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The "Truth": The What? And Why? Of Beliefs
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Opening words The questions presented by this service are: What do you believe, and how did you come to believe it? Why do you believe it, now? Is it about metaphors representing something else about us or about life? Is it about words and linguistics? Is it about fear of death? Is belief a choice? And if it is a choice, does that imply that we believe what we want to believe? If so, what do these choices have to say about us and about our personal characteristics - our personalities. We had only about 56 replies to the surveys, and about 43 of those replies were from this congregation. If you have not completed the survey, I encourage you to do it today. So far, the 43 surveys completed indicated that people in this congregation identify themselves first as pantheists (about 50%) and secondly as atheists or agnostics (about 35%). About 11% identified as theists and 5 % as deists. The question about how we come to our conclusions about what we believe, drew amazingly varied responses. Comments and questions asked in response to taking the survey were quite varied, even in their perspectives about why it might be important or not and what really should have been asked. But, it was clear to me in reviewing the answers and the comments in the margins, that multiple-choice questions reduce the responses to a false simplicity. There is nothing simplistic about our beliefs or how we come to believe them. Almost 3 months ago, when I started to put this service together, my expectations were that I would reflect back to you my observations about how the process of coming to conclusions about beliefs works, based on your answers to the surveys, as well as responses given by people who are not associated with this congregation. What actually happened was that I discovered I could not come to any general conclusions. For example, you wanted the survey to ask these questions: 1. What do other people seem to think of your beliefs, and is that impression justified? Hopefully, you will not be disappointed that I have returned for this service back to my own spiritual path, and I hope that it in some way inspires you to continue sharing your own, so that we can grow together. When I was a child Our cognitive abilities as human beings enable us to ponder reality in ways that other living creatures do not seem to be able to consider. In considering what is important to say about how we come to believe what we believe, I finally had to settle on what I understand the most, and that is my personal experience. It might resonate with your experience or be completely different. When my brother and I were children, I remember my brother's concern with the question of where might the Universe end…and…what might be on the other side…and…IS there an end? My mother found this question to be mind boggling, to the point that she was actually afraid for my brother's sanity if he were to dwell on the question. As for me…although it was somewhat interesting to think about, I simply accepted that it was not something I could know and that the Universe might end, depending on how the word "universe" is defined, but that space, or emptiness goes on for infinity. I realize now that this may or may not be true, given all of the curved-space theories and other discoveries within quantum physics, but it does not worry me as it seemed to worry my mother or interest me as much as it seems to continue to interest my brother. Whatever are the laws of the universe, they are going to be there whether or not I believe in them or understand them. I did, however, grapple with the God question as a child being raised in a fundamentalist Christian church and attending services 3 times a week, from my birth until I left for college. Is there really a god, with or without the capital "G"? Even at that time, however, I realized the question was somewhat one of definitions. I noticed, even among fundamentalist Christians, some variations and disagreements about the realities of God and the question of metaphor and symbol vs. literal truth and physical reality. After my father died when I was 11, I contemplated these things so much and so often that I basically went through at least 5 of the 6 stages of religious belief (as described by James Fowler) by the time I was 13 years old. Since I was a quiet child and spent much time thinking, two years was a very long time. I questioned not only the reality of God, but the usefulness of the teachings that seemed to go along with my religious education at that time. The response I received from others as I verbalized my doubts about God was that the main "evidence" they usually cited for a belief in God was the Bible, which was the Truth, and this was based on the circular reasoning that it was the inspired Word of God. There were also the many statements of the awe of God's creation (nature) and the question back to me about where could it all have come from? It was the circular reasoning in almost all of the arguments about the existence of God that convinced me that there was actually no evidence at all. There would still be the power of the "deep conviction within my soul" answer, but I did not have that conviction. A large part of my doubt concerned the state of the world, the pain and suffering, the judgments and black and white thinking in a multicolored world, and the lack of any evidence of significant divine intervention that would be consistent with the prescribed values of the Christian religion or any religion at all. Value contradictions were all too evident. I did not frame these contradictions as hypocrisies, as some rebels call them, but I saw them as impossibilities. The god I was being taught about was asking the impossible, not only for me, but for the rest of the world as well. You may have had a similar experience of questioning, and you might have come to similar conclusions or very different conclusions, but I eventually made peace with my conclusions, one of which was that I could not be condemned for honesty, or if I were condemned for honesty, that would be one of those impossible contradictions that perhaps I am simply incapable of understanding. This realization brought some peace and acceptance to my search for truth. During this period, there was an imaginary trip that I took with myself above the Earth and clouds and back again that felt particularly enlightening. And my life became transformed. After eventually coming to my agnostic conclusion, I felt almost immediately reborn (Yes! Reborn!) and energized by the feeling of oneness with the universe (without a capital "U") and a brotherhood, sisterhood, parenthood with all creatures of the Earth, including plants and trees. I hugged trees and rocks and kissed the earth. No, you're wrong if you're thinking that I had discovered LSD or smoked a little weed. I never experimented with drugs. I was totally grounded, centered, and sober. And I was not deceiving myself. I knew that my work of understanding the world was just beginning, but that it also could be a beautiful journey, depending on my own choice of perspectives. Perspectives became a grand theme in my life. And I wished that there was some way of sharing my joy with others in a way that everyone could understand. Choice in Beliefs Are our beliefs a choice? If they are a choice, does that mean that we believe what we want to believe? In the survey, question number 5 asks how you came to believe what you believe. I was most interested in this question. When I was 11, 12, and 13 years old, I did not think of the process I was going through as choosing what I wanted to believe. I thought of it as a search for truth…a search for reality. In the fundamentalist Christian church that I continued to attend until I was 17 years old, I expressed my doubts and my new beliefs about what is real. Naturally, discussions and debates (which were not heated debates, by the way) arose out of my simple declarations. I particularly remember being struck by a question an adult asked me: "Don't you want to believe you will go to Heaven when you die?" I remember being rather surprised that he would ask that question, and I answered him, "What does it matter what I want? If I could choose what I believe according to what I would like to be true, then I certainly might have some very different beliefs." And, back then, I had tried to force myself to believe what I was taught to believe. A part of the dynamics of thinking I needed to force myself into believing it, was that I was being told that it was very wrong not to believe. As a result, I started to wonder if it was quite right to pretend to believe something. That seemed a bit like lying. It certainly did not feel like being honest to myself or to anyone else. I chose honesty. But I did not choose what I came to believe, which was that it appeared to be evident to me that there is no supreme being. That belief continues not to be a choice to me. But that's me. I have noticed that some people do seem to choose to believe what they want to believe. I am working on this, and I have to wonder if I am not understanding something. Since some UU's chose that answer as one of their 3 choices in answer to question number 5, perhaps we can have that discussion. I do think that perhaps we choose our perspectives and the details about what we think is ethical or unethical, and those things are beliefs, in a sense. Certainly, as a therapist who uses cognitive therapy, I think we can reframe some of our beliefs, which is basically changing our perspectives of how we look at life or at parts of our lives. Being able to see things from varying perspectives is a tremendously effective tool for maintaining or improving your mental health, and it can be a choice. Now here is where we get to the more complicated part of beliefs, in my opinion. Back to question number one on the survey. "Humanist" was not one of the choices, mainly because that word does not necessarily say what a person believes about the "God" question. On the other hand, as an atheist, I really could have marked "pantheist" or "agnostic" and felt that I was being totally honest. So maybe it is not fair to include "pantheist" since I did not include "humanist". Both of those answers could be seen as different perspectives of my belief that there is no "god" in a dualistic-"us and God" or "us vs. God"- way. In other words, the definition of "God" used in Western religious thought, usually is one that sees God as a separate entity. God created us, but we are not God. There is sometimes a sort of understand that God can be "in" a person or is always there, but not that the person or thing "is" a part of God. That dualism is one of the crucial differences between a Western, Judeo-Christian belief system and a Pantheistic (the universe as God) belief system, which is more prevalent in Eastern religions. This pantheistic recognition of our interconnectedness is a part of the tenets of our Unitarian-Universalist tradition. That is the way I see it, but I welcome a discussion at some time about this. In the book, Infinity In Your Hand, A Guide for the Spiritually Curious, William Houff calls this pantheistic belief "the Perennial Philosophy" which is that the objective world of separate objects is an illusion. Houff says, "Although the evidence for this view is both ancient and modern, it is not easily talked about because of its paradox. In the Mundaka Upanishad, a Hindu scripture, this paradox is expressed clearly:
This is a mystic expression of a perspective that is to me, compatible with atheism and with pantheism. I believe I agree with William Houff as he seems to consider it also compatible with a kind of theism. So, what I am concluding is that pantheism is compatible with both atheism and with theism, and of course with humanism. Hold Beliefs Lightly By the nature of our Unitarian Universalist principles, we are among the most open-minded people around. So, what I have to say next is not new. But even a liberal religion does not completely save us from a human tendency to over-doing our zealousness at times. We must take care not to feel that we have the right answers. Skepticism and open-mindedness are related, especially when we allow ourselves to be skeptical of our own motives within our belief system. As an example, we often believe in our intuitive ability to know the truth about people or about other truths. Our skepticism about ourselves can allow us to examine our own intuition and dissect it. It is not as good a feeling as "going with it", but it is wise to examine our own hidden agendas and prejudices. There is a big difference between saying "follow your gut feeling" and "pay attention to your gut feeling." Paying attention to your intuitive or "gut" feeling might be important and reveal something about you. But if you honestly examine it, you might not want to "go with it." Your gut feeling might be related to a prejudice that comes from an unconscious memory. Perhaps you once had a nasty, mean-spirited second-cousin who now resembles your daughter's new boyfriend. Before you reject him, you might want to be aware of where that icky gut feeling is coming from. Hold beliefs lightly. I have a friend on the Internet who lives in London with her husband and their 13 year old daughter. We have belonged to the same email group of mental health professionals for about 9 years. The rest of us asked Philippa how her family was doing after the London subway attacks, and she responded that she and her husband had been theorizing on the causes of terrorism and violence. Her husband noted that it was curious that most of the actual terrorists were young men in their 20's, and that perhaps he might have been vulnerable to being almost that violent at times in his young life. Philippa, however, stated that she really thinks that it has more to do with radical beliefs. There seem to be many people in the world who are too willing to hold their beliefs strongly and take them to the extreme. She sent us this quote by Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian novelist, political activist, and social philosopher: "The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion." A quote by Friedrich Nietzsche "Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." And another simple quote that I love by Peter Lomas, a British psychiatrist, who says simply (when he is writing about theories used in psychotherapy), "Hold beliefs lightly." It is important to always keep an open mind, even though we will, of course, have our beliefs and convictions. The more open we are to other possibilities, the more we will truly understand others, even when we do not hold the same beliefs or perspectives, and the more we will truly understand ourselves. Closing Words Questions abound, when it comes to beliefs. Other questions may be more important than the question of the existence of a supreme being. Infinite other questions that are important to each of us, and examining them can help guide us through our spiritual lives. Today, we narrowed our focus to basic questions that seem to be asked over and over and will be asked again, because even within that limited focus there is so much more to say. Continue thinking, discussing, examining, and questioning. Go in peace and grow in love.
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