When I wrote that I was having trouble with “the God question.” I was stuck, logically, perhaps linguistically, even structurally, with a long essay that I’d been working on for months, “A Buddhist looks at the proofs for the existence of God.” How might we consider the nontheistic stance of most Buddhist philosophers as they examine scholastic philosophy? My starting point was Thomas Aquinas’s “Unmoved Mover,” then moving through the other “rational” arguments for the existence of God, including Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument. I examined each argument objectively to determine how or if I was moved to belief. I am happy to say that I am still an agnostic until you lock me up in the shrine room or hand me a personal crisis I need help with.
But I find something lacking in a strictly intellectual discourse. There’s no emotional juice. I think the materialists bypass or even eliminate emotions because they make things messy.
A friend suggested that I try the Gaia or Goddess model, and my personal reaction was: Is there something intellectual, spiritual, or material lacking in my life that 'believing’ in the goddess would remedy? Suddenly, I was thrown out of my ordinary world. Of course, all beliefs have consequences. Even a cursory self-examination reveals that many beliefs, assumptions about reality, and even prejudices influence me, even when I am not entirely aware of their existence, much less of their influence or inner workings. Do I believe simply because it makes me feel good, or do I believe because I am persuaded by a convincing rational argument? When I Google the scientific effects of serotonin levels in people of faith, it will show that in the long run, I will be happier if I surrender some of my mad, neurotic desire to seize control and hand it over to a Higher Power. If I believe that the early bird catches the worm, I get up earlier, catch people when they are more alert, make more money, and thus am happier. Or maybe not. Using Pascal’s bet: my chances of happiness remain high as long as you don’t require that I bet the farm.
My mother changed doctors when she found out that her specialist didn’t believe in God. She told me that confidence in a physician was based on a belief that decisions about her health were guided by God’s invisible hand. When faced with major surgery in the last years of her life, she turned to a team of Indian doctors at Yale New Haven Hospital. I didn’t ask her whether she had checked their religious credentials, but I suspect it fell into the “They believe in something” category—Krishna, Jesus, deities tend to blend into one as we age. Yes, among my beliefs is that Indian doctors make a much better living in New Haven than in New Delhi. Perhaps a motivational belief for Indian medical students when applying for residency in the US turns out to be true: an Indian doctor in the US earns between 125,000 and 180,000 USD, whereas in India, he or she would only earn about 50,000 USD.
I have argued that “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a junk statement, but it persists. “Something is better than nothing” is not a strictly philosophical or faith statement. Let me examine it more closely. What kind of belief statements does it encompass, and how are these statements changed, strengthened, or made true by a personal assertion that they are true always and everywhere, despite any evidence to the contrary? Let’s look at a few examples.
In Germany in the 1930s, the belief that the Aryan race was superior to the rest of humankind was gaining traction. It had such dire consequences that it would probably be best left on the junk heap of intellectual, spiritual, and moral history. But enough people assented, and it devolved into a horrific war, as well as the attempted extermination of the Jewish race.
In the West, or at least among intellectual elites, people adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But before the end of the Second World War, the statement or definition was not “a given.” Most of the male governing class agreed that any statement would include civil and political rights, until Eleanor Roosevelt convinced the United Nations to include social, economic, and cultural rights. Her belief has changed how we think about and argue about the structure of human society on Earth.
Some have argued that, in his comments on Genesis 1, Augustine's claim that the Lord gave humanity dominion over the earth and its creatures set the stage for the exploitation of the earth that has led to the climate crisis. The burnt earth thesis probably extends further into the early Fathers, and it is even harder to prove that, as a belief, it was partially responsible. Adopting some notion of Gaia, or goddess consciousness, might be an antidote to this kind of thinking and nudge us to treat the material world with more respect and even reverence. Thank you Gerta Thunburg for capturing our imagination. You show us that belief takes more than just intellectual assent. Imagination and dreams carry some weight.
Does assenting to a personal belief in a God being, he/she/it, god or goddess, have any value? I could argue that it might have the opposite effect: it muddies the waters and makes us “deluded,” to borrow a Buddhist term. It might be time to go back to Saint Thomas and Anslem to disentangle the mess I got myself into.
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