Pantheism versus Theism
The poet William Blake saw Heaven in a wildflower and he found eternity in an hour. Poets are quite mad, of course. But as Plato recognized, the madness of the gods is to be preferred over the sanity of men.
Poets tend to be heretics too. After all, shattering dogmas so that fresh truths can be perceived is part of a poet’s reason for being.
The poet Czeslaw Miloz once wrote, “You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge. And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard.”
Miloz, I believe, captured a great truth about prayer and religion. The traditional conception of God as a personal deity who created the world and intervenes in human affairs is no longer intellectually, theologically, or philosophically persuasive. Nikos Kazantzakis, put it well when said, praying to God is like knocking on the door of a deaf man.
The paradox in Miloz’s poem, On Prayer, is that although our prayers almost certainly fall on deaf ears they are nevertheless spiritually empowering. Faced with the dark night of the soul, a time when we are acutely aware of our limitations, we instinctively turn to a power greater than ourselves. This is when we are at our most authentic, even divine-like. The power of prayer lies not in catching the attention of some supreme being, who then intervenes on our behalf, but in the way a truthful and heartfelt inner dialogue, fortifies us to meet life’s most formidable challenges.
The root meaning of the word religion is to link back. Both pantheists and deists share the belief that man has sprung from a transcendental source. For pantheists, this source is Nature, which is a reflection of a slumbering but cosmic intelligence. We humans are a reflection of this unconscious and impersonal intelligence. Nature has emerged into consciousness through us and we are quite literally the eyes and ears of the world. Nature, of course, can be terrifying and awe-inspiring. However, discerning the broad brushstrokes of beauty and harmony against the backdrop of individual suffering can be an aesthetic experience that offers a poetic respite from the harshness of the natural order.
Schopenhauer believed that aesthetic arrest represents a moment when a human being temporarily transcends the limitations of their suffering ego and recognizes (however dimly or faintly) their ultimate identity with the noumenal ground of being.
Seeing Nature as a work of art is no easy task. Great poets demonstrate that an immersion in nature need not be some sort of escapist regression, as The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat implies in his Op-Ed, Heaven and Nature. Put simply, the kernels of insight and enlightenment that poets like Blake convey have the power to recreate in us the same “Ah ah” experience that stirred the soul of poets in the first place.
In contrast, abstract conceptions of an all-good Almighty -- whose sole remaining function these days is to save His creatures from the evils of His own Creation – seems like an escapist fantasy at best and pernicious nonsense at worst. There is nothing more painful than false belief. And I fear that much of the anger that seems to be consuming the religious right in America at the moment stems from frustration that invariably develops when a person’s worldview is at complete variance with the world he or she inhabits.
Ross Douthat theistic apologia is rhetorically brilliant, but his logic is unpersuasive. His chief argument in favor of theism is that pantheism cannot deliver man from the evils and suffering of this world. But using Hollywood homages to pantheism as proverbial straw men allows Douthat to paint “nature worship” in superficial way.
Wittgenstein was famous for dissolving – not solving – philosophical conundrums. His insight, still not widely appreciated, is that the way we use (and misuse) language generates pseudo-problems. For instance, to say, “It is raining” does not mean there is some entity “It” that is raining. In a similar way, theism generates many false problems by positing literal entities – A savior God, Heaven, and Hell – which are not ontologically real. Pursuing mirages is bound to create angst. Ultimately, it may be that theism creates the malady it purports to cure.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Bush and the Power of Prayer
Three centuries ago, as colonists began displacing Native Indians across the continent, smallpox and other epidemics ravaged many indigenous tribes. Undoubtedly, the settlers in so far as they carried and spread infectious diseases, were at least partly to blame for what turned out to be biological genocide. Tragically, by and large the American Indians effected refused Western medical treatment because they believed that supernatural forces caused the illnesses they faced.
It is hard to blame the mistrust Native Americans had for the settlers. In retrospect, however, the triumph of superstitious beliefs over rational forms of explanation and medicine proved catastrophic. History tends to repeat itself, of course. And today large segments of fundamentalist Christians believe that the cataclysmic weather events associated with global warming are really God’s way of punishing the United States for losing its moral bearings, particularly when it comes abortion and gay marriage.
It is tempting to believe that we live in a just world and that a beneficent Deity metes out rewards and punishment to prod individuals (and even nations) in the right direction. History and experience, however, demonstrate that superstitious notions regarding divine interventions are a luxury the human species cannot afford. The Bush administration, in particular, should be Exhibit A when it comes to debunking the religiously inclined notion that a morally righteous leader has anything to do with national flourishing. For instance, the United States enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton, an adulterer who favored abortion and gay marriage. But the United States is in a moral and financial freefall following eight years under the morally abstemious George W. Bush, a leader who championed the pro-life and sanctity of marriage causes dear to his Christian base.
The Bush administration has been characterized by prayer breakfasts, Bible study groups, and an unprecedented merging of faith and public policy. The results, of course, speak for themselves: disastrous decision making, repeated misjudgments, and a general increase in bureaucratic incompetence throughout the government. Put simply, substituting prayer for rational-decision making procedures is a recipe for failure.
To paraphrase Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek, praying to God is like knocking on the door of a deaf man. President John F. Kennedy, I believe, took the most mature attitude to problem-solving when he said that the greatest challenges mankind faces have been created by us, therefore they will have to be solved by us. In this respect, religious assumptions concerning the Will of Providence amount to metaphysical baggage that hinder our ability to navigate challenges like global warming, the credit crisis, nuclear proliferation, and the war on terrorism.
It is no secret that George W. Bush relies on his gut instinct to make decisions. He has also said that he derives great comfort from the fact that millions of Americans are praying for him. No doubt, his many religiously inclined followers hoped and believed that God would illumine the president’s conscience and thinking. The fruits of Bush’s presidency – Abu Ghraib, the bungled handling of Katrina, the disastrously managed war in Iraq, and the economic meltdown on Bush’s watch – all belie the notion that God and politics mix.
