Great points.

Two phrases jump out at me in this sentence: “ the objective seeker” and “religious experience comes from the same source.” I would raise the question, is there such a thing as an “objective seeker” given what I have pointed out about the personal and cultural filters affecting perception…and in my mind that includes scientists as much as anyone else.

You are right that the use of the term “objective seeker” is a bit touchy. Perhaps there is a better word for the type of individual I’m talking about. Basically what I mean are seekers who attempt to be aware of their own subjective biases through study and self reflection. This offers those individuals the opportunity to step back, to some degree from particular points of reference, to some more basic level, see their own biases more clearly and perhaps make alterations in their perceptions and interpretations. For some people there are kairotic moments in their lives where events either internal or external seem to force this stepping back to see the landscape from a new perspective and “retool”.

The concept of religious experience coming from the same source implies there are sources for the religious experience and there are sources for experience that are not religious… that it is unitary in some fashion, similar to there being “something out there” that is red and has a particular shape that we call “a rose.” In other words conceptualizing religious experience as being something observed by an observer. Maybe there are no non-religious experiences and it is the quality of the experience and the self-transcendent mental stance of the individual perceiver that establishes an experience as being religious.

Quite often “religious experiences” are thought of as something particularly dramatic and earth shaking. However, if there is an ultimate basis for reality and religious experiences are considered events that reveal something of that ultimate basis, then it is true that there are really no non-religious experiences. All experiences have the potential to open one up to ultimate reality where that experience has an impact in one’s subsequent perception, thinking or action. That said, there are experiences that have a different “flavor” to them. Paul Tillich called these types of people,events, places, etc “transparent to the divine”. Of course, this is all in the eye of the beholder. For some those moments of transparency seem to come only at certain times and with dramatic events. It’s like being shaken awake from a slumber where there is realization that there is something fundamentally ultimate to reality that is there to be probed both internally and through action. For others, probably based on personality type to a large degree, almost every thought, event, place or person seems to emmanate from the divine.

The issue of “what we now know of neurobiology” and the “diddling by God” concept seems to imply there are no internal experiences that are not neurologically and physically based. I personally do not feel that that is the case and the issue of what I am, what sources of experience I have access to and my personal ontology goes well beyond the mundane, physical world our bodies reside in. Of course that is the result of my meaning-making interfaced with my perceptual filters and applied to my experiences. However, the same can be said for the ontology of “only neuron”-based sources of experience as well.

This gets into the difficult mind-body problem which in my view evaporates if one has an ontology that its all mind. However, we do name things that we find in the brain like neurons, dendrites, neurotransmitters, etc. and draw correlations between those terms and our experiences. Stick a person in an MRI an show them an image and certain components of the brain light up. Does this then necessarily lead to a “nothing but” stance? Only if one adopts a “svabhava” ontology where there are these “little” things” that make up reality and have their own self-natures. If that is the ontology of choice then there is “nothing but” those little things. However, that position is also fraught with all sorts of logical contradictions that often lead to the denial of mind and consciousness. In this post the point I was making about “diddling” with neurons was related to the literalism of scripture. For those who take them as “holy writ” then there two options to explaining their origin. Either there is some sort of “separate mind” that received and recorded divine speech or the divine somehow “diddled” with the brain to encode divine thougts in the neural structures so they could then be archived.

As to whether or not there is some sort of self , perception, mind or whatever beyond the physical and mundane, my response would be to reject the very premise of “physical and mundance” as ontologically valid. As a monist these terms do not represent an ontological distinction but rather a terminology that has taken root because of the rise of atomism in Greece during the axial age. If all is mind or consciousness then the terms physical or material may be useful in some types of discourse but they can also be ontologically misleading.

Very nice post, Clyde.

One way to approach this question is, I think, from the standpoint of religious experience. Now, what I mean by religious experience is any experience that is interpreted as revealing something about the ultimate basis or structure of reality.

I would agree that individual experience would have to be at least one of the fundamental bases of religious frameworks.

But even if religious experience is considered the only fundamentally sound basis for religious formulations, why are there differences in religious philosophy? I suggest that although the source of religious experience may be sui generis, the interpretations are not.

I also agree with you that issues of interpretation are a critical component of experience. Even if a holy writ were materialized without any human contribution there would still be the human experience of the materialization or the finding of the materialization and the making of interpretations.

To me the issue of differences in interpretation (perceptions and meaning making) is a necessary additional fundamental component to the formation of religious frameworks. These need to become active functions for any experience (religious or otherwise) to not be still-born. Not that there would be much likelihood that experience is likely to stop at the sensation level, since we humans are major meaning makers. However we also cannot understand something without being able to relate to it, which brings in associations, other experiences, and learning and those in turn grow within the matrix of cultural frameworks, values, beliefs, behavior patterns, languages, etc. or the cultural veneer which along with personality factors creates a filter through which sensations are experienced on its way to meaning something to us. These filters influence the perception of all experiences (whether internal or external, religious or mundane) for all humans who have survived past being an infant. This statement of course is my framework based on my experience as viewed through my filters. My perspective is that of a phenomenologist.

I believe the issue of religious experience as a basis for forming religious sentiment has become particularly acute in this age of religious pluralism.

I would go so far as to say that given the unique individual nature of people and their cultures and the filters these provide, the experiences they denominate as being of a religious or spiritual nature are by definition going to be perceived in different frameworks. Considering that institutions serve the role of normalizing the frameworks of their members, they function, in my mind, very similarly to individuals in their need for constancy, integrity, and self-perpetuation and out of that arise different orthodoxies. Some orthodoxies are constructed of frameworks that are more flexible and some more rigid than others.

It seems to me that the issue of religious differences is an issue mostly for the more rigid orthodoxies (and they are the ones that promote the impression that religion, as defined in their framework, is in fact the last or best statement) and for individuals who either feel threatened by the questions raised by those with different frameworks or for individuals who have left their orthodox religion of origin but are still in the orthodox mindset who are pursuing the construction of their own personalized framework. This latter problem surfaces due to the orthodox mindset providing a tendency to influence them to take an “either-or” approach to finding The Truth and it being fleshed out with details—an attempt to replicate the past orthodoxy they no longer subscribe to.

Religious pluralism calls into question the truth and authority of a particular tradition.

This raises the question of how truth and authority is to be determined. In my mind, authority always resides with the individual– like a birthright that cannot be truly given away. When authority is assigned to any one or anything it constitutes a delegation of that authority by the individual involved. In other words we can try to give that authority away as much as we want but it always comes back to the fact that we made the choice of assigning the authority. So it is a responsibility that cannot be escaped. The pursuit of The Truth is in my opinion a goal not a destination and I think that its nature is dynamic and growing. It is also in the eye of the beholder. It behooves the individual to be as aware as possible of their values, assumptions, and the clarity of their personal criteria used for testing hypotheses to avoid confounding the issue and leading themselves farther from a functional quest for the truth.

…it can create quite a quandary for the objective seeker who, for whatever reasons, seeks some religious grounding in their life. Perhaps the best we can do is seek some sort of explanation why even if religious experience comes from the same source, the interpretations may vary.

Two phrases jump out at me in this sentence: “ the objective seeker” and “religious experience comes from the same source.” I would raise the question, is there such a thing as an “objective seeker” given what I have pointed out about the personal and cultural filters affecting perception…and in my mind that includes scientists as much as anyone else.

The concept of religious experience coming from the same source implies there are sources for the religious experience and there are sources for experience that are not religious… that it is unitary in some fashion, similar to there being “something out there” that is red and has a particular shape that we call “a rose.” In other words conceptualizing religious experience as being something observed by an observer. Maybe there are no non-religious experiences and it is the quality of the experience and the self-transcendent mental stance of the individual perceiver that establishes an experience as being religious.

Your distinctions of three categories of ontology–classic theism involving a division between creator and creation; a unity with illusionary divisions; and qualified monism involving aspects of the whole existing within the whole—are very good points and can be very functional in clarifying differences in interpretations and behavioral implications.

It can be interpreted that this world is, in some way, a corruption of being or a tragic consequence of the transition from essential being to existential being as Tillich describes it. This interpretation leads to the need for salvations schemes.

This also provides what could be another component of a taxonomy of ontologies. That component could be categories based on the answers to, “why are we here?” and “what is the purpose of life?” minus the details of the specific religions.

For many people it [authority] is granted because the scripture is thought to have come directly from ultimate reality. In Christianity this is biblical literalism and in Vedanta Hinduism the Vedas are often thought to be ?ruti (”what is heard”). However, this view presents a problem for many educated individuals because of what we now know of neurobiology. This amount of detail would seem to require lots of diddling by God with synapse gaps, dendrites, etc. The more moderate and liberal branches of these traditions grant them normative authority and do not take scripture as “holy writ” but some still claim that many striking events are literally true (i.e. Virgin birth, bodily resurrection).

I pick up on two or three different things in the above. Literalism I take as being how scripture is read, i.e. “if it says this is the word of God, then it is.” Literalism in reading would also apply to the list of “striking events” such as Virgin birth, etc. In which events are seen as literal as opposed metaphoric or some other implication than the literal description. Literalism is an application of an interpretation/perception onto the experience of reading the external content of the scripture.

The issue of “what we now know of neurobiology” and the “diddling by God” concept seems to imply there are no internal experiences that are not neurologically and physically based. I personally do not feel that that is the case and the issue of what I am, what sources of experience I have access to and my personal ontology goes well beyond the mundane, physical world our bodies reside in. Of course that is the result of my meaning-making interfaced with my perceptual filters and applied to my experiences. However, the same can be said for the ontology of “only neuron”-based sources of experience as well.

I totally agree with your closing statement.

Ultimately it will be up to the person to decide which, if any, interpretations they accept.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in this blog!

Sorry for the delay in responding. I’ve been out of touch for a week and trying to catch up.

I have to admit I didn’t follow your arguments very well, probably because my lexicon is not at vast as yours. However, I’ll comment on this.

Alas, I’d say that Gilkey did not prevail over Barth because Gilkey won the war of advocating plurality for its own sake; but, the real plurality that won out over Gilkey’s plurality amounted to Friedman’s econometric of rational choice becoming insinuated into consumer theology itself, in which consumers buy a theology of their choice.

My knowledge of Gilkey is not very deep so I can’t comment on his reasons or rationale for promoting plurality. However, what ever reasons there were for or against plurality in religion, it is inevitable at this point in history. The promotion of arbitrary absolutes in religion have evaporated with the advent of the contemporary style of reasoning and employment of evidence and evidentiary intuition. Absolutes pontificated by the few no longer carry the sway they use to. Many will bow to authority whether it be a putative scriptural authority or from religious leaders, but not all. Rational choice in economics is, as in religion, the result of people opting to process information themselves and making their own choices instead of subjugating themselves to others without rigor. Whether this is good or bad for the individual or society, I cannot say because individuals are often ill equipped to make good choices outside their specialties. The gestalt of all these personal and communal choices makes for a complex “mess” with results that are uncertain. Only time will tell but my guess is that the “organism” of the world may be headed for dramatic change over the next century that will effect religious sentiment, economics, and life style. If the human race survives, it is my hope that the global “organism” will be healthier and more grounded in some beneficent moral bearing. Religious pluralism can play an important part if it does not become radicalized. Throughout history major change has come about through trial. I am of the opinion that the greatest trial of all for our planet is upon us. I’m also guardedly optimistic that this coming trial will further the telos of the universe.

Steve

I drafted a post for your blog. A post on Gilkey and your general comments on circularity in theology. I hit some sort of hyperlink that landed my post in another blog. No clue how. I previewed my post on that other blog and I noticed some new notes about the pope in the main header. I figured I was still on your blog and that you added some pope-notes. So I added some pope-notes too! You know, for Gilkey’s sake in the comity of pluralism! So, I posted. On the wrong blog!

Thus proving your point about circularity in theology without ever landing it on the right blog!

Let’s see if I can do it right this time. I’m trying real hard, so be patient with me.

I still want to post some Gilkey observations. But not fully stripped of my pope-notes.

Talk about circularity. Wipe that grin off your face and enjoy the exponential complexity in engineering.

Here goes.

Steve, if this paragraph on the pope is a total ramble and irrelevant on your blog, please forgive me. It’s a note that slides into your Gilkey love-fest on pluralism. Please bear with me. My accidental post on the other blog included my observations of Douthat’s NYT OP-ED on Benedict’s encyclical “Caritas.” Benedict best shot at pluralism so far still grounds theology in economic solidarity with moral conservatism, and links the dignity of labor to marriage, and nods to the redistribution of wealth, and decentralized governance. Thus, Benedict is still not pluralist enough to riff off of Weber’s WASP work efficiency; but, he’s in the conversation.

One reason why this sidebar is relevant to your Gilkey note (which I want to get to) is because I noted how a Lutheran science-geek-qua-theologian friend (posting elsewhere, and influenced by the Catholic charismatic renewal) has noted that the economics department at Norte Dame no longer wants to intermix econometrics and theometrics (applied empirical theology) because Norte Dame is selling out to neoclassical economics, leaving the pope’s “Caritas” hanging like a Vox Clamantis, in the desert of economic discourse.

I noted in response that where I went to school, God’s name was Milton. Not the poet. But Friedman. Now Norte Dame bows down. What I wanted to post here was that at the same school where Friedman held court with the god-of-rational choice, Gilkey held his own tout court in a class on Barth.

Gilkey wanted to slash and burn (this is a bit too harsh) Barth’s claim of having attained a “presuppositionless” theology (see Barth’s, “Evangelical Theology’). Gilkey says Barth wanted theology immune from analyses and metricization. Yeah, a theology immune from democratized rational choice and econometrics. At least, at God’s heart of hearts. Gilkey assaults Barth’s desire for a theology immune from metricization by the sheer strength of a Word of God so active, that this Rambo-active Word blows away human presuppositions. Alas, I’d say that Gilkey did not prevail over Barth because Gilkey won the war of advocating plurality for its own sake; but, the real plurality that won out over Gilkey’s plurality amounted to Friedman’s econometric of rational choice becoming insinuated into consumer theology itself, in which consumers buy a theology of their choice.

A result Gilkey would find ironic. At best. Imprisoned we are. Back at the compound of economic choice.

This irony takes me to your comments about circularity in theology.

Sure, you’re right. Circularites hold in theology. Like derivatives in econometrics. Or, like Ptolemaic epicycles of small groups of minor Barthians adding epicycles to Barth’s active Word to make the Word according to Barth work out in a pluralistic world. Or like the very few economists left among Catholics applying the epicycles of heterodox economics to the pope’s Love.

But at the same time that Norte Dame sells out to the god of rational choice, I’m thinking that theology becomes simultaneously circular and genetic. Forget the stupid popularization of “DNA” in church planting theology. I’m thinking of genetic theology in the sense of allowing for random mutations that project a broken orthogonal direction (maybe an asymptotic) in theology empirically derived. Mutations which allow Popes to talk to us in Caritas. And Barthians to pontificate. Mutations which result in the fact that Gilkey didn’t wax Barth after all, except maybe in an amused classroom between icy stone walls at U. C., but not given the relative references to them in popular literature.

The circularity in theology is twisted. Maybe in broken helices after all.

Plurality is here to stay. So long as it’s ramified through the market place of a theometrics of rational choice. Which is not plurality at all. Which goes to Gilkey on nature: maybe Freeman Dyson is correct in saying that the new religious ecumenism will emerge and finally hold us together, in environmentalism. I’m not so sure. If actual future praxes in environmentalism follow our north American lead, that is, following in the circles (your circularity) or the legal epicycles of our history under the Environmental Protection Act, then the new ecumenism of environmentalism may just be a repeat of “rational market” choices, of selling pollution rights.

Though I’m not a buyer of ecological holism, Lynn Margulis has said that “Gaia Is a Tough Bitch.” I’m not sure whether Gilkey is right about our concern for nature, that is, whether our concern for nature is really an empirically stable and fixed trait of concern. Beyond the cheap selling of pollution rights. In a new whoring of theometrics and econometrics. Maybe Margulis (not Dyson and Gilkey) is right in saying that Gaia will bitch-slap us back before we care enough. Like Sen said too in warning the Pakistanis and Punjabs against nuclear war. Maybe Gaia will slap us hard and fast, before the epicycles of Barth’s active Word. With all due respect to Gilkey.

[This appears different (but not very different) from your preferred version of panentheism, in which god is in all of nature but exists outside it as well. Here it seems you do not address whether there is any Mind (or God) outside of the Unity. Maybe you have replaced a previous panentheistic inclination with this newer view of objective idealism.]

Let me use my metaphor again to explain better what I mean. My system is monistic. God being “outside” in my panentheism would go something like this. Let’s use JRR Tolkein as an example. He had a mind and created his fantasy world. That world and its characters were aspects of his mind but not all of it. So in this metaphor there is only God but our creation is an aspects of the One.

Thanks for your explanation.

No, I am not familiar with much of that philosophy. I doubt that I am capable of understanding the long article by Chalmers. (I would have trouble mastering the technical vocabulary. You may not realize the extent to which his language is technical & difficult for someone like me because you are so well-trained in philosophy.)

But I do think I understand your ontology. Reality is a Unity, and prayer and any “results” from prayer is just a part of this Unity. Everything is a part of this Unity, including Mind (God), so Mind really cannot intervene in something “outside” Mind (or outside the Unity). There is nothing outside Mind or outside Unity).

[This appears different (but not very different) from your preferred version of panentheism, in which god is in all of nature but exists outside it as well. Here it seems you do not address whether there is any Mind (or God) outside of the Unity. Maybe you have replaced a previous panentheistic inclination with this newer view of objective idealism.]

Intuitively I feel there are some problems with your idea, but that might just be because the idea is new to me. Perhaps it will seem like a plausible ontology when I think about it some more. I certainly can’t put any objections to the theory into writing without giving more thought to it and perhaps doing some minor research. So I would like to get back to you on this later with my questions.

I’ll work on this as I have time. But please let me know if I have characterized your view incorrectly. That way I won’t spend my time addressing a view you haven’t presented.

Since my years at Boston College I’ve been aware of ontological questions. But I spent several decades only rarely thinking about them. When I have thought about them, it was always in a pretty shallow way. Otherwise, I have assumed reality is as it appeared to my consciousness, as consisting of my conscious self and some other things outside myself. My career was spent applying the scientific method to that “order at work in the cosmos” which you acknowledge can be probed using the method.

George

Yes, I agree with the possibility that “reality” is all in my mind. Everything may just boil down to chemicals and electrical discharges in my “brain,” if I have one. I know I exist, but I cannot be sure of you or anything else. Therefore, I too am not awfully thrilled by the concept of “law of nature”. I have Buddhist friends who sometimes make me want to stop using the phrase. But I spent many years as a scientist, and I got pretty used to thinking I was observing things outside myself. Whether it was all a “dream” of some type, I can’t be sure. But a lot of stuff appeared to make sense to me.

This is not what objective idealism means. What you talk about would be more like solipsism. Here’s a pretty good definition of objective idealism:

http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/objective-idealism.php

Since I don’t know how much you know about absolute idealism I’ll ramble on a bit about it. My apologies if you already know this.

A metaphor I often use to describe this is Author/Story. The author is a mind but the author can create other minds in his own. Those minds are aspects of his but there is really only one mind. The author creates the story but at times (and I have talk to other offers about this) the characters surprise the author in what they do or think (free will?).

One question in science is “what constitutes reality?”. Probably the first materialists were the Carvakan philosophers in the Indus Valley (India) around 600 BCE. They claimed that reality is constitute by “little things”, later called atoms by the Greeks, that have a self-nature (svabhava). As such, for materialists reality is constituted by these material objects acting out their self-natures. This ontology (atomism/materialism) caught on in Greece and eventually became the prevailing view in the West and later in science. However, there were also those who rejected the materialist view and promoted some form of idealism. The pre-Socratic philosopher, Anaxagoras was probably the first in the West to promote this idea. He agreed that there are “little things” but they require “Nous” or mind to be animated. Modern pragmatic philosopher Charles Peirce also promoted this notion. Plato was probably the most notable early idealist.

Throughout history there have been a number of idealists. Bishop Berkeley was a prominent one in Britain but his idealism was a subjective one where reality is constituted by individual minds. However, he had a problem understanding how there could be a consistent reality with all these individual minds. This lead him later in life and many others to posit an absolute mind to provide a coherent whole.

So when the question, “what constitutes reality” is posed there is not definitive answer. Although scientific categorize “little things” and their properties, it cannot explain where these properties come from. Are they ultimately cause by a “blind little something (a Planc scale string)” or Mind. With this seeming intractability it might seem impossible to choose. However, today there are some good reasons to choose Mind as the constituting cause. First in the early 20th century it was found in quantum physics that the choice a mind makes in an experiment effects the outcome. This strange factor is still in play today. Even as recently as this year Paul Davies has suggested that choices made today effect not only the present but also the past and future.

The “Hard Problem” in consciousness has also pointed away from materialism toward some sort of panpsychism or idealism. A leading philosopher of consciousness, David Chalmers, has presented powerful arguments against materialism and suggests that consciousness is fundamental to reality.

http://consc.net/papers/nature.html

The take home idea is that if reality is constituted by One Mind (God in my parlance) then there is an overarching unity where all things are aspects of the one in a communion of life. It also means that what many call “laws” are really the habit of Mind. Habits that are faithfully held to, to provide the environment where life can exist. This approach totally removes the supernatural/natural dichotomy because there is nothing to interfere with by God. So when science probes the orderliness of the cosmos what it is really exploring is the order create by Mind.

In this sense prayer is not the isolated event of an individual mind but part of the whole mind. As such, an intercessory prayer has causal effects beyond the pray-er both in the prayed for and God. If intercessory prayers are “answered” they are within God’s faithfulness to the order God maintains. However, this order is not absolute. We even see this in quantum mechanics. There is a openness deeply embedded in reality. This openness, however, is not without limits otherwise there would be chaos. Instead there are limits to openness that create just the right balance of order and novelty. This brings us back to what results one should expect from intercessory prayers? They create a change in Mind but any results will not violate that faithful balance. As such, if remission of disease does not violate that balance, then remission can occur. This also means given the importance of orderliness, one should not expect consistent radical results from intercessory prayer. Given this complexity, this is why I don’t think a scientific experience could definitively come to a conclusion about prayer, pro or con.

Thanks for replying to my comments.

You wrote, “It’s just not that simple for an ‘experiment’ to draw any definitive conclusions. First of all the experiment would have to come up with some kind of criterion to evaluate. What would that be? Blood pressure level, remission of a disease, survival vs. non-survival.”

I answer: How about whether dead, embalmed, and buried people come back to life (as in the experiment I outline below), or whether children who have lost limbs in accidents acquire new limbs?

You wrote: “Besides, I, for one, don’t need a study to tell me that prayers, for the most part, don’t result in dramatic changes in the health of someone who is ill. From my point of view that would introduce “magic” and is not part of my worldview.”

I answer: Yes, when I read all your posts I did see that we are really not too far apart on the “supernatural” things many church-goers are promised and expect. No supernatural is a part of my worldview. For some decades now I’ve been a freethinker in the sense of not accepting authority alone over reason. Of course I know I understand relatively little, but I go with what I do see and understand.

You wrote: “The scientific method works well for drawing definitive conclusions for some things and not for others. It basically relies on reductionism to isolate causes and effects so they are manageable. When things get complex with lots of interrelated causes and effects, conclusions can be interpreted all over the place by different researchers. Just witness ecology, psychology, sociology, global warming, etc.”

I reply: It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to conduct experiments in psychology and sociology using the scientific method. But, yes, you are right that there are some complex questions which the scientific method has not conclusively answered yet. But that doesn’t mean that the method isn’t working, as one of its purposes is to show that hypotheses are not correct. It can do that many times before narrowing down things to the point where a single hypothesis is deemed the conclusive answer to a question.

I will skip a point you made for a moment to answer something you wrote near the end. You said, “My ontology is an objective idealism so I don’t even use the phrase ‘law of nature’. However, I do believe that there is an order at work in the cosmos that creates the possibility of life and to a certain extent can be probed with the scientific method to give us a sense of how things work. However, if reality is constituted by Mind then there will be limitations on what can be gleaned from just looking at and analyzing repeatable phenomena.”

Yes, I agree with the possibility that “reality” is all in my mind. Everything may just boil down to chemicals and electrical discharges in my “brain,” if I have one. I know I exist, but I cannot be sure of you or anything else. Therefore, I too am not awfully thrilled by the concept of “law of nature”. I have Buddhist friends who sometimes make me want to stop using the phrase. But I spent many years as a scientist, and I got pretty used to thinking I was observing things outside myself. Whether it was all a “dream” of some type, I can’t be sure. But a lot of stuff appeared to make sense to me.

Now to go back a bit, regarding your statement, “I just don’t think any definitive conclusion pro or con can be made about whether or not intercessory prayer is efficacious. What we have are anecdotal instances that may sway one’s opinion one way or another but that is not conclusive.”

I reply with the following:

Steve, you are not claiming that theological miracles (the kind in which some theologians would say a “law of nature” was “contravened” or “suspended” or “over-ridden”) occur, but only that we cannot come to a conclusion whether prayers are efficacious. So some of the rest of my reply will not apply to you. However, since I believe that we can know for certain that prayer is not efficacious, I would like to give you my standard reply regarding prayer’s efficacy.

Miracles and Measuring the Efficacy of Prayer

Everything one really needs to know about the efficacy of prayer can be found at http://www.religionandtheology.org/amputees.html

And yet I pray. I even pray intercessory prayers of petition for miracles or the nearest thing to them. There’s sufficient reason to do that at times, but it isn’t because the prayers are efficacious. (I think you’ve said that repeatedly yourself.)

The Traditional Double-blind Study

Traditionally, Christians have been encouraged to believe in the efficacy of prayer. This has led to attempts to measure prayer’s efficacy by the use of double-blind studies. Typically, such studies are conducted in the following way. A statistically sufficient number of sick people are divided into two matched groups. Prayers are said for the healing of the members of one of the two groups, but not offered for the members of the second group. The members of the two groups do not know whether prayers were offered on their behalf. Without knowing which group was prayed for, an external authority conducts an independent examination into the frequencies and speeds of healings among members of the two groups. Only after the independent determination of the numbers and speeds of healings of the members of the two groups, all experimental data is gathered together and analyzed. A judgment is then made regarding the efficacy of prayer.

An Improved Double-blind Study

As some people have pointed out, it would be possible to design an improved test to measure the efficacy of prayer. The above-described double-blind study could be a good test, but it includes a variable that would be easy to eliminate. After all, sick people either do or don’t recover, and recover at various rates, for a large variety of reasons having nothing to do with supernatural intervention in response to prayers. Instead of dividing sick people randomly into two groups, and having one group prayed for, and the other not prayed for, without either group knowing which group it is, and independently measuring the numbers and speeds of recoveries in the two groups, it has been suggested that one could do the following.

Divide dead people into two groups. Because people sometimes only appear to be dead, use only people who have already been embalmed, or maybe who have been embalmed and buried. Have the dead in one group prayed for, that they would come back to life. But do not have the dead in the other group prayed for. Compare the percentages of dead who come back to life in the two groups. When an embalmed dead person comes back to life, supernatural intervention can pretty safely be presumed. Such revitalizations are theological miracles, not just “Biblical miracles” (“signs” or “wonders” to show power or inspire awe). Revitalizations of dead people would be absolutely contrary to the known laws of nature as we know them. Factors other than supernatural intervention could almost certainly be discounted.

If the experiment is done as suggested, you might come to the same conclusion a person I know came to several years ago. For many years he’s had a standing offer to tithe to the church of anyone who can light a match by saying a prayer. So far he has never had to tithe to a church because the match was lighted.

Objections to the Improved Experiment

Let’s look at a couple of likely objections to this suggested experiment.

First, one might say that the suggested experiment asks too much of God. To that is replied that it should not be one whit more difficult for God to raise an embalmed dead person to life than it is for God to more speedily heal a sick person. After all, are not we talking about the God who created the entire universe and holds it in his/her hand, so-to-speak, and does that with great ease? Could such a God find anything too difficult?

A second objection that might be given is that such a test tempts God to perform a miracle in order to prove himself. It is sometimes said that God will never do that. Reference may be made to Satan’s temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. The answers to this objection would be the following.

(a) The temptations in the wilderness were a special case in which Satan, not a human, was suggesting that Jesus specifically perform miracles that would undermine God’s plan and accomplish Satan’s desire. Jesus would have lost stature had he fallen for Satan’s treachery. But the prayers in the suggested experiment would be said by humans who are not in competition with God, and the prayers would be intended to bring God glory rather than to harm God’s reputation.

(b) Jesus did perform signs and wonders to vindicate, or prove, himself before humans. Look, for example, at Matthew 9:2-8, esp. v. 6 (“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” Then he said to the paralytic, ‘Get up, take up your mat and go home.’” – NIV)

Third, we do have those NT verses in which Jesus promises, “If you ask anything in my name, My Father will do it for you” and “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed . . . ,” and so on, implying that all sincere prayers can and will be granted.”

The Real Reason for Objections to the Improved Experiment

Anyone who has spent much time in Christian churches should realize the real reason for objections to the improved experiment. It is because theological miracles, the kind of miracles in which a law of nature is contravened, are just not taken seriously today. When it comes to theological miracles, Christians very rarely take prayerful action on such promises as, “If you ask anything in my name, My Father will do it for you.” And theological miracles are almost never prayed for with much hope or expectation that the prayer will be answered affirmatively. On those occasions when such prayers are said, it is usually in desperation, because in the matters most important to us – like the health of a loved one - the smallest hope is better than none. Only a person either extremely religious or very desperate could fail to recognize the presumption in requesting God to suspend a law of nature on behalf of a sinner confessedly unworthy.

Somewhat paradoxically, ministers in fundamentalist churches are often both the loudest proponents of praying for theological miracles and also the least likely to pray for supernatural intervention in matters where it would seem they would have great interest in doing so. Why don’t they, for example, ask God in prayer to miraculously and unmistakably let all of us humans know which one of many thousands of versions of “his inerrant word” is the right one? Some versions even have several whole books that other versions don’t have. If the Bible were truly all God’s word, we should naturally expect God to have an interest in preserving and promoting an accurate version, and to desire to make men/women reluctant to alter it. At the very least, following the production of all these versions of “his word,” you’d think he would unmistakably make clear to all of us which one is correct. This is a prayer that fundamentalist ministers should quite eagerly pray, since praying for God’s revelation to mankind to actually be recognized by mankind would certainly be praying for something within God’s will.

Steve, as I said above, I know some of this argument is against a straw man and not applicable to you. After all, you didn’t say that the theological miracles happen. You just wrote that we cannot be sure about the efficacy of prayer.

George Desnoyers

Thanks for the comments.

[Your statement that “This is because if prayer is efficacious beyond some psychological factor, it seems to violate naturalistic sensibilities.” is dead wrong. You need to subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer magazine. The observable phenomena (and/or the lack of observable phenomena) in prayer experiments can be explained naturally.]

As I’ve mentioned before, I think being skeptical of certain claims is healthy. Accordingly, I am also skeptical about so-called empirical efforts to affirm or disconfirm the efficacy of intercessory prayer. It’s just not that simple for an “experiment” to draw any definitive conclusions. First of all the experiment would have to come up with some kind of criterion to evaluate. What would that be? Blood pressure level, remission of a disease, survival vs. non-survival. Unless the assumption is that for confirmation there must be some overt statistical divergence between those prayed for or not, then there are too many factors to consider for any conclusion to be drawn. Besides, I for one, don’t need a study to tell me that prayers, for the most part, don’t result in dramatic changes in the health of someone who is ill. From my point of view that would introduce “magic” and is not part of my worldview. The scientific method works well for drawing definitive conclusions for some things and not for others. It basically relies on reductionism to isolate causes and effects so they are manageable. When things get complex with lots of interrelated causes and effects, conclusions can be interpreted all over the place by different researchers. Just witness ecology, psychology, sociology, global warming, etc. Statistical models are used, but it is well known how dependent these models are on assumptions, data collection methods, analytic models, and even personality and ideological inclination. I just don’t think any definitive conclusion pro or con can be made about whether or not intercessory prayer is efficacious. What we have are anecdotal instances that may sway one’s opinion one way or another but that is not conclusive.

My own view is that there is a communion between the prayer, prayed for, and God. The results of such prayers will fall within the boundaries and limitations of the structure of life, order and novelty. Additionally see here.

[I presume the last part is your acknowledgement that the scientific method does work. I.E., that experiments properly carried out and repeated will always produce the same results. I share that faith.]

As I mentioned the scientific method works well in certain situations and not in others. As things get more and more complex, the data from experiments can vary from one to the other and all sorts of anomalies appear that, at least according to Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin, may mean that reductionist methods will not work.

[You don’t have to conjure up kairotic moments as a reason for praying for the healing of the terminally ill. I think there’s a simpler way to justify prayers for miracles contrary to the laws of nature as we’vie known them until now. In moments of desperation, when there is nothing else we can do but pray, we can preface our prayer with the Buddhist thought (or meditation) that there really are no laws of nature, but only probabilities. That is, even if result A was produced by a set of circumstances the first 10 to the fiftieth power times, maybe result B will happen this time. I think saying there are no laws of nature, but only probabilities, is simpler than relying on the notion of critic moments. But of course the results are the same.]

My ontology is an objective idealism so I don’t even use the phrase “law of nature”. However, I do believe that there is an order at work in the cosmos that creates the possibility of life and to a certain extent can be probed with the scientific method to give us a sense of how things work. However, if reality is constituted by Mind then there will be limitations on what can be gleaned from just looking at and analyzing repeatable phenomena.

I liked your article on metaphor in religious language very much. It was loaded with many good points in a small space.

Your little article on prayer has some inconsistencies and is unnecessarily complicated. Here are some of the things you say, and my comments.

•New theological perspectives often try to position themselves as being “naturalistic”. By this I mean they want to distance themselves from the supernaturalistic interpretations found in many traditions. Prayer is often a sticking point for “naturalistic” religious forms. This is because if prayer is efficacious beyond some psychological factor, it seems to violate naturalistic sensibilities. [Your statement that “This is because if prayer is efficacious beyond some psychological factor, it seems to violate naturalistic sensibilities.” is dead wrong. You need to subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer magazine. The observable phenomena (and/or the lack of observable phenomena) in prayer experiments can be explained naturally.]

•This means that radical shifts away from the nominal order we experience are met with strong skepticism. It does not mean the rejection of divine providence but rather it accepts that God is faithful to the ordering of the cosmos. [I presume the last part is your acknowledgement that the scientific method does work. I.E., that experiments properly carried out and repeated will always produce the same results. I share that faith.]

•So how can prayer that is efficacious fit in to a naturalistic theology? It can by accepting the causal limits of prayer. The efficacy of prayer is not grounded in some brute manipulation of causal factors. Instead it taps into the already present causal fabric of depth. This causal fabric is not mechanistic as is portrayed by non-teleologists. It is instead part of the intrinsic freedom and intelligence of the divine life. Accordingly, prayer reaches into the core depth of reality and changes it. [Huh??? See your point just above. This will happen when God begins to heal amputees in answer to the deepest and most sincere prayers ever offered, those of parents of children who lost limbs in accidents caused by the parents’ carelessness.]

•Does this mean that no profound change can occur? To the contrary. Dramatic change can and does occur… [I see you couldn’t give examples here.]

•…but this change also occurs within the kenosis of life. It does so because there are kairotic moments in time, times of fulfillment, times when the tipping point occurs. In each life and each day there are moments of kairos. These are marked by periods of preparation, periods that built to a moment of change. They are radical life changing moments that can go either way. This correlates with the best science of the day. Nobel laureate physicist Robert Laughlin roots these types of momentous change in “collective instability” where very small changes can have an enormous effect. This collective instability is ubiquitous throughout the universe including biotic systems. Chaos theory also supports this notion. One cannot know when these dramatic events can occur, but they are part of the ordered dynamics of life not a violation of it. [You don’t have to conjure up kairotic moments as a reason for praying for the healing of the terminally ill. I think there’s a simpler way to justify prayers for miracles contrary to the laws of nature as we’ve known them until now. In moments of desperation, when there is nothing else we can do but pray, we can preface our prayer with the Buddhist thought (or meditation) that there really are no laws of nature, but only probabilities. That is, even if result A was produced by a set of circumstances the first 10 to the fiftieth power times, maybe result B will happen this time. I think saying there are no laws of nature, but only probabilities, is simpler than relying on the notion of kairotic moments. But of course the results are the same.]

•Prayer speaks to a unity of communion. It is within the communion that prayer reaches out both to the depth of life in the persona of God and to all things. Imagine the power of such a communion. One need not feel alone in life. There is a vast communion of life that is not only part of each life but there for each life. Prayer in the divine life is a striking network of relationship within the organism of life. An organism is a powerful interrelation of its parts. A prayer to the communion is not an isolated offering. It is an offering to God as a communion of all things. That interrelation may seem hidden but its power is manifest in the history of the world and the lives of all in the communion. [This shows some real appreciation of communion and the interrelationship of all beings, a network which does have a unity. I would use slightly different language, but this is good. By the way, the word “communion” is underutilized in its best sense because of its being used for the rite involving bread and wine. For example, people who regularly appear at a church for its services are usually called “members”, “members and friends,” “attendees,” or “congregants” when the best word for them in the context often would be “communicants.”]

•Does this view alter the content of prayers? I think it does. What it means is that the believer should not expect God to violate God’s faithfulness to the life giving order inherent in the cosmos. [Exactly! Suppose for a second that the standard-model theistic god did exist, i.e., the god who created the entire universe and always knows the position, energy level, and momentum of every particle in it (and the number of hairs on every head). How sad this god would be over humanity’s dissatisfaction with the natural realm and demand that there be another, supernatural one!]

•Does this mean that prayers should not ask for remarkable effects in the world? No. It does require, however, a refined sensibility in prayer. It requires a sense of what requests would be asking for a violation of this life giving order and what would not. Prayers need not be radically censored, but the deep intuition concerning what fits within the mix of order and creativity of the divine life can inform prayers. [Again, I think the Buddhist thought I mentioned above is more useful here.]

•It also requires a faithing fallibilism. By fallibilism I mean that a specific prayer may go beyond what should be expected from God. It is faithing because it affirms a faith that God listens to all prayers, however flawed, and embraces their core intent, acting accordingly to the benefit of both the person and the entire communion. Prayer is an essential part of theism. Prayer must be efficacious for there to be a personal relationship with God. [To repeat, you really should subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. It has had many very scholarly articles through the years looking at attempts to prove the efficaciousness of intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is not efficacious, even though it does accomplish some good things.]

•Prayers of supplication and intercession should not be abandoned even for those who attempt to embrace and form their beliefs based on all forms of human exploration into the fabric of the cosmos. [I agree with you (and also John Shelby Spong, by the way) that these traditional kinds of prayer need not, and most likely should not, be abandoned.]

George Desnoyers
cagean@berkshire.rr.com

Although I say prayer can be problematic from an engineering perspective, I do not mean there are no solutions. Most engineering designs rely deeply on predictability and reliability. Without these there can be no confidence of a design working. However, relative to the natural systems we see in the world, engineering systems are very simple. They work with aggregate materials that have proved to behave in predictable ways. This can lead to a mechanistic view of the world that is misleading if extrapolated to all systems both inorganic, organic, individual, social, and cultural. As the level of complexity increases new properties arise that cannot be deduced from fundamental principals. In these systems novelty is present that destroys absolute predictability even though there may be some statistical patterns that can be identified. This is where the engineer may take a broader view of the world, individuals, and societal interactions in organic terms instead of just the mechanical.

It is in these gestalt systems that the efficacy of prayer and the acts of God can be found. They are not violations of order because order itself is intentional and not the product of mindless mechanism. If an ontology of diversity within unity is employed then divine acts associated with prayer are not interventions but the result of internal relations within God. These acts are constrained by the structure of the Divine Life but can truly shape creation according to divine goals and purposes, both for the individual and the cosmos as a whole.

hello. i am visiting here via mike gene’s design matrix website. what i find usually in ID discussion is a complete lack of mention of hinduism. is this a western self deceit?

There probably is some arrogance about Western ideas but I also think that Westerners just don’t know much about Hinduism. Part of the problem is that it is so diverse, with many sects and ideas. However, I think Weserners would be well served to spend some time studying the Eastern religions. There is so much wisdom there!

i am western and i know about krishna. after tackling all the questions concerning jesus, buddha and muhammed, you still have to deal with krishna! one of the paragraphs above mentioned something having “a different saviour for every planet” ,of course, it doesn’t make sense. however krishna has an answer in the bagavad gita, which goes “”When goodness grows weak, When evil increases,
I make myself a body. In every age I come back To deliver the holy, To destroy the sin of the sinner,To establish righteousness.” —— Bhagavad Gita”

I think there is a major difference between Jesus and Krishna. The incarnation of Jesus is in most of the traditions a one time unique event. As you mentioned Krishna becomes incarnate many times wherever needed. To me this is a metaphor for the presence of God in all things. There are, however, beings, objects, places, etc. that are especially transparent to the divine and could be considered special “incarnations”. I have to admit I am not well versed in the details of Hinduism so I don’t know if they take this statement about Krishna as literal but I would not. As I said, I think it represents a deeper meaning about the presence of God in all things and in some things very powerfully.

“Each offers some things that are eternally true but also contain elements that make no sense to today and should be purged.”

And earlier, you wrote:

“This is not the God of the scriptures. It is not the God that can be found in such a wonderful representation in the participatory suffering and death of Jesus.”

It seems to me that you are saying there’s something about the scriptural presentation of an incarnate God who is crucified which is eternally true and should not be purged. Your blog helped me recognize this in a novel way.

Yes I attended Wartbug in the 70’s. I didn’t become a minister for various reasons, but I have always maintained a strong affinity towards much in Christianity. However, my views have moved in many respects from Christian theology. I have found something very appealing in all traditional religions, while I also reject certain aspects.

The theology of the cross that you detect is, in fact, instead based on a fundamental idea that God is a living God. This is, of course, found in most of the religious traditions. My approach is panentheistic, or an aspect monism. I don’t regard Jesus as historically unique so I wouldn’t think that Christians would call me one of their own. Instead I view Jesus as one among many in history who have been transparent to God. However, there is so much in Jesus’ message about our relationship to God and each other that I find extremely compelling.

My view is that all the religious traditions need to change to find relevance in the modern world. Each offers some things that are eternally true but also contain elements that make no sense to today and should be purged. The history of religions shows that religions evolve. In my view, this evolution is like many aspects of human discovery. As new knowledge and experience becomes available, our understanding of God and God’s relationship to the world also changes and hopefully brings us closer to God and how we should embrace our relationship to God in our lives.

Yes…you cracked the code of my “handle!” I’m a Lutheran who prizes the historic episcopate. Another way of describing an “evangelical catholic,” I suppose.

I’m not that well educated in biology, but have been following the design debate for about two years now, and consider it a hobby. Something in one of those blogs referred me to this blog…which struck me as Christian. Since you have some acquaintance with Lutheran theology, I can perhaps use technical language. What you’re proposing here is what Luther would have called “the theology of the Cross,” it seems to me.

Perhaps you would not be comfortable with that designation, Steve. Nevertheless, it was instructive to me that you used (what I would call) the theology of the cross to critique neo-deism. I found myself heartily agreeing with you.

Steve, this is an inspiring blog!

Thanks.

Is there anything to prevent its being baptized? (Ancient baptismal question, in case U didn’t recognize it.)

Perhaps among some Christian circles but I would hope not.

BTW, when I went to seminary I was sort of a lutepisc (or perhaps lutepisccath ) since the Lutheran seminary I attended really had three campuses: ours, the Episcopal’s, and the Catholic seminary in Dubuque.

bob b

I agree with your assessemnent of many panentheisitic formulations, especially those of process thinkers. In fact, Hartshorne said he was comfortable with the label of neo-classical theist. In my view the ontology of process thought is deeply flawed. It just can’t seem to get out of a dualistic mentality (actually it is triistic, creativity, God, the world). While Hartshorne talks about aspects of God, is it really valid when God’s only participation in reality is separate experience and influence? I don’t think so.

I think this all goes back to a dualistic mentality that Whitehead seemed wedded to. According to Griffin, Whitehead felt that one of the greatests insights came from Plato where he said, “the Divine element in the world is to be conceived as a persuasive agency and not as a coercive agency”. While I can understand this sentiment it smacks of a classic dualism that to me doesn’t fit well within a panentheism. It may be much harder to grasp the consilience of both freedom in the Many that are still part of the One, but this is, in my view, one of the key elements of non-dualism. As you said other formulations attempt heroic acrobatics to maintain some intelligibility. They don’t succeed.

Where I find trouble with some Eastern thought is the idea of there being an end in perfection. The Mother quote seems to represents this difficulty for me. Here are my thoughts. Would you care to comment?

I have noticed, as you have too, that many Westerners end up qualifying either the “en” or the “pan” in panentheism. For me, process theology/philosophy as well as panentheism must be based on a dipolar concept of God, which emanates/flows/unfolds. I suspect that many supposedly dipolar process theologians still subconsciously harbor loyalty to a Judeo-Christian monopolar God. The acrobatics they go through to impose a monopolar view of reality upon a dipolar paradigm results in things like soterological-eschatological, expressivist, sacramental and divine-energies brands of panentheism. However, in my humble opinion, a monopolar god dressed in dipolar drag will never allow for a truly satisfying answer to the problem of the one in the many and the many in the one. Such a stunted panentheism may appeal to those who retain a secret fetish for orthodoxy, but let us hope it is just a phase they will eventually outgrow as the dialogue between East and West continues.

I appreciate much of what I have read in Sri Aurobindo, especially his basic theory of involution/evolution. When recently studying how Sri Aurobindo viewed the concept of a lasting individualized personality, I ran across a question/answer page where the Mother described the following…..

“As if honey could taste itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the end be with God and the soul of man and the universe.” (Cent. Ed. Vol. XVI, p. 384)

I rather like that metaphor.

Buck

Welcome. Thanks for the info on Kashmir Shaivism. I’m still a neophyte on Indian philosophy but I’m very interested in it. I’ll do some reading. Lately I’ve been reading the works of Sri Aurobino and found much to my liking. While panentheistic thought has been prominent in the East for centuries, it seems to also be taking off in the West now. There are prominent thinkers in process thought and Christianity who are embracing it. At some point I hope there can be an indepth dialog between the East and West on panentheism. Only a matter of time, I suspect.

Buck’s reply: The Trika School of Kashmir Shaivism has contributed more to my own personal developing concepts of panentheism than Vishishtadvaita. As I learned from reading M. A. Kazlev, the Tantric cosmology of Kashmir Shaivism (later adopted by the Bengali branch of Shaktism or Tantra proper), incorporates both Samkhyan emanationism and Advaita Vedantin Monism.

Such people might or might not self-identify as “religious”, but I am not sure that is any tragedy. The important thing is the “relationship” between the individual and the Absolute, Brahman, God, Allah, or whatever name you choose to use.

I agree that the relationship to the divine is of utmost importance. However, I also think that the communal experience of religion can be very important too. I saw this a lot when I attended a UU church for a while. There were many people coming in who had rejected their tradition’s teachings but still had spiritual inclinations and wanted a communal experience. Unfortunately most UU churches do not have much to form community around. Even in highly contemplative religions like Buddhism the communal aspects seem very important.

As with all complex issues one needs to look at the demographics. There certainly is a group who does just fine being “spiritual but not religious”. I do pretty well in this category, but I still miss very much being a part of a community of believers with some forms of ritual and communal activity surrounding at least a minimal set of common beliefs. I think what is needed are avenues within which individuals can thrive and grow spiritually. For those who don’t need community that’s fine. For those who want and can benefit from religious forms, I think theology should work hard to offer something viable in our present age.

I don’t see that as necessarily being a problem.

In a sense, prepackaged religious traditions might be seen as “training wheels”. There may be people who don’t need them any more, and do not delegate their theological understandings to any particular authority any more.

Such people might or might not self-identify as “religious”, but I am not sure that is any tragedy. The important thing is the “relationship” between the individual and the Absolute, Brahman, God, Allah, or whatever name you choose to use.