<\/p>\n
On my more snarky days, I’m prone to saying that God does not wear his knickers outside his tights, by which I mean that any concept of God which I can come up with which is vaguely realistic (i.e. does not conflict with my experience and knowledge of the experience of others) is not a kind of Superman, a god-like person with abilities beyond the normal ones who rushes in to save people. But I don’t think God is a superhero, nor anything like a superhero.<\/p>\n
This is a pity, because I’m a sucker for fantasy literature. I particularly like tales of superheroes, people with paranormal powers, but I’m also into morality fantasy where somehow or other, through some magical power or godly intervention, the seeming underdog comes out on top over the forces of evil and oppression. I also like fantasy which develops some kind of system of magic which, in the fantasy world portrayed, actually works. I would very much like to think that we live in a world where the underdog will always triumph, and where in the darkest hour the hero (or deity) intervenes to save me.<\/p>\n
The trouble is, nothing I have ever experienced inclines me to believe that that is the way the world actually works. Granted, I have seen some strange things and heard some stranger tales from people who I would very much like to think were not the subjects of wishful thinking and some of the common cognitive biases, but frankly the naturalistic explanation always seems to be the most probable.<\/p>\n
At least, it does when talking about any physical effects. When talking about events within the consciousness of individuals, things are rather different. There, I have huge personal reason to believe that some power, presence, entity or – well – something exists which is benevolent towards everyone and everything, extremely powerful (at least in transforming individual consciousness), omnipresent in the radical sense that everything which is, is within this something, not subject to time in the normal way and is capable of delivering to me more information than my mind is capable of absorbing. It seems to me that this something does intervene in the lives of some people (at a minimum, me, as that’s all I have personal experience of, but looking at the testimony of others, not by any means just<\/strong><\/em> me), and that it intervenes on occasion (but fairly rarely) without their willing it or wanting it. Mostly, people who describe experiences like some of those I have had call this something “God”, so unless talking with major league sceptics (in which case I tend to use the figure [\u00a0\u00a0 ], for a box which can contain a three letter label, which label might be “GOD”, but doesn’t have to be) I go with the flow.<\/p>\n The last paragraph contains most of the elements of what it is that is [\u00a0\u00a0 ] of which I am reasonably confident. You can add to that, however, the observation that transforming contact with [\u00a0\u00a0 ] does not seem to me something which can be reliably worked towards, let alone obtained via some formula along the lines of “do these things, and then this happens”. In addition, it is necessary to surrender to the experience in order for it to “get off the ground”, to stop analysing it as it happens, to lay aside all preconceptions and formulae. While I did for a significant time arrive at the position where that contact was pretty much “available on demand”, what was actually available on demand was the stilling of the conscious mind and the surrender of the will in radical acceptance. This gave conditions in which it seemed to me that it was highly probable (at least) that contact would be felt. I’m working on getting back to that at the moment.<\/p>\n Now, this may be a “supernatural” aspect. I don’t think of it that way, but it’s a possibility. Other than that, however, I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to trust that anything supernatural will ever occur (which doesn’t stop me hoping from time to time). This has sometimes proved to be a difficulty with people with whom I’ve been in dialogue about scripture, who often can’t initially see that it can mean anything to me. However, where I can continue beyond this point (setting it on one side “for the moment”) I’ve usually found that it isn’t actually the supernatural occurrence in a bible story which those I’m talking to find important; what they find important is the spiritual subtext, the nonliteral meaning (or meanings) which can be extracted – and we can then talk about those sensibly, and not uncommonly agree. This has in the past enabled me to conduct productive bible study sessions in which I have agreed interpretations with complete Biblical literalist inerrantists, to their considerable surprise.<\/p>\n And yet, we still end up coming back to the sticking point that they think something supernatural actually happened, and I don’t, and they don’t want to let go of insisting that something supernatural happened and that I really need to believe that it did. On occasion, a particularly well-natured dialogue partner of this stance has allowed me to conduct an extremely respectful cross-examination of them, ending up with a motive. That motive, it turns out, is always that if nothing supernatural happened then, then nothing supernatural is going to happen now either – and they want to be able to continue to believe in that.<\/p>\n They want to believe that superman may come and save them, in other words. Words far too snarky for me to ever use to their faces, but that’s the crux of it. Not only that, but they commonly see me not being able to believe it as somehow diminishing the possibility that it might. This is even more of a pity than it is that I actually can’t bring myself to believe it, as I am comfortable with the situation and they aren’t.<\/p>\n You may realise that what I have been doing here is to propose something akin to an “operational definition”<\/a> of the belief in Biblical miracles, i.e. how does the occurrence or non-occurence of a single supernatural event 2000 years ago affect what we do (and what can therefore be observed and quantified) today, proposing that in fact it doesn’t – and indeed, within that framework, it is difficult to see how it would. However, unless you are a cessationist <\/a>(and I have no idea how a cessationist would react here), the occurrence of a supernatural event then makes it more possible to think that there might be a supernatural event now.<\/p>\n This is even more pronounced when it comes to the resurrection. Now, I also can’t bring myself to believe in a physical resurrection of the “reanimation” kind (which is what my more conservative brethren want me to believe in). Granted, they will concede that there was not a straightforward reanimation (which, of course, is slightly indicated by an empty tomb) but insist that the actual physical remains were transformed into something different, something which actually could enter closed rooms other than through the door, appear and disappear at will and be in widely separated places at virtually the same time, all of which I see as pointing at apparition rather than anything they would admit as being resurrection. Of all possible explanations of the gospel accounts, treating them for a moment as absolutely accurate, written immediately after the event eyewitness testimony (which they aren’t, of course), I consider apparition to be the most likely, granted that there then has to be some undocumented reason why the tomb was empty, again taking that as accurate eyewitness testimony.<\/p>\n Again, taken as a single historical miracle, I suggest that it is not possible to see any difference in what we actually do based on belief in on the one hand a reanimation-style resurrection and on the other an apparition-style resurrection. However, in practice I get even more pushback on this point than I do on the issue of miracles generally. The following gentle process of cross-examination reveals that to accept that it is viable for me that the accounts were as apparitions reduces people’s confidence that they will themselves eventually be resurrected in a body. Or, indeed, survive death at all.<\/p>\n It seems that personal survival, to some of them, equates to inhabiting a physical body. This is a very old concept, as much of first century Judaism lacked the concept of soul separable from the body, and it also has a strong resonance with modern concepts in biology in which the self, the consciousness is an epiphenomenon<\/a> or emergent property<\/a> of the body (or, more specifically, the central nervous system, in particular the brain). That said, there is current talk about the possibility of mapping and storing the personality and memories and “downloading” them into another form, which smacks more of the concept of a soul.<\/p>\n What body, though? I’m currently 60, and due to normal wear and tear plus some rather bad treatment I’ve given my body over the years, I am not in the best possible health. If I had to be resurrected in a body, frankly I’d prefer the one I had at (say) 25 to the one I’m likely to have when I die. However, I’d settle for my brain being pretty much as it is now – I wouldn’t want to ditch the last 35 years worth of memories, for instance, even though 15 years or more of them were ones I wouldn’t have wished on myself had I foreseen them. But what if the brain has deteriorated by the time I die?<\/p>\n Conservative friends would say that this would be a perfected body. Would it then be a perfected mind as well? (If the epiphenomenon or emergent property concepts are correct, it would have to be). If it were a “perfected” mind, would it then genuinely be “my” mind? I have memories of my Twelve Step sponsor scoffing when I worried that when at Steps 4 to 7 I took inventory of my defects of character and asked God to remove these, if that indeed happened there would be no character left. “What’s to lose?” he asked, grinning.<\/p>\n To me, these are really idle musings. An element of certain of my mystical experiences leaves me with a degree of confidence that the brief flashes of consciousness of union with God are a pale shadow of what is likely to happen at my death, and thoughts of a physical body or the continuation of a truly individual consciousness after that point are irrelevant. I find it difficult to see how an individual consciousness could actually survive full union, to be honest. If it did, anything thereafter would be a disappointment. On this point, however, my trust in a benevolent God is absolute – whatever happens will be right and good – and beyond my capacity at the moment to do anything more than muse idly about. There are more important things by far, such as discerning God’s will for me in the here and now and carrying that out.<\/p>\n Whatever it is that God, or [ \u00a0 ] actually is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On my more snarky days, I’m prone to saying that God does not wear his knickers outside his tights, by which I mean that any concept of God which I can come up with which is vaguely realistic (i.e. does not conflict with my experience and knowledge of the experience of others) is not a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,3,12,6,4,5],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-autobiography","tag-christianity","tag-philosophy","tag-spirituality","tag-theology","tag-twelve-step"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}