Confessions of a Teenage Hope Fiend: How I learned to stop worrying and love the ‘Ommm….’.

"And then I did what all parents dread will happen to their children if they get into the wrong crowd - I started dabbling in philosophy. It all began with the weak, relatively harmless stuff: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. But we all know that's a gateway to harder stuff, and that it inevitably leads to Kant and Heidegger."

-          Zoe Markillie, comment on the last post 

 

Hi, I’m Agnonymous, and I have a habit. 

Religion isn’t something I do, but I can’t leave it alone.

If I try to look back and find some precipitate event, all I see is evidence that I always had this need, this compulsion, to test the edges of my beliefs in the crucible of other peoples’. I see myself as a child deciding that I wasn’t going to sing the hymns at my primary school. I wasn’t Christian, so it wasn’t appropriate - right? Then - a little while later – it occurs to me that the value of the songs and the fun of singing them might be separate from their value as theology or a statement of belief. It might be okay for me to sing - and in any case while I may know what I’m not, it’s not at all clear what I am. It may have been fateful that I got in trouble for this – some fellow student asked why I was singing again, and for some reason took my “It was stupid” to refer to the songs and not my unwillingness to sing and thereby felt the only proper response was to inform The Authorities. One wonders what the teacher in question made of a nine-year old’s theology as a justification. In any case, I was still in trouble.  

Actually, defining yourself in terms of the negation of the other is handy when your own ideas are still a bit embryonic. Maybe that explains my rather staunch anti-theist pose in my early teens (even when it wasn’t indiscriminately anti-religious). This pose was odd, because no-one was really trying to impose a theistic point of view on me – my family if anything was possibly Buddhist, and a few jaunty hymns was about as religious as my school got. But a safely imaginary oppressor is a wonderful thing for a fragile identity, and it’s easier to explain you are against The Evil Church of Inquisition and  Dogma than that nice Dalai Lama man . This can be seen in the fact that some people I grew up with seemed fairly clear on their Christians, Muslims and Sikhs, but were less than 100% on the differences between Buddhists, Hare Krishna’s and Jews.

“Did it hurt when you were circumcised?”

As with any habit, terrible role models and a bad crowd didn’t help. Among these were The Ascended Master of Rhetoric incarnated in my father, as well as my very good friend who – despite apparently agreeing with me on all the ways the arguments for theism were ridiculous – remained stubbornly Muslim.  One terrible and two terrific Religious Education teachers later (Mrs H and Mr H, you’re the latter if you ever happen to read this), I’m just about ready to accept the idea that I might be less concerned with the ways in which I disagree with other people’s PoVs and lend some thought to what I do believe. It’s probably telling that at this point the one Argument For God I found difficult to respond to was Pascal’s Wager. The arguments points out - under the assumption of a existing god - the finite cost but infinite gain of belief (the good place) versus the finite gain but infinite cost of unbelief (the other place). If god doesn't exist, you've lose nothing by belief - its a finite cost for a finite 'benefit'. Given the distribution of risks and benefits, says the Wager, wouldn't the rational and reasonable man give that ol’time religion a go? Sure, one can make several responses (Wouldn’t such disingenuous belief –if it’s even possible – annoy god? Which god are we talking about, anyway?), but they’re mostly issues with its application, not a problem with the internal logic of the argument itself (compare this).  

   

So, I come to the point were I’m interested in working out whatI do believe. Theism was never my thing, but I dabbled in other habit-forming ideas – Wicca, Buddhism, vague-new-age-Spiritualism. I even spent some time as a lay community member in a Monastery. In fact, it was probably the latter that put the final nail in the idea that I was ever going to be a believer with a capital ‘b’. I was fascinated by religion: by the ritual trappings; the philosophy; the internal psychology of believers. I could even make use of the spiritual exercises I've learned for my own mental housekeeping. But a wholesale joiner of the club I was not, and probably never would be. 

So I’m more or less at peace with my obsession, now. I’m not offended by people’s beliefs or their Beliefs, in fact I’m often fascinated. On the other hand, I know what I think  and what I think I know, and I’ll fight my intellectual corner if I see the need. One is merely real life. The other is philosophy. And that’s serious. 

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Ultimate Whys and Other Lies, on the Uses and Abuses of How.

"The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty)."

-          Stephen J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

On my actual and ideal bookshelves, a good proportion of the biology and science section is taken up by the works of Stephen J. Gould. Primarily a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, he was also something of a renaissance man of science and reason-based letters – a historian of science and a popular essayist, a constructive gadfly of overzealous evolutionism and remorseless critic of ill-informed anti-evolutionism. A wielder of facts to defeat politicized science, and a relentless pointer-outer of great big elephants in our collective cultural rooms. 

As you may have guessed, I’m something of a fan. Paradoxically, that’s why I’m sort of avoiding another of his books that would be perfect fodder for this blog – see the quote at the start of the post. Not having read it, I’m not about to write some kind of pre-emptive review – and when I do read it I’m sure you’ll hear about it here. It’s not about disagreeing with him – I don’t agree with everything I’ve read of his previously and my enjoyment of his work is as much about how he says things as about what he says. As with C.S. Lewis, a worthy disagreement can be more satisfying than an easy consensus. It’s more that I came across this quote while researching a different post, and it seems to me to represent a conversational trope – as lazy as it common as it is oft-repeated - that might actually make me think less of one of my intellectual heroes if it is the argument he’s making.

Science, we are told, deals in the how. Religion, on the other hand, trades in the great and wonderful why. I don’t plan to stamp my feet and demand that science be let into the circle of arbiters of ultimate meaning. Rather, I want to challenge the idea that faith has unique – or any – access to the domain of transcendent meaningfulness. Indeed, on one level I doubt that it has any greater access than any other form of ‘how’.

Science and religion, on one level, are stories – whatever else they may be on other levels. For the supernatural there’s the range from fairy tale to the future history of the End of Days. For science you have the (actually incorrect but usefully didactic) atom-as-solar-system-model, and you have the standard model or quantum electrodynamics . Both are models for events, causal stories where this causes this by way of that. At this level, both kinds of stories are of the ‘how’ variety, but the claim is that one kind – religious stories – can level-up to the ‘why’ by virtue of their claims about transcendent realities and/or entities. But if these things are truly transcendent, aren’t they by necessity beyond the ken of people like you and me? Isn’t this precisely what we mean when we talk about the ‘mysterious ways’ in which god allegedly moves. Or, if you prefer, akin to the buddha’s unanswered questions.

Both kinds of stories make claims about reality beyond the subjective. But even if science and/or religion have a claim on objective truth and ultimate meanings, the only way you and I get to experience that is though our own limited window on the world. It’s like the blind men in a room with an elephant, each being able to touch and know a small part of the Whole. The total creature, the ultimate Why, may exist or it may not. All we know - for sure – is that there many small creators of small, personal stories of what’s happening and what that may mean. Tiny beautiful proximate hows and infinitesimal, idiosyncratic whys. The meaning, and the arbiters moral value, are you and me, and our worldviews conform to that. To argue that a subset of views are special because there’s a special set of rules that applies only to them is delusional and/or disingenuous. You're reading my account of how I think different views fare under the same criteria. What you make of that, necessarily, is down to you.

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Give it a whirl: Berlin's Long Night of Religions, By Zoe Markillie

Earlier this year, the first Atheist Church was launched in London, with sermons on science by Professor Brian Cox, and Stevie Wonder hits replacing the usual hymns. The underlying principle was that a sense of community and unity in belief is something that need not be limited to the religious but rather should be shared by everyone, including atheists. In an ever-increasingly individualised world, so the theory goes, why not provide an opportunity for the unspiritual to gather every Sunday with like-minded people and discuss the big questions of life?

It’s not the first time that atheists have chosen to take something from religious practices, and I consider it for the most part a healthy attitude – or at least better than a Dawkinsesque ‘you’re all morons’ approach. And it’s a two-way process, with many religious groups becoming more and more open to outsiders. Which is how I ended up spending my Saturday night learning about the complex family tree of the Hindu gods, being hit in the face with the robes of a Whirling Dervish, and watching a Sikh put a book to bed.

As part of its cultural programme, Berlin organises a Long Night of Religions every year – all the places of worship around the city are open to visitors of any (or no) faith between 6pm and midnight, with many providing talks, demonstrations and music. Keen to learn about some of the less well-represented religions – like most Brits, my RE lessons consisted mostly of what Christians and Jews think about various issues – I didn’t bother with any of the churches or synagogues, and I had already visited a mosque during an open day last summer. So instead, the evening’s activities consisted of visits to a Hindu temple, a Sufi centre, a Buddhist temple and a Sikh gurdwara.

The warm welcome I received from all of these places seemed less of a sales ploy than I had expected; the people of the different faiths appeared to be genuinely pleased that I was interested in learning about their religion and not set on converting me. In particular, the Sikhs were openly willing to answer any questions, and insisted on serving us all food, despite the fact that we had guiltily snuck out of the prayer room before the end. And the Sufis not only did not require the female visitors to cover their heads, but also offered the same respectful welcome and ‘salaam alaikum’ to a group of girls who wandered in wearing strappy tops and hotpants.

As well as being educational in the expected sense, I also learned the first rule of watching Dervishes: don’t sit in the front row. But when not ducking out of the way of the spinning robes, I was struck by the elated expressions on their faces. Whatever incredible inner place they were in, I wanted to be there too. Sufism promotes joy and euphoria as a way of connecting with God, but could this be something that atheists can experience too?

As an oriental dancer, I have attended a few dance camps which involved a ritual called the ‘zar’. This is a middle-Eastern tradition which is a form of Dervish whirling for laymen; it is used for prayer, exorcisms, pain relief and general wellbeing. For us, it was a completely secular religious experience – entering a trancelike state of pure elation without the accompanying connection to a higher being.

I was extremely nervous before my first zar; I’ve always been too sceptical even for meditation, and this seemed to be a weirdly pagan, cult-like ritual. We were led into a dimly-lit space and told to move in whatever way felt right; we needn’t worry about safety as there were supervisors to make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves. Zar, unlike Dervish whirling, is not at all a performance; it is not a pretty sight, and the only people who may be present, other than the participants, are there purely for safety reasons.

As the repetitive Sufi drumming began, I felt ludicrous and self-conscious. I had no idea what to do. I sneaked a glance at the others from the corner of my eye and began to follow suit, turning slowly on the spot. At first, the hardest thing was to remember that this was NOT a performance; as I spun, I had to crush my dancer’s instinct to hold my arms in a beautiful pose and to spot in order to avoid dizziness. The dizziness was part of it. Memories of spinning on the school playground until I fell over, just for the fun of it, came flooding back and I began to enjoy myself.

Unlike Dervish whirling, zars are not limited to on-the-spot turning, and whenever I got tired, I would fall to my knees and fling my head and arms from side to side. The wild movements came naturally now, and I could neither see nor care if anyone was watching me. My limbs were loose and felt separate from my body; my hair was in my eyes and mouth but I didn’t feel it; I simply felt a compulsion to move to the heavy drum beats. I was in a trance without drugs or hypnosis, an entirely self-constructed trance.

Finally, the music came to an end and we all lay still on the floor. Once recovered, we were led one at a time from the room and to our beds. Confused and disorientated, I asked one of the supervisors how long I had been in there – it felt like about ten minutes. She smiled and told me I had just thrown myself around in a dark room for an hour.

The zar affects everyone in different ways. Most feel high, dizzy and very relaxed. For some, the feeling of elation is so intense that they laugh hysterically – as I shuffled to my bedroom, I could hear their cackles echoing down the corridor, and a few dancers are well-known for needing at least 45 minutes to stop giggling after a zar. Others cry uncontrollably for no apparent reason. I know one woman who does the zar every year, and afterwards wails for half an hour with huge, racking sobs that seem to come from some deep unimaginable pain; she assures me she’s not crying about anything in particular, and that she finds it rather therapeutic.

Personally, I feel mostly drunk – carefree, uninhibited, but always aware of what I am doing, and with the feeling that I could stop at any time if I wished. I certainly feel relaxed and happy, but I can never quite reach the peaceful place of the Whirling Dervish. The euphoria rises, and I feel like there could be a connection – but there never is. Is this a problem in me, an inability to allow myself to connect to something greater, or simply that there is nothing to connect to at all? And does it matter in any case, if an atheist can have more or less a religious experience without God?

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