Playing God.

For a few months last year I had this quote on the wall of my room:

Now the inspirational aspect, the third aspect of religion, is what I would like to turn to, and that brings me to a central question that I would like to ask you all, because I have no idea of the answer. The source of inspiration today, the source of strength and comfort in any religion, is closely knit with the metaphysical aspects. That is, the inspiration comes from working for God, from obeying His will, and so on. Now an emotional tie expressed in this manner, the strong feeling that you are doing right, is weakened when the slightest amount of doubt is expressed as to the existence of God. So when a belief in God is uncertain, this particular method of obtaining inspiration fails. I don't know the answer to this problem, the problem of maintaining the real value of religion as a source of strength and of courage to most men while at the same time not requiring an absolute faith in the metaphysical system. You may think that it might be possible to invent a metaphysical system for religion which will state things in such a way that science will never find itself in disagreement. But I do not think that it is possible to take an adventurous and ever-expanding science that is going into an unknown, and to tell the answer to questions ahead of time and not expect that sooner or later, no matter what you do, you will find that some answers of this kind are wrong. So I do not think that it is possible to not get into a conflict if you require an absolute faith in metaphysical aspects, and at the same time I don't understand how to maintain the real value of religion for inspiration if we have some doubt as to that. That's a serious problem.

In this quote, taken from a 1963 lecture called 'the Uncertainty of Values' by Richard Feynman, and still deeply relevant today, he raises a very serious question which relates to the use of language in a religious context. On the one hand, this language is normally taken to be referring to, and grounded in, metaphysical reality. On the other hand, the language is used as part of religious practices that enable people to live out their values in the world. Normally, these two aspects are strongly linked, so that in order for the language to be useful in the second way it is necessary for the metaphysics to be believed in absolutely. Often the level of belief required (absolute certainty) not only goes beyond what is warranted by our current evidence but even lies outside the range of confidence that would be appropriate given the most compelling evidence we might hope to find. Feynman mentions one putative solution, only to dismiss it:

You may think that it might be possible to invent a metaphysical system for religion which will state things in such a way that science will never find itself in disagreement. But I do not think that it is possible to take an adventurous and ever-expanding science that is going into an unknown, and to tell the answer to questions ahead of time and not expect that sooner or later, no matter what you do, you will find that some answers of this kind are wrong.

I agree: I don't think a solution of this kind can be found. But I am hopeful that another kind of solution to this problem is being found at present; I don't know yet whether it will work out but I am certain that it is worth making the attempt. I'll explain the idea later in this post, but first I'll fill in some context.

For about 9 months, I have once more been regularly attending a church, namely Cambridge Unitarian Church. I went first of all out of interest; after all, most of my experience with Christianity is with evangelical congregations, and I wanted to see how an extreme liberal position could be held with integrity. The first week was the last before the return of the minister from his summer break, and the talk consisted of a summary of the various sermons which had been preached while the minister was absent. The diversity of ideas in the various talks attracted me, and I decided to come back the next week to hear what the minister had to say.

I'm glad I did, because what he said in the address was extremely thought-provoking: Enough to make me go back again and again. Almost every week the address has made me stop and think, and see the world from a new point of view. Of course, I disagree with what the minister (Andrew) says at least as much as I agree, but I think the questions he is addressing are deeply important. If you want to see some of what he is saying, most of the sermons are available on his blog.

During the time I have been attending the Church, there has been a change in Andrew's thinking. As far as I can tell, this is not a new phenomenon; he has been gradually shifting in view for the last few years. This is disconcerting for many of the congregation, but I appreciate the fact that he does not take his past conclusions for granted. Even when I first showed up, the metaphysics behind the addresses was by no means conventionally Christian. It did claim the existence of God, but this word was employed in the unconventional way introduced by Baruch Spinoza. Essentially, in life we encounter many individual things. The distinctions between these things are a little blurred; our division of the world into individuals is only an approximation. On the other hand, there is a unified world underlying our experiences: It is this world which we conceptually slice up. This world is referred to as God, and is all there is: It is transcended by no supernatural entities. Accordingly, this God, or nature, is not a person and has no personality. This is very far from the classic Judaeo-Christian arbiter who takes an intimate interest in human lives.

Give or take the redefinition of some words, this Spinozistic philosophy is atheistic. Andrew followed these ideas pretty closely, though his conception of God tended more towards pantheism. On the basis of these ideas, and the associated idea of the deep interconnectedness of all things, Andrew drew out some ethical conclusions. We should relate to the world as it is: A complicated, mixed up, irreducible whole. We shouldn't try to impose our ideals on it, but should interact with it conversationally, as we might with a person. Just as all people have intrinsic value simply because they are people, so any particular thing in the world has intrinsic value simply because it is that thing. Here he departed greatly from Spinoza, who denied that even animals have this kind of value.

This, then, could be taken to be a minimal metaphysics of the kind rejected by Feynman above. For it does involve some particular metaphysical certainty, and Feynman's objection does apply. However, the trend of the shift in Andrew's thinking since that time is what has led me to the idea which I hope will resolve the issue Feynman raised. He has held on to some of the language of Spinozistic philosophy (for example, referring to modes of being rather than to things), but this language is now not being used to express metaphysical propositions but to shift the listener's mind out of unhelpful ways of thinking about the world, and so to change the listener's 'way of being in the world', as he puts it.

This is not to say that Andrew has rejected metaphysics entirely: He still holds on to more basic metaphsical ideas which are hard to express but which the phrase 'We can trust the world' goes some way towards capturing. But it does introduce an interesting phenomenon. Language which had been useful for the expression of metaphysics can sometimes acquire a different purpose, and can be useful for that purpose even if it is not taken to be grounded in metaphysics. Like a Koan, the language can be used to pull away the rug from under ingrained habits of thought: To knock a person's soul off unhealthy but stable trajectories.

Herein lies the strategy I hope will allow us to avoid Feynman's problem: Perhaps religious language can be used in such a way as to provide inspiration without relying on any metaphysical certainty whatsoever. The Buddha may have been saying that some of his language is temporarily useful in this way when he talked about it in terms of a raft:

"Monks, I will teach you the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded to the Blessed One.

The Blessed One said: "Suppose a man were traveling along a path. He would see a great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. The thought would occur to him, 'Here is this great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. What if I were to gather grass, twigs, branches, leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with my hands & feet?' Then the man, having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with his hands & feet. Having crossed over to the further shore, he might think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having hoisted it on my head or carrying on my back, go wherever I like?' What do you think, monks: Would the man, in doing that, be doing what should be done with the raft?"

"No, lord."

"And what should the man do in order to be doing what should be done with the raft? There is the case where the man, having crossed over, would think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having dragged it on dry land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing this, he would be doing what should be done with the raft. In the same way, monks, I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas."

The Buddha may have been saying something similar to what I am getting at here, or he may not. In fact, he may never have said anything like this at all. But for the purpose for which I am using the story here, that doesn't matter. This exemplifies another way language in a religious tradition may be useful without relying on the traditional associated certainties. Many of the stories in the Bible, about the life of Jesus for example, are useful for inspiration regardless of whether they are accurate accounts of the facts. I should clarify at this point that I am not simply talking about the potential use of these stories as metaphors. For the aim is not simply to point out facts in an obscure way, but to use the symbolism of the stories to structure the transformation of lives. Something of this kind is present in the proper use of mythology, and (I am told) of astrology.

To illustrate the hope more fully, I'll focus on a special case where the difficulties are particularly apparent: The word 'God'. This word is almost always used in the context of reference to an existing, transcendent being. It may not be clear how it could be used any other way without losing all of its force. But if the hope I expressed earlier is to be worked out within the Christian tradition then it is necessary to find such a use, or at least such uses. For without the unifying idea of a transcendent being, the various uses of the word are linked by weaker patterns and correlations, and there may be no definitive essence at all. I'll focus on just one use; for engaging with spiritual experiences.

Very often, in a spiritual experience, we sense that the event is not completely internal: That it reflects something outside and beyond ourselves, even beyond the world. Even when the experience occurs in the context of encountering the grandeur of nature (as is often the case), we sense that the behind the landscape is a deep creative presence which we only see transfigured through the prism of the world. I don't want to enter into the question here of whether this sense is accurate; at present it looks like it will eventually be possible to explain the arising of this sense without reference to an actual creative presence behind nature, by reference to the physiology of the human brain. But this language is not appropriate for engaging with the experience itself, just as we do not explain the workings of the optic nerve when we are trying to describe a view. Instead, language like 'I met God' or 'There I see God' is more appropriate, just as when talking about a straight straw in a glass of water it may be appropriate to refer to 'the kink in the straw'.

This links to what I was discussing in my previous post. For although some sentences involving the word 'God' are useful in this way, there are many sentences for which, if we were to put in the word 'God' as though it were a noun we would run into more trouble: Sentences like 'God is on our side', or 'God is three persons'. Notoriously, humans have run into serious and destructive disagreement whenever they have tried to use the words in this way, and our experience of this gives little reason to believe that there is some essence behind the word which would cause us, if we were more careful, to use it cohesively. But even without, in the terms of the previous post, saying that God exists, we can say something which is weaker, in a sense, only in degree: That the word 'God' is helpful and works coherently when used in some particular kinds of sentence. We might even hope that this use of the word God would still be helpful for inspiration.

There is, at this point, a danger of deception which must be carefully avoided. If anybody, particularly a Church community, uses the word God in this way then there is a danger that others, encountering them for the first time, will think that the word 'God' is being used in the more usual sense. This could lead to a great deal of confusion. There is also a danger that such a community could be exploited through cunning use of language. For these reasons there is need for both care and clarity in any community attempting to use the word 'God' in this sense.

You might think that these dangers can be circumvented by an alternative formulation, such as 'It is as if I saw God' rather than 'I see God'. There are at least three problems with this approach: First, it is not strictly an expression of the experience itself but of the feelings of the experiencer; it is language that has taken a step back. If we are to engage with spiritual experiences, we can't continually hold them at arms' length. Second, 'as if' language makes address to God impossible. This disrupts expression of a key part of religious experience, for a common way of engaging with what is seen as divine is by addressing ourselves to it. Finally, such language is a little clumsy, and adds an unnecessary element of awkwardness to religious practice.

Another possible worry is that it may be impossible to maintain the usage of language in this way without slipping into self-deception and confusion. But consider that we very often rely on indirectness of this kind without getting confused or deluded about what is going on. When we would like to enjoy ourselves and get to know one another in a group, we often do this indirectly, by playing a game. We temporarily use language and behave as though our main objective were (for example) to send a ball into a particular region of space. By doing this we get what we were really after - a good time and better relationships. Indeed, we could not have achieved those aims by the more straightforward method of willing ourselves to be happy and friendly.

This illustrates that there are some cases where, because of the way the human brain is wired up, we must proceed indirectly in order to achieve particular goals. From the outside, we can say (with a sense of superior understanding) that these behaviours are simply workarounds for the kluges nestled in our skulls. But this understanding does not exempt us from having to use the same workarounds; for though we may understand them a little we are stuck, for now, with the brains we have. Seeing that religion is useful as a crutch doesn't heal the limp.

Whilst I'm addressing possible objections, I'll deal with the idea that this use of the word 'God' does not correspond sufficiently closely with the standard usage to merit use of the same word. Why not use a new word, like 'Flob'? There is, in fact, a great deal of correspondence between the usage I have pointed to and the traditional understanding of God, which would take a while to explain here. It really needs another post; hopefully the next post here will cover it. For now, it is enough to say that if traditional Christian metaphysics is on the money then there really is something to be referred to behind spiritual experiences, namely God. So by using the word as referring in this way, without worrying about the question of whether it has a referrent, this use would precisely correspond to the old one: If there is a God, then someone using the word 'God' in the way I have outlined would be using it to refer to Him, which is a pretty conventional usage.

At the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, we are trying to explore how religious language can be used in such a way; without relying on any commitment as to the reality of the referent of that language. As I suggested at the end of the last paragraph, if this is done well, it will be possible for those in the community with strong metaphysical commitments to engage with us in a common usage of language. I sincerely hope that we can collectively build a language of religious expression which is as helpful for those who believe in God as for those who don't, or who just aren't sure. If we can find uses for the language that inspire independently of metaphysics, then we can unite in a common practice however strong our disagreements may be.

This is not to say that we will be free of religious identity. Instead our particularity will be at the level of practice rather than of belief. I don't think we can get by without the use of some particular workaround, some particular way of being. But if we recognise that that is what we are doing, we won't be quite as tempted to dismiss the other, utterly different workarounds that have flourished as religious expressions around the world.