To Readers and Book Publishers

As of today I’m putting the blog on hold to give more time to other priorities.

I started blogging as part of an effort to get a book manuscript published, but recognized some months back that a blog or Web site doesn’t really do much to help with that. After a book’s published, or has been scheduled to be published – that’s when it might be somewhat helpful. But I enjoyed blogging, so I kept doing it anyway…

Publishers: So if any publisher who happens to have my proposal at this time, which mentions this URL in the cover letter, should for some reason look at this blog, please see any date prior to this one to see what the blog was like.

Blog Readers: Whatever happens with the book, I plan to resume blogging. I don’t know when that will be. But since most blog readers are bloggers themselves, you’ll know I’m back when you see me commenting to your blogs again.

For now, I’m letting go of all blog-related activity. I’m also not planning to respond to comments to this post, although of course I’m glad to receive and read any.

I’ve enjoyed it, and I look forward to reconnecting with you down the road…


A Note for the Diablog Door:

If we feel a sense of threat or offense when someone questions or challenges our religious beliefs, is it really, A) the religious side of our brain that we’re using, and B) God that we’re defending?

Judging Others’ Choices. Post #4

If I were him, I would have acted differently. If I were her, I would never have chosen to do that.

This is the essential thought process by which we judge others.

Yet surely if you were him or her, then “you” would no longer be you. Unless you’re a member of the Holy Trinity, you don’t get to be more than one person at a time.

Because you assume that if you were in the other person’s place, you would act differently; or that you would never have gotten yourself into that position to begin with and, therefore, this other person must also have been able to act differently – well, we’re just not reasoning correctly when we think along such lines.

All we’re really saying is that we would never have done such-and-such under any circumstances. And we may not even really know that much.

We can’t plausibly make ourselves the measure of others.

Free Choice and Judgment. Post #3

I appreciate the diversity of viewpoints and the thought that people put behind their comments to this blog. I started to write a reply to one of you in the comments section of my last post, and then realized that the comment and my reply is a post in itself. It summarizes a lot of what’s been said so far, and at the same time looks at how free choice bears on the issue of passing judgment. Lucy, along with a number of other commentators, favors the idea that when we do wrong, it’s primarily a matter of free choice rather than primarily a matter of limited moral knowledge or awareness.

Lucy: “Paul, I am not trying to pass judgement on anyone. God makes the ultimate judgement on each and every soul. Judge not lest ye be judged. You are talking about the grey area between good and bad choices, or that is what it seems to me. Maybe we just understand things differently.”

Paul: I’m saying that it’s impossible to prove that we do or do not have free moral choice (or free will in any other aspect of our lives.) I'm also acknowledging that most people who’ve posted comments, myself included, do feel that we have a measure of freedom in moral decision making. However, the prevailing view seems to recognize strong influences that bear on how we come to arrive at moral decisions, to the effect that our degree of choice is far from completely free. My personal view is that the degree appears highly limited.

If, instead of seeing moral choice as quite limited, we see it as perhaps not perfectly free, but nearly so, then this conduces to judging other persons, and not just their actions. We view them as doing evil not because “they know not what they do,” but because, although they have full moral awareness, they choose evil. This allows us to blame them deeply as persons – to judge them. At the same time, it allows us to see ourselves as highly virtuous free-choosers of the good. All this represents a big payoff for the ego.

So when, as in your previous comment, somebody says something like, "I know that there are some sicko's out there that are so weak that they can't make a good choice," it sounds highly judgmental. Like you say, you’re not passing ultimate judgment in the sense of deciding who’s going to heaven and hell. But when the Bible says to judge not, not to throw stones, etc., these lines aren’t meant to dissuade Christians from trying to wrestle Jesus Christ out of his throne on Judgment Day! That’d hafta be really hard!

I think the lines are telling us not to pass moral judgment on other persons; not to consider ourselves experts on their minds, their hearts, their souls, what they’ve been through in life – not only in the outer world, but also in the private world where they developed whatever sense they came to have of themselves in relation to others. Just because I wouldn’t or couldn’t have done what some other person did doesn’t give me insight that he or she freely chose it. We are not to consider ourselves the measure of others. Judge not.

Btw, I’m casting no stones in your direction, Lucy, and appreciate your comments and patience. And I only know something about ego because I have one…

Free Choice and Morality. Post #2

Morality Demands Free Choice

Some of you believe that morality is possible only if we have complete freedom of choice. Examples:

Gangadhar: “Without free will, no opportunity for choices between right and wrong exist. Creatures without free will cannot have ethics because they have no choice.”

Kate: “As Gangadhar said, without some acknowledgement of… free will, how could there be any ethics?

"It would be crazy then, to hold anyone responsible for their good or bad acts. It would make no sense to have prisons, or the educational system for that matter. Everything would be relative. Why not still have slavery? Why shouldn't Hitler rule the world? I know I'm oversimplifying here, but do you see what I mean?

"I just can't accept that point of view. But I'm curious to know what you think about that aspect of personal responsibility.”

Morality Does Not Demand Free Choice

Here’s how morality is understood when the main factor behind how we behave is viewed as our degree of awareness of self in relation to God – or, conversely, our level of ignorance concerning this matter. (If you’re a Buddhist or have Buddhist leanings, feel free to substitute “enlightenment” for “awareness of self in relation to God.”)

In brief:

That which is moral or ethical is that which does good. That which is immoral or unethical is that which does harm.

The less ignorant we are, the more we do good. The more ignorant we are, the more we do harm.

I think that those who view free choice as the quintessence of morality must still have some experience of moral ignorance vs. moral awareness as leading them to do harm vs. good. All of us remember past occasions of having done wrong where we learned something from the experience and wouldn’t do it again because of what we learned.

Whichever theory is correct, or more correct – whether we do good/harm from out of enlightenment/ignorance or from out of free choice -- does not make the good that we do better or the harm that we do worse. Acting well from out of diminished ignorance is a good thing. Acting well from out of free choice is a good thing, if that’s how it works.

Problems with Morality as Free Choice

However, one problem with the idea that we make perfectly free moral choices is that it makes it easy for our egos to get involved. We may compare ourselves to others. It makes it easy to congratulate ourselves about how good we are, or to pass judgment against others (or ourselves). Because those who choose evil knowing perfectly well what they do must be evil indeed. We might even conclude that Jesus may not forgive those who choose evil knowing what they do.

Passing judgment against others as free choosers of evil makes it easy to demonize them and want to punish them. The criminal justice system is a good example. It’s founded on the idea of punishment. We have a prison system where prisoners are allowed to rape and stab other prisoners, but who cares? They’re getting what they deserve.

Criminal Justice

And what we get is a high rate of recidivism – criminals who exit the system more angry and hate-filled than before they entered it. Why? Because the idea of “teaching a lesson” to an adult in the sense of punishing him is, frankly, idiotic. It’s psychologically incorrect. Punishment may have some use in instilling a rudimentary conscience in a young child. But inmates aren’t young children who view their prison guards and wardens as parental figures whose values and mores they’re primed to internalize.

As a practical matter, what the criminal justice system ought to do is A) protect society from criminals by locking them up, and B) provide for a prison life that’s as sane and simple as possible. Let’s call it a monastic model rather than a punishment model. Instead of enraging the angry, why not give them a simple and structured life that provides opportunities for psychological, spiritual, and educational growth? Why not encourage those with the capacity to become better persons to do so?

As far as the factors we’d consider for judging and sentencing criminals goes, nothing would change. As a practical matter, whether we view free choice as illusion or reality, some criminals do, for example, “premeditate” more than others. Whether their premeditation was freely chosen or whether it was set in motion and absolutely determined by the forces that came into play at the first instant of creation – who cares?

What matters is that premeditation suggests that the criminal is a greater danger to society than someone who, for example, commits a “crime of passion.” Similarly, a serial killer poses a greater risk to society than someone who murders once in the course of a drunken brawl.

The concept of “responsibility” therefore remains a sound way to judge criminals. Not because we must believe that they are ultimately and fully responsible as free choosers of the harm they do, but because factors like forethought, mental competency, and age, are indicators of how great a propensity the criminal has to commit a criminal act again. “Responsible” now simply means “went through a conscious, reflective, and deliberative thought-process prior to commission of the crime.” That type of thought process is stable, likely to be repeated, and makes a person who thinks that way a greater danger to society regardless of whether we ever resolve the question of whether such conscious and deliberative types of thought processes are freely chosen.

Likewise, nothing changes in our view of harmful individuals, institutions, and practices such as evil dictators and slavery. We oppose them as much as ever. Nothing concerning our values and morals becomes more “relative.”

Free Choice:!!!!!!! Post #1

Only since I’ve started blogging have I been aware of the special importance of free will to many Christians and Muslims, where it takes the form of “free choice” in matters pertaining to religion. It seems to me that free will is impossible to prove or disprove.

!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...

Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.

When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.

1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)

2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.

To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief

In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.

I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”

Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil

As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.

In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?

So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.

Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.

What’s It Been Like for You?

What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?

If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.

If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?

And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?

One with a Bug/One for the Kids…

Mr. Me’s Speeches

There was a bug upon my rug
I thought I’d have to squash it.
But as I came, it moved away,
Almost like saying, “Stop it!”

“I have a name,” it seemed to say,
“Although it’s kind of short…”
“So what is it that you call yourself -?”
“Just ‘me’” – his quick retort.

“Just ‘you’?” I asked, “No, ‘me’,” he said,
“I mean, just I, not you…
And for a bug I’m pretty smart –
I have a high IQ.”

“He must,” I thought, “He talks a lot,
At least he likes to chat.
It’s kind of cool the way he runs
Then lies low, hiding flat.”

I kind of think I’d do that too
Eluding giant creatures,
But then I noticed Mr. Me
Was sort of making speeches…

“My favorite drink is soda pop,
Kids drip it on the floor.
I have a Dad whose name is Pop
My Mom’s named Soda More.

My Daddy calls her Sweet Amore,
And both of them adore me.
They named me after Uncle Me,
Who’s entering the Navy.

At night we sort of snore a lot,
Some people think we’re crickets,
But that’s the sound we make at night
When eating sticks of licorice.

I’m taking tap and soccer
And I play the bugle too
In lots of ways I’m different,
But in some ways I’m like you.”

“Okay, okay, please go away…”
I always feel confused,
By talking bugs who say they’re “me” --
That’s when I turn them loose!



Copyright Paul Martin 2005 all rights reserved

The Profundity of The Captain and Taneal

“Love – love will keep us together…” Okay, the Captain and Taneal may seem an odd choice to start this post, but it’s all Mbains’ fault. I consider him my “resident atheist” since he comments here occasionally; I’ve linked to his “Silly Humans” blog on my blogroll.

MB is innocent of having referred in any way to the dynamic singing duo. But he did start a train of thought that took me there...

In a comment to my 10/3 post, he picked up on my concluding line, “I have done nothing by myself – ever.” I’d given a couple examples of what I meant, including how looking up into the branches of a tree had occasioned a particular thought. MB emphasized that it was my mind that thunk the thought. And certainly I wouldn’t deny that my own cerebral cortex is the proximate cause of whatever I think.

Literally Whole

Nevertheless, it remains true that reality, whatever it is, functions as a whole - literally. For example, the pressure in the cells of our bodies exactly counteracts earth’s atmospheric pressure: get tossed into outer space without a pressurized suit or vehicle and you’d explode. The heavy elements in our bodies necessary to life were forged in the explosions of second generation stars as the universe unfolded. Anyone knowing a lot more about science than I do could provide a lot more examples.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James broadly defines religion as our attitude toward life as a whole. Life, reality, is in fact a whole. I think it’s a good definition.

Some believe reality is a whole with two basic parts: nature, on the one hand, and on the other, God conceived as existing in complete or partial distinction from nature. But it isn’t necessary to have this belief in order to experience, as well as understand, that reality is a whole. Being an atheist is no obstacle.

Experiencing Wholeness

Take love, for example. Love brings us together (hats off to Captain and Taneal…). Love is one way in which we can experience and increase the wholeness of life, and in particular, human life. Empathy, forgiveness, compassion (which, imo, are just variations on the love theme…) – experiencing these things doesn’t require religious beliefs.

Or take the oceanic feelings that occur for many of us in relation to nature. Alone under the sky, we can directly experience something of our personal relationship to the larger reality; sense the fact that we have no existence apart from it, regardless of whether we believe that this all-inclusive reality includes a more or less distinct entity or aspect that we call God or divine.

Or take the unitive states of consciousness that can be known through contemplative prayer or meditation, and that occur spontaneously in some lives. To read descriptions of these experiences by persons who have written about them, and the techniques outlined for entering into them, is to recognize that a single basic kind of experience occurs cross-culturally. This is off the top of my head, but if I recall correctly, there’s a book by an author named Walter Stacey or Stace that’s good on demonstrating this point. I think “mysticism” was in the title, which can be a problematic; this word sometimes refers to alternative belief systems and experiential claims that many people find questionable. But Stace – also James – focuses his discussion on a clearly identifiable form of “altered state of consciousness,” and one that can have far reaching consequences for how we lead our lives.

A Divine Plan or a Divine Run? Post #2

Wind Running

While jogging yesterday morning, I was flying.

This wasn’t the first time. On windy days, especially in the penetrating winds of early spring and the surging winds of autumn, to run is to feel wind-borne. There is a sense of being caught up in it, of sharing the wind’s effortless power.

Of course to begin with, the work of running is made easier when the wind happens to be at your back – as though you were buoyed up like a kite, or gliding over it like a bird. Sometimes big gusts almost seem to lift you from behind.

Then you begin developing some skill with the wind. You not only make use of it when it’s at your back, but also learn how to lean into its resistance when rounding a corner and it’s coming at you from the side. Heading straight into it, you discover how to keep a low profile. You learn how to avoid wrestling with it; how to let a wind-surge slow you down a bit so that you’re not at odds with it and having to exert a lot of extra energy in order to continue moving forward. I think there’s a metaphor for life here concerning adversity and how to deal with it.

Then there’s the matter of the distracting tumultuousness of it all. The boughs that move and branches that bend before your vision, scattering twigs and leaves on the ground at your feet. The swaying trees, near and distant, with their vast, long repeating shouts of “Hurrah, Hurrah!” that swell without ever completely subsiding to dominate the whole sound-scape. And so the cars on the nearby street pass in tremulous whispers, and a boy streaks past furiously pedaling a noiseless bike. The entire visible world is transformed by what the wind is doing; everything is touched, stirred, invigorated. If your body is tired, you’re not noticing it because the whole world is at an angle and your senses are reeling with the feeling.

Eventually your own movements, occurring in the context of the general uproar, blend into a feeling of not being your own movements. Everything is moving: the crumpled what-not scuttering crab-like along the asphalt, the leaves streaming lightly passed like victorious little marathoners, the tops of trees swaying like banners. And your arms swaying at you sides, and your legs stroking to gain the ground, all become part of that same panorama. Add to this the permeating chill of wind just cold enough for your body to accept into itself and enjoy without difficulty, and you begin to feel that you live and breathe the same vitality that makes boughs bend and branch, the clouds billow overhead, the wheel-rolling combustion engines combust -- the earth turn. You no longer seem to own the energy you spend, with the result that expending it becomes an easy, free, and joyous gift – uplifting gift, as though your own feet belonged to the larger purpose of helping spin the go-round of the ground we tread.

Partnering

We are the ones with divine plans and preconceived notions. God is just going, just running, knowing the direction.

God may be looking for a running partner.




Copyright Paul Martin 2005 all rights reserved

The Plan: The Land of Live. Post #1

As we went from discussing gratitude to how prayer may or may not work, some of you touched on the subject of a divine plan – the idea that even the details of what happens here on earth and in the universe is the acting out of a preconceived scheme of things established ahead of time by God. This view is commonly held among many groups of Christians, and I believe Muslims and Jews as well. The concept of a preconceived plan also frequently enters into other religious belief systems in one form or another. Here, from what I’ve seen, it often involves “destiny” – for example, in ideas of karma, reincarnation, and past lives.

Those who speak of the existence of a plan always rely heavily on some hidden or unseen aspect of it. That’s the part that explains how situations and events in this world that appear chance, chaotic, or dynamic when we just look at them, are really aspects of a well constructed – well, “intelligent design,” I suppose.

I assume that in the West, divine plan thinking represents a particular understanding of scripture; one that has apparently become well established in many organized religions. Personally, there’s a lot I don’t understand about the idea of a plan. Here are a few things that come to mind:

Filling in the Blanks

Free will: If we can act on free will, this sounds like a major area in which God didn’t plan out details in a preconceived manner. So is the idea that God planned for “free will” as a general sort of item or box in his overall scheme of things, but then left the specific contents of that box blank, so to speak? Because if God planned each of our freely made decisions in advance, it’s hard to understand how they’d be free. Wouldn’t we be the dreaded “zombies” that it’s usually said we would have to be without free choice? I do kind of wonder about that too. I mean, since we all have free will (or, don’t – but either way, it’s the same for all of us), then isn’t it hard to know if we’d really act like zombies without it? Then again, maybe we’re acting like zombies now, and don’t have any non-zombie humans around for comparison purposes…

Anyway: If God’s plan provides for free will in general but leaves the particulars up to us, are there additional “general” components to the plan? For example, did God plan out in advance exactly which way every leaf would land on the ground every autumn – or do the trees, the sun, and the wind work that out? Did God plan out which twigs every bird would select every spring for their nests, or has he allowed that blank to be filled in by the birds?

The more “blanks” there are, the more reality looks to me like an actual and ongoing act of creation and not something that was mapped out and preconceived ahead of time. Anyone familiar with creativity knows that the dynamic processes involved are very different from what it’s like to use the mind with a cleverness and intelligence that decides beforehand what the finished product will look like. If God’s a planner, for me that’s quite a different statement from saying that God is a genuine Creator.

Knowing A Lot

Yet certainly there are advantages to believing in a plan and believing that you know a lot about its unseen details. You can explain anything. The hidden part of the plan serves as a balance sheet, an unseen ledger so that any contradictions, inconsistencies, injustices, or other forms of untidiness that we observe in reality as we know it now, are only apparent.

And no one can ever prove you wrong. You can’t “go there” with someone who questions your idea of the plan to “look” and see if it’s really true. No one can check up on the accuracy of your assertions.

To give a simplistic and silly example, and yet one that operates on plan-principles, I could tell you I know about the Land of Live. (Live is evil spelled backwards…) Any time something evil happens in the world as we know it now, something very lively and twice as nice happens there.

Still, we should never do things here on purpose that are evil. For if we choose evil just to make that burst of positive energy happen in the Land of Live, to make it twice as nice for us when we finally get there, well, I hate to tell you, but that’s the one time it doesn’t work. A neutralizing energy field from that kind of thinking always crosses over into the Land of Live, so that nothing happens any different there than would have happened otherwise.

Things Unseen

I believe in the reality of things unseen myself. In fact, I tend to believe reality is mostly unknown by us in its full sweep, compass, and power.

When people around the world offer their different explanations concerning how much they know about things unseen, and in so much detail – well, frankly, the more they say they know, and the more details they give, the less convincing it sounds to me.

Anyone know how the idea of a divine plan got started?

Pls. note: the "Changes" link has been updated to the topic of Gratitude...

Gratitude: Joy to the World. Post #4

Acknowledgments

Today, a bright fall morning, I was lying on the floor of my living room and enjoying looking up into the branches of a tall tree outside the window. Suddenly I had an insight relating to the book, and I put it on paper. Forty five minutes later, I found I still felt like lying under the tree to relax, as I’d originally intended, when it struck me that it must have been in some kind of relationship with this tree that the insight had occurred. It wasn’t at all clear to me that I would have had it in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, or at my writing table. In fact, I tend to doubt that I would have. Gazing up at the tree had somehow put me in a relaxed, gently searching frame of mind which had produced the result.

And later in the morning, this thought elaborated itself further to me while jogging and watching the hot disk of the sun glowing roundly from behind the mist: How often do we fail to notice all that is quietly there for us, supporting and allowing for the things we do? Had I ever acknowledged the sun? The sun that gave birth to all the heat and warmth we know and provided the clay of this earth from out of which was created the amazing complexities of our bodies and brains? I have done nothing by myself – ever.





Copyright Paul Martin 2005 all rights reserved