An Afterlife Under Any God?

A dear friend of mine is in hospice care with advanced Alzheimer's Disease. The decline has been shockingly rapid, and I don't fully understand why, although I think it's probably for the best for his family and friends that it's happening the way it is instead of being much more drawn out.

Anyway, I posted something to Facebook last night about my friend, and another friend of mine, Tom, who recently met the unfortunate victim of this terrible disease at my house, made a comment about his hopes for the afterlife, and I replied with my less sanguine thoughts about what any real afterlife would likely consist of.

Here is what he and I wrote:

Me: Sitting at the bedside of a good friend who seems, for reasons I don't fully understand, to be virtually comatose and close to death from cerebral hypoxia associated with an advanced stage of Alzheimer's. What an awful, cruel disease Alzheimer's is!

Tom: Terrible, terrible. While I have no faith in the Gods that write books, I do hope that there is some sort of "veil" we pass through after death where we get some sort of explanation what life, in general, and our life, in particular, was all about.

It's not that I think a life between just birth and death is meaningless. It is just that I think a reason and meaning for having been alive is due us. In Hamlet, the Bard talks about "defeated joy."

Me: Tom, if we die and that's the end of our personal existence and consciousness, it won't matter to us whether we find out why we were here or not. But if we go on to inhabit forever and ever some conscious afterlife, as much as I, like you, would love to believe that we would learn the answers to all our pressing questions and reap huge benefits from this, I'm more inclined to think that posthumously everlasting life could eternally make the trials and tribulations of this ephemeral lifetime seem like a joyous picnic by comparison.

In other words, if so much inequality, injustice, and suffering can dominate this life, what's to stop this from occurring on a far more iniquitous and torturous scale in any life to come? A supremely loving, just, and merciful God? What God is that? One of the "Gods that write books"? Any God that created and sustains THIS unholy vale of earthly tears?

What do you think about Tom's and my comments, and what do you think happens to us after we die, and why do you think it?

Can You Tell Me How?

For all you Christians who rebuke nonbelievers like me for condemning everlasting torture and for condemning THE IDEA of a supremely good God who inflicts everlasting torture on most of the human race after they die, can you tell me how I can force myself to believe that this God exists, and can you tell me how I can force myself to see something--everlasting torture of most of the human race--as good rather than the way I've always seen it: as something hideous, horrible, and monstrously evil? You tell me I'm wrong to see it the way I have since I left the church as a boy of twelve. Can you tell me how I can force myself to grow up and see God's everlasting torture of most of the human race as a GOOD thing?

Reply to Gary

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry titled A Loving God? in which I argued that, contrary to what many believe, the Christian God is not loving and the Christian community is not "love-centered," because: (1) A loving omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God wouldn't create a world of suffering or allow a hell to exist in which human souls could suffer eternally, (2) A loving God wouldn't require us to love him in order to avoid eternal torture in hell, and (3) Christians are generally no more loving than agnostic, atheistic, and other religious people. I concluded by saying: "It continues to amaze me how human beings can use their intelligence to rationalize belief in a "loving God" that is neither loving nor the least bit plausible."

A few days ago, Gary replied with a thoughtful comment that I think deserves more exposure than it's likely to get buried in the comments section of my post. So, I'm reposting it here along with my reply to each point.

Like Dr. Carl Sagan I am both a scientist and an agnostic.

Unlike you and the late, great Carl Sagan, I am not a scientist, but like you and Sagan, I am agnostic or, as I sometimes call myself, agnostic panentheistic, even if I'm not exactly sure what "panentheism" means.

There is no proof either way to support the existence or non-existence of a God.

Just as there's no absolute proof that there's no, to use the example offered by a later commenter, a "Flying Spaghetti Monster," but this doesn't mean that we don't have ample reason to justifiably and very strongly doubt the existence of both.

I am always amazed at the vitriol that is expended by atheists at those of faith. Why bother? It will not effect a true believer and when taken to the extreme I am reminded of the religious fanatics we all despise.

I'm not surprised by the "vitriol," unless I'm surprised that it isn't far worse.

Suppose you relocated to another country where the dominant religion worshiped the Flying Spaghetti Monster god, and this belief permeated the culture to such an extent that no one could be elected president or to any other high office without espousing belief in this god; people seeking political power ostentatiously wrapped themselves in symbols of this religion to psychologically manipulate the populace into supporting them or their dubious if not destructive proposals; proponents of this religion tried to block or vitiate the teaching of certain kinds of science in the public schools and to have their religious beliefs taught alongside this science and to have public school children pray to their god and pledge their allegiance to a nation existing "under" that God; and these same proponents of a religion that teaches that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and feed the hungry, house the homeless, and take care of the sick were often among the most unloving and uncharitable people around.

Don't you think you might feel more than a little frustrated and consequently angry surrounded by all of this entrenched foolishness, coercion, and hypocrisy? Don't you think you might speak out against it and try, by whatever means you could. to weaken the hold of this religion over the minds and hearts and politics of the people around you?

However, I can't say that I see all the "vitriol" that you suggest is out there. People often accuse the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett of vitriolic diatribes against Christianity, but it seems to me that their books and talks are not so much vitriolic as strong assertions of facts and reason against what is largely religious nonsense.

It has absolutely no effect other than to entrench the fanatics on both sides which invariably leads to violence. This is utter stupidity.

Where is "violence" coming or on the verge of coming from the agnostic and atheist "fanatics"? Indeed, where are these fanatics? Who are they?

Why are atheists so frightened or disgusted by those who choose to follow a religion?

I suspect that most atheists are more disgusted than frightened by monotheists, unless those monotheists happen to be AK-47 wielding, suicide-bombing Islamists, and wouldn't you be too if you were surrounded by believers in the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a setting similar to the one I described earlier?

The vast majority are productive members of society who cause no harm to others(my wife is Wiccan hence the use of the term) and carry on with their lives. Many of them perform charitable (in other words they donate their own money...not relying on the taxpayers to do it for them... or their time) deeds on a weekly basis(something the atheist community does not I might add) and the rest at least on a yearly basis. Why in the world would any group choose to vent their spleen on someone like that?

I think a case could be made that they do cause harm to themselves and others. First of all, their embrace of nonsensical exoteric monotheism may blind them and others to the potential of secular reason or esoteric spiritual practice to evoke actual wisdom, personal growth, and positive transformation of society and culture. Second, monotheistic teachings on hell are monstrous and, when imposed on children, arguably abusive. Third, when theists try to foist some of their religious beliefs (e.g., opposition to evolutionary theory, opposition to birth control, intolerance toward gays) and practices (e.g., school prayer, teaching of some version of intelligent design) and to codify their beliefs into law (e.g., criminalizing homosexual relations and abortion), this could well be harmful. As for religious people being more charitable than atheists, I'm not sure this is true. Can you document the truth of this?

Go after the murderers, or the animal abusers, or the child abusers, or anyone who is doing harm.....but no they instead choose to waste their time and many tax dollars in court going after someone who chooses to believe in a God. What the heck for?

Are you saying that atheists don't "go after" animal and child abusers or others who do harm? Don't atheists, as much as anyone else, revile them, ostracize them, throw them in jail, and sometimes even execute them. What do atheists do to religious believers who act within the law? How do they unfairly "go after" theists in court?

As an aside I allways like comparing the currently held scientific theory(or belief if you prefer) on the creation of the universe by the leading cosmologist in the world.

Briefly cosmologists theorise that the universe started from a singularity about the size of a Neutron(one half of the size of a Hydrogen Atom nucleus) and in a massive explosion between 12 an 20 billion years ago all the matter in the universe expanded from that singularity and spread out in a flat universe billions of light years across. The Christian theory(or belief if you prefer) starts...

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
One version is that which I am most familiar with, the other was written thousands of years ago by a primitive non-scientific people and yet...they sound pretty similar to my ear.

For one thing, scientific cosmology eliminates the extra and possibly needless step of invoking a cosmic personage who intentionally designed, created, and presides over the universe and who rewards those who love and obey him and tortures those who disbelieve in him and disobey him. And science isn't faced with, in my opinion, the impossible of task of reconciling an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent creator God with the ubiquitous presence of evil and suffering. In other words, scientific cosmology seems more pleasingly parsimonious and plausible than the monotheistically religious one.

Becoming the Ones We've Been Waiting For

We will become the ones we've been waiting for only once we become more like the One who's been waiting for us.
--Gagdad Bob

I agree. But who or what is "the One" who's been waiting for us? Do we find it in a Judaism, Christianity, or Islam that is not so esoteric as to be unrecognizably Jewish, Christian, or Muslim? And do we find it in Gagdad's One Cosmos unless we look very hard and overlook a lot of what we find there?

Godless Hell

I've been discussing the subject of hell with a Catholic in a religion forum. This guy is bright and challenges me to understand what the Catholic Church officially teaches about hell before I disagree with it. I must say that I think my understanding of Church teachings on hell has deepened as a result, and I think this has helped me to refine my objections to them. Here is what I wrote yesterday summarizing my central objections:

(1) Can one freely choose to act in a manner that one fully knows will lead to eternal hell? And even if one could, (2) Would a perfectly loving, just, and merciful God allow someone to make such a choice?

Let us assume, for the moment, that one could, with adequate knowledge, freely make such a choice if God allowed it. The question is, How could a perfectly loving, just, and merciful God allow it? As I understand it, the Church teaches that he does it because he gives us freedom and respects our capacity to exercise it. But this is how I look at it. If I were a human parent, I too would want my child to exercise as much freedom as possible. However, if I knew that he had a proclivity for pouring gasoline over himself and setting himself on fire, I would not allow him to do it if I could prevent it. Even if I thought he was choosing this with full knowledge of the consequences and completely free of any pathological compulsion to do it, which I almost certainly wouldn't (but we can get into that later), I wouldn't believe that his freedom should extend as far as his bringing such horrible pain and death to himself. And I don't think I'm being foolish in thinking that as bad as this kind of death would be, it is infinitesimally so compared to spending eternity completely isolated from all love and goodness. It just seems inconceivable to me that any parent--human or divine--could allow someone enough "freedom" to choose such an awesomely horrible fate for himself. It seems entirely unloving, unjust, and unmerciful.

But then it also seems to me that no one who fully knew God's love and the joys of heaven on the one hand, and the awfulness of isolation from God, love, and goodness for eternity that goes with rejecting God on the other could freely make such a choice. I know I'm repeating what I've posted before, and I admit that I can't prove it, but everything I think I know about human nature and psychology tells me that people naturally seek to experience pleasure and avoid pain and would, therefore, not knowingly choose to reject eternal joy in heaven for eternal pain in hell unless they were overwhelmed by an irresistible compulsion to do it. Yet, it also seems to me that unless someone has experienced God's love in a very powerful and direct way and/or the horrible isolation of hell in an equally powerful and direct way, he lacks the fullness of knowledge to make a sufficiently "informed" choice between them for which he can justly be held accountable.

And this is why I have said, time and again, that I find a hell of eternal suffering in total isolation from any vestige of God, goodness, and love to be utterly incompatible with a God of perfect love, justice, and mercy.

So far, my discussion partner hasn't replied. However, I suspect that he will in time, and that he will challenge me to refine my objections even further. Who knows? He may even persuade me to abandon my objections and embrace the Catholic position on hell and, ultimately, the Catholic faith. Now THAT would be a miracle!

Resignation Letter, P. 2

Here is Part 2 of the passages I'm posting from the letter Alan Watts wrote in August of 1950 to formally announce his resignation from the Episcopal ministry and Church:

Insofar as the Church is committed to a desire for and a clinging to authority, permanence, spiritual safety, and absolute guides of conduct, it is clinging to its own death. By such means, belief in God, the hope for immortality, and the quest for salvation, become only escapes from the inner emptiness and insecurity which most of us feel in the depths of our being when confronted with the loneliness, the transiency, and the uncertainty of human life. But that inner emptiness is not a void to be filled with comforts; it is a window to be looked through. It is not an evil that life--our own life--flows, changes, and passes away. It is a revelation to prevent us from clinging to ourselves, for whoever lets go of himself finds God. The state of eternal life and oneness with God comes to pass--like a miracle--only when we release our grasp on every form of spiritual security. To cling to security is only to cling to oneself, and perish of strangulation.

It would be a silly kind of pride to pretend that we can surrender this passion for safety just by trying. It is not effort that breaks the vicious cycle of self-strangulation; it is an awareness and understanding of its complete futility. To be aware of this futility is to look through the emptiness within--that window into heaven which affords us the vision of God.

Much of this has a familiar ring to the Christian. "Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it." But I have found that you cannot make this point clear within the Church as it exists without running into contradictions at every step. The liturgy is cluttered beyond hope with sentiments, prayers, and hymns conceived in the state of anxious grasping to forms. And that is by no means all.

During the past years, I have continued my studies of the spiritual teachings of the Orient, alongside with Catholic theology, and, though I have sometimes doubted it, I am now fully persuaded that the Church's claim to be the best of all ways to God is not only a mistake, but also a symptom of anxiety. Obviously, one who has found a great truth is eager to share it with others. But to insist--often in ignorance of other revelations--that one's own is supreme argues a certain inferiority complex characteristic of all imperialisms. "Methinks thou dost protest too much." This claim to supremacy is, for me, the chiefest sign of how deeply the Church is committed to this self-strangulation, this anxiety for certainty, and I cannot support the proselytism in which it issues...

Alan Watts' Skepticism and Mine

I've just posted a four-part series of Alan Watts quotes from his essay Was Jesus a Freak? This is how I understand his essential message:

Those familiar with the history and psychology of religion know that Jesus was one of many who have experienced oneness with Ultimate Reality. Unfortunately, when he talked about this experience, his fellow Jews misinterpreted him to say that he was the only son of the Jewish God as Cosmic Creator-King, and some powerful Jews saw this as blasphemous and used it as an excuse to turn him over to the Romans for execution. After his death, some Jews saw him as the prophesized Messiah as well as God incarnate crucified and resurrected to redeem humankind from its sins. But in understanding Jesus as the one and only God-man who was literally resurrected from the dead, they and the "Christians" who came after them have missed the essential point that they too are just as much "sons"--i.e., of the nature--of God as was Jesus, and in worshiping Jesus as a freak of the supernatural, they have all but denied themselves the opportunity to experience "Christ consciousness" that could kill their false and constricting sense of self and resurrect them to a new and transfiguring sense of their all-encompassing, true Self. They are also inclined to arrogantly see worship of this freaky Jesus as the only truly valid form of religion and the only viable way to salvation envisioned as posthumous eternal bliss in heaven. On the other hand, if they understood Jesus for who he really was and his experience for what it really was, they would understand that Christianity has universal appeal only when it presents Jesus as one of many profound sages cognizant of the identity with Ultimate Reality that we all share, and that those who realize this not only know experientially that the true heaven is right here and now, but they also live more harmoniously with others in this world.

I believe that Alan Watts is right on target with his critique of conventional, institutional Christianity, and I have great difficulty seeing a viable alternative to worshiping the freaky Jesus that would qualify as Christian. For instance, here is the Apostle's Creed:


I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

This creed, which, as I understand it, is officially endorsed or implicitly accepted by most Christian churches in the West, appears to make belief in the literally freaky Jesus paramount. You simply can't be Christian unless you believe that Jesus was a freak of the supernatural.

Now some commentators have suggested to me that Christianity has the potential to grow out of this constricting literalism and its resulting exclusivity that removes it from the living stream of universal, transformative wisdom, and that this growth must come from within Christianity itself, spurred by the great mystics and other realizers of Christianity's higher wisdom and potential for universality. However, I share Watt's skepticism that this can and will ever happen. It seems to me that Christianity is so flawed to the core that it might be better to abandon it than to try to transform it from either within or without.

Soon, I'd like to share with you excerpts from Alan Watts' letter of resignation from the Episcopal priesthood that expresses, with greater eloquence than I could ever hope to muster, his skepticism and mine about Christianity's potential to evolve.

Is God a Mass Murderer?

There's a new blog in town. It's called Biblical Bunk and is authored by someone who goes by the improbable name of Adonis Anacondus. His second post is titled Noah's Flood: Is Bible God a Mass Murderer? Here is the post:

Is Bible God a mass murderer of men, women, children, babies and fetuses?

If Noah's Flood actually took place and you worship or pray to Bible God does this mean that you condone mass baby murder?

Since Satan never killed anyone in the Bible does this mean he is Good and Bible God is Evil?

Why do Christians often declare they detest murder yet go to all lengths to defend what looks like the mass murder of Bible God?

This is how I replied:

The Bible literally says that God killed countless men, women, children, babies, and fetuses. So if we read it as literally true in these accounts, God killed all of these people. But did his killing constitute the "murder" you say it does? One definition of "murder" is: "The unlawful killing of one human by another." I often define murder as "unjustified homicide." Do God's killings meet the first definition? No, since the biblical God is not a human being. What about my second definition? Christians reply that since God is and does only good, he cannot do something that is unjustified; therefore, his homicides are justifiable. I think this is debatable, but I won't elaborate right now. Some Christians also reply that these stories should not necessarily be interpreted literally. Rather, they should be seen as metaphors authored by ancient people to eff ineffable truths about the awesomely incomprehensible nature of God. Thus, if you ask them what these metaphors tell us about the living God, they say that this can't be precisely expressed in literal language but can only be understood to any degree via some complex and prolonged process of faith-based study and contemplation.

I confess that I don't know what to make of all this. It seems to me that there can be no justification for God's literal acts of mass-killing; I can't imagine how even a metaphorical interpretation of them tells us anything valid about a true God who is truly as supremely loving, just, and merciful as Christians believe him to be; and, finally, if we aren't to interpret THESE stories as literal fact, why should we interpret miraculous stories about Jesus' virgin birth, unique divinity, and bodily resurrection as literally true? Yet, can someone who doesn't interpret them in this way be Christian? I understand that such a person cannot.

That is one reason why I do not consider myself Christian.

The Discussion Continues

The discussion of Catholicism I've reported in previous entries has continued. Here is what I posted to the message board today:

You keep saying that when I express my misgivings about
Catholicism, I don't know what I'm talking about and am arguing
against straw men. You say that I need to spend at least several
months intensively studying and meditating on its key teachings before
I'm qualified to challenge them or the faith from which they issue. I
admit that I don't know reams of facts about the finer details of
Church teachings and history, but I don't concede that this makes the
arguments I've posed here against Catholicism unsound. Furthermore,
if these arguments are sound, I contend that they provide ample reason
not to waste my time engaging in the kind of intensive study of
Catholicism you say I should.

Let us take just one of my arguments for now. I argue that if the God
worshiped by the Catholic Church really existed and wanted us to know,
love, and serve him with total devotion in this life and join him for
blissful eternity instead of suffering apart from him for eternity in
the next, it's legitimate to assume that he would make sure we know
that he exists from the very outset instead of requiring us to seek
out what seems like a fairy tale to many of us; therefore, he probably
doesn't exist and there is no compelling reason to seek him out.

You counter-argue that God transcends such "simple logic" and that he
doesn't make us certain of his existence because that would compromise
our free will. I counter-counter argue that my faith that a real God
who wants us to embrace him would make us certain of his existence is
at least as sensible as your faith that he wouldn't, and I ask why we
still couldn't have the free will to obey or disobey God even if he
made us certain that he exists.

Now you can dismiss my argument, counter-counter argument, and
question as ignorant and "sophomoric," but I don't believe that they
are, and I think they provide ample justification in themselves for my
not spending months or years poring over scripture and Catholic
theology before I further challenge Catholicism in places like this
with this and many more arguments and questions. And if I'm wrong
about this, then surely a wannabe Jesuit like yourself can do a better
job of addressing my comments and questions than you have so far so
that I might begin to see enough of the light that I'll want to
investigate further to see more of it.

Having It Both Ways

Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been having a discussion on a message board about how the OT depicts God as a mass-murdering monster. The well-educated Catholic gentleman with whom I’ve been engaging in most of this discussion argues that this is only the OT God and not the NT one. I reply by asking him where the NT and Catholic Church assert that we are not to accept the OT stories in question as historical fact. He replies that this is beside his point that the NT does not portray God this way. I reply that if it and the Church do not refute the murderous acts of the OT God, then the NT and OT God are reasonably seen as one and the same God. He replies that I need to bone up on metaphorical interpretation of scripture. I reply by asking where the NT or Church teach that the OT stories in question should be interpreted only metaphorically rather than literally. I haven’t received an answer.

This points to a beef I have with Roman Catholicism. It seems to want to have things both ways. On the one hand, it counsels people to look for the metaphorical meaning of biblical stories that we find repugnant and reasonably doubt on a literal level. On the other hand, it never, so far as I’m aware, comes right out and claims that any of these stories are literally false. I surmise that this is because, if it did, it would be more difficult for it to maintain that literal biblical passages granting it the power it has over its followers and its authority to interpret biblical passages metaphorically can be taken seriously. So, like I said, the Church tries to have it both ways and hopes that nobody notices.

Most people seem not to notice, but some of us do.