No, not everyone knows God is real

Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo, face detail of God. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is more or less a dogma among some people that deep down everyone knows God is real. Aside from the question of what role that would leave for faith (which cannot exist without doubt--some people confuse faith with certainty), another question is what is means to know that God is real.

This is trickier than it sounds for skeptics and believers alike. Belief has several important shades of meaning, depth, and conviction. Is belief assent or agreement with an intellectual proposition such as "Korea is currently divided into two nation states and is located on a peninsula south of China" or is it an opinion such as "Rat terriers are the best dog breed"? Is it an intuition or a choice?

And upon what is a particular belief grounded? Is it an assumption you picked up as habitus because the people around you seemed to think and act like it was true? Has it been confirmed by your own experiences, and how do you know your perceptions and conclusions surrounding your experiences weren't biased by your pre-existing beliefs or those of the people you've encountered in your life?

This is especially tricky when it comes to belief in God because of differing perceptions on the nature of God and how God interacts with people. If God is within then is that warm glow you feel in your chest a sign? If God is without, then was your prayer answered when you asked for something and it happened? Or was that just a coincidence? And on it goes.

Then there are categories of connections to the divine such as peak experiences and a sense of the numinous. These can include the sensation or perception of non-dual unity with the universe, possession by absolute acceptance and bliss,  an overwhelming sense of wonder and awe generating a sense of connection to a larger mystery. And while they don't have to be interpreted as incontrovertible proof of a higher power, arguably these events are less ambiguous than other experiences that are taken to be signs of God.

Still, there are those who have no convincing sensations, serendipitous occurrences, or extraordinary shifts in conscious awareness. They have no felt sense of the presence of God and no intuition of an overarching purpose to either the universe or their own lives. And regardless of whether the personal testimonies of others or intellectual arguments about the reality of God sound convincing, there is nothing of substance upon which they can sincerely claim to know that God is real.

Let's explore some common themes that arise when expressing such lack of knowledge of God's reality.

God, bad and ugly

Image via Wikipedia

This is the fourth and final part of a long essay. Parts one and two and three are also available.

If we look at religion beyond the caricatures and stereotypes of ignorance and intolerance, acknowledging that these are based on very vocal and visible religious institutions and individuals, then we can admit that these are part of what religion can become without assuming that this is the truest or most revealing part of what religion is. (We might also see that prophets and other religious figures were generally combating this tendency toward religious fanaticism, but again, let's leave that for your own investigation.)

We can look at the communally artistic way that religion or the religious aspects of culture deal with the most profound existential dilemmas facing our curiously sentient species and ask what value there may be in exploring these questions by weaving them into a shared tapestry of meaning and social affiliation.

We can speculate about the human (or at least the Western) tendency to organize our perception and behavior (and thus our explanations and cultural constructions) along an axis with freedom, ambiguity and uncertainty on one end and structure control and clarity on the other. Might this also apply to our notions of spirituality and religion when it comes to the aspects of our cultural systems that deal with major existential questions?

We can allow for the possibility that the questions and concerns driving nonbeliever and the irreligious are not so different from those who seek God or engage in religious activities. Or even that there may be a useful dialogue, if not a degree of synthesis, available to such seemingly divergent perspectives.

And still we can ask, how exactly does God fit into all of this? 

A lack of compelling evidence for belief in God?

Image by galactoseintolerant via FlickrThis is the second part of a long essay. Parts one and three and four are also available.

Clearly nonbelievers of all stripes have some reason to care about the God question, as for many of them it is tied up in the larger issues surrounding religion. There is little point in arguing with someone who is convinced of the immanent danger posed by religion and belief in God, but what about those who are in the live and let live camp? Those who emphasize their weak atheism/agnosticism and who do not see religion or belief in God as dangerously delusional? Beyond the effects that the choices and influence of believers have on their lives, isn't it more or less irrelevant? What's the point of believing in God, anyway?

After all, who doesn't want to think of themselves as bold, intelligent, knowledgeable, shrewd, mature, ethical and rational? As standing on the side of oppressed and marginalized while championing social and scientific progress? In Western societies today, your perceived degree of religiosity is connected to this image.

Religiosity can take many forms. But from a popular modern Western perspective, it has to do with how many things associated with monotheistic (especially Abrahamic) religion you indicate an affinity for. That would include things such as the very idea of God, how anthropomorphically God is depicted, belief in angels, Biblical miracles (i.e. contravening the laws of nature rather than just labeling something extraordinary being labeled as  miraculous).

To illustrate the point, which of the following would you most readily suspect of being associated with homophobic or misogynist attitudes? A pantheist, a Buddhist, or a Christian? How about a Wiccan, an atheist, or a Muslim?

Believing in God isn't the same as believing in God--being open to truths of religion & spirituality

Image via Wikipedia

There is a difference between direct, first-hand experience and second or third or fourth hand knowledge. In the West, and perhaps the world, religion is now a matter of second-hand knowledge. Faith mostly means trusting the sources for this second-hand knowledge. Do you believe God is ____________? Unless you are a very rare bird whatever you used to fill in the blank ("not real", "love", "my Father", "the same as shunyata", etc) is based on second-hand knowledge. It is based on theology, philosophy, social psychology, cultural influence, and a host of other factors which we mistake for direct, first-hand experience. Our view fits our needs and our value system, including our epistemology (i.e. how we know what we think we know). We may even talk about our personal experiences (or lack thereof) with God, but these too can readily be inspired or interpreted by our second-hand sources.

Now this may sound like an argument for atheism, but I've included it in the list of views of God based on second-hand knowledge as well as agnosticism or whatever else one want to identify as or with. Because like all phenomena we want to put God, and heaven, and nirvana and the rest in labeled box with a proper name and a list of qualities or properties. Even those who may have had a glimpse of a deeper truth or reality beyond their second-hand world are at severe risk of then folding it back into a box, pigeon holing their experience and turning it into an idol. Even calling God ineffable is reducing God to something we can wrap our heads around, a concept to accept or reject. The same is true for our sacred texts and symbols as well, which are even more vulnerable.

One part of us wants certainty, clearly defined phenomena contained in rational and readily described categories, things which are uniform and predictable and easily subjected to the grossest forms of empirical verification, phrased in math and historical statements; the other allows for ambiguity, creativity, and paradox, engenders humility and wonder, allows for things beyond our ability to fully grasp, pin down, or control, phrased in metaphor and poetic language. The former tendency has become dominant in (Western) religion. We want to know, in specific terms, who God is/what God is/what God is like. We want to similar know what the Buddha meant when he held up a flower. We want to know with the same specificity and certainty what we are supposed to get out of the image of a crucifix, or contemplating a koan, or receiving the Eucharist. We want to know, we want to know, we want to know.

Great minds think alike (so why I am I thinking like they do?)

I recently browsed an issue of Shambala Sun.  Sometimes it has nothing of interest to me, other times it has a gem of an article that I need to keep and read over and over.  This one by "Jack Haubner", in the January 2011 issue, had a quote that talked about the importance of the tension between received tradition and ongoing (personal) revelation:

More important, watching Roshi in a non-monastic setting gave me new insight into just how seamlessly he had made the Zen tradition his own--and vice versa.  An uneasy tension had always existed between my free-spirited self and the hyper-disciplined, even militaristic conventions of formal Zen practice.  But that week in the hospital I began to see that the proper relationship between an individual and a tradition is one of tension--healthy tension.  That is what produces spiritual growth, both in the individual and in the tradition itself: not the individual's solo efforts nor the tradition's overarching forms, but the two locked into a single struggle/dance, from which a new kind of person--and practice--emerges.

With the full force of the tradition behind him, my teacher searched within himself (the "backward step," as Dogen called it) and eventually broke through, turning himself inside out and taking the outside in.  The tradition became personal and the personal universal.  As the religious historian Karen Armstrong has pointed put, the tendency in our age is either to reject the traditional and remain isolated, secular individualists, or cling to religious forms and ideals and become fundamentalists.  But the truth, like all truths, lies somewhere in between: We can't do it on our own, nor can the tradition do it for us.  When the individual and the tradition are perfectly wed, intermingled and indistinguishable, a spiritual heavy hitter--a genuine master--is born, and an institution is revitalized.

In short, the tradition must be dissolved within the individual, and the individual must dissolve within the tradition.

A month or so ago I had finally picked up the classic Being Peace by Thich Naht Hanh, and in Chapter Two I came across a passage which read, "Whenever I say, 'I take refuge in the Buddha,' I hear 'The Buddha takes refuge in me.' " That kind of phrasing seemed a tad familiar to me, although we took developed it in different ways.

The benefits of letting go of God can include coming closer to God

[The following is taken from a larger conversation originally conducted elsewhere. It has been edited for congruity and sensibility, including some new text, but the integrity of its original meaning is left intact.]

People sometimes mention letting go of God. But what does that mean? Was God in your pocket? Maybe on your iPod? Did you set God out with the trash? What you let go was an idea about God. A conception of God. A way of relating to God.

People will often keep struggling to hold on to this perspective, but intellectual honesty often wins out because there were things that didn't work with their expectations and assumptions, including their interpretation of what God and religion is supposed to be and what is valid or invalid in assessing such requirements.

I cannot go into everything I've written on the matter, but I went through the same thing, as have thousands of others. For whatever its worth, here are a very few of the things I have encountered and pondered along the way:

Is God a person or just some vague cosmic force?

Is there, in fact "one all-powerful force controlling everything"?  Perhaps a "mystical energy field" that controls your destiny?  Is there some great big guy in the sky who is watching your every move from a throne and ready to judge you if you don't think or act the right way?  Or is such talk based on "simple tricks and nonsense"?

There are times when someone else has said something so well, it is better to let them speak on the matter and add a bit of commentary.

Let's talk read some Kung.

How would we know God?

Following up on some thoughts that found expression in some recent posts (here and here), a question arises. People sometimes limit their thinking of God and hence their awareness of same, but what is your expectation? What vision of God would you really accept? What would you really believe? Are you trying to (dis)believe strictly in someone else's described experience of the Divine, and if so, why?