barry@ames-lm.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (07/09/84)
[<+>]
I've been finding the debate on net.religion most entertaining
of late, what with the theists and atheists going head-to-head. Still,
I worry that too much simplicity may lead away from some of the odder
answers to this question, so let me muddy the water a bit.
It might be useful in our Quest for Truth, here, to divide religious
beliefs into two categories: provable-in-theory and not-provable-in-theory.
For the sake of my fingers, I'll call the first kind of belief 'occult',
and the second, 'mystical' (no offense, anyone, just handy labels). Occult
beliefs assert *something* about the nature of physical reality; doesn't
matter what it is, as long as it's testable in theory. If your god can
turn water into wine, for example, then it's at least possible He/She/It
might do it a few times for the scientists and meter-readers, and settle
the whole debate.
The other kind of religious belief, the kind I'm calling mystical,
is a much more difficult proposition, intellectually. By definition,
it asserts nothing testable about objective reality. There seem to be
at least some versions of Buddhism which meet this definition, but mystical
beliefs don't seem to get along well with organized religious hierarchies,
since they are highly subjective. They're more commonly the property
of somewhat eccentric individuals.
Such beliefs, though perhaps in some sense arguable, are not
properly *testable*, and arguments for atheism which are based on the
lack of evidence for divinities seem to the mystic to be beside the point.
Occam's razor cannot slice through this one, because the mystic need
make no more complicated assumptions about reality than the atheist does.
Scientific materialism, which does so well with questions of what, when,
where, or how, fails utterly on the question of Why, because, in material
terms, the question is circular; explain B as caused by A, and the question
simply changes from 'why B' to 'why A'. Meaning is something we can't
expect to find 'out there'.
The mystic's god is more like an organizing principle through which
the overall shape of reality is understood, than a discrete entity, with
an independent reality.
Only thing wrong with the mystic position is that almost nobody
but another mystic can make head or tail of it. The pure materialist
dismisses it as meaningless because it says nothing about the only kind
of reality he/she will admit exists, and regards it as hardly a point
of view at all, but just flabby thinking. The occult believers find
it bloodlessly abstract, atheism in religious clothing.
And the mystic's only response is silence. Cause-and-effect is
not only the foundation of materialism, but of the very language we speak
("Why?" "Because."). Since the mystic attempts to transcend this sort
of linear logic, he/she cannot use a tool (language) that's based on
it to explain their position. How does one point in a direction which
is not East, West, North, South, up or down, but orthogonal to all of
them?
- From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry
NASA-Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA
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