Truth with a capital T

[qatarperegrine]

The phrase "All roads lead to the same place" came up in conversation yesterday, and I've been thinking more about it.

I don't, in fact, believe that all roads lead to the same place. The analogy is usually, I think, that the religions of the world are all paths leading up the same mountain, which is to say that they all converge on the same end goal. But is the goal the same in every religion? I don't think even the major religions share a vision of what it means to attain spiritual fulfillment -- becoming a boddhisatva is not quite the same as becoming a saint, or a tirthankara, or a Muslim prophet. I suppose one could say (to use Christian language) that the goal they converge upon is God, but I don't find God-as-object-of-quest to be a satisfying metaphor for religion. And this is ignoring the even further question of whether all religious beliefs and practices even lead towards and not away from what I consider to be holy.

I really don't think you have to believe that all religions are interchangable in order to have a profound respect for other religious traditions. I'm not sure you even have to see them as equal, to use the contested word of the week.

My central image of the relationships of the religions is more like a story I heard from Rev. Ben Silva-Netto at a training for Methodist lay speakers in California. He asked us to imagine a room full of art students circled around a model in the middle of the room. Because they all see the model from a unique perspective, and because they come to the assignment with their own personal background and skills, each of them portrays the model differently. One paints a portrait, one draws a silhouette in charcoal, one sketches the model's hands. At the end of the assignment, when the model has left the room and they start looking at each other's work, they are sure to find areas of disagreement in their portrayals. People sitting in very differerent places are likely not even to be able to recognize that each other's pictures are of the same model. (This was certainly true when I took an art class in college!)

Rev. Silva-Netto used this as an analogy for the theological task. When we start trying to explain how we understand "Truth with a capital T" we are likely to disagree with each other. And if I see my own painting rather than the model itself as the Truth, I am likely to see my neighbors' portrayal of the Truth as wrongheaded. But this is only because my own perspective is limited, and I am failing to recognize that the model itself exists in one more dimension than my version of it. So I see my version and my neighbor's as mutually exclusive, not realizing that our disagreements and contradictions don't have to be resolved, that our observations may both be valid even when they conflict. And, in fact, if I were to try to make the draw-er of the silhouette buy into my vision of the model's hands, I would be asking that person to go against the Truth that was disclosed to her.

Anyway, this metaphor is not entirely a satisfying metaphor for religion either, because I think God/The Truth/The Tao/Whatever is a lot more than a passive model. But for me it IS a more helpful metaphor for the intellectual, theological aspect of faith, because it explains how we can acknowledge and even learn from other people's visions of the Truth even when they disagree with ours, whereas (in my mind, at least) the paths-up-a-mountain metaphor requires that we ignore the very real differences between the religions.

So I hear a question like "Is Jesus divine?" and I wonder if yes/no is the right approach. I think there is truth in the Christian assertion that God is ultimately revealed through the life and death of Jesus. I think there is also truth in the Muslim assertion that the whole Trinity idea is a little weird. And I don't think it's violating the Christian tradition to see the perspective that might be gained from both sides of an issue; the Bible is, after all, full of different and contradictory perspectives. Was Abraham saved by faith or by works? The Bible includes (at least) two contradictory statements on the matter. I think things like that are an acknowledgement that different intellectualizations of an experience can be useful even when they completely contradict one another.

In Buddhist logic, a and not-a are not the only logical alternatives. Both a and not-a and neither a nor not-a are also logical perspectives. I see value in a both a and not-a approach to Truth: Jesus is God, Jesus is not God, there are spiritual insights we can gain from both positions. Or to be more apophatic, the divine mystery cannot be reduced to either "Jesus is God" or "Jesus is not God." Neti, neti, the Hindus would say: Ultimate Reality is neither simply this nor simply that, but always transcends any formulations we use to describe it. The Tao that can be described in words is not the real Tao.

I wanted to talk more about Christian particularism and the question of whether "Jesus is God" even is the central truth claim of Christianity. (Not to mention whether truth claims are the heart of religion in the first place.) But I think I'll have to leave that for another day....

Comments

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Hi, Sarah! I'm glad you liked it.

I have read Life of Pi; I really liked it, but you're right that I disagreed with the central point about religion. Or at least, I think there's more to the religions of the world than "Let's paint as happy picture as we can of the universe, even if it's delusional." :-)

What I've been trying to work out is where a religious tradition like Unitarian Universalism fits in here. It seems like syncretist faiths try to synthesize all the other pictures (or at least the ones they agree with) and use them to reconstruct the model using, I don't know, stereoscopy or photo-stitching or something; I'm sure there's a good metaphor in here. What I don't know is how well that works -- can you gain a larger perspective by having a syncretist view of multiple religions, or whether you just lose the depth of each individual tradition?

The Luke quote is a good one for where I was going to go with the central claim of Christianity thing. I don't think the central claim of Christianity is necessarily the same as the central teachings of Jesus, and I haven't decided whether I think that's OK or not. :-)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Note to self: reread your sentences after you change their structure significantly!

Should be: can you gain a larger perspective by having a syncretist view of multiple religions, or do you just lose the depth of each individual tradition?

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

Speak of the devil (no pun intended)! I'm a Unitarian Universalist.

I like to think of UUism as something like Jefferson's Bible. Thomas Jefferson (a Deist, who we therefore claim to be UU) cut out his favorite Bible passages to create his own Bible. In the same way, UUs look for the good in every religion and disregard the bad.

Realizing that religion, while inspired by God, was ultimately created by Man, it's easy to account for most discrepancies. Saint Matthew's dire warnings of hell for nonbelievers, a concept I abhor, can easily be explained by a desire to recruit more followers for example.

In a way, I think religions inform each other- we gain a broader perspective on what we do believe by understanding what we don't.


And in the end, I don't think a patchwork faith is bad, even if you're the only one in the world who believes exactly as you do. Statistically, any belief system has an equal probability of being true, no matter how many people believe in it. We just as likely should be worshipping ants as our ancestors or cows or a 2000-year-old carpenter. Whatever belief brings you comfort, I've decided, is the best one.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I thought you were a UU, or at least raised UU. (You mentioned it in a xanga entry back when your xanga was linked to from Leland's wiki.)

The "looking for the good in every religion" is something I've been thinking about lately. I very much do the same thing: I think that learning about all the major world religions teaches me more about God than just learning about one. What I start to wonder sometimes is where one's concept of "the good" comes from, though. If I am using some principle extrinsic to religions to evaluate them, what exactly is that principle and how did I decide on it?

So normally I'd have no problem saying that the extrinsic principle is my personal sense of discernment, since I have "that of God" in me (to use the Quaker term) that allows me to evaluate good from bad. But in some sense that is a cop-out. I think that hell is an abhorrent idea; I think that Kali is a scary goddess, I think that no war is holy... but is that real discernment, or is that just me being what my pagan friends would call a "fluffy bunny"? The Qur'an says, "Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not." I sure don't like that idea, but it's hard to argue against. And, in a larger view, I think having a totally individualistic faith can also get us into trouble: I think of a woman who heard voices in her head and believed them to be demons taunting her, and I think it's good to be able to say, Our personal experience is not necessarily more reliable than the weight of religious tradition.

In the end I keep coming back to the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which says that a trustworthy theological position must take into account scripture, tradition, reason and experience. And still, Methodists of all stripes are using the quadrilateral to explain diametrically opposed viewpoints on, e.g., homosexuality, so that's hardly infallible either.

I'm not sure why I'm hoping for infallibility today. :-) I must be channeling my Catholic roots!

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I think you added value. I have to say that, as a progressive Christian who believes that questions have more value than answers. :-)

"But my exposure to Islam has not made me more convinced that Christianity is correct; at least, not yet. Nor do I find myself convicted that Islam is closer to the big T than Christianity."

This has been my experience of pretty much every religion I've been exposed to. Every time I start learning about a new faith tradition, part of me wonders if I'm going to end up being convinced that this one is The Truth. Instead, in every case I find things in the tradition that make me think, "How cool is that!" and things that make me think (at best), "Well... that's kinda weird...."

"Agnosticism sounds attractive, but then where does Pascal's wager fit in?"

I'm not, as you know, a fan of Pascal's wager. For one thing, "wagering for" the Christian god (as he presupposed) necessitates "wagering against" the Muslim god, so by his logic you are (literally!) damned if you do and damned if you don't. His logic would presumably lead you to opt for the religion that promises the worst torture for those who get it wrong, which is hardly a fantastic reason for adopting a faith tradition. But more importantly, his assumption is that the heart of religion is holding a particular opinion about the existence or nonexistence of a particular supernatural entity, which is, I think, a false premise. And anyway, what kind of god would reward someone for being that mercenary? (Not to mention that, if you're Muslim, betting in the first place is haram.)

I think this is getting back towards the topic I was going to talk about, namely whether religions are about truth claims. Certainly religions embody worldviews, which bear some kind of relation to capital-T Truth, but is affiliating with a a religion really about creating a Pascalian decision table?

Re: Pascal's Wager

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I hope that, at some point, my parents will return to a life of semi-normalcy and be able to contribute something here, because they probably know more about this than me. My impression is that there were lots of changes happening in beliefs about the afterlife around the time of Jesus, what with the Pharisees and Sadducees duking it out over resurrection. But you know that stuff. I guess the interesting question is, why was it changing? And why did people hear this "hell" idea from the Zoroastrians and go, "That sounds like a great idea to me!"

I'm pretty sure I've sent you these web pages before, but I find them handy (if tragically designed):
Teachings in the Hebrew Scriptures about the Afterlife: A Liberal Interpretation
and the bizarrely un-parallel-ly named
Liberal Interpretation of Passages from the Christian Scriptures on the Afterlife: 1st Century CE

But of course that doesn't answer the why question.

Re: Pascal's Wager

[qatar.livejournal.com]

"Unless you are 100% convinced that no god/God exists, why not believe in a god of some sort?"

And, just in case nicodemusrat doesn't come slap you around for maligning the ethicality of atheism, BECAUSE INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY MATTERS. And I say that on purely theistic grounds: I don't think God gave us brains so that we could ignore logic in order to avoid punishment.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
-1 John 4:18

Re: Pascal's Wager

[qatar.livejournal.com]

"...sacrificing intellectual integrity is a finite cost, compared to (possible) infinite rewards."

Unless God punishes people infinitely for sacrificing their intellectual integrity. Which I think would be cool, don't you? I'm sorry, you plagiarized that synthesis paper -- ZAP! -- straight to hell!

OK, maybe not.

Also, I think you are adding an extra pronoun to God every time, which makes me curious about where you'll go next. You'll have to break new ground in pronouns, unless of course you slip into first person, which would be worrisome. Or make up gender-neutral pronouns. I think "sie" and "zie" are the most common GNPs out there, but when the GNP-gung-ho community can't agree on a standard, I think they're a long way from taking the world by storm with gender-neutrality.

Talk about a non-value-added post. I think it's past my bedtime.

LOL on the pronouns

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

What I do is "simply" structure my sentence, such that repeating G-d's name makes ANY pronoun superfluous, or using the numerical pronoun "oneself" : "It is only through G-d's action that G-d can be known." This can, of course, lead to rather twisted sentences, but I'm insistent about this point.

In Hebrew, because all parts of speech are gendered, we inherently know that the associated gender isn't necessarily that of the described entity or action, so while Scripture, and common usage, uses male pronouns for G-d (most of the time), it is clear that G-d, at least, is entirely gender-neutral!

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Pascal known as kind of a nutjob anyway? And you can't help what you believe. If you're an atheist pretending to go to church, I think God's gonna figure it out.


Every time I start learning about a new faith tradition, part of me wonders if I'm going to end up being convinced that this one is The Truth. Instead, in every case I find things in the tradition that make me think, "How cool is that!" and things that make me think (at best), "Well... that's kinda weird...."

Have you read The Gospel According to Jesus? Those were the ideas I was raised on instead of the Bible- that Jesus was a good guy whose ideas were corrupted by the Catholic church.

I've been reading the New Testament for the first time, and Jesus seems to have a split personality. Half the time he's the "turn the other cheek" guy, and half the time he's the "all who don't follow me will burn in Hell!" guy. What the Gospel According to Jesus suggests (if I remember correctly... it's been a long time) is that much of the brimstone and fire stuff was put in Jesus' mouth by church officials decades later.


My main religious belief is this- God (assuming he exists) is probably a pretty smart guy, if he created the whole world. So I'm guessing he can come up with a system of judging souls a little more complex than "Do you believe in the correct religion/sect? Then you go to heaven." That's why I like Purgatory- lots of levels.


And returning to looking for the good in every religion:
I think the principle we use is simply emotional reaction and reason. If something doesn't feel right or doesn't make logical sense, there's no reason to believe it, but no reason to discard the things that do feel right. A flawed barometer? Of course. But what else do we have? Other people's instincts? Holy books written by other people? Science? The closest science has come (so far that I've heard of) is the 21 gram soul thing.


I'm thinking of writing a holy book, declaring myself a prophet, and seeing if anyone follows me.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Rats, I screwed up my HTML and LJ ate my post. I think I said something like...

"What the Gospel According to Jesus suggests (if I remember correctly... it's been a long time) is that much of the brimstone and fire stuff was put in Jesus' mouth by church officials decades later."

Well, the problem is that it was ALL put in Jesus' mouth decades later. The first gospel was written down around 70 CE, i.e. around 40 years after Jesus' death. People like the Jesus Seminar have tried to reconstruct what is most historically accurate, but I don't think they're going on too much more than emotional reaction and reason, either.

I'd also quibble with the term "church officials"; the first century church just wasn't all that organized, and there were people running around with all kinds of ideas about Jesus and writing all kinds of gospels. My impression is that there wasn't enough of a hierarchy to really suppress anything effectively! So I do think that the second-generation believers' interpretation of Jesus' life may not be the only fruitful one, but I don't think anyone was deliberately trying to misquote Jesus.

As for our own reason and experience as our best barometer, and God being a pretty smart guy, I agree (except for the "guy" part!). Personally I'm not all that concerned about the afterlife, if there is one. I think God wants me to live this life as best I can, and trust that the rest (if there is something else) will work itself out. I don't think God would be happy with the idea of embracing a religion out of fear.

FWIW I'd be interested in reading what you write about in your LJ, if you would care to friend me. No worries if not.

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

Sure! Consider yourself friended, although thought-provoking discussions like this are few and far between, while rants about trivial stuff fill in the rest.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Well, that's certainly true for my journal, too! In fact, I don't think there's ever been a discussion this intensive on my LJ before.

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

I need to learn more about religion and religious history, like that whole Catholic church thing. Any books you'd recommend? (or movies, for someone like me with a short attention span?)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

So that's... a little broad. You mean a book on the history of Catholicism? Nothing comes to mind, but let me think about it. (And ask my mother. Hey mum, what should she read?)

If you've never read Huston Smith's The World's Religions, that might be a good general religion book to start with. Although, if your upbringing was anything like my Unitarian nieces', world religions would probably not be the hole in your religious education. :-)

I'm more used to suggesting books on progressive Christianity to non-progressive Christians, but that's a totally different reading list (mostly consisting of lots of Marcus Borg, including The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, which he co-wrote with conservative scholar NT Wright; and Remedial Christianity, which despite a condescending name and a dismissive attitude towards conservatism is good and, more importantly, fun to read).

Human barometers

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I think the principle we use is simply emotional reaction and reason. If something doesn't feel right or doesn't make logical sense, there's no reason to believe it, but no reason to discard the things that do feel right.

The major problem with this is that you are going to constantly be fighting human nature itself. From a purely biological POV, four major "behavioral flaws" can be demonstrated (in increasing order of strength):

1. "Subjectivity" - In general, our ability to respond to ANY situation, is only through the filter of our previous experiences. Trauma, both emotional and physical, can forever stain this filter, and prevent us from having any sort of coherent ability to know what "feels right". As a secondary-victim of childhood sexual abuse, I can tell you that I will never-ever be able to be "objective" about many issues even remotely related to sexuality, either because at some level I've been "programmed" to perceive them as "normal", or because I over-compensate in the opposite direction.


2. "Laziness" - Doing anything real, general takes actual effort. This means that animals, humans among them, will generally seek the path of least effort. This means they will be intrinsically inclined to rationalize avoiding doing things, even if, otherwise these things would "feel right".


3. "Self Gratification" - We are hard-wired such, that we derive varying levels of pleasure from activities such as eating and sexual intercourse, with a direct correlation to how important to survival they are, to both the individual "unit" and the species as a whole. We are quite literally [Endorphin] "junkies" for pleasure. So this too clouds our ability to know what "feels right", in this case because "feels good" can easily take precedence. As every guy knows "A stiff dick has no Conscience"...


4. "Self Preservation" - The Number #1 "motivator" for all living entities is to continue living, at practically any price. What happens when you conflict this with the mere "feels right"? It rather pales in comparison doesn't it? While the threat of actual death, is generally pretty rare, we often respond strongly to even the most tenuous threats, or potentially threatening situation (such as saving someone's life at personal risk). Do you think this won't impact your ability to know what "feels right"?

While this list bares some parallel to the Catholic list of Seven deadly sins - the first three matching: Anger-Pride, Slot and Gluttony-Lust, I am thinking of them in the sense of biological imperatives (and not "sin"), to show that your "barometer" is inherently incapable of working. I can't think of any biological imperatives that would even remotely match Avarice and Envy, the two that I'm "missing".

You further underestimate the flexibility of human "logic", to rationalize whatever we damn well please. I doubt there are many cultures in human history who were quite as rational, straitlaced and "logical" as the Germans. Yet it was precisely for this reason that they could, through "solid rational science" demonstrate that Jews and certain other minorities such as the Gypsies, were genetically inferior, and that logically, this called for their scientific extermination, to make room for the "superior races". While I DO highly value logic as a useful tool, it is extremely overrated.

This is precisely why Divine Revelation is needed to tell us how to behave. We have proved throughout history, that we are incapable of finding this out for ourselves.

Divine Revelation

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I'd say we've demonstrated plenty of times that "Divine Revelation" can lead to pretty bad behavior. For instance, the Crusades, certain jihads, or even Joshua's battle.

Well as a ["exclusivist"] Jew, I would say the Crusades and Jihad are just clear examples of claimed Revelation, and hardly the Real McCoy, but you had to throw Joshua in there to confound my "easy answer" option. ;-) So for starters I'll say that we Jews, have rather strict rules on what a claimed prophet can and can not claim, and how to test the validity of a prophet. Obviously, from our POV, none of the various Popes with their ex cathedra statements, nor any Immams, qualify. Regarding Joshua, you are also making the statement that assumes his decimating the Canaanites was actually a Bad Thing [Tm]. Current archaeological evidence pretty much supports the Biblical claims that these nations had sunk far beyond "redemption" with their depredations especially in context of murdering their own children, as human sacrifices. They had managed to combine the Three Cardinal Sins, while "keeping it all in the family", and this in the "name of G-d". You bet G-d is going to be steamed!

In any case, the above was not my point at all, as I was using the term "Divine Revelation" NOT in the present-progressive context of prophesy (which is always the exception to the general order of the world), but in context of G-d having to clearly define The Law for us humans (i.e. Give us the Torah), because we are clearly incapable of knowing "what is Right" by ourselves.

He says that everything we desire, we can fulfill...

Like WOW!? I know C.S. Lewis was weird, but that is just so totally bizarre and twisted, from a Jewish POV. Reducing our tendency to seek the Divine to the level of an "animal urge"? That's almost as pathetic as the proponents of The G-d Gene (see referenced articles). Never mind that his metaphor is so incredibly flawed, what if he don't have any food, or are still single? His metaphors and parables are usually superb, if often hard for a Jew to stomach (I loved the near-pagan Space Trilogy, but couldn't stand Narnia [Whoa qatar! Please put DOWN that pitchfork!])

I think he blames the Devil for the perversions we come up with.

Blame it all on the Devil! Yeah, WTG. :-D We Jews don't believe in the Adversary at all, especially in this context, as it is G-d Almighty that comes out and puts the "blame" clearly at our own feet - "the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). Back to your interpretation of "Divine Revelation", when Christian zealots tell that "Jesus talks to them" and guides them in their daily lives, I am always compelled to ask "How do you know this internal 'guiding voice' is that of Jesus, and not your natural Inclination for Evil?"

Re: Human barometers

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that humans are all experts at rationalization, and that logic can't get us everywhere we need to go. (My favorite Greek philosopher is Parmenides, who couldn't logically explain the creation of the universe and concluded, therefore, that it didn't exist.)

But I don't see how we can get out of the predicament that we are forced to rely on our own subjective assessment of the world. There are, for example, countless people alive even right now who claim that they are receiving "Divine Revelation." (And some of them write to me!) Even if I accept the idea of divine revelation, I don't accept that all these people are actually receiving it. So I have to use some kind of criterion to judge whether something is divine or not, right? That criterion may not be entirely logic or entirely gut instinct, but whatever it is it's going to be subjective. (It may be something seemingly objective, like, "Was it approved at the Council of Carthage," but in that case I still subjectively determined that it's the Council of Carthage I give authority to and not the Council of Laodicea.)

So the very fact that divine revelation occurs is not, in and of itself, a way out of the "problem" of subjectivity, unless you are proposing that there is some entirely objective way to know if a given text is divinely revealed.

LOL on the Gopi Goodness!

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

Now though, you can only read the beginning of the essay you wrote.

As I explained to lelandt above, I wasn't referring to that type of ongoing "revelation", but to the initial giving of the Law. Furthermore, the law itself explains how to test the validity of a so called "prophet", and limits the type of thing that a prophet can tell us. For starters, a prophet is strictly forbidden as such to rule on the Law (they can rule as a learned Rabbi, if they are such). This means that the Law once brought to earth, by Moses, is now under "jurisdiction" of the Rabbis - "For this commandment which I command thee this day, ... It is not in heaven," (Deuteronomy 30:11-12). So indeed we have "some kind of criterion to judge whether something is divine or not". As far as WE are concerned, this means the problem is solved.

For the record, Jewish Tradition is such, that the power/ability to prophesy passed from the world, with the last Bible prophet Malachi (this would obviously preclude Jesus and Mohamed), and is now in the gradual process of returning as we enter the pre-dawn twilight of the Messianic Era. And before you ask, yes we do believe in gentile prophets (Bilaam for example).

Truth Claims

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I hardly think that Judaism is about truth claims of ANY sort. As I've said before, G-d is a "given" (i.e. not a "belief"), and belief in Truths (or anything), is always secondary to the action one does in "support" of these Truths. It wasn't even until Maimonides came along, in the 12th century, and in response to Islam, actually formulated our Thirteen Articles of Faith (and "Faith" is really an inapropriate word here). We had gotten along fine for millennia without them being codified...