In the brief span of time during which I entertained fundamentalism as the solution to existential uncertainty (while in Barbados, and attending Pastor Holmes Williams' Evangel Temple) I immediately saw that what was actually being dispensed was mental poison. This poison didn't present a label attesting to such, but was more insidious. More like an innocent consumer grabbing a bottle of soft drink unaware it was laced with strychnine.
The poison dispensed was "true belief" or the delusion of absolute certainty that x, y or z would happen - particularly as regarding the post-death condition. What I saw (and what ultimately led me to depart from these people) was that they were so desperate to escape their own insecurities they had to invent their own kool aid then invest 100% belief in it, merely to get through a day.
In truth, no such certainty exists, no matter how much any of these folks tried to make it so in their mind. The fact is everyone is guessing: there is no passport to absolute knowledge (certainly from some book based on corrupted 12th century manuscripts), nor is there any absolute knowledge of what happens beyond the grave other than 'nothing'. (Though as we know by the Ockham's Razor principle, the simplest hypothesis is the most likely of all competing alternatives, and in the case of human death - nothingness is the simplest conceivable.)
Maybe coincidentally, it was within a year or so of departing the evangelical sect that I encountered the book, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by Alan Watts. Rather than offer up pap for babies, Watts doled out cold hard truths. Most of these centered on human futility in grasping and grabbing at certainty.
In his first chapter, Watts brilliantly takes on (using a number of metaphors) the futile pursuit of certainty. He begins by zooming in on the nature of "true belief" itself, stripping away all the gibberish and codswallop. As he puts it (p. 24):
"(True) Belief is the insistence that truth is what one would wish it to be. The True Believer opens his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. This belief clings to self-deception..
True Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with an ocean wave in a bucket."
As he notes, if you try to capture a wave in a bucket, it's clear you don't understand the nature of the wave and will always be disappointed. Each time you see the wave coming in, and lunge at it with the bucket, all its form escapes and vanishes ....and you're left with dripping water, no wave.
Also, keeping on doing the same thing and getting the same result (while expecting the wave to go into the bucket) is "insanity" as Einstein defined it. So why do so many keep on doing it? Because they fear life, the basic uncertainty inherent in life! They prefer to hide in something that promises them certainty and answers, where actually none exist. It could be a bible, it could be something else - say a saint's statue, or even a rosary. The point is, whatever the idolized object is, the traumatized person believes it's his or her only lifeline.
Rather then take a different route, which necessarily means leaving the idol to wade through the river of uncertainty, they keep on trying to catch that wave in a bucket - the bucket of their belief!
Watts next (p. 25) makes a solid case that the manner in which our brains have evolved (to include the new layer called the neocortex) enables us for once to break free of the unconscious zombies we were hitherto (see Julian Jaynes excellent work on the bicameral mind)
In this way, on account of this new depth of enabled consciousness, "our minds have been prepared by the very collapse of the beliefs in which we had sought security".
Rather than a "curse", as Watts notes, this "letting go" (with the inevitable disappearance of the rocks of the absolute) is no calamity, "but rather a blessing".
So why do so many count it as a curse, say unless they can hide themselves in their little bible beliefs?
Watts' answer is that they hide themselves because they are afraid to open their new minds, and face reality for once. Like a man who's lived in a dark house with no light, but knows where every piece of furniture is - because he's felt out each location - he's more secure remaining in that dark house than going out to greet the full sunlight. Who knows how many thousands more shadows and scenes the full sunlight will disclose? Better to hide in what one already knows, and then call it the truth!
In a way this is similar to Plato's metaphor of the cave dwellers. These cave dwellers never left their caves and only judged the world on the basis of the shadows that were cast from outside, to their cave walls. Because the cave was small and safe, it suited the small and cautious mentalities of the cave dwellers who preferred to remain inside and never leave. As far as they were concerned, they knew the absolute truth and it lay in the secondary shadows cast onto their cave walls. When someone would try to pry the cave dwellers to come outside to see the full world - they rejected them as "false prophets" or vehicles of "evil". Better to stay inside the cave, and study the shadows one knew rather than be greeted by blinding sunlight and millions of actual objects one didn't know and never saw before.
And so also the bible believers - as modern cave dwellers- averse to entering the light and seeing the broader world and universe. They prefer to see instead the miniaturized shadows of that outer world reduced to the antiquated words and phrases adorning the pages of their bibles. And so, like the shadows on the walls of the cave dwellers, the words in their bibles hold all truth for them. They prefer not to venture "outside", not now or ever.
The mistake made by both the cave dwellers and bible dwellers is that they can see full reality - or their God, by restricting their minds and consciousness, to caves or bibles.
But as Watts notes (ibid.):
"You can only know God through an open mind, just as you can only see the sky by going outside"
He goes on to point out:
"A careful study of comparative religion and spiritual philosophy reveals that abandonment of belief, of any future life for one's own...is the first principle of spirtual life"
Where Watts is most dead on, however, is in how the mind that craves security - as opposed to uncertainty- will look for idols wherever its gaze takes it. Oh, it will not call what it embraces "idols", but instead use language that justifies the idolatry to itself - say like "this contains the source of truth".
But Watts is unforgiving in his direct honesty as he cites the basic commandment prohibitive of idolatry:
"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above...thou shalt not bow down to them or worship them."
As he notes, bowing down and worshipping means much more than the literal meaning of actually doing so - as one might visualize a Canaanite bowing and scraping before a stone idol.
No, it can equally apply to ANY object for which one's life and belief becomes obsessive and all encompassing, to the extent that IF one had to do without it (say that all such objects were destroyed) one would be unable to live as an authentic being. Or one would lose his mind.
Obviously, this includes a book like the Bible!
As Watts observes (p. 26):
"To discover the ultimate reality of life, the absolute, the Eternal, you must cease to try to grasp it in the form of idols...these idols are not just crude images but verbal preconceptions of the truth"
And what does one find when one scans the blog, say of a Bible banger? Well, precisely such overt and dogmatic obsessive devotion that all other perspectives are excluded. Thus, the Bible's own passages and its preconceived truths (e.g. for "salvation") become the lifeline to worship it. By worshipping the book and its passages, the true believer believes he has not only solved life's mysteries but secured his own "salvation"
But he's deluded, because one cannot tie one's salvation to an idol: it will drown you.
Is the Bible an idol for these people? That's a question only they can answer, but before they do, they need to answer another one:
How will you get by, live day to day, if tomorrow every last version of every last bible suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth? Don't worry to rationalize it, just explain what you'd do, and how you'd live...especially after five, ten, fifteen years...and you've forgotten every last passage and no else recalls them either!
Be honest, and don't dodge the question! Are you a bible idolater, or not?
The poison dispensed was "true belief" or the delusion of absolute certainty that x, y or z would happen - particularly as regarding the post-death condition. What I saw (and what ultimately led me to depart from these people) was that they were so desperate to escape their own insecurities they had to invent their own kool aid then invest 100% belief in it, merely to get through a day.
In truth, no such certainty exists, no matter how much any of these folks tried to make it so in their mind. The fact is everyone is guessing: there is no passport to absolute knowledge (certainly from some book based on corrupted 12th century manuscripts), nor is there any absolute knowledge of what happens beyond the grave other than 'nothing'. (Though as we know by the Ockham's Razor principle, the simplest hypothesis is the most likely of all competing alternatives, and in the case of human death - nothingness is the simplest conceivable.)
Maybe coincidentally, it was within a year or so of departing the evangelical sect that I encountered the book, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by Alan Watts. Rather than offer up pap for babies, Watts doled out cold hard truths. Most of these centered on human futility in grasping and grabbing at certainty.
In his first chapter, Watts brilliantly takes on (using a number of metaphors) the futile pursuit of certainty. He begins by zooming in on the nature of "true belief" itself, stripping away all the gibberish and codswallop. As he puts it (p. 24):
"(True) Belief is the insistence that truth is what one would wish it to be. The True Believer opens his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. This belief clings to self-deception..
True Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with an ocean wave in a bucket."
As he notes, if you try to capture a wave in a bucket, it's clear you don't understand the nature of the wave and will always be disappointed. Each time you see the wave coming in, and lunge at it with the bucket, all its form escapes and vanishes ....and you're left with dripping water, no wave.
Also, keeping on doing the same thing and getting the same result (while expecting the wave to go into the bucket) is "insanity" as Einstein defined it. So why do so many keep on doing it? Because they fear life, the basic uncertainty inherent in life! They prefer to hide in something that promises them certainty and answers, where actually none exist. It could be a bible, it could be something else - say a saint's statue, or even a rosary. The point is, whatever the idolized object is, the traumatized person believes it's his or her only lifeline.
Rather then take a different route, which necessarily means leaving the idol to wade through the river of uncertainty, they keep on trying to catch that wave in a bucket - the bucket of their belief!
Watts next (p. 25) makes a solid case that the manner in which our brains have evolved (to include the new layer called the neocortex) enables us for once to break free of the unconscious zombies we were hitherto (see Julian Jaynes excellent work on the bicameral mind)
In this way, on account of this new depth of enabled consciousness, "our minds have been prepared by the very collapse of the beliefs in which we had sought security".
Rather than a "curse", as Watts notes, this "letting go" (with the inevitable disappearance of the rocks of the absolute) is no calamity, "but rather a blessing".
So why do so many count it as a curse, say unless they can hide themselves in their little bible beliefs?
Watts' answer is that they hide themselves because they are afraid to open their new minds, and face reality for once. Like a man who's lived in a dark house with no light, but knows where every piece of furniture is - because he's felt out each location - he's more secure remaining in that dark house than going out to greet the full sunlight. Who knows how many thousands more shadows and scenes the full sunlight will disclose? Better to hide in what one already knows, and then call it the truth!
In a way this is similar to Plato's metaphor of the cave dwellers. These cave dwellers never left their caves and only judged the world on the basis of the shadows that were cast from outside, to their cave walls. Because the cave was small and safe, it suited the small and cautious mentalities of the cave dwellers who preferred to remain inside and never leave. As far as they were concerned, they knew the absolute truth and it lay in the secondary shadows cast onto their cave walls. When someone would try to pry the cave dwellers to come outside to see the full world - they rejected them as "false prophets" or vehicles of "evil". Better to stay inside the cave, and study the shadows one knew rather than be greeted by blinding sunlight and millions of actual objects one didn't know and never saw before.
And so also the bible believers - as modern cave dwellers- averse to entering the light and seeing the broader world and universe. They prefer to see instead the miniaturized shadows of that outer world reduced to the antiquated words and phrases adorning the pages of their bibles. And so, like the shadows on the walls of the cave dwellers, the words in their bibles hold all truth for them. They prefer not to venture "outside", not now or ever.
The mistake made by both the cave dwellers and bible dwellers is that they can see full reality - or their God, by restricting their minds and consciousness, to caves or bibles.
But as Watts notes (ibid.):
"You can only know God through an open mind, just as you can only see the sky by going outside"
He goes on to point out:
"A careful study of comparative religion and spiritual philosophy reveals that abandonment of belief, of any future life for one's own...is the first principle of spirtual life"
Where Watts is most dead on, however, is in how the mind that craves security - as opposed to uncertainty- will look for idols wherever its gaze takes it. Oh, it will not call what it embraces "idols", but instead use language that justifies the idolatry to itself - say like "this contains the source of truth".
But Watts is unforgiving in his direct honesty as he cites the basic commandment prohibitive of idolatry:
"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above...thou shalt not bow down to them or worship them."
As he notes, bowing down and worshipping means much more than the literal meaning of actually doing so - as one might visualize a Canaanite bowing and scraping before a stone idol.
No, it can equally apply to ANY object for which one's life and belief becomes obsessive and all encompassing, to the extent that IF one had to do without it (say that all such objects were destroyed) one would be unable to live as an authentic being. Or one would lose his mind.
Obviously, this includes a book like the Bible!
As Watts observes (p. 26):
"To discover the ultimate reality of life, the absolute, the Eternal, you must cease to try to grasp it in the form of idols...these idols are not just crude images but verbal preconceptions of the truth"
And what does one find when one scans the blog, say of a Bible banger? Well, precisely such overt and dogmatic obsessive devotion that all other perspectives are excluded. Thus, the Bible's own passages and its preconceived truths (e.g. for "salvation") become the lifeline to worship it. By worshipping the book and its passages, the true believer believes he has not only solved life's mysteries but secured his own "salvation"
But he's deluded, because one cannot tie one's salvation to an idol: it will drown you.
Is the Bible an idol for these people? That's a question only they can answer, but before they do, they need to answer another one:
How will you get by, live day to day, if tomorrow every last version of every last bible suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth? Don't worry to rationalize it, just explain what you'd do, and how you'd live...especially after five, ten, fifteen years...and you've forgotten every last passage and no else recalls them either!
Be honest, and don't dodge the question! Are you a bible idolater, or not?
"And so also the bible believers - as modern cave dwellers- averse to entering the light and seeing the broader world and universe. They prefer to see instead the miniaturized shadows of that outer world reduced to the antiquated words and phrases adorning the pages of their bibles. And so, like the shadows on the walls of the cave dwellers, the words in their bibles hold all truth for them. They prefer not to venture "outside", not now or ever."
ReplyDeleteWOW! That is such a powerful metaphor! And soooooooo accurate! I never considered it before but it makes sense to think of bible clutchers like cave dwellers.
They think everything they need to know is in their bibles and so the cave dwellers believed everything they needed to know was in the tiny shadows of Plato's cave,
They eschew the outside world, and any other books as having any truth, including science books, and the cave dwellers eschewed any outside reality as containing truth if it also didn't show up in their cave shadows. So, because the green grass outside their cave was too short to cast a shadow they didn't believe it existed!
This really wraps up the biblical literalist brain in a nutshell and shows how pathetic it is. These true believers think they're evoking a virtue but it's a hard vice: idolatry.
Of course, they'll never see it that way, only that WE atheists are the ones with the vice of unbelief. But reading this, I see we are the ones with the virtue of open-mindedness.
Bible worshippers indeed! I bet most would have nervous breakdowns if they had to do without their good books for even a day.