Comment by Forrest Curo on 4th mo. 4, 2012 at 8:43pm

To 'theists' (as far as I know) the argument is not over "Who's a good person?" but about "What kind of universe do we actually live in?"

I generally like atheists (who agree that there is an actual universe but disagree with my understanding of it, as a realm under unified, purposive mental coherence); I simply consider them mistaken.

I often like "non-theists" but find myself bewildered and exasperated by (what looks to me as) their determined evasion of the ultimate question: "What kind of universe is this?"-- and their typical insistence that "I know that you can't possibly know what you say you know, so how dare you keep insisting that you know it and I don't."

I frankly don't know how to bridge this kind of mismatched interaction, where whatever I say leads to responses in terms of what someone else would like it to be about...

Comment by Dave Britton on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 12:19am

Forrest: I'll try to answer your questions about, ""What kind of universe is this?"-- and their [nontheists'] typical insistence that "I know that you can't possibly know what you say you know, so how dare you keep insisting that you know it and I don't."

But first, when I've led workshops titled "Nontheism Among Friends" I usually start with a brief description of what I have seen of the range of Friends theological positions: from strongly Christ-centered to "there's a God, but Jesus was a man, not a god" to "there's a spiritual non-material dimension to our existence which has power in our lives but ultimately unknowable properties and there could be something you could reasonably call God as a part of that" to the pantheist "God is in everything" to the panentheist "God is everything", to wiccan and buddhist theological perspectives, to the Great Story of the Universe as a Being in the process of becoming self-aware, to varieties of materialism (there is only the material world, no non-physical dimension) including orientations from "the universe is a complex emergent process" to strong determinism... and that's only scratching the surface. (If I left out anyone's perspective, I'm sorry, I'd love to hear what it is to broaden my understanding.)

What's common to all these Friends is a commitment to acting in the manner of Friends, based on an underlying fundamental sense that there is something all of us can access if we try, that is deeper and non-conscious that draws on aspects and elements of our human experience and can motivate us to action that seems good or right or needed,  based on inner subjective personal experience, not just rational conscious decision-making. Most Friends in the world today consider that inner experience to be our personal inner contact with a divine Christ that links us to an outer divine God. Some Friends have very strong personal experiences in which this is manifested in life-changing religious experiences as of being visited or spoken to by this divine Other, often accompanied with feelings of great peace and of being deeply loved. Many Friends have not had this same religious experience. Some have had powerful instances of what we call "openings" while others have had little or none of this subjective personal religious experience, but mostly we agree that there is something important within us that goes deeper than our limited conscious awareness. 

This sense of a deeper capacity in all of us leads Friends to several implications: the personal inner experience trumps any words, so a creed is both unnecessary and inadequate. Silent Worship facilitates access to this inner experience. Equality, integrity, simplicity and peace are inherent in the commitment to the significance of the inner experience: everyone has this within them; it's always there, not just on Sundays and it calls you to right action always; avoid distractions and excesses that move you away from it; war and violence are contrary to the inner message of love.

So we are all Quakers, even though we have many variations in our theology. That's my position about what Friends know and say they know. The theology in my view is relatively unimportant in the context of the inner experience and the belief in or acceptance of its implications for how we need to live our lives.

I don't think that I'm saying by this that you can't possibly know what you say you know, and I'm certain I don't want to convey that I do know it (i.e. that you can't possibly know what you say you know) and you don't (know that you can't possibly know what you say you know). It sounds like a Monty Python skit when I put it that way. On the contrary, I completely accept your statements about what you say you know about this inner experience and what it implies to you. I haven't shared your experience, but I have my own and it's different, but I believe (actually I have faith) that the differences are unimportant compared to the common shared sense that there is this deeper capacity within us that leads us toward right action in the word.

The validity of the inner experience is a personal conviction derived from the experience itself, i.e. the experience or belief is self-validating. One knows one is right. Where we may differ, and I'm not sure if we really do, is whether that personal conviction justifies insisting that others must or should or can be expected to act as if they had the same inner experience. We have no way of really knowing what another's experience is like, and each person will necessarily understand the experience in the context of the life they are living. So, most nontheists as far as I know place importance on behavior rather than theological interpretation.

Which raises your other point: You say clearly, the best I have ever read it, that for you and perhaps theists generally, my position is irrelevant, because it's not about being a good person, it's about what kind of a universe we live in. As you write it in another post, "the post post modern question", the theist perspective is "we can know the universe because (and only because) its underlying reality is spiritual, because that reality wishes to communicate Itself."

I shall attempt to avoid "determined evasion of the ultimate question: "What kind of universe is this?" which irks you. Forthrightly, then I hypothesize that the universe is a continuously creative process of such wondrous and important complexity as to be worthy of appropriating the word sacred to describe it. (I thus agree with a position expressed by atheist theoretical biologist Stuart Kaufmann in "Reinventing the Sacred.") The process, I hypothesize, moves overall in the direction of increasing complexity from which genuinely new things constantly emerge, in the direction of maturation, growth, betterment, even love (if you will permit me an unscientific word) in a continuous process of transformation within which we humans are embedded. As part of that universe-process we too are in continual transformation, seeking instinctively toward growth, maturation and love (and finally in death, the inevitable final transformation from which the necessary new may arise).

In my view this process of the universe neither requires nor would benefit from the attribution of conscious agency. On the contrary, agency exists as an emergent phenomenon, becoming an element  within the process, not as the process itself or as something apart from the process that governs it from outside. We humans for example have agency, we make choices and take action, we are the universe being aware of itself. In this context I then make another hypothesis, more speculative: Perhaps the very definition of right and good and love is this direction, and when we turn ourselves to move in that direction that's why it feels right. In other words, morality (goodness, right, love), roughly speaking, is embedded in the universe process as part of its inherent nature, and thus is within each of us, and that is what we are sensing deeply within ourselves as we sit in expectant silence in Meeting for Worship, at least on our better days.

To press on even further, I would take the position that this is scientifically accessible eventually. These hypotheses are ultimately testable. We are in the very teeny beginning of scientific understanding of the universe; we've only been writing things down for maybe 6,000 years, and the light from the sun that started out on the day the first writing was done has not even made it one quarter of the way across our little galaxy. Complex systems theory started in earnest in the mid 90's and is still in its baby steps as a new scientific paradigm, but it may eventually allow us to go beyond the Newtonian paradigm of living in a universe of billiard balls all governed by the laws of motion. Chance, uncertainty, phase shifts, recursion, fractals, new emergent things and properties, are all real but poorly understood or integrated into our worldviews as yet. But that will change. We will eventually come to know enough to be able to ask the question, "Is the universe inherently moral?" Or looked at another way, less anthropocentrically, is our conception of morality what it is because it conforms with an underlying fundamental part of the universe process, within which we are growing and creatively changing in constant transformation.

It's possible of course that my hypotheses are wrong. My belief in them will have to remain an item of faith, I suppose, as your belief that an outside agent wants to make itself know to us might be.

But you've claimed (in post post modern) that *the* Quaker answer to understanding how the universe works is the outside agent theory. I dispute that. I am a bona fide unhyphenated Quaker who in fact does have a position about how the universe works, and a stance that the universe is not meaningless or inaccessible to our understanding, and incidentally provides support for our religious perspective. We can respectfully disagree, or even better respectfully acknowledge our differences and their internal validity for each of us, but let's agree to stay away from claiming only one of has "the" Quaker answer. Let's work for the day when our theological differences of opinion don't bother us in the least because we're Friends.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 1:17am

I would not agree that the "agent" in question is "outside", any more than it's confined to the "inside."

But I do agree that we're trying to get on the same page here, and that's an improvement.

As with any scientific question, the answer is testable. But it isn't a strictly intellectual question, to be decided by academic methods. If you apply the heuristic, "The universe wants to teach me something," to your actual day by day and overall life... it becomes self-confirming.

Inner experience, outer experience; the whole thing answers that question. It isn't about "what I believe" but about "what's there to find." Not about "what members of contemporary Quaker Meetings think" but about "what was there for our spiritual ancestors." Descriptions vary, but it's still here.

Comment by Daniel Wilcox on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 1:36am

Hi Nat,

Actually, I have a lot of respect for Richard Dawkins, have read about 5 or 6 of his books.

While I don't agree with his philosophical conclusions, I understand his nontheistic views.

I admit Friends who claim nontheistic views mystify and confuse me.

I will keep listening.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Comment by Ken Baxter on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 12:02pm

For the record, I find Dave Britton's above comment absolutely brilliant and spot on.

It is an enormous credit to Friends and Quakerism that this kind of thinking occurs and is welcomed.

This is not true of all too many denominations.

Comment by Jim Wilson on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 12:51pm

Greetings Friends:

I find Dave Britton's comments well meant, but misguided.  His post is rather long, and I am unable to reflect on everything.  But there is one point I would like to highlight.

Britton's analysis seems to suggest that there is a complete separation between what people believe, the views they hold, and their behavior.  I am skeptical that this is true.  After outlining numerous views held by different Quakers, Britton states, "What is common to all of these Friends is a commitment to acting in the manner of Friends, based on an underlying fundamental sense that there is something all of us can access if we try . . ."  Britton eloquently expands on this basic idea. 

From my reading Britton has divided the human being into two separate parts: the part that has ideas and views, and the part that acts.  In my reading Britton is saying it doesn't really matter what we believe as long as we behave in the manner of Friends.

I see things differently.  I think there is an ongoing intimate connection between the views we hold and our behavior in the world.  The 'manner of Friends' didn't arise in a mindless vacuum.  The manner of Friends was built on a foundation of views of the world and among those views was an intensely theistic understanding.  I think there is an intimate connection between the 'manner of Friends' and those views.  My suspicion is that if that theistic foundation is abandoned the 'manner of Friends' will be abandoned as well; not necessarily immediately, but soon enough.

I already observe signs, suggestions, regarding this among non-theists and their suggestions for how Quakers should practice; for example relying on individual understanding rather than a transcendental dimension.  In specific instances I have observed a weakening of the commitment to a peace testimony among non-theists; although this might be just the expression of a few individuals as I have not taken a poll of non-theists.  Still, I think the idea that you can remove the foundational notion from the Quaker tradition and not have the whole building weakened is naive.  And I find it psychological unpersuasive.

 

Thy Friend Jim

 

Comment by Dave Britton on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 3:30pm

To Jim Wilson's point, that I have "divided the human being into two separate parts: the part that has ideas and views, and the part that acts.  In my reading Britton is saying it doesn't really matter what we believe as long as we behave in the manner of Friends." This is a subtle but important concern, one that has been debated in the theory of ethics for a long time, is it belief (and therefore intention) or is it outcome that determines the morality of an action?

First, as a neuroscientist, my perspective is that we are very much more than our conscious awareness. Neuroscience has been hot on the trail of consciousness for the last several years (read Christoph Koch's excellent "The Quest for Consciousness" for example). We have discovered a lot, without yet finding the answer to what philosophers of mind call "the hard problem": how can the non-material but patently real existence of conscious thought emerge from the activity of the brain's neurons? One of the phenomena that has become clear is that a large part of our "selves" is not conscious; we can detect with brain wave analysis, for example, that a choice is selected as much as a third of a second before the person becomes aware of having made the choice, or more accurately, before the person experiences the making of the choice. Does this mean we do not have free will? No, it means that a lot of the processing that goes into making choices, including belief patterns and experience, are not consciously knowable, and many choices are virtually mindless habitual responses. Our conscious free will happens as we experience the choosing process: we can stop it before it is acted on ("free won't"), we can regret it and change future choices, we can feel positive and rewarded, for example. In short you are not just your consciousness, you are also the interplay of patterns of experience combined with genetically  and developmentally established neural patterns. You are much more than you normally experience consciously.

So yes, I would say there are elements of both conscious belief and  determinants of action within each person, but they are fully integrated, so as you put it "there is an ongoing intimate connection between the views we hold and our behavior in the world." But there is also a large component of non-conscious contribution to both the views and the behavior. To an extent then it is reasonable to ask how do we know what we really believe unless we see it in our actions? You don't even know what you are going to say until you have heard yourself say it, most of the time.

I didn't make the claim that it doesn't matter what we believe. The nontheists I know never make that claim. That's an exaggeration that allows your rhetorical separation of belief and behavior. What would be a more accurate reading of that point is my implication that somewhat different theological beliefs can converge on the same behavior, especially when they share a wide overlap on many points of belief about what's important in the world.

You go further to point out that among the foundational beliefs of early Friends was "an intensely theistic understanding." Note, though, that there was also present among the early Friends a distinctive nontheist strain, eg. Winstanley, etc. and a clear relating of "knowing experimentally" to the growing influence of Francis Bacon and others promoting early scientific "experimental" knowledge in opposition to the mainstream church's Aristotelian disregard of verifying one's premises with direct observation. Given Fox's intelligence and literacy we can be confident that he was aware of and therefore consciously allying with this new anti-clerical trend of what would come to be known as science based on direct observation, to determine the truth by "knowing experimentally". I hope that you would not go so far as to claim that theists hold the patent rights to Quakerism.

Your fear is well expressed that perhaps our collective commitment to acting in the manner of Friends may be in danger of being undermined or weakened by abandoning theism. I hear that and do not dismiss it outright. I deeply hope it is an unfounded fear, and I know for myself that it is unfounded, and I see no sign of it being endangered among other nontheists, if for no other reason than our commitment being strengthened as it is tested by our nontheists' need to affirm our beliefs and our participation in the Religious Society of Friends. Moreover, there seems to be no danger that nontheism will be writ large in the face of Evangelicals' far greater presence.

You have seen weakening of the peace testimony among nontheists; Richard Nixon was a theist Friend, and the peace testimony has a history of being challenged by theist Friends from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War and beyond. Myself, I haven't seen that weakening in any of the nontheists I know, and frankly don't think it likely given the high commitment to right action in the world that I do see. But since you do see it, I stand warned and alert, but unwilling to generalize the concern as a danger of nontheism.

I remain unsure how to respond to your perspective that the manner of Friends is threatened by "relying on individual understanding rather than a transcendental dimension." I doubt you mean to imply that God must force you to act rightly since your individual understanding will not, although that's one way to read "transcendental dimension" as divine intervention. More likely I suspect, is that you are implying that behavior guided without mystical experience is inadequate to preserve the manner of Friends. I'm sure "experimentally" that is not the case. Certain practices, particularly testing leadings with the community, and using collective discernment provide built-in rudders.There is much Quaker writing to document the range of Friends' mystical experience and its role in Friends' beliefs and actions describing the many ways Friends grapple with the transcendental dimension without undermining acting in the manner of Friends.

Beyond that, I believe it is simplistic and inaccurate to frame individual understanding as merely intellectual abstraction. Understanding necessarily derives from all of your self, including the large part that we scientifically know is not consciously accessible but contributes nonetheless to your experience and your interpretation of that experience; the old Descarteian notion that your conscious sense of self is separate from the rest of you is nonsense, even though it feels that way superficially. You are a complex adaptive system within a continuous creatively transforming universe: it is part of you and you are part of it; separateness is a perceptual illusion, useful for functioning in the world. It is impossible for you not to incorporate a scientifically demonstrable version of transcendence into your understanding.

So the question arises, "can [you] remove the foundational notion from the Quaker tradition and not have the whole building weakened?" In your view the foundational notion is theism. In my view it is the primacy of the individual's "knowing experimentally" through Quaker practice, which for some leads to theism and for some does not, but either way never weakens the whole building. We're not Ranters, after all, for whom anything goes, if it feels good do it.

I accept that your experience of Quakerism is bound to your experience of theism. I hear your concern about what could happen to Quakerism if we took away the theism. No one is arguing that this should happen, only that we acknowledge and respect that some Friends experience of Quakerism is not as bound to theistic experience as yours. You are unpersuaded psychologically. That's fine, I'm not interested in changing your theological beliefs, I only hope to reassure you that mine are not a threat and that Quakerism is strong enough to embrace us both.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 4th mo. 5, 2012 at 4:27pm

Science may be "closing in" on what we mean by 'consciousness' in the sense of 'This person has its eyes open and is paying attention';

but what it is Who says "I am" in each human being can no more be 'captured' by science than a real world human could be arrested by Dick Tracy.

Fox wrote of a moment in which he was overwhelmed by the thought: "All things come by nature." And then he recognized this fear as "a temptation". He had beliefs about God, certainly, but what was "experimental" in his religion was that he lived his life in ongoing conscious relationship to what he knew transcends that "nature".  This continually confirmed itself to him; he couldn't doubt it any more than you could truly doubt having Earth underneath.

The core of what he taught was neither a "believe" nor a practice; but that ongoing experiment.

Comment by Olivia on 4th mo. 6, 2012 at 4:29pm

Hey all!

I was wondering:  What do the non-theists on this discussion think of the movie Contact (w/ Jodie Foster)?     If you haven't seen it, you'll find that it's very much on the topic.

peace,

Olivia

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