Why Organized Religion Needs to Stand Aside Sometimes

Why Organized Religion needs to stand aside sometimes to make spiritual room for personal experiences to shape the existential perception of God through his/her personal journey called life.

The question of God is an eternal mystery for mankind — with inquires that begun since men’s humble days in the cave. Many theologians will describe God as beyond words and concepts that must be directly experienced through intuition, mysticism, and revelation. Thich Nhat Hanh once said that a good theologian will say almost nothing about God, because the ‘notion of God might be an obstacle for us to touch God as love, wisdom, [nature] and mindfulness… [Buddha] was against notions of God that are mere mental constructions that do not correspond to reality, notions that prevent us from developing ourselves and touching the ultimate reality.’

This dynamic and personal description of God models Him as the “Force” beyond knowing that spans from the Alpha to the Omega, from each of us personally to the intricate workings of the entire universe. To “know” God then is to “kill” the universal notion of god (“kill” the buddha so that we can experience the real Buddha directly and existentially). From this point-of-view, God can be compared to as a “galactica lover” who desires personally-unique romance and intimacy with each of us.

This divine relationship require our intuitive and mystical capacity to enter into a larger reality, based on personal experiences (Bonheffner) like how a husband “knows” his wife (not based on biometics), how parents feel on the first sight of their newly born child (not based on biometics), and how a lifetime of shared memories merges 2 souls into 1 (not based on biometics), I think…

With this concept of God, where all of creation and its relations with the divine can be seen as an inseparable web of interconnections that are dynamic, personal, and infinite, theology is then neither static nor quantifiable in any way. This type of religion leaves little room for reasoning. But the Universalists, who want a more concrete and categorical definition of what is divine, armed themselves with tools of governing dynamics and economic distribution. They described God’s governing relationship with man with 4 categories: Atheism, Deism, Pantheism, and Theism.

Atheism means that God doesn’t exist (or unnecessary) and thus comparable to an anarchy government. Deism believes in a distant God in a way that “has no more effect on [an average individual’s] life than being a Republican or a Democrat might” — since God is merely a matter of intellectual and mechanical assent. Pantheism means “all God”, where god plays both sides of a chess game; this translates into a totalitarian relationship between man and god — “Whatever is, is in God.”

Finally Theism refers to a mixed government of theological monarchy and a free-willed democracy where God plays one side of the chess game and man plays the other side — both arbitrating between the proposition that “God exists” and “the world exists” in this reality as we know it. In my personal opinion, I assert that this is the healthiest view of God. This notion of Man and God was articulated by Machievellie as the beginning of modern Political Philosophy: luck determines 50% of man’s fate, and man can control the other 50% of his luck. (I will use and further develop this concept of God and Man in my assertions later over the most optimized way of race relations and international relations.)

Now if “God exists” and “the world exists”, they must then both exist harmoniously. Therefore emperical reasoning should serve as inductive support for the transcendental. This is exactly what David Hume did in his three-part Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume’s treaties (aside from his famous induction of Universal Morality) argues that “because of the universe is so skillfully wrought… we can see the hand of the designer in its perfection. Even something so basic as the cycle by which water is purified through evaporation and returns to Earth as life-giving rain illustrates the forethought of an efficient planner.”

Counter arguments against the Hume’s induction from the “efficient nature” pose 2 deductive questions concerning the omnipotence and omniscience nature of God: If god is God, God is not good; If God is good, God is not God. This is to draw upon the other side of nature, one of evil and suffering in this world, which can be used to question either God’s power (to stop them) or God’s goodness (in allowing them to exist). Where is God while evil seems to triumph?

A seventeenth-century mathematician Pascal answers the this age long question by opening up the eternal afterlife as fair games for God to use in order to settle the apparent randomness of worldly injustice and suffering. ‘Whatever you loose on earth [for God] will be rewarded 100 times to you in Heaven.’ Therefore seek treasures in heaven instead. By capitalizing on the afterlife, with transcendental goodies that neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal, this harmonic economy between logical worldliness VS God’s holiness is settled. Evil exists in this world so we can have “39 [real hot] dark haired virgins”, the original Garden of Eden returning to wipe away all tears and suffering forever, or etc., in the next lifetime.

But what does all of this mean? Why are we here? How should we love and live our individual lives (and live well)? These questions concerning meaning (not governance and economics) bring us back to the top of this essay.