as another, in one form or another, as good, bad or indifferent like the universe itself. But we have an intuition and revelation affirming the goodness of God. But what means do we have to determine this? We have simple trust of course, simple faith. In the end, the thought that God is not good is too terrible a prospect to contemplate. In that case it would be better that he simply not exist, and we will take our chances with pure materialism. If He wants to enslave and torment us for all eternity there is presumably nothing we could do about it. So perhaps there is the same inclination as with any powerful and terrifying tyrant or bully, we interpret as good whatever they say is good, to keep on their good side, and we keep our heads down in obedience and pray they will not hurt us, ignoring those around us who are being cast into hell, accepting such a fate as deserved, or at least the way of things.
"Have I displeased you, you feckless thug?"
(The West Wing, "Two Cathedrals" (2001), see the article: On Happiness)
But what means do we have to judge the goodness of God? If the authorities and the texts say He is good, do we just accept that? If there are different texts and different authorities saying different things, different religions, do we just accept the one we were born into, the one believed by our neighbours and assume that is the true one while all the others are false, and go to war to destroy those who call god by other names? Do we have any way to know good from evil?
An intuition of what is right might be implanted supernaturally by a divine Spirit of Truth, or may be a product of natural and social evolution, or only wishful thinking. Can we use that individual sense of right as a judge of written religious revelation? It might be suggested that revealed doctrine is an antidote to the waywardness and unreliability of natural intuition. We want anyone to be let off the hook for anything we would want to be let off the hook for. So that our inner compass is lax and hypocritical. Cruel to our enemies and forgiving to our friends. If moral absolutes exist they may well be counter-intuitive. It may seem wrong to us. Perhaps it is right that we should be taking stubborn sons to the city gates to stone them to death, for the sake of the greater good, and the weak liberality of our ordinary human sentiment blinds us to that unalterable truth. The Christian doctrine of the Spirit of Truth lends legitimacy to individual intuition and Jesus' own words are essentially liberal.
"Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not."
(Qur'an 2:216)
In the course of our lives we might accept many unpleasant truths, yet these are still required to convince us of their legitimacy. They must demonstrate their rightful place within the larger scheme of things. Failing that, they must feel right to us. To us. Who can tell us that God wants something else from us? Perhaps you hate a thing that is bad, and you love a thing that is good. God knows, but your priest may not. In the end, as I have said several times. We choose the God we are willing to believe in, according to our own sense of right. If God is cruel and only terrifies His creatures into submission with the threat of eternal torture, then perhaps Lucifer's rebellion was justified. Perhaps Hell is populated by the kind hearted and the road there is indeed paved with good intentions. One cannot in good conscience accept something for truth only on the threat of torture. Belief in God must include belief in the goodness of God. Beginning with this brute assumption, we reverse engineer the religion of our liking. If you do not like the God someone is trying to sell you, choose another, or make up your own. Trust in Him.
Whether we trust it or not. Whether it is wholly consistent or not. Whether it is right or not. We each of us has a moral intuition. An internal compass that tells us, or tries to tell us right from wrong. An instinct. In Western culture, the hero in our stories tells us to trust that instinct, and to remain loyal to it in the face of external forces telling us otherwise.
"This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
("Hamlet", by William Shakespeare, Act 1: Scene 3 (c.1599-1602))
In the face of a conflict between institutional authority and written revelation and this inner compass what do we do? Who or what do we trust? The representatives of cruel doctrine may claim that we do not have the understanding to know the will of God and must, in accordance with faith, accept what seems wrong to us. We run the risk, in obeying them, of discovering later that these teachers are themselves the devils. In the end there is no logical argument to be made one way or the other. Evolution will decide. Not because there is an objective standard of morality, or because there is a logical deduction leading to it; but because enough people will want to believe it is so. We will see in 1,000 years, if we are watching people stoned to death for adultery, or beheaded for having the wrong opinions. Or whether those who want to impose such penalties have disappeared from the face of the Earth for good, or into prisons or mental institutions. Remembered only in stories as glib villainous caricatures of human beings, fearful of their place in the modern world. Unmourned, emotionally stunted dinosaurs to be taunted and beaten by our heroes, forever after. In a world where compassion rules. Will the future be, instead of intolerance, a lot of singing, dancing, writing, cooking, painting, decorating and invention? A world where learning is cherished and individual distinctiveness is nurtured as the personality contribution of the individual to the world. Will it be subsistence farmers living in rustic huts, or apartment buildings among public gardens? The progress of civilisation seems to be a progress to greater tolerance and liberalisation.
This attitude is not "Biblical". The Bible itself says: "Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord [אֱלֹהִים (elohím)] must be destroyed." (Exodus 22:20). It is sometimes assumed that this statement is aimed only at Jews, but since all the commandments of the Old Testament are addressed to the Jewish race, this makes a rather important distinction unclear. Jesus in any case indicates that his words are for all people, not just the Jews.
"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15)
"I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." (John 10:16)
He also makes the following comments.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." (Two of "The Beatitudes", Matthew 5:7-9)
The Hebrew Bible is much concerned with members of the Jewish race not going after foreign gods (Exodus 20:3, 23:13, 34:14, Deuteronomy 5:7, 6:14, 8:19, 1 Kings 11:1-11, Psalm 16:4, Jeremiah 7:9, 25:6), and modern Christian fundamentalists hold up these passages as evidence of the evil of religious tolerance, and likely take this trend rather as a sign of the end times, a fatal religious and moral decadence. If the goal is peace on Earth and good will toward men, there is no way even to model this within fundamentalist religion. The heaven or paradise of the religious fundamentalist is one achieved by the extermination of the members of every other religion, and among the remnant that is left, to execute anyone who departs from the straight and narrow. It is a cruel and brutal, intolerant, primitive and terrifying community that will endure, changeless, for eternity.
There is plenty of textual support for such a view, for those who wish to believe in such a religion. Those who wish for religious tolerance to be true religion, will simply ignore these passages. If god does not intervene to exterminate all the impure in the world, or if religious fundamentalists do not come into possession of a super-weapon to achieve it, the contest for the Earth will be between two philosophies of living and their adherents. The world will come to be defined not by a divinely implemented or inspired apocalypse, but by whatever the majority of ordinary human beings decides. The Word will be set aside in the name of Love. By a global community ruled by friendship and kindness. Because that is what most ordinary human beings want. To live in peace and safety in a liberal democracy. To make art in a garden and connect with others. The end of religion will have been achieved despite religion. Despite the teachings and guidance of pure and disapproving religious and moral leaders. The contest is between two hearts. The heart that hates and the heart that loves. Some will seek support for their hate in passages of scripture, led there by their heart for justification. It is a grossly antisocial and inhumane goal. Indicative only of an unwillingness to share the world with others unlike themselves. Fundamentalism is an excuse to oppress, torture and kill for those who derive satisfaction from such things. Jesus' own position is given by: "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2). In the end, that is, destruction will be confined to those who desire it for others. While the rest merely go about their normal business. Who live naturally according to the golden rule of liberal democracy: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31).
In the end it is a question of who will dominate: the proponents of modern morality, or the adherents of the old morality. The fundamental contest is not between this or that religion, but between moral evolution and regression. Every religion has its liberals and its fundamentalists, its tolerant and its intolerant. It is if we see the fundamentalists of the various religions rallying to a common cause in opposition to their liberal counterparts that we should worry. Liberals will naturally link up and cooperate. Fortunately, the fundamentalists of the world are a house divided against itself. But if they have ever each of them rid themselves of the liberals within their own ranks, their next step will be to go to war with each other until they or the last of their enemies are dead, or to wage war forever. It is difficult for those who cannot inhabit a world where people disagree with them, to thrive, though they can be replaced by more like themselves, lingering endlessly on the brink of destruction. The only way a society composed of such people can find stability is under tyranny. Which is why the harsh ruler is sometimes embraced. By forcibly preventing anyone from acting on their own initiative, he keeps a kind of peace, and is admired for his strength. All agreed in their admiration of his successful intolerance. The real danger here is the calm, pragmatic tyrant. The one who has a very nice, stable tyranny set up, thank you very much, and who only wants to enjoy it in perpetuity. While the fanatics will go to war against the rest of the world who disagrees with them without thought of consequences, he will not want to start a war he might lose, though he will happily sabre rattle from now till Kingdom come. He does not want to disrupt the stability and security of his kingdom but seeks rather to consolidate and complete it. The short lived fanatics only prepare the ground for such a ruler and he seems at first like a prince of peace. He will join hands with anyone who can help him. So that secular tyranny, theocracy of any breed, and cartel-run state will form an international alliance for mutual defence to protect each other's privileges, soberly defining each other's spheres of influence. Distinguished by their diverse rhetoric, they are bound by a common form, methods and goals. Reasonable tyrants accommodating of anyone not specifically in their way. Seeking a discreet and safe way to spread.
A jungle tribe composed of three people can implement a democracy, and two guys on a desert island exchanging coconuts can implement a free market. Democracy began in a cave when one guy turned to the other three and said: "What do the rest of you think we should do?" We call this act of coordination "leadership". There is not some special level of economic or cultural or technological development required. Only a faith and loyalty to the concept. It fails to eventuate only for the people who do not believe in it. Who fail to act in accordance with it for whatever reason. Tyranny is what comes to fill the void in the face of this failure. It is not something imposed otherwise. Tyranny comes when it is seen as the more plausible option. Tyranny tends to afflict those proud of their cynicism, as if scepticism and high ideals cannot coexist. Democracy is a high stakes, high risk act of trust in the essential goodness and common sense of ordinary people, when encouraged and permitted to flourish. Where this is absent, a strong paternal hand is thought to be the cure for people's waywardness. In this context, high ideals are used instead cynically, for the social manipulation of the untrustworthy masses. To such as these, releasing the people to do as they will in the simple hope that it will somehow all work out though no one can plan or predict how, is an invitation to chaos. So the society squanders its resources attempting to control what cannot be controlled, and neglects the one essential thing that government is properly for, to protect the people from the abuses of concentrated power. This is neglected because paternal hypocrisy cannot be separated from simple corruption. Creating the very horrors they are professing to cure. It is difficult to take seriously the good intentions of a government that prevents its citizens accessing information freely available in the outside world (that is, the world beyond its own borders). The government that fears a popular uprising if the people were to come into possession of information about it likely does not embody the will of the people. If the will of the people is what it honestly seeks to fulfil, their participation would assist more to that end than merely their ignorance of the government's enduring failure. But if a population has made some poor choices for national leadership in the past, and had more than its share of civil strife, the population itself may be reluctant to spin the wheel again. And so instead tolerate a current tyrant, the devil they know, who is not as bad as some others, and who is at least growing the economy soberly not just for themselves, or keeping the gangs on a leash. An impoverished and illiterate populace may be helpless. Once the middle class has grown and the people are educated, they can be trusted not to support another populist who will only return them to tyranny. But as the people grow richer, so does the State. The government goons in the pickup truck with AK-47s now have tanks, missiles, ministries and a network of cctv. And the only political education the people are getting is pro-government propaganda. Still, the nation with infrastructure: roads, energy, banks, schools, media, communications and hospitals, has a better chance of succeeding than the nation without these things. It might even have the sophistication to cross over in a bloodless revolution instead of civil war. That is something to see. Under such a circumstance, a benevolent foreign power plotting a premature regime change may not be welcomed.
As democratic principles seek to assert themselves in more nations, are we witnessing the last days of tyranny, tyranny's "last hurrah"? Or will it always be waiting in the wings to return whenever good becomes lax and complacent, however technologically advanced we become?
Over the course of these articles I have sought to show the commonalities among different religions, not necessarily to suggest that they were independently arrived at, because history is long (and a good story, like the flood, is hard to stop) and there has been much time for the spread of ideas, but to show that certain ideas have universal appeal. Placing more faith in what is common to all human religions than what is unique to one. As members of a church go out to find new recruits, they typically press what is unique about their particular brand of religion and frequently offer the threat that you will surely go to hell unless you join their church. Religion is a mirror held up to our mind. We see our love there, for better or worse. If the idea of a divine trinity gains popularity, people do not throw out their old religion and replace it with the religion where they got the idea; they will rearrange their existing gods into threes. The many aspects of the great serpent, and god's son, the protector of man, finds expression in local forms. The extent to which these commonalities exist is a topic of ongoing contention. What every religion offers is a vision that good is a universal force greater than any Earthly tyrant or catastrophe, and the suggestion that we should throw in our lot with that, to make the vision manifest.
To know right from wrong is no trivial matter, and certainty often eludes us. The danger of being wrong is a terrible and seemingly sometimes unavoidable and ever present threat. Learning right from wrong seems to be one of the primary tasks and challenges of human living, growth, maturation and evolution. If we cannot abide by our own developing moral compass, then it is pointless for us to have one. We can forsake our knowledge of good and evil and accept what others tell us, abandoning our own moral consciousness, Eve's gift to us; and put the apple quietly back on the tree as if nothing has happened.
The Function of God
In the article On Happiness it was suggested that believing in eternal life does not logically require believing in a god or gods. We might imagine an eternal life that is somehow a natural part of the universe in some "spirit world". The value of believing in eternal life is vividly obvious: it is salvation from death. The value of believing in a god or gods is less obvious. If one believes in eternal life, in a sense the positing of gods is automatic, since at the very least it suggests that there are likely to be some very ancient beings in existence, and one assumes that these should have acquired knowledge and powers greatly in advance of those possessed by we short-lived mortal creatures, so that they will at least appear to be gods relative to us. The spirit world itself might also offer its inhabitants abilities beyond what we know in the material realm.The value of believing in a monotheistic god is subtle. It is firstly a unifying principle. A pantheon of more or less equivalent deities who vie with each other for dominance seem to represent a kind of pointless and bland existence. What do they do: have barbeques? If we suggest these deities work harmoniously together then they begin to take on the role of organs in a greater whole, and we are moving toward monotheism again. It has been suggested that the natural inclination of reason is to organise disparate particulars into unities. In religion it begins when the pantheon of individually emerging gods are arranged into families, stories and roles; and ends when they dissolve into a single monotheistic entity; as the multitude of disparate physical laws seek to be woven into an all-encompassing "Theory of Everything" (TOE).
God is necessary as a unifying TOE, if such a theory is necessary. No theory of Physics can be a true TOE because it necessarily leaves out much of what exists, everything that does not come under the heading of "physics", most notably people. A true TOE must take account of consciousness, psychology, society and history. This it the role served by a monotheistic God who contains all of this in Himself (or Herself).
A state of being, such as Nirvana does not serve this function. A state of being is incomplete. It requires something to experience that state. If we place ourselves into that state, then all we have is ourselves experiencing a state, and the state is trivialised. If we place another entity into that state and require that entity to be something more than ourselves, then we have returned to Theism. If we say that we become something more by virtue of entering into the state then we become something other than ourselves, and effectively dissolve into that otherness, effectively ceasing to be. The significance of Nirvana for the person who wants to attain it is that it is in some sense a desirable, pleasurable state. Profundity and awe are still a kind of pleasure, a fascination, excitement. For all the talk of freeing one's self of desire, if we do not get something good out of Nirvana then what is the point of it? It becomes so much psycho-babble, philosophical double-talk. We are asked to take on faith that Nirvana is desirable, and we will understand when we are enlightened.
Nirvana does not give the impression of being a social environment. Dissolution into a formless oneness in the end sounds boring and lonely, whatever assertions are made to the contrary. It sounds like nothing to do. Perhaps it is the dream of being God, the centre of the universe, of conjuring worlds by your own will, and populating them with beings and being their God, or entering into their midst and becoming one of them again, perhaps forsaking your godhood, returning to the wheel of life to escape the boredom and futility of Nirvana and omnipotence. Perhaps it is the dream of the passive recipient of perfect entertainment, inert and immobile before a mystic television set delivering the universe into your mind in all its varied intensity. Activity in which you have no stake and no part. Or perhaps you may play the role of guide for souls, leading them to Nirvana, according to your knowledge of its principles, inviting them all over to watch your awesome tv, all plugged in together to a narcotic drip of eternal ecstasy. In the end, a Christian's union with God and a Buddhist's arrival at Nirvana might not be so different, if we suggest union with God as an end state. In the article On Happiness we considered the prerequisites for happiness, and found that they depended in turn on the prerequisites for meaning, and that these were undermined in the face of a final state of being. Of course we cannot imagine the nature of true enlightenment, and it may be that this state is self sufficient, and the state that God is in, and available to us on becoming God, or one with God, the first one there, perhaps, in perfect stasis. It may be that in resolving the various antinomies of reason in "eternity", where "one" and "many" are the same, the beginning and the end are one, and the journey and the destination are one, stasis and activity equivalent, it also removes from the equation of happiness the need to act. It could be that Theism is simply the long way around. That the journey toward God is not eternal, but has an ending in eternity. That ideals and limits are ultimately achievable because god achieves them. If there is nothing separating the god without from the god within, an entity from a state of being. Are we only arguing over partial descriptions of the same thing? Me + my experience is already a duality. Ultimately the same striving for unity that posits the monotheistic god, also posits the dissolution of I and thou. I guess it all comes down to your tolerance for sitting cross-legged for long periods of time. It depends on whether we trust that enlightened mystics are experiencing the metaphysical wonders they claim to be. Whether we think that sitting on our ass alone is what will get us there.
A statement like "all is one" can be interpreted in a number of ways. If it means everything is connected, that is a nice idea, and consistent with what science seems to be telling us. If it means that everything we actually experience is illusion, maya, and that reality is actually one single homogenous unit with no internal distinctions, then that unit is alone and inert; and this is inconsistent with everything we experience or can experience, and is not an attractive idea. If we say: "we are god", this might mean we are like god ("in God's image") and with a potential to become ever more like god. We might say that we are one because we are in Him and He is in us. Or we might assert that we are numerically identical to God. There is not two or more entities, but only one. Not a connected multitude, but a single, solitary entity.
The appeal of Theistic religion is that it is a social sphere, care of perhaps a projected other. Interesting people to meet, things to see, places to go, things to do. Not a world conjured out of your own mind, but from that of some great author. The importance of the other is to take us out of ourselves into a greater world, and to share the experience, the journey, with others. If god was alone and wanted not to be, it would not be enough merely to create other people, he would also create god as an other, as an infinite limit. If Nirvana is social, and we are all floating there together in limbo, then we must think up something to do, like a bunch of people stuck indoors on a rainy day, because there is only us and a limbo responding to our will. A board game anyone? An orgy? The cost of Theistic religion is that it is a world where people have jobs. Nirvana is a product of people's desire not to have a job.
The Nirvana concept might also be applied within the context of monotheistic religion. Some people's conception of an afterlife appears to be a kind of bodiless limbo of communion with God. How exactly they imagine that communion to be is up to them. For these too perhaps the communion is imagined to be identity. It might also be imagined as a kind of ecstatic state: just you and God, or as some kind of telepathic communion with a God loving multitude.
If we imagine that god may not be good, he fails to serve the function for which he was originally posited. This can seem to lead inexorably toward the conclusion that he probably does not exist at all, or if he does, that he is merely some accidental by product of some cosmic nature. A potentially sinful god who might himself require redemption. The psychologist Carl Jung suggested that if god was conscious he would not need us. Thus for him, god was the great "collective unconscious", emerging out of unconsciousness with us.
Aside from a unifying principle god's primary function is to serve as an intellectual and moral ideal. In the article On Happiness it was suggested that it was not enough that we could potentially live forever, we also required a universe that could hold our interest for eternity. If there is no single great god over all, there is nothing to guarantee such a universe. Although the universe might hold the potential for infinite variation and possibility, these possibilities hold the danger of falling either into a few broad and predictable classes, or a more or less meaningless chaos, or a bit of both, such as the universe appears when we are not enamoured with it. A ruling pantheon of gods have nothing in particular to do. The proposition of a monotheistic god is that of a unified being amazing enough to give rise to an organised universe amazing enough to surprise and fascinate us for eternity by expressing unlimited infinite potential. What does the martyr do when he has been through his 70 virgins after only the first 4 or 5 months of the afterlife, and none of them are virgins any more and he still has the rest of eternity ahead of him?
The monotheistic god suggests the odd notion of a lonely god who might create creatures just to keep him company. The pantheon with the Most High god at the apex resolves this by positing a divine family. But when the upper few tiers of the pantheon are claimed to have ambiguous distinctness; that is, when the claim is made that they are really aspects of a single being, such as the Christian trinity or the interchangeable Hindu gods, the distinction between one and many dissolves into the mystery of God. God serves not only as an ideal being, but as an ideal society and universe. The universe is made out of the body of god where his organs serve as parts of society. This in turn suggests the somewhat creepy prospect that we are all destined to dissolve eventually into some kind of shared consciousness like the Borg, but we need not go to this length. The place of the individual in society is already a unity poised within a plurality, which plurality is itself a unity within something else. In fact everything that exists is in some sense a sub-whole of something larger rather than a unity in an absolute sense. Not only is it true that "no man is an island" (from "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" by John Donne (1624)), but neither is anything else. We find the same kind of entanglement in quantum physics. The philosopher Arthur Koestler in his book "The Ghost in the Machine" (1967) referred to such an entity as a "holon" (p.48). The perfect god might arise out of the inherent harmony of nature. Rather we have a kind of telepathic unity where the individual continues to exist, but is not alone, being immersed in some deep and profound communion with other beings, a kind of epic creative harmony.
God serves as an ideal, a point on the horizon or at zenith. He provides somewhere for the individual and society to purposefully go. He is keeper of the secret we cannot know because it will spoil the story. A purpose that must remain unknown and only trust the author that it is grand beyond anything we can imagine or know ourselves. Some refer to this as "a plan", though others dislike this prospect, thinking that it smacks of a limiting predestination, or a contrived and futile game. But we might suggest that such a "plan" is only defined in its broad strokes, such as described in the "Perfection" section above. For instance, we are predestined to begin as children, and if lucky, to grow to maturity and finally old age. But what we do during those predestined phases of being is up to us. So too with the phases of our future, eternal evolution. For some "the plan" is a fascinating story that we are all a part of, everyone a main character in their own story, created by a master story teller. Believing in God means believing in the plan for us. They interrogate events for signs of a plot. Providing a destination in eternity and infinity that can be forever approached and never reached, as the individual and society approaches god by becoming ever more like him: the divine hero. Not a contrived and arbitrary story, but one which is really the unfolding and discovery of reality and its potentials. The discovery of reality and the discovery of God being one and the same since He encompasses all, and the discovery of ourselves and each other as His image. In these scenarios god is the servant of man rather than the other way, the perfect parent from the point of view of the child, except for everything bad that happens. Others prefer to think they are making up their own story, in territory uncharted by any pre-existing entity, and seek the infinite potential within themselves, the sleeping god within themselves.
Nirvana provides no such ideal, ultimately amounting to little more than a weekend or holiday when you've had enough and want to get off of the working weekday treadmill of the (hamster) wheel of life. Then when you get bored of Nirvana you jump back on the wheel for another turn. But the religion of the Most High Buddha does provide such an ideal, like that of any other Most High god, the Buddha who is not us but some awesome other. Not the hallucinogen fuelled adolescent who believes himself or herself to be an enlightened "old soul", who after millions of years of existence on and off the wheel of life, can still think of nothing better to do with their time than text his or her friend his or her latest inane thought.
This is not meant to imply that a moral ideal cannot exist in the absence of a god concept. A hero is a moral ideal, as are people we admire, or the ideal we aspire to ourselves of the kind of person we want to be. But these are partial representations. The god concept is the notion of a moral ideal taken to its ultimate conclusion, so to speak. If the achievement of moral ideals is the goal of evolution, what is the end result if not a celestial kingdom of angels: innocent as doves and wise as serpents?
People often do not like the moralising character of the theistic, and particularly the monotheistic religions, seeing it as an unnecessary infringement of their lives. But moral questions are the problems of living in the real world among other human beings. Theistic religions attempt to address the issues of the here and now. To whatever extent reality may be an illusion, it is not just an illusion, a mistake to be escaped. It is the venue within which we live our lives with others. To whatever extent we might disagree on the answers to moral questions, we do not do ourselves a favour by ignoring or avoiding the questions. Or imagining that one's own actions or inaction has no impact on others because they are "on their own path" and in a reality manufactured by themselves. If everything is an illusion, nothing really matters. In monotheism, things matter a great deal. Everything is heavy with importance. The liberty and boredom of inconsequence is replaced by the burden and angst of consequence. Reality is by definition a shared venue of complex interactions. A machine like karma cannot serve as a moral ideal. Our moral ideal must at the very least be human, and should be much more, more human than human. So that our moral ideal is a personality, a divine person. If we reform our concept of "righteousness", replacing the old self-righteous conservatism with modern liberalism, the concept of a righteous god becomes a powerful assist to civilization. Over the years, Buddha has evolved into a god, and Buddhism into a religion as it attempts to address the problems of living, but the personality and intent of Buddha remains unclear. It is easy to assert that such attributions as personality and intent are meaningless in relation to Buddha, but what sense is there in the suggestion that we should pursue a vacuum of meaning? Which no doubt suggests a retort prescribing non-attachment to meaning, and so on.
There is something incoherent in attempting to turn Buddhism into a religion because its most high god is just some guy who lived 2500 years ago. This raises the question of what was the state of affairs before Buddha lived. Buddhism amounts to ancestor worship, like Shinto. It operates on the idea that the dead go to some other world where they attain supernatural powers that may enable them to influence events in this world, or at least to provide assistance to you when you reach that other world. In ancestor worship, the "gods" are merely the spirits who crossed over before you. Like the Catholic saints. The assumption seems to be that the most ancient spirits will have the most supernatural power, having lived there the longest. So the most high god might be the first man who lived, the Adam. Or if we assume the existence of other worlds with people on them, then the first person to cross over on any of the worlds.
This hypothesis, while not illogical, depends upon the supernatural world providing an appropriate venue for human existence and further development, much as material nature does. We might attribute this fortuitous state of affairs to coincidence, or perhaps some spiritual equivalent to natural evolution: supernatural evolution, and a corresponding spiritual anthropic principle. It lacks the unifying concept of a universal god, and turns the afterlife effectively into just another natural world where beings competitively strive to eke out an existence. What Buddhism introduces over ancestor worship is meditation. It suggests that continued conscious existence in the other world is not automatic but depends upon being "enlightened". When the unenlightended person crosses over, their spirit enters a kind of temporary dream and ends up back in the material world, reincarnated perhaps as a turtle or a woman. Only the enlightened remain in the afterlife to experience nirvana. As the first enlightened soul, Buddha rules in heaven, so to speak. This means that reaching heaven depends upon becoming enlightened, and therefore becoming Buddhist.
Tibetan priests recite the Tibetan "Book of the Dead" over the body of the deceased to help guide them to the light of Nirvana, or at least an improved reincarnation. This treats the other side, the spiritual world, as a kind of jungle. An uncivilised realm where the only guidance comes from the faint voice of a priest on this side. It is also the rationale behind the community paying to support a priesthood. If the spiritual world is populated by ancient spirit beings, everyone who has ever died anywhere in the universe. It should be a city not a jungle. There should be ample guidance on that side, from beings infinitely more qualified to be giving it. The Egyptian Book of the Dead served a similar function, and so does the spiritual medium in general.
While Buddhism has much to recommend it, its varied manifestations and earnest worship of the almighty Buddha represents a striving toward religion rather than an already defined religion. But through the simple act of disassociating the concept of the Most High Buddha from the human prince Siddhartha, it would complete the transition and join the world's religions. The Most High Buddha has already taken up residence in the hearts of many Buddhists, he lacks only official doctrinal sanction. My goal here is not to talk those attached to the Nirvana concept out of such attachment, but rather to explain the appeal of monotheism to those who do not feel it.
"Buddhism in its original form is one of the best religions without a God which has arisen...."
(The Urantia Book 103:9.3)
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The larger of two large Buddha statues in Bamiyan province, Afghanistan,
as it appeared in 1931. The statue was destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Monotheism does not preclude that there be a "dark side" to god, but only requires that the dark side serve an organic function within the whole that is ultimately good, as Jewish Kabbalism or the book of Job, or the Hindu Shiva perhaps suggest. But neither does this dark side necessitate a universal devil or Ahriman (as in Zoroastrianism). That is, it does not literally need to suggest an evil deity with powers of universal scope contending with the Most High god for the souls of His creatures. The idea of a universal Devil is at odds with the premise of monotheism, though monotheism can accommodate any number of local devils, natural or supernatural. The universal Devil is a pantheistic concept. It is Odin versus Loki. There is a substantial difference between a god who is a symbol or a metaphor, and a God who is. Whether a Buddhist meditational deity behind which is a mere man, or a Hindu deity behind which is a principle or a process.
The one great pitfall of monotheistic religion over pantheistic is that it replaces many opinions with one. It encourages the view that there is one right way of doing things, whereas a pantheon naturally acts as a community where differing opinions must be accommodated. A pantheon offers a model of a community, whereas the absolutism of monotheistic religion models the all-powerful unquestioned king who defines right and wrong for everyone. Pantheons may have their most high god, but he or she does not always get his or her way, and his or her position may not be secure. While this is a pitfall of monotheistic religion it is not a fatal one. Rather it means we need to be more careful in terms of what views we attribute to such a deity. In the pantheon we leave it to the de facto natural status quo arrived at through contrary opinions cancelling each other out. In monotheism we must imbue God with an innate and intentional tolerance and compassion.
This completes our consideration of the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible. In the next article we look at ideas about Heaven and Hell (not yet posted).
Any comments welcome.
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