(Ele)Civil Disobedience

I still believe, I think, but I have some major questions for the "big guy" and I'm not too shy about asking or complaining when I pray. Yes, I have doubts. Yes, my life has had some major **** in it. Yes, there's plenty of evidence of bad people doing bad things, of random events doing bad things, and occasional evidence of very good people doing very good things just because, or of good stuff happening for no particularly apparent reason. That, and there have been a couple of "inexplicable occurrences" that, well, I can't explain logically, rationally (duh) and so I don't know. I would like to believe there's a greater good, all encompassing consciousness somehow. I have sometimes wondered if it might be simply...neutral. See, lots of questions. And the questions I had about how being gay fit in (or didn't) with my religious upbringing and beliefs...was my nemesis, my bête noir. When it finally got through to me that the translations and interpretations I'd grown up with were in all probability wrong, while there were other, more valid ones, it helped. Yet here I was, damaged by all that, and by other stuff, trying to heal from it. I guess life is one long, strange trip after all.

That is to say too, who am I to judge a friend for his or her religious beliefs, or lack of them? I came to the conclusion that if God exists, he's at least very different (and way more into options and guidelines than actual rules) than any of us humans thinks. In other words, most likely each and every human has only a very tiny glimpse, that whole three blind men and the elephant thing.

Not to be rude, either, but you know, no one ever said what happened if one of those blind guys happened to be feeling around and got ahold of the elephant's more personal attributes. LOL, for either the elephant or the blind guy, must've been a very disconcerting experience. -- What that really would have to do with religion or anything else, I'm not too sure, but well, it must say something. (Other than that I need to get out more....)

P.S., I think I have the file you'd sent way back in the day, when you'd submitted "Fistfights With Flashlights" to Codey's World. I'll send you what I have.

P.S., Keep bein' you. I think that's pretty awesome.

Getting off auto-pilot and examining one's life is such a fruitful occupation. Discovering that you live in a different world than that described by religious teachers of any stripe is a hard won triumph of the spirit. I am full of admiration that you managed that feat at seventeen.

I was fortunate to fall in with Buddhists at an early age (they never thought of themselves as any kind of -ists). They encouraged me to cultivate silence in which I could look at and listen to the world, and allowed me to discover that people who are constantly yammering cannot manage self-examination, much less encourage it in others. They were powerless and loving in behavior and word. I will say that one old man who was very helpful to me equated the eschatological crap being taught to young kids in Sunday Schools with child abuse (many Buddhist sects are guilty of the same abuse).

I admire your seriousness in looking at your place in the world from time to time. The world seems a lovelier place with people like you in it.

And alas, sometimes an elephant trunk is just an elephant trunk.

One can always tell a rational. intelligent person because they use the word, Eschatology, instead of saying, 'the End Times'.

We share a similar moment at our 17th year of age, EleCivil. I had been raised to believe and pray to God etc, as a protestant (Aussie mode). But it became apparent that my praying had not cured my congenital hole in the heart, and so began a series of questioning that accompanied my already established investigation of why I liked other males rather than girls. This strangely led me to trust the surgeons at the local hospital who repaired my heart.

When the cardiac surgeon, a very intelligent, humane and caring man, told me I could go home and expect to live a normal life, I thanked him for using his skills to help me. His demeanour changed, his aloofness melted as he shook me by the hand and thanked me for thanking him. "Most people," he told me, "were too busy thanking, Him up there, " as he pointed to the sky, "instead of me and my team. Thank you."

I later learned he was an atheist, and I would agree with you, Ele, that had he been a believer in a god, he would still have extended my life with his skills as a surgeon. But there is another interesting factor in this man's attitude to his work. He was a heterosexual man with a family, but he had staffed his ward and surgical team with many people who were gay, because they were the ones who would drop everything to attend a medical emergency to help save a life.

From that moment of my surgery, my questioning of the reason for life spiralled towards my firm non-belief in gods.

Yet in those dark days of criminal prosecution for committing homosexual acts, and the pressure to believe, it still took me 5 years to undo all the indoctrination of my childhood. Indeed so-called 'Enlightenment' means, in some sense, to constantly be overcoming the conditioning of one's own culture.

Most important was this extract from a book written by an ex-Anglican minister who had also been influenced by Zen:

“If, the scientists would say, you believe in God, you must do so on purely emotional grounds, without basis in logic or fact. Practically speaking, this may amount to atheism. Theoretically, it is simple agnosticism. For it is the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.” (-Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity.)

This leaves the honest person in the somewhat precarious position of unsatisfyingly having to admit that he just doesn't know. Neither belief nor non-belief can alleviate the uncertainty of the agnostic, but accepting reality as we experience it, without imposing mindful misinterpretations or myths, brings us close to the physicist Eddington’s idea that, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

To cut short this long intrusion into your blog, I will sum up with this observation. A religious man is one who seeks to know himself, to know the truth about life, and doesn't let the discovery of 'knowing that he cannot know' from ever stopping him from seeking the answer that is only ever knowable for the moment it exists.

I have to agree with Ben, keep being your awesome self.

And I agree with bi_janus who posted whilst I was writing the above, the world is indeed a lovelier place with you in it. You have brought me much pleasure and contentment with your stories and posts.

They encouraged me to cultivate silence in which I could look at and listen to the world, and allowed me to discover that people who are constantly yammering cannot manage self-examination, much less encourage it in others.

Silence is a virtue - when you're talking, you can't listen. When you can't listen, you can't learn.

In general, I try to remind myself that there is something I can learn from every person I meet, provided I take the time to do so.

As a wise man once said, "Never miss a good opportunity to shut up."

Des -

I love that Alan Watts quote. He and Carl Sagan are some of my biggest influences when it comes to my views on religion.

Our use of words like Atheism and Agnosticism is based on ancient Greek although it was Thomas Huxley in 1869 who coined the term Agnostic. If we stay true to the original significance of these terms, a theist believes in one or more deity (subdivisions monotheist, polytheist etc) while an atheist believes in no deity at all. A gnostic reckons he knows there is one or more deity - more than belief, his knowledge must come from some mystic revelation. Conversely, an agnostic is not someone who hasn't made his mind up, or who has an open mind, but someone who believes it is not possible to know whether there is a deity out there. He holds that mystic revelation is bunk. Those who haven't made their mind up about deities don't have a label since they aren't aligned with any of these philosophical cabals.

As to where I sit among these various fenced-in compounds, I can only say my perch is a little uncomfortable...

Conversely, an agnostic is not someone who hasn't made his mind up, or who has an open mind, but someone who believes it is not possible to know whether there is a deity out there. He holds that mystic revelation is bunk.

Indeed - if you wanted to be technical, I would consider myself an agnostic atheist, in that I do not believe it is possible to know whether there is a God, and I currently do not believe in one. (It is equally valid to be an agnostic theist - admitting that there is no way to prove the existance of a God, but believing in one anyway.)

But most people don't understand that, so when asked, I just say "skeptic" because it's shorter. And if they don't understand THAT, I tell them I'm a Discordian.