Thursday, March 18, 2010
Human Sexuality--More Discussions
So, my wife's most recent class concerned masturbation. Once upon a time, that was a word I was uncomfortable saying, but after reading some of the things she was required to read, it seems rather clinical. At any rate, the Church says it is objectively a sin. However, there are Catholic theologians who say this "sin" can be mitigated by youthfulness and immaturity. What do you think? Is there a benefit to masturbation, especially in a marriage? Is it a sin, even in a sacramental marriage? Let me know your thoughts.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Human Sexuality--What Role DOES the Church Have With This?
I realize that I said I would continue the discussion of the Buddha's teaching of "No-Self," or "An-Atman" on the last post, but I felt it was important to post something my wife and I have been discussing the last few days and solicit your feedback.
My wife is in a Graduate Program for her M.T.S. in Atlanta, and is currently enrolled in a course concerning human sexuality and the [Catholic] Church. At this moment she is presenting her paper to her class, and it covers some topics I find intensely interesting.
She and her groups raised some questions, and I wanted your thoughts concerning them.
1. The covenant relationship between God and His people Israel and later Jesus and his church is used as an analogy for the marriage relationship. How is this helpful and not so helpful to our understanding of marriage.
2. The church's teachings on sexuality in marriage has evolved over centuries. Initial the church "tolerated" sex in order to achieve the continuity of the species. After Vatican II the church see sexual relations in marriage in a positive light. Given this history is the church a credible voice on human sexuality?
3. In Genesis we were told to be fruitful and multiply. You could argue we have done so and further multiplication of humans erodes the stability of mankind. Should the current status of the world population have any impact on the church's teachings on sexuality?
4. The three stated purposes of marriage and sexuality are the good of the spouse, and the procreation and education of children. What are the benefits and downfalls of each of these as a stated purpose of marriage?
5. One of the purposes of marriage and sexuality is education of children. What sort of education does this entail? What "lessons" are to be taught through the parental marriage and sexuality?
6. If we are to be open to new life, and natural family planning could be effective at the expense of union of the spouses and their children, what is the balance between financial practicality and introducing artificial contraception into a sacramental and committed marriage? In other words, if a married couple with children is not able to spiritually and logistically make natural family planning work for their family, is it appropriate for them to solely focus on the education of their children and the fulfillment of each other? Could these two purposes of marriage outweigh the purpose regarding procreation?
7. What role, if any, should the government (public schools), the Church, and parents have in the sex education of children?
8. In the past, the Church has allowed the government to oversee marriage. What role, if any, should the modern-day government have establishing and promoting its image of the “ideal” family?
9. Given the fact that popular culture is clearly at odds with the teachings of the Church regarding human sexuality and the family, what, if anything, should the Church do to combat this?
Alright, they say that "sex sells." I am looking forward to some titillating discussions! Let the fireworks roll!
My wife is in a Graduate Program for her M.T.S. in Atlanta, and is currently enrolled in a course concerning human sexuality and the [Catholic] Church. At this moment she is presenting her paper to her class, and it covers some topics I find intensely interesting.
She and her groups raised some questions, and I wanted your thoughts concerning them.
1. The covenant relationship between God and His people Israel and later Jesus and his church is used as an analogy for the marriage relationship. How is this helpful and not so helpful to our understanding of marriage.
2. The church's teachings on sexuality in marriage has evolved over centuries. Initial the church "tolerated" sex in order to achieve the continuity of the species. After Vatican II the church see sexual relations in marriage in a positive light. Given this history is the church a credible voice on human sexuality?
3. In Genesis we were told to be fruitful and multiply. You could argue we have done so and further multiplication of humans erodes the stability of mankind. Should the current status of the world population have any impact on the church's teachings on sexuality?
4. The three stated purposes of marriage and sexuality are the good of the spouse, and the procreation and education of children. What are the benefits and downfalls of each of these as a stated purpose of marriage?
5. One of the purposes of marriage and sexuality is education of children. What sort of education does this entail? What "lessons" are to be taught through the parental marriage and sexuality?
6. If we are to be open to new life, and natural family planning could be effective at the expense of union of the spouses and their children, what is the balance between financial practicality and introducing artificial contraception into a sacramental and committed marriage? In other words, if a married couple with children is not able to spiritually and logistically make natural family planning work for their family, is it appropriate for them to solely focus on the education of their children and the fulfillment of each other? Could these two purposes of marriage outweigh the purpose regarding procreation?
7. What role, if any, should the government (public schools), the Church, and parents have in the sex education of children?
8. In the past, the Church has allowed the government to oversee marriage. What role, if any, should the modern-day government have establishing and promoting its image of the “ideal” family?
9. Given the fact that popular culture is clearly at odds with the teachings of the Church regarding human sexuality and the family, what, if anything, should the Church do to combat this?
Alright, they say that "sex sells." I am looking forward to some titillating discussions! Let the fireworks roll!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
More Discussions on Buddhism
So now we have the Buddha and his Arhats, as well as a plan to achieve liberation from suffering, or Nirvana.
So, these Arhats proceeded to missionize others with the Buddha's wisdom, as the Buddha himself died at the ripe old age of 80 from eating bad pork. As these Arhats spread this liberating message, more and more people joined the Sangha that the Buddha had sanctioned before his death, because he knew how hard it was to actually live his programme. The Sangha was a COMMUNITY of like-minded Buddhists who committed themselves to the Eightfold Path and held each other accountable.
Some years after the Buddha's death, those who survived him took some honors upon themselves, for they were further on the path to Nirvana than those to whom they ministered, and called themselves Theravadin Buddhists, that is, Buddhists in "the way of the Elders." Now, these Theravadins put the Buddha's thoughts, as they perceived them, down in a book, known as the Abhidharma. Now, this book tried to make explicit the teachings of the Buddha from his second sermon concerning "An-Atman," or the teaching of "No-Self." You see, the Buddha rejected Hindu notions of any kind of eternal, abiding essence in people (such as a soul), since these could neither be seen nor proven. Instead, the Buddha discerned that we are simply a conglomeration of SKANDHAS, or PROCESSES that are assembled and harmonized in such a way that we APPEAR to be permanent.
In order to understand this doctrine of "no-self," two examples seem helpful: the car and the human.
These I will lay out in detail in the next post...
So, these Arhats proceeded to missionize others with the Buddha's wisdom, as the Buddha himself died at the ripe old age of 80 from eating bad pork. As these Arhats spread this liberating message, more and more people joined the Sangha that the Buddha had sanctioned before his death, because he knew how hard it was to actually live his programme. The Sangha was a COMMUNITY of like-minded Buddhists who committed themselves to the Eightfold Path and held each other accountable.
Some years after the Buddha's death, those who survived him took some honors upon themselves, for they were further on the path to Nirvana than those to whom they ministered, and called themselves Theravadin Buddhists, that is, Buddhists in "the way of the Elders." Now, these Theravadins put the Buddha's thoughts, as they perceived them, down in a book, known as the Abhidharma. Now, this book tried to make explicit the teachings of the Buddha from his second sermon concerning "An-Atman," or the teaching of "No-Self." You see, the Buddha rejected Hindu notions of any kind of eternal, abiding essence in people (such as a soul), since these could neither be seen nor proven. Instead, the Buddha discerned that we are simply a conglomeration of SKANDHAS, or PROCESSES that are assembled and harmonized in such a way that we APPEAR to be permanent.
In order to understand this doctrine of "no-self," two examples seem helpful: the car and the human.
These I will lay out in detail in the next post...
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Continuing to discuss Buddhism
So, on our last post we saw that Siddhartha had left his palace and his pampered life to try and discern the truth of existence. He had joined a mendicant Hindu order, and wandered the Indian countryside as an ascetic. Now, Siddhartha, being a good mendicant, did this to the very best of his ability, and mortified himself through starvation to the point that he ended up passing out under a (or, as the Buddhists say, THE) Bodhi tree.
While he was unconscious, a woman passed by and thought he was a god. There are reasons why this is so, which we can certainly cover if anyone has questions about Hinduism. At any rate, she thought he might be a god, so she left an offering of fruit for him. When he awoke, he ate the fruit, and then he became the "Buddha," that is, "The Enlightened One." He realized that extreme pleasure and extreme renunciation were fruitless, and conceived his "Middle Way." He discerned the path to Enlightenment, and cracked the code, so to speak, of how to find peace and satisfaction in this universe.
He got up and was ready to proceed about his business, when the legend says that the Hindu god, Indra, pleaded with him to teach what he had discovered to others. The Buddha initially demurred, thinking nobody would want to hear what he had to say. However, Indra was persistent, so the Buddha relented. He then went back to his mendicant order and delivered his first "sermon." What he said to these men can be summed up as follows, and this "sermon" is known as the Deerpark Sermon, where he outlined the Four Noble Truths:
1) Life is suffering (dukkha)
2) Suffering caused by attachment (trishna/craving)
3) Eradicating attachment will eradicate suffering
4) Eradication achieved through The Eightfold Path:
1) Superior Understanding of Four Noble Truths
2) Superior Thought or Intention
3) Superior Speech
4) Superior Action
5) Superior Livelihood
6) Superior Effort
7) Superior Mindfulness
8) Superior Concentration
Later, the Buddha taught another "sermon," the teaching of "An-Atman," or the teaching of "No-Self," in which he taught that there is no eternal or abiding reality in any individual, which many of us would call a "soul," but instead, we are simply a conglomeration of PROCESSES (which he called "skandhas"), that we associated with some kind of permanent identity, WRONGLY. Think of it this way: when does a car become a car? When it has a chassis? When it gets tires? When it gets an engine? When it gets seats and headlights? Or, to put it another way, if you get in a fender-bender, when does your car cease having "car-ness?" Is it when it won't run anymore? Is it when it is irreparably damaged? The fact is, most of us would disagree on the answers to these questions, which illustrates the Buddha's point: there is no "you," only a series of processes working together in such a way that you think you are "you." If you lopped off one of your arms, or both of your arms and your legs, you would probably still say "you" existed. However, at what point do "you" cease to exist? Is it when your mind goes? Well, the fact is that you need your body for your mind to function, thus illustrating the Buddha's claim that you are nothing more than an assemblage of processes...
Now, five of the Buddha's audience saw the "wisdom" in his teaching and became "Arhats," that is, they were "enlightened" to the truth, but had not yet passed to that state known as "Nirvana." What that is, and the consequences of such a thought, shall be treated in the next post.
While he was unconscious, a woman passed by and thought he was a god. There are reasons why this is so, which we can certainly cover if anyone has questions about Hinduism. At any rate, she thought he might be a god, so she left an offering of fruit for him. When he awoke, he ate the fruit, and then he became the "Buddha," that is, "The Enlightened One." He realized that extreme pleasure and extreme renunciation were fruitless, and conceived his "Middle Way." He discerned the path to Enlightenment, and cracked the code, so to speak, of how to find peace and satisfaction in this universe.
He got up and was ready to proceed about his business, when the legend says that the Hindu god, Indra, pleaded with him to teach what he had discovered to others. The Buddha initially demurred, thinking nobody would want to hear what he had to say. However, Indra was persistent, so the Buddha relented. He then went back to his mendicant order and delivered his first "sermon." What he said to these men can be summed up as follows, and this "sermon" is known as the Deerpark Sermon, where he outlined the Four Noble Truths:
1) Life is suffering (dukkha)
2) Suffering caused by attachment (trishna/craving)
3) Eradicating attachment will eradicate suffering
4) Eradication achieved through The Eightfold Path:
1) Superior Understanding of Four Noble Truths
2) Superior Thought or Intention
3) Superior Speech
4) Superior Action
5) Superior Livelihood
6) Superior Effort
7) Superior Mindfulness
8) Superior Concentration
Later, the Buddha taught another "sermon," the teaching of "An-Atman," or the teaching of "No-Self," in which he taught that there is no eternal or abiding reality in any individual, which many of us would call a "soul," but instead, we are simply a conglomeration of PROCESSES (which he called "skandhas"), that we associated with some kind of permanent identity, WRONGLY. Think of it this way: when does a car become a car? When it has a chassis? When it gets tires? When it gets an engine? When it gets seats and headlights? Or, to put it another way, if you get in a fender-bender, when does your car cease having "car-ness?" Is it when it won't run anymore? Is it when it is irreparably damaged? The fact is, most of us would disagree on the answers to these questions, which illustrates the Buddha's point: there is no "you," only a series of processes working together in such a way that you think you are "you." If you lopped off one of your arms, or both of your arms and your legs, you would probably still say "you" existed. However, at what point do "you" cease to exist? Is it when your mind goes? Well, the fact is that you need your body for your mind to function, thus illustrating the Buddha's claim that you are nothing more than an assemblage of processes...
Now, five of the Buddha's audience saw the "wisdom" in his teaching and became "Arhats," that is, they were "enlightened" to the truth, but had not yet passed to that state known as "Nirvana." What that is, and the consequences of such a thought, shall be treated in the next post.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
So What's the Difference Between Nikaya and Other "Buddhisms?"
So, in my last post concerning the stats on the World Religions, I alluded to the difference between Nikaya Buddhism and other "Buddhisms." I thought now might be a good time to start to delineate those differences. This will probably take two to three posts, but, you always want to leave your fans wanting more, right?
Anyway, the legend of "the Buddha" (the Enlightened One) goes something like this...
About 2500 years ago, in Northern India, which was principally Hindu, a prince or king of the Sakya clan had a son, whom he named Siddhartha Gautema. Now, this ruler took his son to a wise man named, Ashita, who did a "seeing" on the child. After this seeing, Ashita said the boy would either become a religious mendicant or a great ruler.
Well, the father certainly did not want his son to become a mendicant (for they were poor beggars), and decided he would ensure that his son would follow the latter path. To do this, he sealed off the palace from anything that smacked of suffering or labor. Thus, young Siddhartha grew up pampered and groomed toward being a king in his own right. However, when Siddhartha became older, he grew bored with the constant pleasures of the court and its homogeneity, and persuaded a palace guard to take him on a trip outside the palace.
While Siddhartha was journeying through the countryside, he saw four things that shocked him, for, after all, he had never experienced such things before--his father had ensured that he wouldn't: he saw a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and laborers slaving away in some fields. Moreover, nobody besides himself seemed to think these phenomena noteworthy--they walked past the dead man, and of course, nobody thought the laborers in the field an aberration--it's how things were.
Well, Siddhartha went back to the palace flummoxed, and decided that the palace life was not appropriate for him, for sooner or later he too would have to face the same kinds of tribulations...he reasoned it would be better to be ready for them, than think as his father did and try to avoid them. Therefore, he left the palace and joined an ascetic mendicant Hindu order. What happened next is critical in his story, but that is for the next post...
Anyway, the legend of "the Buddha" (the Enlightened One) goes something like this...
About 2500 years ago, in Northern India, which was principally Hindu, a prince or king of the Sakya clan had a son, whom he named Siddhartha Gautema. Now, this ruler took his son to a wise man named, Ashita, who did a "seeing" on the child. After this seeing, Ashita said the boy would either become a religious mendicant or a great ruler.
Well, the father certainly did not want his son to become a mendicant (for they were poor beggars), and decided he would ensure that his son would follow the latter path. To do this, he sealed off the palace from anything that smacked of suffering or labor. Thus, young Siddhartha grew up pampered and groomed toward being a king in his own right. However, when Siddhartha became older, he grew bored with the constant pleasures of the court and its homogeneity, and persuaded a palace guard to take him on a trip outside the palace.
While Siddhartha was journeying through the countryside, he saw four things that shocked him, for, after all, he had never experienced such things before--his father had ensured that he wouldn't: he saw a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and laborers slaving away in some fields. Moreover, nobody besides himself seemed to think these phenomena noteworthy--they walked past the dead man, and of course, nobody thought the laborers in the field an aberration--it's how things were.
Well, Siddhartha went back to the palace flummoxed, and decided that the palace life was not appropriate for him, for sooner or later he too would have to face the same kinds of tribulations...he reasoned it would be better to be ready for them, than think as his father did and try to avoid them. Therefore, he left the palace and joined an ascetic mendicant Hindu order. What happened next is critical in his story, but that is for the next post...
World Religion Stats
For those who don't already know, these are broad statistics about the "Big Five" World Religions; they are posted in chronological order of origin:
Hinduism: Between 750 million-1 billion; most are in India
Judaism: Approximately 20 million; most are in the United States (6-9 million), NOT Israel
Buddhism: Between 500-600 million; most are in China and Japan, and look VERY different from "original" or "Nikaya" Buddhism
Christianity: About 2 billion; 1.2 billion are Catholic, the rest are Orthodox and Protestant
Islam: About 1.7-1.9 billion; at its current rate of growth, it will overtake Christianity in numbers very soon
Hinduism: Between 750 million-1 billion; most are in India
Judaism: Approximately 20 million; most are in the United States (6-9 million), NOT Israel
Buddhism: Between 500-600 million; most are in China and Japan, and look VERY different from "original" or "Nikaya" Buddhism
Christianity: About 2 billion; 1.2 billion are Catholic, the rest are Orthodox and Protestant
Islam: About 1.7-1.9 billion; at its current rate of growth, it will overtake Christianity in numbers very soon
Sunday, January 17, 2010
What difference does it make which religious belief one adheres to?
This is a question that came up with my seniors last week when we were talking about the emergence of John Locke's empiricism and thoughts concerning revelations versus ethics, which generated over two days' worth of discussion. Below are the essentials of my answer.
John Locke, who published, Essay on Human Understanding in 1690, proposed that experience and empiricism are the only ways to know anything with certainty. He was an Enlightenment thinker who, following men like Rene Descartes (1596-1650) agreed that the order of the world corresponded with the order of the mind, but held, against Descartes, that anyone held any innate ideas with certainty--experience was required to know ANYTHING with certainty. Therefore, anything in religious discourse that involved revelation (such as Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai or Jesus walking on water) could never be known with certainty, since we were not there to witness it, nor are there any surviving archaeological data to support these stories. We can only conclude, based on revelation, what is most PROBABLE to believe, and Locke did conclude that Christianity was the most "reasonable" of all religions, but could not be proven. Other Enlightenment figures articulated similar thoughts, and many of them concluded that the one thing that seemed to be common to religions, regardless of their revelations, was a system of ETHICS that mandated certain codes of behavior. Because of this, Reform Judaism was born, and many other intellectuals in Christianity taught that the Christ of the Scriptures was not accessible, but Christ the Teacher was.
John Locke, British Empiricist (1632-1704)
John Locke's "Tabula Rasa," which presupposes that all humans are born with a "blank slate," and that our experiences largely determine who we are.
After going through these points, a student asked, what does it matter what one believes, if it gets us all to behave in the same way and get along with each other? It's a question I have heard before, but I decided to give it some serious thought for the sake of this student and the benefit of the class. I spent a day thinking about how I wanted to answer. Below is essentially what I said.
The question presupposes that all religions are essentially the same in substance, if not in practice or belief. The question presupposes that all religions are like ice cream, and the different manifestations are like different flavors, and human beings, being what they are, may choose one "flavor" over another, but at the end of the day, they are all the same, and provide the same results.
I have found that in the year 2010, many people in America share something akin to this opinion...religion is a belief system that satisfies a particular yearning in the human for meaning and understanding of the complexities and seeming caprice of the universe, and therefore, whichever one chooses, as long as it provides those things, is valid--Buddhism as much as Christianity or Judaism or Islam.
I began my response by asking, is it ALWAYS wrong for someone to violate a child sexually? I picked this subject with reservations, not because I am insensitive, but to illustrate a point. Of course, the class unanimously answered, yes, that is ALWAYS wrong. I asked, is it wrong, even if someone says they BELIEVE it is okay, for whatever twisted reason? They said, again unanimously, yes, it is ALWAYS wrong. I then asked, how can we have any statements of eternal import (that is, statements founded on ALWAYS) in a universe that is constantly changing? They were perplexed by this, so I proceeded.
I said that what they just demonstrated in their unanimous disapprobation of the molester is a seemingly universal claim to JUSTICE that seems to reside in the human in an acute sense. I then said that this need to see justice fulfilled can be manifested through three options, as far as I can tell, to answer this question. The first, Option "A," says, "Justice is taken care of NOW, in this life and in this world." The second, Option "B," says, "Justice is taken care of after this life." The third, Option "C," says that there is no justice, it's simply a human invention to ensure sociological peace among the species, for the universe is a random interchange of action/reaction, stimulus/response, and there is no rhyme or reason or meaning to it.
The first Option seems flawed, since many "wicked" seem to prosper, while many "good" seem to be persecuted. If Option A is true, then "justice," as we desire it in the human heart, is a chimera. However, that fails to explain its universality--even the hardest criminals in a prison know that the child molester is at the bottom of the societal ladder, thus seeming to support that even the wicked recognize an inherent code of right and wrong, and that some misdeeds are worse than others. This further supports the claim that justice, even if it is unfulfilled, is something humans share. This therefore debunks Option A.
Option C is compelling, but only so far. If the need for justice was something that was a result of chance in a materialistic universe, it would seem it would have not survived. Even Darwin's theories of Natural Selection provide that that which is most condusive to the survival of a species are adopted, but we still have not, at least publicly, adopted a system of a-morality. We deplore and despise those who cheat us, even though their chances of survival are increased by it. Moreover, we do not excuse our friend, the child molester, no matter what experiences he might have endured that led him to do such a heinous crime. Why is this so? Well, if we live in a close universe, the fact is, we could not blame him any more than we would blame a pen for falling if we dropped it. Let me explain what I mean.
In a closed universe, there is simply action and reaction, cause and effect (by the way, traditional Buddhism, being a "materialistic" religion, presupposes exactly this). In such a universe, what we do is not our fault, and we are not culpable for it. Let me explain by way of analogy.
Imagine a jar that is vacuum sealed, where gravity is removed, that is full of marbles. That represents the closed universe. Now, imagine that of these billion marbles, there is marble "3" and marble "10056." Now, if you took a video camera and kept it on the jar, you would see that, as soon as you shake the jar (because our universe is clearly kinetic, though the materialists are hard pressed to explain WHY), you could see how marble 1,005,784 touches marble 3456 which touches marble 2,009,894 and so on, until the chain of events strikes marble 10056, which touches marble 3. In such a scenario, marble 3 simply reacts to stimuli over which it had no control, and touches another marble. If that reaction was child molestation, is it really his fault? Is he culpable? After all, he was acting as an agent who was influenced by a nearly infinite chain of cause and effect, of which he is a part.
And yet, we still want the molester prosecuted...is this simply a malformation in our evolutionary sense of justice? That is possible...perhaps we are uncomfortable admitting that the universe operates on so much chance, but that does little to comfort us, and little more to explain how murderers and thieves in the prison detest him. It seems, then, that the probability of such an assertion of a closed universe is weak. It is possible, but weak. The anthropology does not seem to support it.
That leaves us with Option B. This option says that justice will be meted out after this life. Well, if, as my student says, religion is simply a question of beliefs that prepare you for that eventuality, let us see if she was right.
Let us say I blow up my school and film it. I have hard evidence that proves I did it. I killed over a thousand people. Now, I have been arrested and am about to go to court to answer the charges that I am a mass murderer. The odds are that I will receive the death penalty in short order. Now, at this point, I have some options: I can choose to defend myself, or I can hire a lawyer. I think, in something as important as this, that I need to hire a lawyer, but we all know, lawyers come with a varying degree of competence and acumen. So, I probably need to hire a very good lawyer, not just the cheapest, that is, the one who perhaps partied his way through law school or just barely passed the Bar. If I am to have any hope of being acquitted, I need the very best--remember, there is a video I made in my maniacal attack, to immortalize it in my narcissism, so the prosecuting attorney has EVERYTHING he needs to convict me.
At this point, it seems that I need to do a little investigative "shopping." I need to find the best lawyer to "get me off." If we are subject to some kind of judgement for our misdeeds after this life, doesn't the same hold true?
Of course, my student stated (to my great pride), that our "sins" are not the same as blowing up a building full of people--a lie is not the same as that. I agree. Then I asked, if you were out on a pristine ski slope, and thirsty, and decided to pick up some snow to eat it, but you found that there was the slightest infinitessimal drop of yellow in it, would you still eat it? I asked, if you were at a pool party with a hundred other people, and you felt a slight increase in the water temperature when you swam near someone else, would you get out? I asked, if your house was robbed, how would you feel coming in later? The answer was essentially the same for all three questions: the object in question was TAINTED, and it didn't matter how much--the tainting ruined the whole. Now, such a claim presupposes that there is not a closed universe, but an open one, and that this open universe has some kind of "Owner," for after all, the owner of a house determines its rules, and, as stated above, most humans seem to agree that the rule forbidding child molestation is just. Well, the only way you can have such ETERNAL laws, in a universe that is constantly in flux, is to have an ETERNAL LAW-GIVER OUTSIDE of the universe giving such laws. Otherwise, the laws of behavior would change with the times. Now, I am not talking about laws pertaining to business or political borders, which necessarily change as borders or technology do. I am talking about the statement that child molestation or rape is ALWAYS wrong. That means that even 10,000 years ago it was wrong, and will continue to be, 10,000 years from now. The only way that is true is if there is an eternal Law-giver. Well, if there is such a law-giver, it seems he/she/it would also be the one, naturally, to do the judging upon our death, if Option B holds. Therefore, if he/she/it is TRULY just, then we must pay for the smallest offenses, the smallest taints, or else, as I said before, our quest and inherent yearning for justice is a chimera. How do we pay for it?
If we are the one in the pool who tainted it, and everyone at the party knew we did it, how do we escape the ridicule and scorn that must necessarily follow, as well as the banishment from the party? We need an advocate, the BEST advocate.
Or, to take it a step further, let's say we were at the pool party at a wealthy friend's house. Let's say we just couldn't hold it in, we taint the pool, everybody knows it, including the owner. He wants us thrown out as some disrespectful cad, but his son comes up and says, "Dad, let him stay--don't embarrass him." Wouldn't that be a great example of an advocate?
Well, if Option B is true, then we have some further options...Hinduism says that at the end of this life, we are destined to repeat its trials and sufferings in another life, in a cylce known as "samsara." The only way we can get off this cycle is through a sufficient accumulation of karma. Question: how do you clean the pool after you tainted it?
Buddhism says we live in a closed universe, which has serious issues explaining our penchant for justice, but regardless, Buddhism demands that we live in a disciplined state to enjoy the present AS-IT-IS, and, depending on whether you are speaking of Theravadin or Mahayanan Buddhism, you can, after multiple lifetimes and sufficient accumulations of karma and goodwill toward others, a release from suffering. The question this raises is, how is there a judgment of "good" or "bad" in a closed universe?
Judaism says acts of loving-kindness can ameliorate one's position with God. That has its own issues, since, if I blew up the school, I said I gave a million dollars to charity, it would still not wipe out my mass murder. The only hope here is some kind of forgiveness from the "owner" of the "house," which I certainly allow as a possibility, but then there is the issue of reconciling that with our concepts of justice.
Islam similarly holds that God is the judge of all our deeds, and holds, essentially, that if we follow the dictates and edicts of the Qur'an, especially our faithfulness to the Five Pillars, that God will admit those whom He wishes into Paradise, and condemn the rest. Again, however, this forces us to reconsider our definitions of justice, since any sin "taints the pool"--can God allow that without some kind of retribution?
Then there is Christianity, which holds that the son of the Owner, that is, the Creator, has paid the price, somehow, for our tainting of the pool, and has somehow cleaned it, so that the Owner is satisfied. Then, the son becomes our friend, in spite of our hapless accident in the pool.
These are the essentials of what I told my class. I hope you found it interesting.
John Locke, who published, Essay on Human Understanding in 1690, proposed that experience and empiricism are the only ways to know anything with certainty. He was an Enlightenment thinker who, following men like Rene Descartes (1596-1650) agreed that the order of the world corresponded with the order of the mind, but held, against Descartes, that anyone held any innate ideas with certainty--experience was required to know ANYTHING with certainty. Therefore, anything in religious discourse that involved revelation (such as Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai or Jesus walking on water) could never be known with certainty, since we were not there to witness it, nor are there any surviving archaeological data to support these stories. We can only conclude, based on revelation, what is most PROBABLE to believe, and Locke did conclude that Christianity was the most "reasonable" of all religions, but could not be proven. Other Enlightenment figures articulated similar thoughts, and many of them concluded that the one thing that seemed to be common to religions, regardless of their revelations, was a system of ETHICS that mandated certain codes of behavior. Because of this, Reform Judaism was born, and many other intellectuals in Christianity taught that the Christ of the Scriptures was not accessible, but Christ the Teacher was.
John Locke, British Empiricist (1632-1704)
John Locke's "Tabula Rasa," which presupposes that all humans are born with a "blank slate," and that our experiences largely determine who we are.
After going through these points, a student asked, what does it matter what one believes, if it gets us all to behave in the same way and get along with each other? It's a question I have heard before, but I decided to give it some serious thought for the sake of this student and the benefit of the class. I spent a day thinking about how I wanted to answer. Below is essentially what I said.
The question presupposes that all religions are essentially the same in substance, if not in practice or belief. The question presupposes that all religions are like ice cream, and the different manifestations are like different flavors, and human beings, being what they are, may choose one "flavor" over another, but at the end of the day, they are all the same, and provide the same results.
I have found that in the year 2010, many people in America share something akin to this opinion...religion is a belief system that satisfies a particular yearning in the human for meaning and understanding of the complexities and seeming caprice of the universe, and therefore, whichever one chooses, as long as it provides those things, is valid--Buddhism as much as Christianity or Judaism or Islam.
I began my response by asking, is it ALWAYS wrong for someone to violate a child sexually? I picked this subject with reservations, not because I am insensitive, but to illustrate a point. Of course, the class unanimously answered, yes, that is ALWAYS wrong. I asked, is it wrong, even if someone says they BELIEVE it is okay, for whatever twisted reason? They said, again unanimously, yes, it is ALWAYS wrong. I then asked, how can we have any statements of eternal import (that is, statements founded on ALWAYS) in a universe that is constantly changing? They were perplexed by this, so I proceeded.
I said that what they just demonstrated in their unanimous disapprobation of the molester is a seemingly universal claim to JUSTICE that seems to reside in the human in an acute sense. I then said that this need to see justice fulfilled can be manifested through three options, as far as I can tell, to answer this question. The first, Option "A," says, "Justice is taken care of NOW, in this life and in this world." The second, Option "B," says, "Justice is taken care of after this life." The third, Option "C," says that there is no justice, it's simply a human invention to ensure sociological peace among the species, for the universe is a random interchange of action/reaction, stimulus/response, and there is no rhyme or reason or meaning to it.
The first Option seems flawed, since many "wicked" seem to prosper, while many "good" seem to be persecuted. If Option A is true, then "justice," as we desire it in the human heart, is a chimera. However, that fails to explain its universality--even the hardest criminals in a prison know that the child molester is at the bottom of the societal ladder, thus seeming to support that even the wicked recognize an inherent code of right and wrong, and that some misdeeds are worse than others. This further supports the claim that justice, even if it is unfulfilled, is something humans share. This therefore debunks Option A.
Option C is compelling, but only so far. If the need for justice was something that was a result of chance in a materialistic universe, it would seem it would have not survived. Even Darwin's theories of Natural Selection provide that that which is most condusive to the survival of a species are adopted, but we still have not, at least publicly, adopted a system of a-morality. We deplore and despise those who cheat us, even though their chances of survival are increased by it. Moreover, we do not excuse our friend, the child molester, no matter what experiences he might have endured that led him to do such a heinous crime. Why is this so? Well, if we live in a close universe, the fact is, we could not blame him any more than we would blame a pen for falling if we dropped it. Let me explain what I mean.
In a closed universe, there is simply action and reaction, cause and effect (by the way, traditional Buddhism, being a "materialistic" religion, presupposes exactly this). In such a universe, what we do is not our fault, and we are not culpable for it. Let me explain by way of analogy.
Imagine a jar that is vacuum sealed, where gravity is removed, that is full of marbles. That represents the closed universe. Now, imagine that of these billion marbles, there is marble "3" and marble "10056." Now, if you took a video camera and kept it on the jar, you would see that, as soon as you shake the jar (because our universe is clearly kinetic, though the materialists are hard pressed to explain WHY), you could see how marble 1,005,784 touches marble 3456 which touches marble 2,009,894 and so on, until the chain of events strikes marble 10056, which touches marble 3. In such a scenario, marble 3 simply reacts to stimuli over which it had no control, and touches another marble. If that reaction was child molestation, is it really his fault? Is he culpable? After all, he was acting as an agent who was influenced by a nearly infinite chain of cause and effect, of which he is a part.
And yet, we still want the molester prosecuted...is this simply a malformation in our evolutionary sense of justice? That is possible...perhaps we are uncomfortable admitting that the universe operates on so much chance, but that does little to comfort us, and little more to explain how murderers and thieves in the prison detest him. It seems, then, that the probability of such an assertion of a closed universe is weak. It is possible, but weak. The anthropology does not seem to support it.
That leaves us with Option B. This option says that justice will be meted out after this life. Well, if, as my student says, religion is simply a question of beliefs that prepare you for that eventuality, let us see if she was right.
Let us say I blow up my school and film it. I have hard evidence that proves I did it. I killed over a thousand people. Now, I have been arrested and am about to go to court to answer the charges that I am a mass murderer. The odds are that I will receive the death penalty in short order. Now, at this point, I have some options: I can choose to defend myself, or I can hire a lawyer. I think, in something as important as this, that I need to hire a lawyer, but we all know, lawyers come with a varying degree of competence and acumen. So, I probably need to hire a very good lawyer, not just the cheapest, that is, the one who perhaps partied his way through law school or just barely passed the Bar. If I am to have any hope of being acquitted, I need the very best--remember, there is a video I made in my maniacal attack, to immortalize it in my narcissism, so the prosecuting attorney has EVERYTHING he needs to convict me.
At this point, it seems that I need to do a little investigative "shopping." I need to find the best lawyer to "get me off." If we are subject to some kind of judgement for our misdeeds after this life, doesn't the same hold true?
Of course, my student stated (to my great pride), that our "sins" are not the same as blowing up a building full of people--a lie is not the same as that. I agree. Then I asked, if you were out on a pristine ski slope, and thirsty, and decided to pick up some snow to eat it, but you found that there was the slightest infinitessimal drop of yellow in it, would you still eat it? I asked, if you were at a pool party with a hundred other people, and you felt a slight increase in the water temperature when you swam near someone else, would you get out? I asked, if your house was robbed, how would you feel coming in later? The answer was essentially the same for all three questions: the object in question was TAINTED, and it didn't matter how much--the tainting ruined the whole. Now, such a claim presupposes that there is not a closed universe, but an open one, and that this open universe has some kind of "Owner," for after all, the owner of a house determines its rules, and, as stated above, most humans seem to agree that the rule forbidding child molestation is just. Well, the only way you can have such ETERNAL laws, in a universe that is constantly in flux, is to have an ETERNAL LAW-GIVER OUTSIDE of the universe giving such laws. Otherwise, the laws of behavior would change with the times. Now, I am not talking about laws pertaining to business or political borders, which necessarily change as borders or technology do. I am talking about the statement that child molestation or rape is ALWAYS wrong. That means that even 10,000 years ago it was wrong, and will continue to be, 10,000 years from now. The only way that is true is if there is an eternal Law-giver. Well, if there is such a law-giver, it seems he/she/it would also be the one, naturally, to do the judging upon our death, if Option B holds. Therefore, if he/she/it is TRULY just, then we must pay for the smallest offenses, the smallest taints, or else, as I said before, our quest and inherent yearning for justice is a chimera. How do we pay for it?
If we are the one in the pool who tainted it, and everyone at the party knew we did it, how do we escape the ridicule and scorn that must necessarily follow, as well as the banishment from the party? We need an advocate, the BEST advocate.
Or, to take it a step further, let's say we were at the pool party at a wealthy friend's house. Let's say we just couldn't hold it in, we taint the pool, everybody knows it, including the owner. He wants us thrown out as some disrespectful cad, but his son comes up and says, "Dad, let him stay--don't embarrass him." Wouldn't that be a great example of an advocate?
Well, if Option B is true, then we have some further options...Hinduism says that at the end of this life, we are destined to repeat its trials and sufferings in another life, in a cylce known as "samsara." The only way we can get off this cycle is through a sufficient accumulation of karma. Question: how do you clean the pool after you tainted it?
Buddhism says we live in a closed universe, which has serious issues explaining our penchant for justice, but regardless, Buddhism demands that we live in a disciplined state to enjoy the present AS-IT-IS, and, depending on whether you are speaking of Theravadin or Mahayanan Buddhism, you can, after multiple lifetimes and sufficient accumulations of karma and goodwill toward others, a release from suffering. The question this raises is, how is there a judgment of "good" or "bad" in a closed universe?
Judaism says acts of loving-kindness can ameliorate one's position with God. That has its own issues, since, if I blew up the school, I said I gave a million dollars to charity, it would still not wipe out my mass murder. The only hope here is some kind of forgiveness from the "owner" of the "house," which I certainly allow as a possibility, but then there is the issue of reconciling that with our concepts of justice.
Islam similarly holds that God is the judge of all our deeds, and holds, essentially, that if we follow the dictates and edicts of the Qur'an, especially our faithfulness to the Five Pillars, that God will admit those whom He wishes into Paradise, and condemn the rest. Again, however, this forces us to reconsider our definitions of justice, since any sin "taints the pool"--can God allow that without some kind of retribution?
Then there is Christianity, which holds that the son of the Owner, that is, the Creator, has paid the price, somehow, for our tainting of the pool, and has somehow cleaned it, so that the Owner is satisfied. Then, the son becomes our friend, in spite of our hapless accident in the pool.
These are the essentials of what I told my class. I hope you found it interesting.
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