Is There A God? (by alaric)
So what do I believe? Well, I believe very little. As I mentioned before, I'm quite happy to leave unanswerable questions unanswered. My philosophy of life (I hesitate to call it a religion, to be honest) revolves more around living with rampant uncertainty, than a set of facts I accept unconditionally out of faith (which I would call a religion).
That's the Taoist side of it. I say "Fundamentalist Taoist" because I think the Tao Te Ching expresses my approach to life quite well, but wish to distance myself from Taoism as it is practiced today, which seems to involve a lot of worshipping and believing in invisible spirits.
But the Tao Te Ching itself is quite different. Opening pages at random and quoting bits that I feel are applicable here on each page I open it at reveals:
The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.
I see that as a warning against faith. "Create confusion in those who think that they know".
When I come to that metaphorical fork in the road, I have no preconceived idea that there must be a correct branch and a wrong branch; perhaps both branches will lead me home, perhaps neither, perhaps just one, but I have no way of telling. I have no fear of taking the wrong branch, because I know such fear would not help me in any way. I think that lack of preconceptions, and the lack of fear of making the wrong choice, is perhaps what the "empty mind" referred to in the Tao Te Ching may be.
If you open yourself to loss, you are at one with loss and you can accept it completely
Again, when I pick a path without pretending to know if it's the correct path, I am open to loss. I am prepared to find it's the wrong path. And so, if that happens, I am not upset. I accept the loss completely, because I have accepted it in advance; I've gone down a route happily knowing it might be wrong, but that there's nothing better I can do than to pick one and take the risk.
The Master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn't cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her.
Ok... need I go on? So far every page I've opened at random has a few lines somewhere on it that express my happiness with living in a world that I only provisionally accept as actually existing.
This is why I cite inspiration from Fight Club: you have to learn to let go.
Tue 1st May 2007 11:00 pm 
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By David Cantrell, Wed 2nd May 2007 @ 8:00 pm
Never having done any scouting I know nothing at all about it, but what makes you think that making "some kind of spirituality" mandatory for group leaders is a good thing?
By Lionel, Mon 7th May 2007 @ 9:27 am
I am interested in the current debate, especially in the US, between the fundamentalists (who assert that not only does spirit exist, but that it is the ultimate good and that the problems of the world can be traced to society's abandoning spirit), and the humanist extremists (who, like Dawkins, argue that not only does spirit not exist, but that it is bad in that the belief in it has caused more wars, tyranny and misery than good).
I do think the Dawkins folk have a point when they deny that religion is necessarily a force for good or the answer to our problems (and I recall, Alaric, you once gave a talk on those lines at your prep school). But I see more resson to believe in spirit's existence.
The existence of spirit, as generally understood, seems to me to require 3 things:
That there can be some interaction between our universe and those outside intelligences.
Clearly a universe can exist, because we live in one. If something can happen once, the minimal expectation is that it would happen more than once - otherwise we have to explain why it could happen once and only once. For example: an explorer lands on an island and sees his first ever pineapple plant, so the natural assumption is that there must be other pineapple plants around somewhere. But if the explorer finds a unique statue, then there has to be an explanation of how it could have been created, and that probably requires a human creator.
I would also expect intelligence and conscious self awareness to exist "out there", because darwinian theory seems to illustrate that these qualities tend to evolve because the have survival value.
The interaction is the problem bit. When i was going to give a talk on this subject i did the sensible thing of telling the spirits that I was going to talk about this and would they be so kindas to provide irrefutable proof of their ability to not only hear me but also interact with our universe in time for my talk. Nothing happened. Are they insufficiently intelligent to get the point? Unlikely, as that would make us the greatest intelligence and that requires a reason why. Or are they too intelligent to accept my offer - can't comment on that! Or did the interaction fail?
Whereas the existence of intelligent spirit is a logical argument, based on likelihood, the interaction bit requires evidence. there is plenty of evidence, but it is not scientific evidence. So all I can say is that there are times in mediatation or quiet acceptance in my life when i do get a feeling of something big and beyond that i can commune with.
Therefore i come down on the side of spirit's existence but, like Alaric, I would never seek to persuade a doubter.
The next bit - is spirit good or bad for us - is a bigger subject.
By ella gale, Fri 11th May 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Hi Al. I think we have some similarities in outlook. I was an agnostic for a while, then atheist (and I like the metaphor of exploring each path). I now believe in something I call God. Science can take you as far as agnosticism and leaves you there with the question of whether there is a God or not unanswerable. So I came to choose to believe there was one based only on the fact that the idea seemed right to me and path seemed more pleasant. I have no idea if this God really exists or if I'm fooling myself, but it seems a nicer worldview than atheism. I also have no idea if this God is a Christian God or just some sort of universe/spirit force. I don't know.
And there is sort of strong anosticism that is to say that you can't know either way, you're not trying to decide, you've decided it's an undecidable question and are happy to not answer it.