Religious beliefs

I think my favourite book in the Bible is Proverbs.  There’s a line in it “Upon the hoary head [frosty with grey hair] is placed the Crown of Wisdom.” (Though people like Ronald Reagan show that older folk can be as foolish as their juniors…) I also like the line “The spider takes hold with her hands, and is found in kings’ palaces!” And I like the line in the Gospel, “As you have done it for the least of you, you have done it for me.” Some years back they canonized Father Damien—now that’s a saint I can believe in!  He did it for the least of the people around him…

I’m not the religious type.  I’m a half-assed agnostic, not even ready for the cold comfort of atheism.  In the Gospel Jesus walked on the sea and invited St. Peter to join him, but Peter was afraid to, and Jesus said “Oh, ye of little faith!” I can understand how Peter felt:  he must have wondered, “What if my faith makes no difference and I drown?” then “What if my faith isn’t STRONG enough to make the difference and I drown?” When St. Paul visited Athens he noticed a temple with the dedication “To the Unknown God.” To me that’s really profound! (On my Tweeter profile I wrote the line in the original Greek: To^hi Agnosto^hi Theo^hi.)

On a more intellectual level, considers Occam’s Razor:  the principle that other things being equal, the simpler explanation is preferable.  Atheism is simpler than theism, and other things are essentially equal.  Someone invented a scale for religious belief where 1 is “I’m a certain theist,” 4 is “I’m agnostic,” 5 is “I think there’s probably no God,” and 7 is “I’m a certain atheist.” On that scale, I guess I’m 4.5:  the odds seem to be against theism, but I’m not really an oddsmaker on this…

I can say that I believe in the Devil, because I believe that the Devil is within us.  And I can also say that I believe in hell, because I believe that Ronald Reagan is there. (I like to think that he and Ayatollah Khomeini are cellmates there…) Atheists often emphasize that they don’t believe in the negative aspects of religious faith like the Devil and hell, yet in those aspects my belief is actually stronger!

Someone asked non-believer H.L. Mencken, “When you face the Great Throne of God, what will you say then?” Mencken answered that he’d say “I’m sorry, gentlemen.  I was wrong.” Something very disarming about that.  Non-believer Stephen Fry said he’d say to God, “Why do you give children bone cancer?” I was thinking that I’d say, “You’re one sick fuck, you know that?  Like the time you told Abraham to tie up his son and execute him, and at the last moment said ‘Just kidding.’ Do you think Isaac ever trusted his father again?  Who do you think you are, God?”

Blaise Pascal came up with the honestly cynical Pascalian Wager:  if God exists you’d better get on his good side,   and if He doesn’t believing will do no harm.  But does God really care what you believe?  Really, “If you don’t believe you’ll go to hell!” isn’t an argument for believing, it’s an argument against doubting.  Would God really send people to hell for not believing in Him?  Only a petty god would do that.  If you’re God you’re the elephant in the living room, and it shouldn’t matter whether people believe in you or not.  What it’s really about, of course, is that the existence of non-believers often has the effect of reminding believers that they don’t feel completely secure in their own faith, and insecurity breeds intolerance.  Does God exist to justify the people who believe in Him?  That would be solipsistic. (My big word for the day!)

The Greek philosopher Epicurus asked whether God is able and willing to intervene in the world to make things better. “If He’s able and willing, why is there still evil and suffering in the world?  If He’s able but not willing, he’s malicious.  If He’s willing but not able, he’s impotent.  And if he isn’t able or willing, what’s the use of gods?” I suppose that God gave us free will, then let us stew in our own juice.  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the only love in the universe is the love that we sentient beings often make.  Wouldn’t that make our love more important?  I suppose you can look at love as an act of rebellion against the dog-eat-dog universe!

If you say you believe in God, I really don’t know any better than you.  I suppose that the advent of Christianity and Islam and other religions has all been part of the process that’s led to creating a world where people have freedom to think.  And religious differences are actually necessary for us to evolve intellectually.  I think of the story of the Tower of Babel where God made everyone speak different languages so they’d stop being obsessed with building an infinitely high tower and seeing nothing else. (In a way, when Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward he was building his own Tower of Babel.) Does the story apply to religions as well as languages?

One of the many controversial points of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in the chapter “You Can’t Pray a Lie.” In a moment of crisis Huck decides that his friendship with runaway slave Jim is more important to him than the religion he’s been taught, in which helping a slave escape is as bad as running off someone’s cattle, and he says “All right, I’ll go to hell then!” Some grownups didn’t want children reading this because they relied on fear of hell as a control mechanism. (For his part, Mark Twain pointed out that parts of the Bible were unfit for children!) For me, it’s a startling, brilliant moment:  it’s about making your own moral judgements, taking responsibility, growing up.  It’s downright existential!

There’s a line in one of the non-Paul Epistles, “If someone says ‘I love God!’ but he hates his brother, he’s lying.  Because how can you love something you’ve never seen when you hate what’s right next to you?”  How do people love what they’ve never seen?  I suppose most people love the idea of God.  Which is to say, God is an idea.  On Tweeter the other day someone asked “Where is this God I keep hearing about?” and I answered “Everywhere and nowhere…”

Granted that religion fills the emotional needs of many people.  But so can atheism:  I imagine that for some people atheism is a way of taking responsibility.  In the neo-noir The Usual Suspects one of the characters admits that he no longer believes in God, but still fears Him! (As Machiavelli pointed out, love may come and go, but fear stays there.) I guess that’s the modern dilemma, or one not so modern…

For the last word, Mahatma Gandhi said something I like. “When I was young, I was taught that God was Truth.  But now I realize that Truth is God!”