Tag Archives: secular

The Presence of God

Posted by on December 5, 2011 No comments

I had a conversation in the car tonight, it got me to thinking and and I have had this at the back of my mind for a while.  It actually ties in, in a way to my punch / counterpunch posts back in April and I’d like to extend the theme of those posts as I write tonight.  I said in April that we are too quick to assume a little knowledge, and then let that knowledge think itself the entire world, when this isn’t often the case.  To push this point a little more I want to directly consider the existence of God, which I’ve always tried to avoid commenting on before.

The existence of God is something that has been debated for thousands of years.  They were debating it when the Buddha walked the Earth, and frankly it’s not been solved since then.  This tells me that we’re talking about something that, let’s face it is likely unanswerable by mankind.  Now, this is going to be something that a lot of people on both sides of the religious fence are going to shout loudly about.  But the point stands, we just don’t know.

It’s said that you can’t prove a negative, this is true.  If I state that there is no God, then I am saying that I have examined every inch of the universe and found no God.  This is impossible; so, the thinking goes, we must look at probabilities.  But this in itself exposes a flaw, all of our judgements about the existence of a creator are based on our arrogant assumption that we understand the nature of that creator!  How exactly are we so sure of this?  I’ve criticised holy books at length before and will refer the reader to my articles and archive for that, but this also extends to Science; what makes you think that a divine presence in the universe would even be something we could comprehend?  Whether we choose to admit it or not, we are limited, flawed creatures.  Who is to say we would even recognise God if we saw it?

This is where I think Taoism has it right, the Dao is beyond our understanding and has no plan, design or preference.  We cannot grasp it with our intellect as we are limited and it, by it’s nature, encompasses the things that are both within our grasp and outside our grasp.  Whenever we try for a God or Gods, we just wind up with ourselves, writ large.  But if there is something out there, then my money is on it being something like the Dao, and not just being out there, but in here as well.

Here comes the bus.

Posted by on January 7, 2009 2 comments

You know, you can wait ages for a bus and then they all come at once.

The British Humanist Association has got a donation funded ad campaign running that has put an Athiest message on the side of numerous buses in London and other UK cities.  The campaign has spread to other countries and has exceeed its original donation target by many many times over.

Speaking from my own perspective which is both Buddhist, Humanist and secular, I think the idea is a good one.  We regularly get religious messages rammed down our throats overtly or otherwise, so it’s good to see a counter point.

This challenges people’s beliefs, and as such, many believers won’t welcome this.  In fact many haven’t, but if you hold a belief then it’s important that you regularly challenge it and examine it.  If you hold a belief from a desire to socially conform, or out of fear, then can you really be said to believe?

This is a question I’ve asked myself before, if many “believers” hold their beliefs for a desire to conform, or out of fear, then are the worlds organised religions as stong as they seem?  Or does the house of cards have no bottom card?

Thoughts on Karma – it’s secular.

Posted by on December 10, 2008 3 comments

I was mulling Karma the other day after a number of events I’ve had happen.  I thought to myself “Rich, why don’t you put your thoughts into text and see how things go?”  So I plan to and hope to make 2 (or maybe even 3) posts.

So, I now need to explain what in the world I mean by that post heading.  Here goes.

I’ve seen the definite meme that Karma is some sort of divine judgment force, that there’s some kind of mystical account being kept for us.  I think that’s an unlikely state of affairs.

I tend to apply Occams Razor which means I usually go for the simplest explanation, thus I consider Karma to be a simple matter of cause and effect.  The reason it looks mystical is, in my view, down to the simple fact that we do not (and cannot possibly) possess (or keep track of) all the information in any given situation.  There are just too many variables, many of which are hidden.

For example, a person may well injure themselves in the gym, but again no mystical judgement force is involved.  Unheeded bad habits, poor exercise form over a number of years, simple carelessness, maybe even an undetected medical condition all can be factors.

So let’s build from the gym example, I gave examples of bad secular karma above.  But are there examples of good?  Of course there are, because there are things that can be doen to combat the above, even before they happen.

This is where I invoke parts of the Eightfold path. Right Mindfulness, awareness of your habits while using machines and performing exercises.  Mindfulness of the fact you may have a condition and taking that into account.  Right Action ties in by actually getting you to the doctors to get that condition checked, or seeing a Personal Trainer to get your poor form corrected.

Buddhist readers can no doubt take my example and tie the other elements of the path into it, so as is my habit, I’m going to leave the question open as a thought exercise for the reader.