Techniques

(For previous sections see below)

Title

         God II: a God for atheists

4.  Techniques for the study of God II

Study God II! Yes, 'study'. (To say 'worship' would send our atheist friends into a panic; it would be like saying 'levitation' to a physicist or 'snake-oil' to a pharmacologist. And indeed, worship would be entirely the wrong word at this stage. We might end up by 'loving God with all our heart'.' but that would be a long way down the line, for at this stage we have no clear image of what we are talking about.)

The scientific atheist is quite sure in his own mind that GodI did not create Adam and Eve in his own image and instruct them and their progeny on the rules for virtuous living. Man seems to be clearly related to the rest of animal creation, while altruism is easily seen as an evolutionary feature that has arisen because it has survival value in a social animal like man. However, from one point of view it does not matter at all why we have morals; what matters is how we live. How do we find out the rules for virtuous living? And to what extent should we struggle to be virtuous. Do we follow our instincts, or do we read the Bible and go to church? It seems that the churches have lost a lot of their authority in the hundred years since the publication of 'The Origin of Species'. It is hard to take any instruction from a church that outwardly supports a creed that swerves between the impossible, the improbable, and the repugnant. On the other hand instinct, though it may well be the ultimate source of man's moral sense, seems too weak a guide most of the time. It might indeed occur to one in the autumn of his days that he made mistakes, but too late.

For that reason alone is seems important to have a technique for determining and studying morals. There is another point to make here; the value of tradition. It may be readily accepted that representative government in a parliamentary democracy is the best method yet devised for governing complex societies. Imagine collecting a few million teenagers together on an island and waiting till they re-invented parliamentary democracy! It is a ludicrous idea. It is clear that it has taken at least 1000 years to evolve our system, by trial and error, and the best efforts of the best men of our race. The idea that we can each elaborate for ourselves our own a moral code is equally ludicrous. We need not only a method for testing and establishing truths in the field of moral values, but we also need a method for sharing these and passing the accrued wisdom down the generations. A replacement for type I religion is necessary; a type II religion.

If our instinct is the ultimate source of the information we seek, then our method will ultimately require introspection. A Buddhist meditates, and a Quaker sits in silent contemplation. Perhaps they are both doing the same thing; perhaps each is seeking to know more about God's will. I think not. Let us consider Buddhist meditation first.

The Buddhist is not normally thought of as seeking God, but as seeking tranquillity and insight. The two 'outer' aspects of Buddhist practice are perhaps the best known, but in this context the least important: meditation pursued for physical or mental health. There are three successively deeper aspects of the insight sought by the Buddhist: the pursuit of self-liberation or nirvana, of a sense of the unity of all things, and ultimately the sense of becoming one with all things. The pursuit is clearly rewarding, for the persistent devotee, and the goals even seem attractive to the man in the street. Anxieties about the emptiness of life, the awfulness of death, the pains of animal existence all drop away as the Buddhist goals are reached, and even the puzzle over the existence of matter may appear solved in the late stages of Buddhahood. These goals, however, are very different from the goals of western religion. It would seem that the Buddhist seeks to become less and less concerned with the practicalities of everyday life, and hence with other people. There is no point in denigrating Buddhism, which is after all one of the worlds great religions, except to point out that God does not enter into it, neither God I nor God II. God, as the concept has developed during the last two millennia in the Middle East and in the West, has a most decided personality (For an excellent survey see 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong). He has many human attributes: he speaks to his people, feels concern, anger, pride, mercy, love; he punishes, and he forgives. None of that troubles the Bodhisattva.

The Quaker, by contrast, is encouraged to respond to 'that of God in everyman'. The practice of waiting in silence for guidance 'from God' seems to have been introduced by George Fox in his charismatic preaching tours of the early sixteen fifties. His audience hoped he would speak to them, but Fox characteristically waited (often for more than an hour) for 'inspiration' to come to him. Since then the practice has grown up amongst Quakers of waiting till ideas form themselves in the mind that are recognized as 'of God'.  That ideas come, is not a theory but an experience. That ideas come in distinctive colours, is also an experience, and not a theory. You might be sitting there in a quite room with other Quakers and, quite unbidden, an idea comes into your head, a new use for a detergent perhaps, or a way of outsmarting the taxman. These ideas are dismissed. Or you might find yourself wondering about the happiness of the person sitting opposite, or the motives behind a retort you recently made. These ideas are given space. It is quite easy to distinguish the ideas that tend to depress or contaminate, from the ideas that lift and cleanse. But if your own judgement falters in that task you can look across the room at Friends you know well and whom you love and respect, and in your imagination lay your thoughts before the judgement of your fellow Quakers. This also is quite easy, and the results can be quite clear-cut; 'I know full well what X would say of that'. Because you can get to know each other in discussion, over the space of months or years, discussing these very things; not the detergent or the tax evasion, but human frailties, the retort and its motive.

If we are content to call this awareness of morality, of good versus bad, an awareness of God, or God's will, we have established the beginnings of a method for the Study of God.

However, you might say that Morality would be the better word; that we have suggested a method for the study of Morality, and that to call it God is confusing, even if we distinguish God II from God I. Here are two types of justification for bringing in the concept God II. [a] There is a bundle of notions besides those of a narrow moral code that are legitimately considered in a Quaker meeting including kindness, fairness, love, forgiveness, purpose and value. (Eventually we might find we could include most of what has traditionally been regarded as religion, but that is a matter for a later discussion.) So, if the term God II, a deliberate neologism, is still unspoken for, I suggest it can be used here. [b] Over the centuries there have been many things said of God. In a Pragmatic sense the meaning of any term is defined by how it is used. If, as atheists, we admit that we do not know what God is, that we do not know the 'substance' of God, nor the referent of the word 'God', we can hardly object when someone says 'God is Love'.  It is plain silly to retort that 'I don't know what you mean because I don't know the meaning of one of your terms.' It is silly because this IS the definition; or at least a part of it. If the term God is used by Quakers, and understood, then we can legitimately ask what is the pragmatic meaning of the term. We can then legitimately use the term.