Thoughts on the Philosophy of Religion

[academic writing; original selections from forum discussions in Dr. John Shook’s course on social ethics and religion; Union Institute and University, fall 2011].

Posted: Wed 7/20/2011 at 3:19 PM, in reply to R S

I’m interested in what might be a spiritual schizophrenia, a standing belief in Buddhism and elsewhere, that attributes the creation of both the ‘evil’ of the world—what moved the rocks that trapped the miners—and the ‘good,’ that is, whatever life force saved them. We are creators: of meals, children and families, but also of weapons with which to draw to extinction other species, builders of tsunami-ready boats, somewhere seeking safer ways to split the atom at this very moment. If we had left it all alone, starting with the apple…? It doesn’t seem like we would have ever been able to leave well enough alone; humanity’s relationship with the non-human, natural world seems less harmonic and more adversarial by the day. Days of Prayer have been declared by the governors of a number of states this week, in response to our current environmental madness. It seems to be Flew’s failure of logic—that elements, lifeless or not, must be ‘good’ by their very creation—at work on the grand scale, as thousands if not millions fan themselves during prayer in churches, asking for help in keeping cool. I am willing to see in these events taking place in the non-human, natural world, as being significant, having something to say about humanity’s relationship with any ultimate reality… and, to use Mackie’s phrase, I use my own poetry and creative work as a way to make sense of a place where “these appearances fade away,” and “try to formulate the suggestion precisely” (249), where the grayscale of our lives might be given a hint, some prodding, that leads to seeing some moment of seeing some small part of the Technicolor of Oz, whatever that may be for an individual on their journey of gaining knowledge about themselves and their beliefs. Spiritual evangelism seeking viewers’ improved Perception through art might be sheer egoism, but still may be less toxic than government-mandated, state-by-state Days of Prayer in response to soaring temperatures. For a less mystical Buddhist, the acceptance of suffering may be the only and ultimate reality, the salvation of the individual through transcending a beautiful and beautifully cruel world. Adding to my own spiritual schizophrenia and challenge, I see ‘cash value’ in the universal promotion of such transcendence in others, however p assive or transitory (music).

Posted: Mon 7/25/2011 at 9:07 PM, in reply to R J

What proof of free will do we really have? Buying wholesale that “the reality of our existence is that we do indeed have moderate control over our own decision-making capabilities” passes Carrier’s test of being a delusion: one may hold the belief in certainty (“not wishy washy,” in Carrier’s words); holding the belief with incorrigibility (not changeable, even by evidence to the contrary); and that the belief would be “implausible, bizarre, patently untrue”. Suddenly it seems we’re splitting hairs of our differing experience, especially when it ocmes to our differing sets of circumstances that may help reinforce or dismantle one’s claim to incorrigibility—and this intersection of the forces of metaphysical human belief and whatever, if any, forces that are at work in the non-human, living world may not be underestimated. Religion may, for some, be about more than only the propagation of “better/heathier/more just” choices for those creatures evolved/lucky enough to have grown brains big enough to identify, and assess such an intersection. I’m less of a predestinationist than may appear (“destinationist?”), but may see as much fallacy in a belief in autonomous free will as in a belief that the trees are talking and I’m in actually less control than I may think.

Posted: Wed 8/17/2011 at 12:12 AM, in reply to J S

This is an interesting thread, and I like how examples of environmental and human “evil” are provided to represent the darker side of God’s hand: certainly tragedies that take place in and on the earth—hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like—might be equal in our definition of “evil” to a couple’s inability to conceive a child, though, as Dr. Shook points out, only in some situations may one’s preparedness counteract such destructive environmental truths. So our bodies are part of nature in that respect: a random tree may fall in the woods and kill a camper; a hurricane may make a beeline for a populated coast; we may be born with parts of ourselves that don’t work as well as others. I’m very hesitant—perhaps a practice of my own mental health—to make “evil” out of any ‘shoulda/woulda/coulda’ situations, including the example provided of building codes, and how one town’s regulations may prevent residents’ homes from collapsing during an earthquake. To me, such retrospect itself is damaging (I won’t say “evil”), as perhaps a basic premise of human social development is the acquisition of food, water, and shelter. Different populations across different environments have sought to meet those needs differently; civilizations’ collective intentions to procure those basic needs might be judged the best attempt possible at the time, and they may not. And, it’s unfortunately likely an individual’s “evil,” in greed or lust for control, may have gotten in the way of such collective intention. I think of those who mixed and poured concrete in the 1950s, who stacked cinder blocks into their own backyard bomb shelters, and of the weird array of survivalists who, in the name of their faith, stock canned food and buy bullets. Like others, I’m not up for assigning “evil” to economics—in the name of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, in a way, as systems contrived by humans are the products of human behavior and thought, and the range of our bad decision making is immeasurable, innate flaw. The individual’s “evil” mentioned above as ‘greed or lust for control’ might too be bad wiring in the brain, but this may be too far a leap, because at its worst, the systematic adoption of one individual’s destructive ideas constitutes something larger than collectively ignorant intentions (Nazism).

Posted: Thu 9/15/2011 at 5:08 PM, in reply to K M

thanks for inciting this discussion of rouge psychologists, as evidence of some ‘outside-the-box’ thinking on religion’s manifestation in people’s actions and beliefs. The overstimulation of our brains in this quickening, naturally- and humanly- tumultuous time surely complicates any individual or collective vision of how belief in a higher power manifests into deed. Professor Shook summed Dewey’s concern regarding the difference between the ‘religious’ and those who adhere to a ‘religion’ as a matter of objectivity and subjectivity: “anything a religion says about objective reality is subjective […] A million atheists aren’t any more objectively right than a million faithful, so far as just counting beliefs is involved.” I think sometimes that a dour postmodernism gripped too much of intellectual thought and culture in this country, creating a sociopathic and spiritually lazy climate in which all is subjective, and one’s own experience is ultimate and central: the “Pepsi Jesus” and “feel-good” church my father railed against as he watched our Episcopal church transform in sermon and mission, from the presentation of Biblical redemption as objective truth, to the discussion of the ethical metaphors and advice spoken by Christ and others in the Bible. Dewey would have condoned both theological reasons to gather on a Sunday morning: “[…] supernatural intervention is assumed to have effected the transition from brute to man […] Therefore, it is inferred, we must resort to supernatural control. Of course, I make no claim to knowing how far intelligence may and will develop in respect to social relations. But one thing I think I do know. The needed understanding will not develop unless we strive for it. The assumption that only supernatural agencies can give control is a sure method of retarding this effort” (Dewey, p. 76). The action of humanity gaining a grasp on its understanding of any connection to a higher power is an action of Striving: a reach, above and beyond the experience of what is common. Humanity holds in its grasp some intrinsic control of its future, its actions, decisions, and sense of belonging, and I have always wished—prayed—for more humans to embrace the control they do have over their own lives, however scant their rights may be. What is a divine action in this, our human environment? The rescue of neighbors from floods; the toppling of dictatorships; the fund drives that ask of the resources of untouched populations? In my view, there’s a big difference between an individual who can claim ‘it’s the right thing to do’ and one who can and will say to themselves, ‘I believe it’s the right thing to do’—the manifestation of spiritual and ethical exploration. Buddhism may be the handiest in this regard, in establishing a spiritual search for identity that manifests in an ethical and peaceful existence. Alan Watts has been my longtime guru in this; I attend church as well because I value the common and ritualistic action of being ‘religious,’ and the establishment of constructive, compassionate community around such common action. Watts is distinctly psychological and punchy (“How to Be A Genuine Fake” is one chapter in his 1966 The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are); here, he introduces his that work on identity, arguing that an individual’s experience may be one that may be experiential and scientific enough to offer grounding for an universal stance of understanding: all are able and may be willing to upholding the eight noble truths (prayers to typhoon-ravaged Japan): “I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time—a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body” (Watts, p. 12). Perhaps most common across the spectrum of a new category of ‘applied-religious’ individuals—those who act upon their spiritually-derived ethical beliefs—may be the simplest acknowledgement of the spiritual other, that knowledge that lies beyond what is common to our lives: “we can never, never describe all the features of the total situation, not only because every situation is infinitely complex, but also because the total situation is the universe. Fortunately, we do not have to describe any situation exhaustively […]” (Watts, p. 87). Watts, A. (1989). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. New York: Vintage.

Posted: Tue 9/27/2011 at 11:41 AM, in reply to E A

I’m glad for your response to Daly, because you identified some of the risks associated with Daly’s reconceptualization: “in her attempt to emancipate women from the patriarchial system, Daly risks further alienating these women from real power and participation in the developed, predominantly Christian hemisphere.” This alienation comes through her call to ‘empty’ “Jesus and God of any concrete imagery of experiential identity” (Shook, lecture notes)—leaving behind an accessible, amorphous, and gender-neutral spiritual entity. The act of rethinking one’s notion of God to this extent may be a revolutionary and radical one, depending on the extent to which one’s traditional notion of a patriarchial Christian spiritual entity may be engrained. And thus I appreciate most that Daly engages language itself in her reconceptualization: “metapatterning women and words have magical powers, opening doorways of memories, transforming spaces and times […] Thus liberation is the work of Wicked Grammar, which is a basic instrument, our Witches’ Hammer” (p. xxv). The action of ‘re-seeing’ our intrinsic and natural spiritual abilities—and the fact that our existence proves our outright and liberatory success—requires our special attention to language, its power and glory, forever until we actively, consciously, change it, and perhaps not even then. I know a writer and teacher whose history of practicing energy transference and meditative perception spans more than three decades; the words he uses during his guided sessions, however, sound as if lifted from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. They are the words he knows, he says, but in the sessions they take on a fully different meaning. I’m very interested in the social and cultural context surrounding the publication of Daly’s work, because her scholarship and legacy may represent some of the most progressive and liberatory thought I’ve encountered in a while. I believe Mary Daly is as Christian as Kurt Cobain, Ozzy Osbourne, Adrianne Rich, and the writer described above. If Beyond God the Father was Daly’s stance in 1974 (whose voice and tone reminded me of a pissed-off and polarizing version of popular astrologist and Daly contemporary Linda Goodman), Daly’s sense of liberation did more than run the risk that Elizabeth identified, but fully established a separation of gender as being critical to the survival of humanity: “If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males” (Daly, as cited by Bridle, 2011, para. 27). Promoting gender inequality in a number of ways in the same 1999 magazine interview, Daly notes that if she had the chance to retitle her 1974 work, she would change it to simply Beyond God, leaving any form of patriarchy fully separate from her discussion. While I find such intellectual divisiveness about as useful as a government shutdown (up to and including stalled FEMA funding), I am interested in the social and cultural environment that gave rise to Daly’s voice: the revolutions of thought and action, politics and culture, war and peace that took place in the early 1970s may have constituted a different intellectual environment than what we’ve got today, one built at least in part of a “Wicked Grammar” with a purpose (though one might use that phrase to describe text messaging language). If we are to ‘empty’ ourselves of any “concrete imagery,” with what may we fill that void? Poetry is good; for a modern journal of feminist “wicked grammar” in this tradition, one that seeks Rich’s call for a common language, I recommend “Chain,” edited by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young (the latest issue, subtitled “A Megaphone,” features an introduction written without the letter ‘r,’ and presents new and poetic forms that each seek liberatory language). Music seems to always be my favorite answer, and many take the genre as a means through which to promote and divulge their spiritual understanding. This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, whose grunge vision presented an ultimately bleek and dystopic spirituality (“here we are now/entertain us”). Mary Daly probably railed against and ignored Black Sabbath during their early, best, and formative years, but I can think of few musical entities from the years that preceded the publication of Beyond God the Father that sought specifically to redefine and recharacterize common spiritual understanding—employing what was surely viewed as a most “wicked grammar” at the time. The higher spiritual entity presented across Sabbath’s first few albums is one of Old Testament vengence, in full and perhaps diametric patriarchial opposition to Daly’s liberatory frameworks—but it the employ of language across Daly’s paperback, Rich’s poems, and Sabbath’s lyrics that creates an interesting environment in which the promotion of an individual’s self-sustaining spirituality may take place. Two years prior to the publication of Beyond God the Father, rock critic Lester Bangs sought, across two articles published in Creem magazine, to sum Black Sabbath’s place—if any—in popular and liberatory spirituality. He described the spirituality of the first ‘metal’ band as not just Christian but as “the first truly Catholic rock group” (p. 226), speculating that the vengeful characterization of God at work in Sabbath’s reconception of spirituality may be less than useful, as the band’s advocation of substance use and abuse squandered any attempt by the band at spiritual liberation through lyrics: “[…] I see this band making an attempt to provide direction for a generation busy immolating itself as quickly as possible. Since nobody else around that I can see seems to have any better advice for them than Black Sabbath, it pains me perhaps unduly to see them suggesting the hoariest copout concieved in 2,000 years. I mean, what’s the difference between a vegetable babbling about how much crank he can hold and stay alive, and one locked into repeating a zealot litany with mindless persistence to every stranger coming down the street?” (Bangs, p. 231). The promotion of spiritual liberation through language is important, and the important social responsibilities that seem to adhere to the roles individuals play in that action extend to all: the writer, the critic, the artist, the musician, the poet. To what extent was the liberation offered in Nirvana’s grunge vision really a squandering of human spirit; to what extent does Daly’s gender divisiveness later in life squander her liberatory vision? Some lyrics from Sabbath’s 1971 second album Master of Reality provide an example of alienation through gender bias while seeking liberation as much as Daly did, I believe, but I can praise them both for finding language for their vision: Leave the earth to all its sin and hate Find another world where freedom waits. Past the stars in fields of ancient void Through the shields of darkness where they find Love upon a land a world unknown where the sons of freedom make their home (“Into the Void,” 1971). Bangs, L. (2003). Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Ed. J. Morthland. New York: Anchor. Also available at http://www.creemmagazine.com/_site/BeatGoesOn/BlackSabbath/BringYourMotherPt001.html Black Sabbath. Master of Reality. (1971). Vinyl. New York: Warner Brothers. Bridle, S. (2011). “No Man’s Land: An Interview with Mary Daly.” EnlightenNext Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j16/daly.asp?page=3 Daly, M. (1974). Beyond God the Father. Boston: Beacon Press. Spahr, J. and Young, S., eds. (2011). Chain:Links:A Megaphone:Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism. Philadelphia: ChainLinks.

Posted: Thu 10/27/2011 at 2:24 AM, in reply to K M

What to do when one's got enough bliss with which to bear the brunt of this unbiased and cruel-- and beautiful-- world? If the Greeks sought a cosmological order and rational structure to our existence, I'll concur that we live in a bleak time for popular exploration of spiritual beliefs and views; tough times make for full pews, they say. I'll side with the universe as being that "brilliant accident" over anything we're able to wrap our brains around completely. While Philip K. Dick's existential reality-as-what-disappears-upon-your-disinterest appeals to me, I want to also invite the acknowledgement of an unattainable noble truth that we are together in our incomplete knowledge; like Dewey and others, I acknowledge the value of empirical, intuitive, and positive engagement as individuals. From Gregory Corso's 1962 collection Long Live Man, an excerpt from "Stain Francis Holding the Church From Falling": The Church is steadfast. Computers pistons engines hydros dynamos museum it; All is real estate. What once gave light to dark Now gives dark to light. The Church should not fall But walk away And leave behind the glory of its stay-- Corso, G. (1962). Long Live Man. San Francisco: New Directions.

Bibliography

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