Smaller than an atom, larger than the Universe
Friday, September 25th, 2009 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serai.
Over the course of my life, my views on religion and what most people call "God" has changed and evolved. I was raised as a nominal Catholic. I and my siblings attended Catholic schools mainly because my parents felt (quite rightly) that the level of education we would get there far surpassed that of the public schools, even here in California, which in the 60's and 70's was at the top of the nation for children's education. My father has always been an atheist, and my mother, while religious, was very private about it, and rarely spoke on the subject. So my early encounter with religion was almost all based on what I was as an intrusion by outside authorities. Not always an unwanted intrusion, mind, but still an outside influence.
From the first, my most intense religious feeling was directed toward the female figures of religion - the Virgin Mary and her retinue of lady saints. The male figures of Catholicism did not offer me any spiritual nourishment, but rather imposed rules that I resented. The one exception was Jesus, who seemed in his downtrodden and ultimately sacrificial state to be much closer to the female figures than to the all-powerful, arrogant, and deeply unpleasant being claimed as his father, whom I had no liking for at all. Jesus seemed alright to me. True, he had a bit of a temper, could sometimes be unreasonable (that poor fig tree!), and at times flew off the handle, but by and large he was compassionate and at least paid women some attention (unlike his disciples, who mostly seemed like assholes).
As a teenager, I grew completely disillusioned with Catholicism, and by the time I was 19 had left it behind completely. Thanks to the good graces of a friend of mine, I came into contact with the Goddess. It was like coming home (the main image invoked by all people who find their own spiritual path), and I never looked back. After some years, I began to broaden my views, and read up on other religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and other faiths, coming to understand that there is value in all faiths - they all have something to teach us, each in its own way. That's the great value of being a polytheist; it makes spiritual truth a much more universal thing. All gods and goddesses finally come to be seen simply as facets of an unknowable truth, something we humans will never be able to grasp fully, so it becomes logical that there are so many different ways to think about this subject. I went from Catholicism's "Our way is the only right way" to "You have something different? Please tell me about it!" Much more comfortable, interesting, and entertaining, as well as convivial.
And somewhere in there I made my peace with Jesus, whom after study of different faiths I recognized as another incarnation of the Sacrificed God, the son of the goddess, Dionysus of the Greeks, John Barleycorn, Osiris, all of whom are cut down to nourish the people. He is another of the Great Teachers, who has evolved through the centuries. I was especially delighted when I read about his similarities to the Buddha, how close their outlooks on life are, and how even the stories told about them are related. Did you know the story of Jesus walking on the water was being told about the Buddha three hundred years before Jesus was born? It's the exact same story, even down to what the Buddha says to the disciple who tries to follow.
All this because I'd like to present a wonderful interview that I just heard online. Terry Gross speaks with Karen Armstrong, a former nun who has been writing about world religions for many years now, with intelligence, grace, and a remarkable evenhandedness. She has a new book out called The Case for God, in which she argues that what many people think of as religion these days is really a very modern invention, something that has developed only over the last couple of centuries. She speaks here about the history of that, and about the problems inherent in treating religion as is it were the literal clinging to incredible fairy tales that so many characterize it as, and how it is imperative that a vision of religion, both older and newer, arise in the world, a vision that sees religion as not a literalist replacement for factual knowledge, but a poetic and metaphorical way of viewing the deeper problems of life, and a compassionate guide for how to deal with one another. Serving the needs of others rather than serving our own beliefs.
The Case for God - Karen Armstrong interview
I know there are some folks on my list who identify as atheists, and I would very much like for those folks to listen to this interview. NOT because I have any interest in changing anyone's beliefs - we pagans do not proselytize, thanks - but because it saddens me to hear so many people talking as if all religious people hold the same simplistic, childish, literal view that has dominated the discussions of religion in the media for the last couple of decades. Really, we're not all fools believing in Santa Claus. Many of us understand that religion is simply a map of the world, and not the world itself. The Buddha exhorted his followers to take care never to confuse the finger with the moon it points towards; if that were a lesson that was taught to every child, the world would be a much better place.
Enjoy!
Over the course of my life, my views on religion and what most people call "God" has changed and evolved. I was raised as a nominal Catholic. I and my siblings attended Catholic schools mainly because my parents felt (quite rightly) that the level of education we would get there far surpassed that of the public schools, even here in California, which in the 60's and 70's was at the top of the nation for children's education. My father has always been an atheist, and my mother, while religious, was very private about it, and rarely spoke on the subject. So my early encounter with religion was almost all based on what I was as an intrusion by outside authorities. Not always an unwanted intrusion, mind, but still an outside influence.
From the first, my most intense religious feeling was directed toward the female figures of religion - the Virgin Mary and her retinue of lady saints. The male figures of Catholicism did not offer me any spiritual nourishment, but rather imposed rules that I resented. The one exception was Jesus, who seemed in his downtrodden and ultimately sacrificial state to be much closer to the female figures than to the all-powerful, arrogant, and deeply unpleasant being claimed as his father, whom I had no liking for at all. Jesus seemed alright to me. True, he had a bit of a temper, could sometimes be unreasonable (that poor fig tree!), and at times flew off the handle, but by and large he was compassionate and at least paid women some attention (unlike his disciples, who mostly seemed like assholes).
As a teenager, I grew completely disillusioned with Catholicism, and by the time I was 19 had left it behind completely. Thanks to the good graces of a friend of mine, I came into contact with the Goddess. It was like coming home (the main image invoked by all people who find their own spiritual path), and I never looked back. After some years, I began to broaden my views, and read up on other religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and other faiths, coming to understand that there is value in all faiths - they all have something to teach us, each in its own way. That's the great value of being a polytheist; it makes spiritual truth a much more universal thing. All gods and goddesses finally come to be seen simply as facets of an unknowable truth, something we humans will never be able to grasp fully, so it becomes logical that there are so many different ways to think about this subject. I went from Catholicism's "Our way is the only right way" to "You have something different? Please tell me about it!" Much more comfortable, interesting, and entertaining, as well as convivial.
And somewhere in there I made my peace with Jesus, whom after study of different faiths I recognized as another incarnation of the Sacrificed God, the son of the goddess, Dionysus of the Greeks, John Barleycorn, Osiris, all of whom are cut down to nourish the people. He is another of the Great Teachers, who has evolved through the centuries. I was especially delighted when I read about his similarities to the Buddha, how close their outlooks on life are, and how even the stories told about them are related. Did you know the story of Jesus walking on the water was being told about the Buddha three hundred years before Jesus was born? It's the exact same story, even down to what the Buddha says to the disciple who tries to follow.
All this because I'd like to present a wonderful interview that I just heard online. Terry Gross speaks with Karen Armstrong, a former nun who has been writing about world religions for many years now, with intelligence, grace, and a remarkable evenhandedness. She has a new book out called The Case for God, in which she argues that what many people think of as religion these days is really a very modern invention, something that has developed only over the last couple of centuries. She speaks here about the history of that, and about the problems inherent in treating religion as is it were the literal clinging to incredible fairy tales that so many characterize it as, and how it is imperative that a vision of religion, both older and newer, arise in the world, a vision that sees religion as not a literalist replacement for factual knowledge, but a poetic and metaphorical way of viewing the deeper problems of life, and a compassionate guide for how to deal with one another. Serving the needs of others rather than serving our own beliefs.
The Case for God - Karen Armstrong interview
I know there are some folks on my list who identify as atheists, and I would very much like for those folks to listen to this interview. NOT because I have any interest in changing anyone's beliefs - we pagans do not proselytize, thanks - but because it saddens me to hear so many people talking as if all religious people hold the same simplistic, childish, literal view that has dominated the discussions of religion in the media for the last couple of decades. Really, we're not all fools believing in Santa Claus. Many of us understand that religion is simply a map of the world, and not the world itself. The Buddha exhorted his followers to take care never to confuse the finger with the moon it points towards; if that were a lesson that was taught to every child, the world would be a much better place.
Enjoy!
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Date: Saturday, September 26th, 2009 06:57 pm (UTC)The Catholic Church certainly learned a long, slow lesson from coming down on the wrong side of the Copernican question, and eventually pardoned Galileo (I remember this quip from Mark Russell: "Isn't it typical? You put a criminal in jail and he's back on the street 400 years later.") However, Protestantism covers a broad spectrum, and I'm aware (thanks to having it hammered into me by 1,400,000 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver) that the Reformation was key to the scientific revolution in the Age of Reason. Newton himself was a fire-breathing Puritan. The Reformation idea was that, like the Bible in English, the wonder of God's work should be accessible to all, and scientific investigation, far from being discouraged, was a kind of worship.
I'm not sure I agree, however that not rejecting the evidence of science is the same as embracing it. However universal its themes, the Bible reflects a 2,000-year-old perspective in which much of the Earth was still unknown, let alone space, the microscopic and macroscopic universes, and of course all of modern physics. Hence my interest in seeing what a contemporary, science-based religion would come up with in the way of metaphors. (I agree with you that cosmogonic myths are among the most beautiful of human faith constructs.)
I'm more comfortable with metaphor than with logic; I prefer paradoxy to orthodoxy.
That's beautifully put, and like Carl, I also appreciate the impulse toward a more poetic and descriptive view of the world; our minds are formed for metaphors. To me one of the tragedies of modern science is that it is no longer comprehensible by even a well-educated person. The Newtonian world of simple geometry and immutable laws accords well with our desire for pattern and certainty. I find myself nostalgic for the Bohr particle model I grew up with; I try to understand string theory but find it confusing and incomprehensible!
I think your idea (or Carl's) of religion-as-metaphor, a sort of pantheism that recognizes parallel descriptive stories for the physical universe, is much more viable than Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria." The problem with declaring that science governs this realm, and religion that one, is that science's territory keeps expanding. Within a few decades we will be augmenting our brains; we are already, through the Internet, becoming part of a collective mind in ways that I don't think we realize. Our future selves may not even perceive the same universe that we do, and will no doubt need new stories to make sense of it.