God Does Not Not Exist

Does God exist?

What God are you talking about?

Is it the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present eternal, personal (male) being? Is it the watchmaker God of deism who set the world in motion with sophisticated constants only to sit out the rest of the game? Is it the God of pantheism who is the cosmos?

The point is…

The question of God existing isn’t even specific enough to merit an answer. For the most part, we aren’t even agreeing one what God even is. If God is beyond our imagination or even what we can imagine (as most traditions claim), the categories of existence and non-existence don’t apply. 

Like the rest of our words, ideas, and theologies, they’re like a box of eight Crayola crayons commissioned for capturing a Texas summer sunset. We can approximate. We can imply. We can craft an image sharp enough for a patient mother to marvel at our “art.” But when it comes down to it, we’re children doing our best to capture the ineffable. All of our categories, even limitless ideas, cage the Divine into our digestible, snack-sized theories:

All-powerful

All-knowing

All-present

In the apophatic tradition, God is inexplicable—a mystery at the very core of our relationship with the Divine. In order to keep the mystery alive and electric, the saints would meditate upon three contradictory ideas. The purpose, of course, is to marinate in the impossibility of grasping God. Here is an example I’ll leave you with:

God exists.

God does not exist.

God does not not exist.

God does not not exist.

God does not not exist.

God does not not exist.

A Method for Navigating Politics in 2018

We live in weird times. With the gulf between left and right, it’s difficult to agree on policies, motives, or even facts. Our heated language labels others as “evil,” a “mob,” or (I heard this at a rally) belittles opponents as “dogs with fleas.” Dehumanizing and cutthroat tactics have accomplished little, if anything, in persuading voters but have proven triumphant in driving us back to our partisan corners in some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth, rabid fury. We post black and white memes on social media with zero nuance, we reduce arguments from the opposition to frail straw men, and we forget our friends and family are more than their voting record.  

“Finding common ground” or “getting on the same page” is admirable, but feels naïve in our current political climate. It’s tough to identify a starting point for discussion on issues like abortion, immigration, taxes, healthcare, or guns. Instead of pushing forward in our enfeebled quest to the promised land of “middle ground” (which often doesn’t exist), we should enact the principle of charity. This method “requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.”[i]

In practice, it looks like this:

1. While suspending our own beliefs, we seek a sympathetic understanding of the new idea or ideas. 
2. We assume for the moment the new ideas are true even though our initial reaction is to disagree; we seek to tolerate ambiguity for the larger aim of understanding ideas which might prove useful and helpful.
3. Emphasis is placed on seeking to understand rather than on seeking contradictions or difficulties.
4. We seek to understand the ideas in their most persuasive form and actively attempt to resolve contradictions.  If more than one view is presented, we choose the one that appears the most cogent.[ii]

These provisions don’t dispose of our convictions but work to see the world from a different vantage point. They can foster the rare and precious civil debate, marked by our ability to “acknowledge [the] good in the position we disagree with.”[iii]

Even when we are listening to some far-out conspiracy theory about the federal government poisoning alcohol during the prohibition, President Truman hiring Nazis to win the space race, or Scientologists infiltrating US intelligence agencies, the principle of charity forces us to reckon with the humanity of the speaker and acknowledge their concerns as something authentic to their reality.

Because let’s be honest, most of the time when we are listening to a political opponent speak, we reduce them to an idea while we take inventory of the counter-attacks we've amassed from Facebook videos. We’ve created an environment where we assume the worst in others instead of realizing we’re all doing the best with what we have.

We should fight for change.

We should fight for justice.

We should fight against dehumanization.

And the best way we can achieve these ends is by seeking to understand instead of being understood.

Grace and Peace

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[i] Normand Baillargeon: Intellectual Self-Defense. Seven Stories Press 2007, p. 78

[ii] https://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

[iii] Frances Kissling quoting Sidney Callahan during her interview with Krista Tippett for the On Being Podcast

Why Facts Don't Matter

Something that discourages me is that epistemology, or the science of how we know things, claims that rational, empirical thinking has very little to do with our decision making. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Atlantic:

“…From an evolutionary perspective, there are more important things than truth… you hear a growl in the bushes that sounds remarkably tiger-like. The safest thing to do is probably high-tail it out of there, even if it turns out it was just your buddy messing with you. Survival is more important than truth... Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth... And of course, truth gets more complicated when it’s a matter of more than just “Am I about to be eaten or not?” …The natural environment of human beings, like the sea for dolphins or the ice for polar bears, is information provided by others, without which they could not forage, hunt, choose mates, or build tools. Without communication, [there is] no survival for humans.…Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth about some facts that do not directly impinge on your life.”[i]

I’m dry-heaving a little bit.

Our brains are masters at creating a story, particularly our own story, where we are the protagonist, trying to achieve an ultimate goal by overcoming some great conflict. Any jerk who stands in opposition to our goal inevitably wields the mantle of the hated antagonist. 

You are the epic hero, Odysseus, striving to make it back home to Penelope.

You are Katniss Everdeen, working to liberate the 13 districts.

You are Harry Potter, working to stave off He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

This means we see ourselves, whether we admit it or not, as a rational agent in this mysterious, rich, and complex world, abiding by the Facts and the best ideas.

But in reality, we make decisions according to our social context. If we’re located in a progressive environment where all of our coworkers wear “I’m With Her” shirts, eat vegan chili every Tuesday, and opt for deodorant-free lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint, the data shows[ii] that we will most likely subscribe to their musky, free-loving ways in order to be part of the tribe.

We’re social apes that need interaction with other humans to survive, no matter how introverted we are: A sense of belonging is of paramount importance for every person. Whether the community you aspire to belong to is your family, friends, coworkers, or bloggers, our ideals align with who we want to be. 

Even if you have wardrobe full of MAGA hats that you press and lint roll every night, if you were to move to an urban area with more diversity, odds are your politics would begin to shift a little, too.

It happened to me.

I grew up in a loving, conservative household with intelligent, hard-working parents, but after going to a liberal school, earning a degree in religion where I came in contact with Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and Hindus, I got a job in a profession that primarily benefits from progressive legislature. It only makes sense that my ideas would lean left. My ideas and beliefs shifted with my experience.

We have to be honest with ourselves: We are products of our environment, and that has serious ramifications.

I love this quote from Richard Rohr:

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.[iii]  

If we grew up in the South with particular political and theological views, those ideas would most certainly be different if we grew up in the North or in Afghanistan. And how would those particular political and theological views shift if we befriended people from a different social context than our own? While the numbers aren’t absolute, they trend toward inclusivity and acceptance of the “other” when we live and interact with those who are different from our tribe.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advising anyone to throw their faith away. I’m encouraging us all to understand that our beliefs, ideas, and politics are primarily grounded in our social context, not facts. What that means is that we should look to dissolve the boundaries between us, make friends and have conversations with as many different types of people as possible so our tribe is as colorful and variant as the world we live in. From this point, we can have a deeper and broader perspective of how the cosmic clock of reality really ticks.

Remember this: when you look at data and statistics, engage books or news, numbers may not lie, but the interpreters of those numbers certainly do. The best thing we can do to center ourselves in reality is to live as broadly and deeply as we can and let new thoughts and ideas emerge. Work against your brain’s own bias about how it encodes and tags new information by making decisions and seeking experiences that make the whole world, as corny as that sounds, part of your unique and beautiful identity.

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[i] Julie Beck, “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change-your-mind/519093/

[ii] David McRaney "How Your Address Changes Your Politics https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-your-address-changes-your-politics-120899 and I refuse to treat data as a plural noun.

[iii] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs