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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The God of traditional religions, I mean.
There is nothing more reductionist than saying "God did it." No other explanation is needed.
But there is no mystery to why we use the scientific process. Because it works.
Having a concept of God is useful because it makes us feel better, and perhaps behave better. But I have yet to see it solve real-world problems. So I don't see a good reason to start mixing God and science together.
Just as I have previously been utterly let down by Dawkins and Hitchens, each of who brought absolutely nothing new to the game, I had some hope (being Fromm's "eternal sucker") when I glimpsed the leader into this piece. But no. Nothing new here. Nothing significantly pro or con.
I've had better luck with an exchange with a professed (but not militant) atheist professor at a school in Pennsylvania. I've had far better luck with my own empericist daughter (who denies being an atheist -- and I agree, she's not -- but would like something solid to grab onto and has so far not found it).
But far worse than the academic exercises carried out in the name of God or Not God by Kauffman or Hitchens or anybody other than, perhaps, those amazing contemporaries Einstein and Tielhard, I find little to nothing. Bring an agenda to the table and you've essentially screwed yourself and wasted everyone's time except for that of the nihilists and the fundies who love to crash together like waves in the wake up a speedboat after one of these lame expositions are spent here.
And yet -- and yet there is something more than meaningless and something more than "just God" that animates my world. I'm not sure I care what it's called. In fact, please quit trying to name it, define it and reduce it to a single dimension. Just leave off the whole exercise and be in the present moment. Everything else is truly meaningless.
Another slew of brain cells fried over nothing. Have fun arguing over this latest nothing. A rainbow is no less wondrous for all your aimless attempts to reduce its meaning, which is entirely based upon the context in which the witness happens to view it.
Wonder is all that matters. Science and religion can both go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Here's to life, whatever it is and however "meaningless" it may be. It wouldn't be so meaningless nor so tainted if I pointed a gun at some atheist's head -- or some religious nut's either. Suddenly life would become sacred for that fuckwad.
Context is everything. Feel or shut up.
For the last 11 years, I've been exploring similar issues in music and community, in part through my band Gaia Consort. I wrote music for a lot of folks in the Pagan community, thinking that of any group of people, Pagans who cliam to celebrate the living earth as "divine" would get excited about catching on to the hard science of people like James Lovelock who are working with similar ideas.
As it turns out, they do and they don't. People attach meaning to ideas in complete disregard to even the most precise language, as long as they want to see it that way. The word "god" just has way too much baggage.
We don't need "god" or "spirituality" or any "bridge" between science and fairy tales. We will be healthier humans eventually, if we cultivate a community that celebrates and embraces the awe inspired by our experiences as part of an entirely natural universe.
We don't need a new word for "god" - art and science will fill the gaps when we let go of religion. Don't worry about finding "meaning" - we do it by making it ourselves with or without religious metaphor.
Whatever name we give to the totality of all beings and things, it's awe inspiring named or not. Any name you give it will just detract. "God" will probably take you farther from the direct experience than any other word.
“…I think Richard (Dawkins) is wrong….I think that there's something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it's God enough for me…”
How exactly is Dawkins wrong? Since when did he say that nature was not ‘stunning’? I’ve read many of Dawkins’ books and have watched him lecture and I would say that from his writings and lectures he finds nature pretty stunning. Do you really think that scientists have to abandon reductionism to see “awe and wonder” in nature?
“Richard's view, and those of the new atheists, is simply not going to reach out and persuade those who hold to the standard Abrahamic religious views to consider something else. Whereas I hope what I'm saying may help create a new kind of sacred space.”
First of all, what are you, a scientist or a counselor? It’s not the job of the scientist to try to “bridge the gap” between science and superstition with some kind of middle of the road touchy feely claptrap.
Secondly, the tag of ‘new atheist’ is a misnomer. There isn’t anything ‘new’ about it. Atheist comes from ‘a’ (without) and ‘theist’ (deity). Putting ‘new’ in front of it implies that something has somehow changed. Atheists today are exactly the same as atheists from a thousand years ago or atheists a hundred years ago. Some things really do never change!
"We don't need a new word for "god" - art and science will fill the gaps when we let go of religion. Don't worry about finding "meaning" - we do it by making it ourselves with or without religious metaphor."
Right on!
Okay, what is nature?
Nature is Malaria. It is a disease which led to the existance and the need for sickle cell anemia.
Maleria, via a mutation migrated to humans, sickle cells evolved in order to prevent people getting malaria, a valuable trait in malaria areas. This is why the condition is more common in areas which, surprise suprise, have malaria.
It is not the mark of a benevolent God that this came into being, it is the mark of evolution - which doesn't require intent guiding it, it just requires things to adapt to their surroundings.
To see God in nature, is to forget that a lot of nature includes parasites which blind children, diseases which cause unimaginable agony, madness, deformity etc... It looks very pretty, and hey I like nature, but it isn't a symptom of some wonderous all knowing deity running the universe.
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