We humans like to define, to divide, to draw up differences – who's with us, who's against us; who are our friends, who are our enemies (and who are our enemy's enemies). Politicians have picked upon this instinct to divide and rule, as have religious leaders.
Believers and atheists, the moral and the immoral, the just and the unjust, individualists and conformists, traditionalists and modernisers, centralisers and devolutionists. The Thirty Years' War resulted in up of a quarter of the population of western Europe being killed or starving to death. While all involved believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, some of them believed that the communion wafer of which they partook was His actual body, whilst others that it merely symbolised Christ's body. And that theological nuance was enough to cost several million lives.
So where do I draw the dividing line in terms of worldviews?
For me, it is physicalism v. spirituality. Those who have given it any thought will hold that either everything in this Universe is composed of matter, and we humans are nothing but matter, and consciousness is mere illusion; or we consider consciousness (aka the soul) is primary and there's more to reality than the physical world. Then of course there are those who haven't considered this question at all. And then there are those who hold neither view, but are examining the arguments before reaching a view.
I have been led towards the non-physicalist viewpoint, both by scientific and philosophical inquiry, and by personal intuition and my own subjective conscious experiences, which I hold to be primary.
Do I wish to cast judgment on physicalists or 'don't-know-haven't-thought-about-its'? No. Minds change over time. (I will be writing about that in a forthcoming Lenten blog post.)
So – do I see eye to eye with those who follow a religion?
Not really. We might agree that there's more to the Universe than mere matter, we might agree on the existence of an overarching purpose and tendency towards goodness that can be called divine – but that's about all that we can agree on, unless we get deep and metaphysical and rise above literal interpretation of holy texts.
I am not fixed in my faith; I seek, I modify and improve my worldview over time; I am not bound by doctrines. I seek neither a spiritual leader nor spiritual followers; rather fellow-seekers with whom I can discuss and argue and question and fine-tune my spiritual thinking.
This annual blog cycle forms a set of milestones for me to look back upon and consider how my thinking has evolved. Some things become clearer over time, with contemplation, meditation and intuition, others more nuanced – and then there are questions that might one day be answered. Claiming certainty in matters spiritual is a fallacious endeavour.
Religions offer certainty to people looking for ready answers. Humanity's best philosophers can posit elegant theories that attract adherents, but I feel that as a species, we are still far away from understanding reality. Maybe there are eight billion separate subjective realities rather than one objective reality?
Having internally agreed their own tenets and doctrines, religions will by their nature create insiders and outsiders. Vehement divisions between people of different faiths ensue; followers of this book will see followers of that book as their enemy. But are they active followers who have seen the light and believe ardently in their religion's tenets to the exclusion of others? Or are they merely adherents of the faith into which they were born? Once an Iraqi Sunni or Northern Ireland Protestant, always one? So who is your enemy? The Shi'ite or the Catholic. Why are they your enemies? Do they threaten you materially or spiritually? Where is God when the terrorist places the bomb in the mosque or the chapel?
Religious leaders who condemn believers in different faiths or adherents of different denominations to the fieriest pits of hell for not accepting some obscure dogma are as repugnant to me as those reductive materialists who laugh at those seeking to understand the nature of reality in metaphysical terms.
We should seek common ground, we should seek highest common factors – that on which we can all agree. But that's difficult when the other seeks merely to mock or even eradicate you and your way of thinking.
Reality, the New God
Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil
Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God
Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism
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