The first of a series of essays on my conversion, starting with the biggest scalp there is: why the God of classical theism is unavoidable and inevitable and modern secular atheism logically fails
I don't think you need to condemn your younger self for his skepticism. Whether he was aware of it or not he held a valid intellectual position when confronted with something he couldn't see, hear, taste or touch, etc., but could only either accept as true from what others told him (like a child) or through ponderous mental exercise years later. Some of your readers might object to being labeled “childish” by implication because they haven't taken the leap of faith you have, however much they've considered the likelihood or however often they've encountered similar philosophical arguments in favor of a higher power’s existence. People who aspire toward “the Good” can disbelieve in God(s) or the notion that goodness stems from an innate godliness, and if “the Good” is what Christians mean by “God,” many of them might require a reminder. But that's true of so many religious people, no matter the dogma. Still, congratulations on reaching a point in your search for meaning worthy of embrace, from one stranger to another.
Thanks for this Erik! I agree was somewhat cultural in my case but the main thrust of the argument is that God is the assumption underlying reason and rationality so when you follow the argument no leap of faith is necessary! the God of classical theism is logically necessary to truth and knowledge. Atheism is childish in the sense that it ignores the impossibility of grounding reason and rationality without an assumed rational order and rational capacity of our minds, which you can't prove from materialism. It's counter intuitive this strange moment in time but for thousands of years was taken for granted as the basis of the search for truth and knowledge and inspired the scientific revolution. Most early scientists like galleo and isaac Newton were theists.
I am somehow failing to understand how this is about God. To me it sounds like you are saying that since there is any order at all that we can perceive, there must be The Good, God. Why can't I simply call it physical laws of the universe?
That's a really interesting point but what physical laws render things intelligible to us? Surely do we not know about the physical laws because they are intelligible to us in the first place and therefore we require a further source of intelligibility to explain intelligibility as such?
To just add additional context, I am pretty much a Buddhist and I am not that much into metaphysical questions, because I don't find them important somehow. I mean, I do find them important, I just find them unanswerable 😅 So I feel like stressing that I am not discussing this to look at you "from above" or to try to dismantle your faith, it's just a fun thing to do 🙂
Anyway, my mental model of the whole thing is basically based on the notion of predictive brain, we could say. And evolution, perhaps. I hate saying that this and than exists because of it was a handy thing to evolve that way, because it's really boring, but here we are. So I mean, if I try to put my model in words, I would say that we just evolved to detect and match patterns that are handy for us. It's like, watching the ocean, you see waves, you don't see the molecules hitting each other, you don't see the laws of thermodynamics, because it's just a wrong level of detail for organisms as us. So my notion would be more like, there certainly are some rules and patterns, but where it is put together are our brains. And to some extent it creates a specific world and order for us. Because you can say, we see Newtonian patterns, but not let's say quantum patterns. So that's the world we inhabit and create.
This can potentially lead to the whole discussion whether anything really exists at all and whether it's all created by our brains, but I simply find that not useful and also boring. What I found to be a huge source of meaning for me is really understanding what kind of creatures we are. By studying psychology, ecology, economics... Just understanding the patterns that govern us. This really lead to a lived experience of being embedded in the world. And so I find this rather fascinating and beautiful and that's it.
But really, Buddhism is bit of a different beast from Christianity or theism in general. It's not really about what the reality is, it's about how you show up in it. What perspective to take and manifest. It's a terribly intense path of acceptance and letting go. And it works, for me at least. When you enter the path by taking refuge, you fully recognize that taking refuge in external things does not work completely. So you take refuge mostly in your own basic goodness, which is called your Buddha nature. You just vow to keep coming back to that resource instead of mindlessly seeking elsewhere. This works for me.
And following that is the bodhisattva vow, which just makes you realize that your life is not really that much about you and that you are not going to find meaning in just handling yourself. It's an extremely deep and powerful recognition.
But anyway, this cannot be put into words easily. I am just wondering how much we are into seeking this basic goodness. Christians then perhaps say, there is certain order here, there are things that are good, and we were saved from our original sin by Christ, so we are good, we are cool. Perhaps you introject this order and goodness a bit. Buddhists then, perhaps, start with their own basic goodness, then projecting it into the world.
I do believe this all mostly just employs our mental resources. When you watch carefully, the patterns and psychological principles are very similar. And so in a way, I can understand a Christian better than a complete atheist. Why? Because atheists never really take deep refuge in anything, they don't know what that is. Or you could say faith.
It's perhaps a misconception here in the West what faith is or must be. It seems like you have to believe something. But for me, faith is just a very specific attitude or moment. It's this yielding that happens when you are perhaps lost, weak, confused. And instead of grasping onto things, you just give up. You go to the edge of the world that is known to you, metaphorically, you fall to you knees or you sit, put your hands together, quiet yourself completely. You stare into the unknown and just let yourself be filled with the words of your selection, for me it would be something like:
Buddhas and bodhisattvas,
wherever you may be,
help me to find the way.
And you just stay with it. You keep repeating this. And you let it affect you. In the most deep openness you employ, it touches you, perhaps it even changes you.
This may seem external, but everything in Buddhism is just a mirror of your own nature. And so what this does is that it gives you immense power. The more you yield, let go, sacrifice. The more you don't just follow a myth, but you actually vow to become a myth for others and the world, the more power awakens in you to be there in the world and for the world. And that's in the end why Tantric Buddhism is called Vajrayana, the indestructible path. Because really, what you find in yourself is a source of immense power for the world that you perceive as absolutely indestructible. And as you find it, the whole world is set on fire, it's lit. It's lit with meaning. And you just stand up and go enter the world, because you cannot do otherwise. The question of meaning is solved.
Sorry for being a bit excited, I don't want to impose my approach or anything. It's just too fascinating and exciting. When you understand this all psychologically, you understand ritual, but in the end you find out that it actually does not matter at all. The only anwer for me has been to put myself in a place where everything fits together. You enter the world, you accept the world. And for that you must keep dying on a very deep level, because we have psychological obscurations that usually prevent us. And that's why there are practices to put us to the place from which you look and see everything in a certain perspective so that no other answers are needed.
And so ontological questions become a fun activity. It's just a part of the adventure. But the nuclear reactor inside your heart is there and you are just burning with passion and fascination for the world. The embodiment is immense. And that is perhaps the answer I am willing to stick to. In the end it all just fits. The world is just as it is, and that's ok.
And so regarding the question of The Good or God... I sit in silence, I give up, I offer myself immediately.
Cheers for the detailed reply! What plato would say I think is that the patterns you talk about the mind percieving aren't purely physical - it's the real non-physical patterns that help us identify what objects are, like the pattern of chair, which provides the form for physical objects, or a wave as in your example. I think this lines up well with the predictive mind because perception in predictive processing comes from top-down predictions, anticipated patterns, and then bottom up sensory information, but without the predictive model vision would not be possible, we simply wouldn't recognise anything. I'm with Donald Hoffman in his argument that our sense perception evolved for survival and reproduction not objective reality but I don't think this means we are cut off from reality forever. Rather like Plato recommends through self-transformation, like in Buddhism, we can overcome our self-deceptive tendencies to connect to real patterns and hence grow in self-knowledge to connect with more real patterns and open up into what Verveake calls "reciprocal opening". But again for Plato physical objects aren't just matter, they are also more fundamentally (in terms of our understanding what the object is!) forms, and the source of these forms is the Good beyond Being.
I think that it all lines up, but I don't have much of a clue what Plato is talking about, so it feels a bit too definitive to me. As the title of this article 😁 I tend to think that we all in the end find the form that matches our nature and cognition, and that's ok. I can relate to Christian sentiment, to some of it at least, but God does not appeal to me that much. So while you perhaps see these principles as governing reality, I see it as mind stuff. Which does not mean it's not important. And that there is no rational way to do things. But I just take it as the predicament to work with. Which is also very Buddhist and Tantric 😁 I would like to point out, though, that Buddhism is not relativistic. The approach is more like, clean up your inner shit, then you inevitably arrive to one particular conclusion since we all have the same cognition, the same mechanics. So that would be the foundational principle for Buddhists. The clear, spacious and spontaneous nature of the mind, which leads to the good. Anyway, for me this not really about finding the Truth, it's more like sharing stories. What is life like for you, you know. Ah, like this. Fascinating. I can relate to that, or perhaps I can't. Anyway, would you like another sausage? 🙂
I am wondering now what the difference is between the pure nature of the mind and God. Perhaps on the experiential level, there is none. But I cannot really say.
I don't think you need to condemn your younger self for his skepticism. Whether he was aware of it or not he held a valid intellectual position when confronted with something he couldn't see, hear, taste or touch, etc., but could only either accept as true from what others told him (like a child) or through ponderous mental exercise years later. Some of your readers might object to being labeled “childish” by implication because they haven't taken the leap of faith you have, however much they've considered the likelihood or however often they've encountered similar philosophical arguments in favor of a higher power’s existence. People who aspire toward “the Good” can disbelieve in God(s) or the notion that goodness stems from an innate godliness, and if “the Good” is what Christians mean by “God,” many of them might require a reminder. But that's true of so many religious people, no matter the dogma. Still, congratulations on reaching a point in your search for meaning worthy of embrace, from one stranger to another.
Thanks for this Erik! I agree was somewhat cultural in my case but the main thrust of the argument is that God is the assumption underlying reason and rationality so when you follow the argument no leap of faith is necessary! the God of classical theism is logically necessary to truth and knowledge. Atheism is childish in the sense that it ignores the impossibility of grounding reason and rationality without an assumed rational order and rational capacity of our minds, which you can't prove from materialism. It's counter intuitive this strange moment in time but for thousands of years was taken for granted as the basis of the search for truth and knowledge and inspired the scientific revolution. Most early scientists like galleo and isaac Newton were theists.
I am somehow failing to understand how this is about God. To me it sounds like you are saying that since there is any order at all that we can perceive, there must be The Good, God. Why can't I simply call it physical laws of the universe?
That's a really interesting point but what physical laws render things intelligible to us? Surely do we not know about the physical laws because they are intelligible to us in the first place and therefore we require a further source of intelligibility to explain intelligibility as such?
To just add additional context, I am pretty much a Buddhist and I am not that much into metaphysical questions, because I don't find them important somehow. I mean, I do find them important, I just find them unanswerable 😅 So I feel like stressing that I am not discussing this to look at you "from above" or to try to dismantle your faith, it's just a fun thing to do 🙂
Anyway, my mental model of the whole thing is basically based on the notion of predictive brain, we could say. And evolution, perhaps. I hate saying that this and than exists because of it was a handy thing to evolve that way, because it's really boring, but here we are. So I mean, if I try to put my model in words, I would say that we just evolved to detect and match patterns that are handy for us. It's like, watching the ocean, you see waves, you don't see the molecules hitting each other, you don't see the laws of thermodynamics, because it's just a wrong level of detail for organisms as us. So my notion would be more like, there certainly are some rules and patterns, but where it is put together are our brains. And to some extent it creates a specific world and order for us. Because you can say, we see Newtonian patterns, but not let's say quantum patterns. So that's the world we inhabit and create.
This can potentially lead to the whole discussion whether anything really exists at all and whether it's all created by our brains, but I simply find that not useful and also boring. What I found to be a huge source of meaning for me is really understanding what kind of creatures we are. By studying psychology, ecology, economics... Just understanding the patterns that govern us. This really lead to a lived experience of being embedded in the world. And so I find this rather fascinating and beautiful and that's it.
But really, Buddhism is bit of a different beast from Christianity or theism in general. It's not really about what the reality is, it's about how you show up in it. What perspective to take and manifest. It's a terribly intense path of acceptance and letting go. And it works, for me at least. When you enter the path by taking refuge, you fully recognize that taking refuge in external things does not work completely. So you take refuge mostly in your own basic goodness, which is called your Buddha nature. You just vow to keep coming back to that resource instead of mindlessly seeking elsewhere. This works for me.
And following that is the bodhisattva vow, which just makes you realize that your life is not really that much about you and that you are not going to find meaning in just handling yourself. It's an extremely deep and powerful recognition.
But anyway, this cannot be put into words easily. I am just wondering how much we are into seeking this basic goodness. Christians then perhaps say, there is certain order here, there are things that are good, and we were saved from our original sin by Christ, so we are good, we are cool. Perhaps you introject this order and goodness a bit. Buddhists then, perhaps, start with their own basic goodness, then projecting it into the world.
I do believe this all mostly just employs our mental resources. When you watch carefully, the patterns and psychological principles are very similar. And so in a way, I can understand a Christian better than a complete atheist. Why? Because atheists never really take deep refuge in anything, they don't know what that is. Or you could say faith.
It's perhaps a misconception here in the West what faith is or must be. It seems like you have to believe something. But for me, faith is just a very specific attitude or moment. It's this yielding that happens when you are perhaps lost, weak, confused. And instead of grasping onto things, you just give up. You go to the edge of the world that is known to you, metaphorically, you fall to you knees or you sit, put your hands together, quiet yourself completely. You stare into the unknown and just let yourself be filled with the words of your selection, for me it would be something like:
Buddhas and bodhisattvas,
wherever you may be,
help me to find the way.
And you just stay with it. You keep repeating this. And you let it affect you. In the most deep openness you employ, it touches you, perhaps it even changes you.
This may seem external, but everything in Buddhism is just a mirror of your own nature. And so what this does is that it gives you immense power. The more you yield, let go, sacrifice. The more you don't just follow a myth, but you actually vow to become a myth for others and the world, the more power awakens in you to be there in the world and for the world. And that's in the end why Tantric Buddhism is called Vajrayana, the indestructible path. Because really, what you find in yourself is a source of immense power for the world that you perceive as absolutely indestructible. And as you find it, the whole world is set on fire, it's lit. It's lit with meaning. And you just stand up and go enter the world, because you cannot do otherwise. The question of meaning is solved.
Sorry for being a bit excited, I don't want to impose my approach or anything. It's just too fascinating and exciting. When you understand this all psychologically, you understand ritual, but in the end you find out that it actually does not matter at all. The only anwer for me has been to put myself in a place where everything fits together. You enter the world, you accept the world. And for that you must keep dying on a very deep level, because we have psychological obscurations that usually prevent us. And that's why there are practices to put us to the place from which you look and see everything in a certain perspective so that no other answers are needed.
And so ontological questions become a fun activity. It's just a part of the adventure. But the nuclear reactor inside your heart is there and you are just burning with passion and fascination for the world. The embodiment is immense. And that is perhaps the answer I am willing to stick to. In the end it all just fits. The world is just as it is, and that's ok.
And so regarding the question of The Good or God... I sit in silence, I give up, I offer myself immediately.
What a serious comment. I am kind laughing at myself right now. But I did enjoy putting it together 😁✌️
Cheers for the detailed reply! What plato would say I think is that the patterns you talk about the mind percieving aren't purely physical - it's the real non-physical patterns that help us identify what objects are, like the pattern of chair, which provides the form for physical objects, or a wave as in your example. I think this lines up well with the predictive mind because perception in predictive processing comes from top-down predictions, anticipated patterns, and then bottom up sensory information, but without the predictive model vision would not be possible, we simply wouldn't recognise anything. I'm with Donald Hoffman in his argument that our sense perception evolved for survival and reproduction not objective reality but I don't think this means we are cut off from reality forever. Rather like Plato recommends through self-transformation, like in Buddhism, we can overcome our self-deceptive tendencies to connect to real patterns and hence grow in self-knowledge to connect with more real patterns and open up into what Verveake calls "reciprocal opening". But again for Plato physical objects aren't just matter, they are also more fundamentally (in terms of our understanding what the object is!) forms, and the source of these forms is the Good beyond Being.
I think that it all lines up, but I don't have much of a clue what Plato is talking about, so it feels a bit too definitive to me. As the title of this article 😁 I tend to think that we all in the end find the form that matches our nature and cognition, and that's ok. I can relate to Christian sentiment, to some of it at least, but God does not appeal to me that much. So while you perhaps see these principles as governing reality, I see it as mind stuff. Which does not mean it's not important. And that there is no rational way to do things. But I just take it as the predicament to work with. Which is also very Buddhist and Tantric 😁 I would like to point out, though, that Buddhism is not relativistic. The approach is more like, clean up your inner shit, then you inevitably arrive to one particular conclusion since we all have the same cognition, the same mechanics. So that would be the foundational principle for Buddhists. The clear, spacious and spontaneous nature of the mind, which leads to the good. Anyway, for me this not really about finding the Truth, it's more like sharing stories. What is life like for you, you know. Ah, like this. Fascinating. I can relate to that, or perhaps I can't. Anyway, would you like another sausage? 🙂
I am wondering now what the difference is between the pure nature of the mind and God. Perhaps on the experiential level, there is none. But I cannot really say.
Be sure to read the large comment online and not from email, I edited it quite a bit 😅