Truth, Beauty, and the American Way

My own creation story is very simple;  God existed as perfection for an infinite period of time but found it "tedious?"or "limiting?" and so exploded her essence into a million billion little God pieces that are now scattered across the Universe. God's essence is then constantly forming the Real.  Some would call this materialism and it probably is but I think it has a "divine" spark.   Just beginning from nothing seems a forlorn epistemology.  The particulars of Life are not usually very godly but instances of godliness sometimes appear.  God is in all things and can re-start or re-order the show whenever.  All Religions seem flawed as paths to God in this scenario. They assume what is necessary.  Religious faith may be better by far than wandering solo in the wilderness but it is an illusion, a mistake about the nature of Reality.  I am a cultural Christian.  This means I am unconvinced by the supernatural underpinnings that require Faith but am a believer in the social interaction demanded by true Christianity  We are asked to love God (the Natural Order) and love one another.  We are also counseled to love our enemies as a means to convert them to our virtue.  Much of our western heritage of belief about the intrinsic rights of Man are supported by a God-centric culture.  If we dispense with God, then we are threatened with the loss of Goodness.
      I could go on but God is not directing Life in a way that is intelligible to us.  There may be an afterlife but that is a question for its own time and place.  Once in heaven or hell we can debate the purpose of what we experienced here.  I don't pray.  Why would I?  I try and be attentive to  what could be considered Good.  I am as right or wrong as everybody else and try to be tolerant.  If God makes you a better person, I am not interested in making you worse.  If we take the Apostles Creed one statement at a time, I vote no on most of it.

Money or spirituality? Two dangerous choices that require some reflection.  Since Darwin, God has been under attack.  Progress and technology seem to have provided more miracles and given more measurable results than faith in God.  Many of us have elected to sign up with the promises of Progress.  But it is looking a little threadbare these days.  The flying arrow arc of Progress, shot so confidently into the sky, is turning down.   It has been a marvelous 150 year run but our powers are waning markedly.  Our success has been based on an unsustainable hubris and we now feel the onrushing chill of a life of austerity.  We do not see a steady state life of hope.  We see the outline of Nature "red in tooth and claw" and we tremble.  Our Progress was our real God while we paid deferential respect to the "old ways" of god fearing religion.  

Truth seekers are always in dangerous territory.  Man appears to be a meaning seeking or meaning dependent creature and truth elusive. So illusions often replace Truth.  Illusions are more predictable and become more comfortable.  Think of some of the fundamental truths:  God loves us, he sent his son to save us, Mohammed is the “messenger” of God, eternity and the afterlife are more important than our transient lives, Humans matter more than dinosaurs (we exist and they don’t).  Money is the best way to organize complicated human activity.  Long term “growth” is possible on a finite planet.  Progress can continue indefinitely with technology.  Human civilizations cycle, rising and falling.  Unlike Tolstoy’s observation about happy and dysfunctional families, a civilization differentiates into its peculiarities while ascending and falls to its lowest common denominator when descending.   Thus rising societies become more idiosyncratic while declining societies become more alike.

So our own preferred illusion is what we call Truth.  But Change is happening every day and as our truths become less “true” they may require re-evaluation.  If we found an Ultimate Truth, life would be spoiled.  We would have only our duty to it, slaves building pyramids.  We are compelled to pursue our truths but advised to open our hearts to our own weaknesses.  Love if you can, fight if you must.   As for philosophy, Man does not live by bread alone but by all the words that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  In my estimation this would be true if we could agree on what we hear.  But maybe Faith is just more important than Rationality in a search for Truth.  How do we “discern”?   Which is the right tool to find Enlightenment?  Faith is easier than changing. 

We live in peculiarly interesting times.  Our lives are complicated and our truths diverse.  We would join together but we are afraid of losing something important.  We cannot hold in our hearts all our possibilities because we are afraid of losing some of our essence.  And perhaps it is not truth, but power we seek?  If we find power we may be able to compel truth.  And if we seek humility can we stumble into deliverance?  If we deliver our Life to that which is bigger than us, do we not join some kind of immortality?  God?  National Socialism? Progress?  So our sacrifice to a cause becomes our truth.  We can believe in ourselves and die a small death or believe in something larger and live in that truth.  If God exists, well there you are—immortal and saved. 

But if we focus on the Now, we are in no hurry for “salvation”.  We mean only to live well.  What is the philosophy of living well?  Epicureanism.  What is the philosophy of living honorably?  Stoicism.  What is the philosophy of living sacrificially?  Buddhism or Christianity.  What is the philosophy of living selfishly?  Trick question.  We cannot help living selfishly.  Whatever we sacrifice, we hope to gain.  If it’s love we give, it’s love we hope to receive.  To be thoroughly altruistic would be bizarre.   It is almost nihilistic and suicidal.  Where can I give my Life to no discernible purpose?  So what about Happiness?  The pursuit of happiness seems a flawed goal.  It is bound to be disappointing.  Connecting it to life and liberty in the Declaration has elevated its importance.  It is a result.  It is causes and principles we sacrifice for and the results are what we live with. 

We have done wars on terrorism, poverty, and drugs.  I would counsel making war on people, groups, nations, and leaving  tactics, conditions, and temptations to other organized amelioration.  Actually, I do not counsel making War.  I prefer making Peace.  I only meant that War works best when focused on our supposed human enemies. They may ultimately become our friends.....

 

MEANING

Life is short but not worthless. It is intrinsically good not certifiably good.  Infinity extends at least two directions so God COULD have already existed an infinite amount of time.  Having already been infinite it pleased him to become temporal and so he exploded into a million billion little God pieces now scattered across the universe.  He will take now an infinite amount of time to get back together.  The Big Bang was not necessarily “the beginning”.  There may have been an earlier bang.  God writes the rules of the universe so he can, at his discretion, re-order the parts.  Currently God is present in your neighbor’s heart, so you should try and find him there.  Naturally you should look in your own heart too.  When hearts get together-God quickens, that is why love is so satisfying.  Many hearts as one acting in harmony suggests divinity.  This Humpty-Dumpty metaphor suggests WE will never put God back together again.  We will have to be satisfied with the shards of the Godhead.  Worship then would not be about us “pleasing God”.  It is about sharing hearts of hope and love.

     Christianity is somewhat oppositional to the Humpty-Dumpty metaphor; thus, God is good, personal, just, and exists.  There are then two realities in the Christian model:  the infinite God reality (the one we will someday join) and the almost insignificant concrete reality we experience every day. In other words “spiritual world” like some dark matter filling the universe and the time bound visible world.  The H-D metaphor is a God-with-us, not “above”, caring and/or controlling, but here. We are participants in the spiritual force.

How does God 'act'? Secularists, like myself, say he does not “act” though He could empower human hearts with right desire but he does not, Zeus-like, throw a thunderbolt. Will he, can he make things right?  That is our deepest need-justice-for what we have experienced here.  If all go to heaven, it doesn't matter what we experience here, we have yet an infinity of ?pleasure?.  Since we don't know, best to assume the best.  The worst usually comes round a few times. 

So what we believe about God only has relevance for us and how we touch the hearts of others. My belief, your belief- vapors.  God did not exist, like it is suggested he does now, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Now we are asked to read Bibles and sit in pews to find him but that will not be necessary when the kudzu covers the steeples.  So whether we have a God whose gentle breath blows our little boat toward home or not, we are all stuck by gravity to a revolving ball and our human similarity will always be greater than our differences.

My problem with religion is exclusivity and the false apprehensions that lead to idolatry.  The religion, the means of seeing or linking becomes more important than the spiritual fact:  God-Reality.  PEOPLE consider me Presbyterian because I sit in a pew with that label, not God.  Presbyterians have an unusual way of "seeking" God.  They look in a book and they worship together. God is not in a book, he's not in the tomb, and if he's running things--it's an interesting but piss poor job.  If this world doesn't have any meaning then the pain is just an "experience" like Jesus suffered through. Our deepest need, more than love, is justice.  Justice will requite the love we have shown.  Finally, if this is all there is--we'd better keep trying to find our better selves.....

Faith

I have been asked to speak about my faith.

 I am uncomfortable with this because my faith may be a thoughtless criticism and dismissal of your faith and second I may inadvertently expose that I really think your faith is foolish and I don't really have much faith at all, so who really cares what someone who has so little may think about it?  But I do respect your faith or better your desire for a connection to the Real. But you have asked me for what I believe: A comprehensible God does not exist. God as the substance of reality may exist but her characteristics are unknowable. God is Love? Certainly that is not all God is. Life goes on because we are creatures who must keep going on. I cannot tell you any meaning except what we give it. We don't know why we are here but we are grateful. Religion has built these large beautiful edifices because we are thankful. We did not create ourselves and yet here we are. Something must have done it. Let's call it God. First and only important cause. The source. Always present.

The nature of God is what is problematic. Is God angry? Satisfied? Hopeful? Can he talk or write a book?
None of these questions really make sense. God can only be “other”, everything we are not and so
impenetrable or imponderable to human scale.
Our anthropomorphic God exists because we prefer beautiful illusions to possibly ugly truth. A God
who cares about us. Men talk about “The Truth” but I think a man's illusions bolstered by a faith  may be more important
than his truths. Truth may not include us. Even now an asteroid could be hurtling to a rendezvous with our future.  A man sacrifices to create truths in which to believe. A man's greatest sacrifice could be for a purpose, a goal, an idea, a meaning, a value, another person. And a woman's greatest sacrifice may be for her loved ones; a man right or wrong, her family, her children, other people.  I will acknowledge that to suggest a gender difference is "sexist". Men are obligated to “Gauge the Meaning” or “Find the Purpose” or “Fight for the Right”, a woman must support her loved ones.. The sexes have different roles but together they create human ideals.  The duality in some sense creates unity.

 God, if he
existed, would be interested in the whole creation, not just mankind. What, after all, was his interest in
100 million years of dinosaur world? Who was praying then or going to services? Is there another
“real” reality behind the apparent world? Heaven and Hell and all that. I could assume it but I cannot
see it and I surely do not believe it. A faulty faith for sure.. A religion is a well worn path to a social
idea of the Good, the True and the Beautiful but these things change as human beings change and face  different situations. Truth is irrevocably relative.
There is no one best way to live. Anthropologists talk about farmers and hunter gatherers. A basic
difference that requires vastly different utilization of the environment. Modern society goes way
beyond that. How many “-isms” can you name? My son wants to know what the best society is. I
reflect on this question and consider that the answer is the best of what is possible. It may not be
possible to return to hunter-gathering or monarchy. For our situation it might be something very
utilitarian AND Beautiful. The greatest good for the greatest number AND lovely. What would it look like? Who knows, we have to inch our way to perfection only to watch it all melt away.....

Prayer embarrasses me or I would ask for help. (I don't like being required to approach God one particular way) I am however very interested in your idea of God and how it helps you
live.

The ancient Greeks had philosophies of right living. There were Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans,
Dialecticians, Animists, pantheists, and of course monotheists. What philosophy could help sustain us
today? I prefer stoicism. I could even try Educationalism: a philosophy that we should all study and get a lot smarter. But stoicism seems noble: Bear up with what happens and do your best. You get to determine what best is for you. If your best isn't my best we communicate, tolerate, negotiate or fight. Sounds a lot like history to me.
There are those who say a man has one best way to live and that is in communion with the God of the
Universe. Many speak of a “relationship” with God. This is a poor description for the unfaithful and a
scientific state of mind. If you say, I feel God in my heart and when I ask him what I should do a calm feeling comes over me and I know this I must do. This feeling then is my “relationship” with God. He
doesn't talk he just gives me strength to do what I feel needs doing. If faith is the only determinant of
that truth, all other aesthetics are denied: altruism, rationality, sensibility, artistry. Can you see that
others might dispute your “relationship”? They think you are “seeing things” or “hearing things” and
are missing a critical component of what would normally be called a relationship.
Good is linked to what we like and evil is linked to what we despise. Good is relative. We cannot be
absolutely good without God to certify it. But where is the certification? Where the validation?
Without a universal standard that is agreed upon, we cannot do an unquestioned Good deed. We do
various shades of better. It is all a question of whose ox is gored.... If a killer whale is not evil then
what about defective people? Can we even excise just the evil and keep the good? Kill the mosquitoes
but starve the bats. It's always like that, you wound the good when you cut the bad.
If a man has a code he can live by, he has done enough. People need a special philosophy. A set of
principles they point to and say “to me that is most important”. There is honesty, there nobility, there
beauty, there generosity, and there courage. There is my tribe and there my country. Here is my family
and here is my first loyalty. All else is friend, foe, or irrelevant.
I was talking about evil. Evil may be to live by desire rather than justice. We need desire but if we are
flawed then we desire the wrong things. I find it hard to fathom a preference for nihilism, a need for
destruction or vandalism.. Canabalism? Never say never. Child rape? Comprehensible as the desire of
defective people. Perhaps though they are another species and could be killed, like flies, with impunity.
Let's not encourage that gene. But didn't Plato have sexual relations with his pupils? We are at war with
microbes and terrorists. They are not necessarily evil. They have different “needs”. You can talk to
terrorists easier than to God and you have a higher probability of getting a meaningful response. Some
terrorists may tire of their own philosophy and we may tire of ours as well. We may each prefer a third
way that makes us accomplices.
So I have just propounded an evil philosophy: your absolutist dreams are dangerous to my way of
thinking and mine to yours. Can we go on as before? I do not like to talk about my faith.....
How about faith AND everything else. Faith is what happens after everything else. Keep all the other
good stuff and add faith for what we don't know and will never know. What could be simpler? But is it
true? It may be better to assume that the things we need are true.....
Where else can we go for a “fuller” life?