God the One and God the Many

The world seems to have suffered a particularly cruel spate of natural tragedies in recent times, Theo.  We had the New Orleans flood, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the New Zealand earthquake, the Sendai tsunami, the horrendous US tornado season, and now the forced flooding of thousands of homesteads to protect New Orleans from another disaster.  Witnessing human suffering on this scale is profoundly distressing, but what I find even more alarming are the religious people who can always be relied upon to say that it is all God's will - a punishment for mankind's misbehaviour.  One US cleric even suggested that New Orleans is being specifically targeted for being the modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

Why do you find that so alarming Sophy?

Even these people presumably don't believe that God carefully selects who will be killed in each tragedy or who will suffer most and who will suffer least from injury or loss of property and loved ones, all on the basis of the scale of their personal culpability. So they have to believe that the God in whom they believe is a God who randomly slaughters and maims the innocent and the guilty alike, either just in a blind rage or in the hope that we will all be scared into behaving better in future.  Hitler used to wipe out entire communities in retaliation for acts of resistance to his will. What is the moral difference between his behaviour and that of the God in whom such people believe?   The only difference I can see apart from scale is the fact that they believe their God to be our creator, but can they really believe that the random slaughter by God of his children should command our respectful obedience?  Do they believe that parents have the right to viciously discipline their children because they brought them into the world? If such a God did rule the world, volunteering for Satan's army would be mankind's natural and inevitable response.

So what religious conclusions do you draw from this?

It does not lead me to any religious conclusions Theo, only to more questions.  Of course I reject the idea that there is a God who sends these catastrophes deliberately to punish us.  But that simply forces me to accept that if there is a God he is either powerless to prevent these catastrophes, or he has the power but chooses not to exercise it.  The only other possibility is that there is no God, and I am not sure I find that any more troubling than the concept of a God who is powerless to help us.  And as for a God who could save us from catastrophes but chooses not to do so, well, I’m not sure that there is a huge difference between that and deliberately inflicting the catastrophes upon us.

They say, do they not, that it is all about free will?  God has given us absolute power over our own lives and we have to accept the consequences of that?

Well, that would be all very well if we were talking about accepting the consequences of our own actions, but we are not, we are talking about the consequences of natural catastrophes over which we have no control.   There are only four possibilities. 

The first is that God does not exist and our living environment is just the product of the laws of physics. 

The second is that God could have given us free will within a perfect living environment without natural catastrophes but deliberately and just for the hell of it, so to speak, chose to create a massively flawed one knowing that we would not be able to save ourselves from such catastrophes no matter what we did.
  

The third is that God would have created a perfect living environment for us if he could have done but the one he gave us was the best he could do, given the limits of his powers, and he is powerless to help us within it.

And the fourth is that God created a perfect living environment for us and the natural catastrophes would not happen if we did not bring them down upon ourselves by misbehaving. 

You have to accept one of these.  One begins to see why some clerics feel compelled to accept the last one as the lesser of, for them, several evils, even though the idea is quite ludicrously improbable and results in the acceptance of the slaughter of innocent children as Godly behaviour.

But we are told, are we not, that there is no such thing as innocent children?  The concept of original sin?

Theo, the concept of original sin is surely about the general fall from grace of mankind – its loss of spiritual purity.  Even those from the wildest frontiers of religion surely do not mean that at birth we inherit personal responsibility for the sins of our ancestors and must while still babes in arms be punished for them by random annihilation.  A God who did that would make Hitler look relatively benign.

I take it then, Sophy, that you are a disciple of Richard Dawkins?

I need no help from science to conclude that religion based on this kind of view of God is nonsense. But yes, the facts that the physical causes of all these disasters are well  known to science, and that many central religious beliefs and historical accounts are flatly disproved by science, does reinforce my conviction.   All this was clear long before Professor Dawkins came on the scene.  He is not really telling us anything new.  He is just filling in more scientific detail, and perhaps hoping that history will afford him a place on Darwin’s pedestal. 

But Richard Dawkins clearly regards atheism as a desirable state of affairs and would like us all to embrace it. Is that your conclusion too Sophy?

That, Theo, is the question.

So, if that is the question Sophy, what is the answer?

Well, first of all Theo, there is not the remotest chance of persuading more than a small minority of the peoples of the world to abandon their religious beliefs and embrace atheism instead, no matter how desirable Mr Dawkins might think it is.  Scientists publish hypotheses so that they can be tested by their peers until proven or disproven.  Atheism is clearly not a hypothesis that can or will be tested that way; the minds of the vast majority of people with religious beliefs – even of some other respected scientists - are simply impervious to the power of Richard Dawkins’ science and logic.  Professor Dawkins must know this, which makes me wonder sometimes what his motive is for devoting so much effort to it. 

So you think Professor Dawkins represents no threat to religion?

Not on a global scale, no; but in advanced Western societies such as his own he does indeed represent a threat to it.  Congregations in England had been shrinking for decades before he launched his attacks on faith, as state schools withdrew from the practice of inculcating religious faith and traditions in children, and as adults grew increasingly doubtful about the validity of religious chronicles and teachings in the light of modern knowledge and in the context of modern life.  That trend may well be significantly reinforced by Richard Dawkins’ campaign, leading to even smaller congregations and to increasing difficulty in maintaining beautiful churches throughout the land. – already we are seeing many of them being converted into homes, offices, theatres, discos, restaurants and even bars.

Perhaps if good examples of the architecture are being preserved in that way we should welcome that?

Well yes.  And no doubt benefactors and government would act to save the very finest of our great cathedrals and other great places of worship too if an accelerating decline in religion came to threaten them.  But many more may be lost.  It could become a 21st Century version of the dissolution of the monasteries with crumbling ruins all over the landscape.  

Well, we survived that Sophy.  The world did not come to an end, and even greater masterpieces were constructed.

Yes Theo, but this time the threat is not just to the architecture of the losers in a battle between religious orthodoxies but to faith itself, and to all the cultural splendours generated by it, for which the architecture provides the stage and the audience.  The stunning works of art and sculpture; the divine music, from great orchestral and choral masterpieces to the familiar hymns we all love; the Christmas carols; the poetry of the bible, prayer book and pulpit; the splendid robes and incense; the ringing of the bells; the joy all this brings to families gathered for weddings and christenings and the comfort it brings to those gathered for funerals. Religion gave us all of this.  How much of it could survive the onward march of atheism?

Perhaps most of it Sophy.  Great music and great poetry is eternal. Already thousands of those who attend church every Sunday and take great joy from it as a central part of their cultural heritage and of community life do so in full and conscious knowledge of the fact that they do not accept the central tenets of the faith concerned.

I am not sure I can share your optimism Theo.  What you say is true for now, but that is because the culture has been handed down from parent to child and from teacher to pupil to the present generation.  As proactive atheism chips away at that process, the culture will be weakened generation by generation.  Yes, the performance of great religious works of art by paid professionals for highly cultivated audiences will continue always, as will the use of Christmas and other religious festivals in entirely non-religious ways as opportunities for families and friends to celebrate and to give and receive material things and material pleasures.  But that is no substitute for the sights and sounds and profundities of the mass congregation of the faithful, and for the joy, comfort and solace that it, and it alone, can bring to so many people.

Well Sophy, for those for whom it really is an irreplaceable source of joy, comfort and solace it will presumably continue, and to the extent that it declines it will be because fewer find it to be so for them.  You could almost say that it will find its natural market level, as does supply and demand for all things.

You have a point I suppose Theo.  Perhaps faith will become just a small gem in a sea of pastiche.

I suspect that Professor Dawkins would see science and atheism as the gems and faith as the sea of pastiche.  Remember also Sophy that, as he constantly reminds us, though faith may well have been a source of all those good things for so many, it has been also a source of great strife and savagery causing immense suffering to millions through the ages, and continues to be so today.

Well, yes Theo, but is it right to assume, as Richard Dawkins seems to do, that without religion the world would have suffered less strife and savagery?  Evolution has been a Darwinian fight for the survival of the fittest.  To survive in that fight, groups have had to be bigger, stronger, more united and better able to cooperate and persevere than their enemies.  Religious faith has not been what has made them enemies, it has been what has enabled them to be strong against their enemies. It has simply been the rallying banner.  I see no reason to believe that such rivalries would not have been every bit as savage even if every man on earth had been a convinced atheist.  Indeed, to the extent that the quality of mercy has been an element in much religious faith, it is arguable that such conflicts might have been even more savage without it.

So you think that the onslaught on Islam by the Crusaders back in medieval times; the retaliatory onslaught on Christendom by Islamist extremists today; Hitler’s attempt to annihilate the Jews; the Jews’ wars against Britain and the Arabs to recover and hold Israel; the catholic versus protestant killing fields of Northern Ireland; the Buddhist versus Hindu killing fields of Sri Lanka - you think that all these things would have happened under different banners even if none of these faiths had existed?

I am saying that fear, suspicion, greed, hunger, envy, cultural rivalry, racism, nationalism, expansionism, colonialism and imperialism, were the underlying driving forces for all that strife, and that strife on a similar scale would probably have happened throughout those times and across those areas, driven by all the same factors, even in an atheistic world.  In fact Nazism was atheistic and so is Communism, so there is no lack of blood on the hands of atheism.

So you believe that if anything faith reduces rather than increases the likelihood of suffering in the world?

Yes, I do believe that, especially when you bear in mind the role that faith plays in the delivery of relief to those suffering from conflicts and disasters.

You seem to be coming to something of an ‘on balance’ conclusion here though Sophy.  I do not get the impression that you believe that the triumph of atheism would make all that much difference to the scale of suffering in the world one way or the other?  That being so, perhaps it should be welcomed as the triumph of rationalism and science over ignorance and superstition?

The trouble is, Theo, as I have said, atheism cannot triumph.  The real struggle is not between atheism and faith but between moderation and extremism within and between faiths.  It is only within the more moderate and humane faiths that atheism is advancing, leaving the more extreme and inhumane ones strengthened.  If we are not careful we will end up with the triumph not of atheism but of religious totalitarianism.

So you believe that Professor Dawkins and his like are making us all more vulnerable to such religious extremism?

It is a little unkind to pin it all on them.  I do not believe that Mr Dawkins and his acolytes can claim much of the credit for the progress of atheism.  The central causes are the advance of materialism and of recreational sex and the withdrawal from state education of religious ritual.

So you think governments should order a return of morning religious assemblies in schools, take publishing controls back to the days before the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial, and bring back austerity?

You know as well as I do Theo that things have gone much too far for any of those to be politically possible.

So nothing can or should be done?  We just carry on as we are, managing the decline of faith and the advance of atheism as best we can and fighting off the attacks from the religious extremists?

All my instincts tell me that something can and must be done.  The more we carry on as we are, the more we can and will be depicted by the religious extremists as amoral, self-indulgent, soulless, corrupt materialists. They see themselves as having destroyed godless Soviet communism in Afghanistan and to be embarked now on the task of destroying what they see as equally godless Western capitalism. Their ability to recruit fanatics to that cause will be strengthened, and our ability to give our young people a sense of meaning and purpose in life and a sense of belonging to the wider community will continue to be weakened – the recent riots, arson and looting  show just how serious that problem has already become – if we fail to achieve a moral re-awakening based on deeply and widely held and promulgated beliefs of the kind that state-supported religion has provided in the past.  Without that, the day may eventually come when all this ends in upheaval and suffering on a scale that we all thought we had consigned to history.

So what, Sophy, is the something that can and must be done?

What is clear Theo is that for any such belief system to be widely embraced it must not:

compel us to attribute powers, motives and methods to a god which, if true, would make that god no more deserving of our love and loyalty than the most heartless and violent parent or tyrant imaginable;

be incompatible with modern science;

be offensive to or in sharp conflict with existing religious faiths and traditions or with political ideologies of left or right, so that all can embrace it as a wider spiritual and philosophical house seeing their own traditional beliefs as metaphors for it or it as metaphors for them.

Surely Theosophists have been striving for over a century to create such a wider spiritual and philosophical house with little success outside their own Society?

Theosophy has evolved in such complex ways that it is quite beyond the ability of more than a small intellectual minority to grasp and embrace with the kind of joy and enthusiasm which is essential for the mass spiritual reawakening we need.  It is perhaps more of an attempt at a synthesis of faiths than the creation of a new but compatible one.  And despite its own admirable efforts to reconcile its beliefs with science, it is perhaps a little too preoccupied with occultism and mysticism to meet the condition of compatibility with modern science.

Perhaps then Confucius is a better model?

If Theosophy is a little too occult and mystic for our purpose, Confucianism is perhaps not occult and mystic enough.  Certainly there is much that is excellent in its value system that one would like to see widely disseminated in our society, but it perhaps has about it rather too much of the behavioural lecture of the school master and not enough of the inspirational revelation of the seer to achieve that.

So you could perhaps add two more conditions to your list.  Your belief system must be:

          simple enough for all to grasp easily;

          inspirational and revelatory enough to be a cause of joy and 
          celebration?

Yes.  Indeed, if people are able in their minds to link the new belief system allegorically with their traditional faiths, it should be possible for them to use their traditional forms of religious celebration in allegorical ways in multi-faith gatherings, each faith bringing its own music, poetry and art to the party, so to speak, to be shared with all.  Would it not be wonderful if morning assemblies in all our state schools could take this form?

So far so good Sophy.  But from where is this revelation to come?

It is easier to say from where it must not come.  It must not come from someone claiming to be a new prophet in receipt of a divine message, partly because that will immediately invite conflict with existing religions, but more importantly because it would ask us to put faith in one person rather than in an idea that is as close as possible to being a self-evident truth.  Neither must it depend for its genesis on assumptions about divine powers which, if true, would imply divine actions or inaction making that divinity undeserving of our love and loyalty.

That does not seem to get us much further forward Sophy.

Well Theo, we have set out the parameters.  What we can do now is invite suggestions for a new belief system that would fit within them.  If many differing but equally appealing fits are proposed we might have to accept defeat, since no one of them is likely to have universal appeal.  But if only one fit can be found it seems to me that we have the basis for a revelation as profound and persuasive as any claimed divine message.

And what if no one can come up with even one fit?  Do we not have to accept defeat then?

Well not until the ends of time Theo, because so long as there is a tomorrow there will always be the possibility of a fit. 

That is a long time to wait Sophy.

Yes.  But we do not need to do so. I think I may have a fit now.

Tell me then Sophy, what is your suggestion for a belief system that fits all your parameters?

I invite you to assume that there are two possible states in which our universe can exist.  One is as a single entity in which positives, negatives, dimensions, energy and matter do not exist because they are held together in a state of total harmony, total beauty and total knowledge.  This non-physical single entity, this state of total perfection, is God. Let us call it God the One. 

If this perfect entity is shattered, the cataclysm of our universe as we know it comes into being.  Where all before was peace, all is now a mighty struggle by the forces released to recombine.  That struggle can proceed only by the quelling of one force by another; by the consumption of matter by matter; of life by life.  This is the struggle of what I suggest we call God the Many to recombine into God the One.  We are all part of God the Many, all swept up in that struggle.  God influences events in our lives in the sense that all events are a consequence of that struggle, but only in that sense.

The ultimate objective is the restoration of total harmony, total beauty and total knowledge in God the One.  Everything we do in life that creates harmony and beauty and love and expands knowledge is God’s work, and everything we do in life that creates ignorance, hate, discord, pain, suffering and destruction is in conflict with God’s will – it is, if you like, the work of the Devil.

The great paradox is that we cannot even exist without conflict.  Energy has to clash with energy; matter has to clash with matter; life has to consume life. Our very development as a life form has been the product of a Darwinian fight for the survival of the fittest.  This great paradox is the cataclysmic tragedy resulting from the sundering of God the One into God the Many.  Only by the restoration of God the One can it be resolved.  All we can do as part of God the Many is embrace as our golden rule that it is our duty to survive and to build beauty and knowledge with the greatest degree of harmony and the minimum degree of suffering and destruction that can be achieved, using the knowledge we gain to achieve that objective to the optimum degree.  We can be sure that it is God’s will that we should do that, because only that is in harmony with the struggle of God the Many to become again God the One.

We can think of the Christian Holy Trinity as an allegorical or metaphorical reference to these states, with God the Father being God the One, God the Son being God the Many, and God the Holy Ghost being the forces struggling to restore God the One from God the Many, of which the human instinct to pursue harmony, beauty, love and knowledge is just one small part. We can see the birth of Jesus – of God’s becoming man, as metaphor for God the One becoming God the Many.  We can see his crucifixion and ascent into heaven as the Holy Spirit as metaphors for the forces within God the Many striving for restoration of God the One.

We can worship God the One with all the joy and music and poetry and art of Christian tradition, and we can pray with deep faith and fervour for His help in all that we face in our lives, not in the belief that our prayers can bring Him to our help in a direct way, but in the belief that by uniting through prayer and worship in pursuit of His will mankind can best dedicate itself to the eternal struggle of God the Many to become again God the One; can best comfort and sustain itself through all the sufferings that are an unavoidable part of that struggle; and can indeed achieve miracles and move mountains.

And what assumption do you invite us to make, Sophy, about the reasons for all this? Should we assume that God the One sundered Himself into God the Many as a deliberate act of His own will?  If so, why?  If God the One is as you suggest the state of total perfection, why should God the One choose to sunder into God the Many, only then to have to struggle for restoration?  The implication surely would have to be that it was not a deliberate act but either some kind of terrible accident or the result of negative forces – the Devil if you like – triggering the sundering.  But the concept of God the One as a state of total harmony and perfection allows no room for the occurrence of such an accident or for the existence of such a negative force either within God the One or outside God the One.  So how do we rationalise all this?

Now we are getting to the crux of the matter Theo.  There seem to be four possibilities.  The first is that it was some kind of accident.  But I think we have to reject that as being incompatible with the idea of God the One as a state of singular perfection with no internal or external pluralities.  The second is that it was the work of a separate ‘Devil’, but we have to reject that for the same reason. 

The remaining two possibilities are I think the ones we have to choose from.  One is that God the One and God the Many are in constant flux from the one to the other.  This flux is in the nature of God; it is not something God chooses to do; it is just what God is. 

The other possibility is of a similar fluxing between God the One and God the Many, but one which is not inevitable but an act of will by God the One, God the One not being an eternal state of perfection which is pointlessly sundered and then re-assembled as you suggest, but the trawling in, so to speak, of all the new beauties, harmonies, knowledge, love and peace created by God the Many, these new creations only being possible by God as God the Many, not as God the One.  Just as God the Many cannot exist without God the One, neither can God the One exist without God the Many.  Each time God the One becomes God the many, God the One too becomes a state of even more perfect bliss.  The promise of heaven for us all is to experience that eternal state of perfect bliss as God the One.  The more beauty, knowledge, love and harmony we create as God the Many, the more blissful will be the heaven of God the One for us all. 

You seem to be suggesting a faith in which we all experience eternal bliss in the heaven that is God the One even if as God the Many we have done nothing but create ugliness, ignorance, hatred and suffering.  That doesn’t seem to offer much incentive to be virtuous and creative.

The hell you are looking for Theo is here in the world of God the Many.  The role of the faithful is to minimise ugliness, ignorance, hatred and suffering by all possible means including the control and punishment of those who cause it, while maximising the creation of knowledge, peace, beauty, love and harmony in service to the greatness of God the One.  Our existence in God the One is not as reincarnations of ourselves but as God the One.  It is not reward and punishment of individuals but reward for the whole hive.

The latest scientific consensus appears to be that the universe is accelerating at an irreversible speed, so that it will end in a cold, dark whimper rather than in a great coming together.  Does this not rather break one of your basic conditions that any faith system must be compatible with science, not contradicted by it?

That is a good question Theo.  I suppose there are two possible answers to it.  The first is to say, who is to know whether the expansion of the universe is not in fact the route by which it returns to singularity?  Perhaps the ultimate destination of expanding space-time is its starting point, rather as travelling on the same axis round the globe also brings you back where you started.

The other answer involves a rather radical change to the belief system I have postulated.  This would be to say that the physical universe is merely the transmission system, not the essence, of God the Many. It is the means through which God the One becomes God the Many and draws in again to God the One all the new beauty, harmony, love, peace and knowledge that can be created only when God is The Many, not The One.  The cold, dark whimper of the ever expanding universe is no more than the skeletal remains drifting away; all that is good from it having been already assimilated into God the One, to be shared and enjoyed in their God the One state by the God the Many who created it.  The physical universe itself is not reassembled into God the One, only its virtual and virtuous products.

But Sophy, surely you postulated at the outset that those virtuous products as you call them are the result of the reassembly of the sundered perfection of God the One, which means that all knowledge, beauty, harmony, love and peace are pre-existing and then re-assembled, not newly created.  Which brings you right back does it not to the question of why God the One should as an act of will sunder into God the Many only to re-assemble ultimately into the same God the One?

Perhaps Theo we can liken the process to a kaleidoscope.  An infinite variety of combinations is possible.  Each switch of God the One to God the Many is a shake of the kaleidoscope of knowledge, beauty, harmony, love and peace; and God the One is the sum total of all the glories it produces, so that all can be enjoyed by all the manifestations of God the One.  Only through God the Many can the glory of God the One be made more glorious.

But are you not now back where you started in another sense Sophy, asking that we accept the idea of a God who inflicts suffering on us all for his own ends like any dictator?

No, I am not Theo, because God the One does not stand above watching our suffering; he becomes us, God the Many, and our suffering is his suffering.  That is what makes the Christian beliefs of Christ as God’s only son sacrificed for us; Christ’s resurrection; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost – that is what makes them all such apt metaphors for God the One and God the Many.  And that is why believers in God the One and God the Many could with great comfort and joy use the congregations, culture and art of Christian worship for their own worship too.

Worship without prayer presumably Sophy, for what would be the point of praying to a God the One who is for now God the Many and unable to help us anyway, either as God the One or as God the Many?

When we pray to God the One we pray to his virtual existence as all that is true, right, wise, compassionate, beautiful, peaceful, harmonious, loving and knowing within ourselves as God the Many.  By praying together we strive to bring all that together in ourselves and to rid ourselves of the false, the wrong, the foolish, the  merciless, the ugly, the warlike, the discordant, the hating and the ignorant – against, in short, the anti-Christ that is also an inevitable by-product of the sundering of God the One into God the many.  We pray in that way in a very real sense for our own salvation.  And we pray and we worship in a very real sense for the greater glory of God and for the day when God the One is again gathered in as the harvest of God the Many.

You do not seem to envisage in your belief system anything resembling a Day of Judgment?  No Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  No Second Coming?  Perhaps no end of time even, just the cold, dark whimper of an ever expanding universe?

Perhaps the nearest thing to any of that in my postulation would be the next sundering of God the One into God the Many, signalling that the harvest is gathered in and it is time to plant again.  A new universe expanding and driving away the skeleton of the old.

It does not sound as though we will have long as God the One to enjoy the harvest of God the Many if God the One is to sunder again no sooner than the harvest is in?

Perhaps these are words that have meaning for us only in space-time.   Perhaps we should assume a constant pulse between God the One and God the Many in which what we experience in God the Many as a single life within aeons of space-time we experience in God the One only as the briefest of absences from a glorious sunrise of eternally expanding knowledge, beauty and pleasure.

Now you are undermining your idea of God the One suffering with us as God the Many rather than inflicting our suffering on us for His own ends.

Well, perhaps there is no choice.  Perhaps God the One cannot exist without God the Many, and God the Many cannot exist without God the One.  Perhaps you either have both or you have nothing at all.