On Religion, Part Three: Conjectures and Problems

Okay, in this post, I will try to make it as succinct as possible; hence, I’ll make it to point per point.


On Faith

Traditional views on faith hold that faith is equal to believing that lacks of empirical evidence, in contrast with science*. Although not necessarily bad, this has been a subject of ridicule by some freethinkers. There goes the redefinition of faith; we can go with:

a) Faith as a way of living that regards life as having some meaning on it. In this way, faith serves as a notion that against the deconstruction of human and their life experiences as mere particles that occupy space and time, interact with other particles, and are subjected to probability. Faith says that life is beyond that; that what we do in this world is special and has meaning. To have faith is to see the world differently with wonder, enchantment, and sense of mystery and divinity. To have faith is to hold God to provide answers to human existence, although God’s existence is rationally uncertain.

b) Faith as an ecstatic passion for the ultimate. Faith includes rational and non-rational elements, yet is not identical with them. It means that when one encounters something ultimate that demands total surrender (after certain justifications that eventually stop in certain level) to whoever accepts its ultimacy, she is ready to have other concerns, other worldviews, be sacrificed.


On God

In my view, God has two properties, Transcendence and Immanence. God as Transcendental Being is a God who serves as foundation/ground upon which all beings exist. This God precedes subject-object dichotomy and ontologically prior to conception (similar to Heidegger’s Da-Sein) and reason. Using this a priori definition, Transcendental God is described by modern philosophy as “beyond reason/knowledge,” since knowing God presupposes the subject-object dichotomy. This is a God whom described by Paul Tillich as “God above God.” However, since Transcendental God is beyond comprehension, this somehow deconstructs God into non-personal Being, contrasts with traditional religious views.

God as Immanent Being is a God who manifested into subject-object dichotomy realm, as personal/anthropomorphical Being. This is a God as described by traditional religious views (and also the one who is killed by Nietzsche.) In my definition, Immanent God is a maximum entity possessing the highest possible features in all possible qualities which are not logically inconsistent. However this leads to several questions: whether God has control upon Its qualities (can God choose to be evil – since God is always described as all-loving. If It can’t, then God is not sovereign-omnipotent. Termed aseity-sovereignty paradox,) and whether omniscience is compatible with free-will (more on that later.)

The dualism of Transcendence-Immanence of God has led to a paradox, since logically it is impossible to have both qualities. My conjecture to T-I paradox is simple: that it is possible to have both qualities. In Christianity and Islam**, God is both described as Transcendent (Alpha and Omega; The Beginning and the Ending; Which Is, which Was, and which Is to Come. – Revelation 1:8. The First and the Last; The Outward and the Inward; The Knower of Everything - Al Hadid:3) and Immanent Being (there are myriad of mentions in Bible and Quran.) How this is possible? We can take a look on how electron behaves.

It is proven mathematically and empirically that electron has dualism in its nature: it is both a wave and a particle (it can even occupy two positions at the same time.) When we’re about to observe it, it experiences a wave function collapse; it decoheres as either wave or particle. Using this, we’re able to logically conceive that God can have dualism, too. Its default position is Its Transcendence; however, due to Its loving nature to express love to Its creations, It has necessity to decohere as an Immanent God. Immanent God does not just serve as a symbol (as described by Paul Tillich) but It is truly alive and manifested through religious experiences.


On Free Will

Are we driven by free will or a deterministic system? It is both, of course. Free will is when we make a decision; determinism is when we fall down to the earth because of the gravity, or that human can’t grow a pair of fully functional wings because there is no DNA for wings in human genes (this serves as an answer to Sartre’s problem.) However, a God who allows human being to have free will pose some problems.

First, the problem of evil. As been explained by Alvin Plantinga, problem of evil arises as the consequence of God giving human free will. To be fully capable of making free moral judgement, human must be able to do both morally good things and morally bad things, open up the possibility of doing crime. Inasmuch of this doesn’t really answer of problem of natural evil (such as why an omnibenevolent God lets disasters/starvations happen) and problem of non-interference (such as why an all-loving God didn’t prevent Holocaust to take much death tolls despite I believe there were prayers from millions of Jews at that time,) this begs the question as why the configuration of the world that allows suffering/evil to happen and the possibility of innocent victims is preferable by God rather than not giving free will at all***. Or, let’s say why didn’t God create the world where bullets and knives will not cause any harm to human, therefore keeping the world free from suffering but still allowing free will to happen? Some will say that God is also just, therefore will punish those who inflicted evil things to others (in hell?); Nonetheless, hell is also problematic, but more on that later.

In regards of problem of natural evil, if God deliberately "sacrifices" humans through disasters/famine for the sake of so that other people will learn, then God must be horribly unjust, even if God promises places in heaven for these people. I am not entitled to shoot my first kid just to serve as a warning for my other kids, even though I always provide her with all her needs before. Humans are not the means, they are the ends in themselves. Using them to serve as an example for the others therefore is immoral and incompatible with the concept of an omnibenevolent God. Even if you say that "God is so good with us, why do you never take into account of Its goodness?" it is still wrong. Morality is not a simple economic calculus. That's why even the most religious person would think that we cannot exempt a person from criminal charges simply because she never breaks the law before or always donates for charities and poor people. This is why it is simply wrong to dismiss problem of evil just because God is (seemingly) good (in your perspective.)

Second, the problem of omniscience. Suppose there is a God G who understands all facts in the universe, say K1 = {F1, F2, F3,…} and all possible combination of subsets of facts, say K2 = {(F1 + F2), (F1 + F3), (F2 + F3),…} and so forth; then G who understands knowledge K = {K1, K2, K3,…} including of what will happen in the future Kt+n = {K1t+n, K2t+n, K3t+n,…} will know all what’s happening in all quantum states in all 10^500 multiverses and all subsequent outcomes. Therefore, if God knows all possible outcomes from our actions, then the free will that we have is not a free will, but just an illusion of it. Either God must be not omniscience, or It limits Itself from knowing all thing, despite possible to know. Nevertheless, it is well-established by religions that God knows everything including the future, that’s one of my problems of faith.


On Hell

Suppose a just God will banish those who committed wrongdoings in Hell, eternally. This is, however, in itself, is unjust and incompatible with an omnibenevolent God. Why?

1. It is unjust to punish someone eternally for what she did in a limited/temporary course of time. How can it be just to punish someone who spent, let’s say a total of 10 years from all her life since she was kid for doing sinful things, into a million millions millions millions (ad infinitum) years of torture?

2. Suppose I’m a robot maker, and I programmed my robot to be able to make choices for navigating around obstacles and doing certain things. Assume I didn’t include Asimov’s laws of robotic in my robot’s algorithm (therefore my robot is capable of killing human, even though I didn’t specifically program it to do so.) My robot then has free will, albeit rudimentary. Suppose then my robot inadvertently killed human, who is held liable for the murder? Me as the maker, or the robot as the doer, or both?

I, although can’t foresee the outcome of the action of my robot, can be held liable, as the tort law also can also hold companies that design dangerous equipment/machine culpable if that machine’s actions can cause loss of life, limb, and/or property. The court can decide whether I have taken all reasonable precautions to prevent death, injury, and damage (I haven’t – for the sake of allowing “free will.”) If the court can prove that I can foresee the action of my faulty robot, the punishment will even be more severe. Now, replace me with God and robot with human. Isn’t God supposedly held liable for the actions of human, moreover when actually It can foresee the impact and damage of the actions of human and can prevent it to happen?

Furthermore, the existence of hell itself is problematic. I’m not talking about its visual descriptions, since different people can also portray the same object with different descriptions. I’m talking about the prerequisite to enter hell.

Assume hell is a university, say University X. And we know there are various ways to enter it: via written test (SNMPTN,) selection of rapport or talent (PMDK,) or by, well, money (swadana.) We can safely say that we can enter University X by one of that means. But what if there is a campus authority says the only valid way to enter University X is by SNMPTN, and there is another campus authority that says the only valid way to enter University X is by PMDK, and another campus authority says swadana and only swadana? Should University X be an objective thing, it has to have a non-contradictory and non-exclusionary way to accept students. This is exactly another problem of hell: religions are contradictory and exclusionary in determining who gets to hell.

Virtually almost every major religion dictates that the one who doesn’t believe in that particular religion’s teaching will go to hell. Religion A dictates that the nonbelievers of religion A (including believers of religion B, C, D, E, atheists, etc.,) will go to hell. Religion B dictates that the nonbelievers of religion B (including believers of religion A, C, D, E, atheists, etc.,) will go to hell. Therefore, either there are a lot of hells (in which everyone goes to hells – see the reasoning above,) or there is only one hell but we don’t know whose version of hell that is true (giving us a non-zero probability of choosing the wrong religion.)

Well, perhaps, hell is just a metaphor for the bad consequences of our wrongdoings in this world, and heaven is the good ones. Hell for a murderer is having his ass thrown in jail for years and beaten by his cellmates. Hell for a cheater is having his marriage and family gone astray. Hell for a corruptor is having a trouble sleeping at night, and then if he gets caught he has to endure shame and humiliation in media and in jail, and so forth. This is similar to the concept of karma or "what you sow is what you reap." But this is just my opinion, of course.

Epilogue

With all the problems of mainstream religions, I’ve been asked by my friend of what will I have my kids to embrace? Well, whenever my kids are logically capable, I will have them taught all that I know about atheism, Christianity, agnosticism, Islam, pandeism, Buddhism, pantheism, Hinduism, deism, etc. and all the pluses and minuses of all of them. I will not indoctrinate them that there is God, but I won't indoctrinate them that there is no God, either. I will teach them to be skeptical. For what purpose? So that they will have an informed choice and pick the best for themselves – in a thoughtful, intellectual way, of course.

Post Scriptum

* However, science also has limits in achieving empirical evidences. For instance, we will never know what lies beyond 46 billion light years (4 x 10^23 kilometers) from us. We will never have the empirical evidences for string theory – as to test it we need a collider in the size of a galaxy. Making science is somehow intuitive as well.

** I just know a similar concept of a Transcendent God in Hinduism, that is Nirguna Brahman. As of my limited understanding about other religions, I’d like to hear to what other religions have to say about the concept of Transcendental God.

*** Have been discussed by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” especially in “The Grand Inquisitor” part. Also discussed by C. S. Lewis in “The Problem of Pain” and Alvin Plantinga in “God, Freedom, and Evil.”

On Religion, Part Two: Calling for Liberalism

On part one, I have told what bothers me about religions and subsequent intolerance that occurs in Indonesia. Now, on part two, I will tell about my personal opinion on how religious people should be.

Mix religion with power, and you get one hell of recipe of destruction and oppression. History records this very well that religions become corrupt in the course of time. We saw how Christians went with Spanish Inquisition or Islam with their bloody history of caliph feuds*. Today, we can see religious cacophonies elsewhere in this world: Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia (with law giving death penalty to apostates,) Indonesia, Pakistan, Vatican (the alleged pedophilia cases, rejections to condom, church inclusivity via Dominus Iesus, etc.,) Lord’s Resistance Army (theocratic Christian militant army with long list of human rights violations in Sudan, Congo, and Central Africa,) Al-Shabaab (Islamic militant army based in Somalia,) Al-Qaeda, right wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party in India (who keeps on oppressing Sikhs and Christians,) Laotian Buddhist government (who keeps on oppressing Christians,) and the lists go on**. What should we do to mitigate these? The answer is to contain religion within private sphere of individuals.

Reshaping Individual Realms of Religion

I am always perplexed with absolutism and fundamentalism, given the claim of religion is circularly self-justifying and there is nothing we can verify of such claim from outside of religion. Thus, with the contradictions of what God and heaven look like, and the way to achieve salvation among religions in this world, one can rationally conclude that there is non-zero probability that we pick the wrong religion. Rather than feeling humble in the presence of God, followers of each religion feel superior to others, thinking that they’re the chosen ones. Fanaticism is fed with theologies based on superstitions, erroneous ideas, unscientific concepts, false expectations, and unethical commands. With the vivacity of converting others into their groups – to the extent of offering various versions of heaven or even threatening with forces – religion has grown into divisive teaching. When one thinks that her religion is absolutely correct and the only way to salvation, using violence seems justifiable. When one thinks that her eternal life in paradise is at stake, anything done to achieve it seems justifiable. Instead of teaching tolerance, religion teaches intolerance. Instead of teaching peaceful co-existence, it teaches dominance, and even annihilation.

There are two kinds of religiosity: one in which someone tries to delve into sublime and intimate spiritual depth, and one that treats it as simple economic calculus of “what will I get if I believe in God and what will I get if I don’t.” This Pascal’s Wager-ish sort of discourse renders most people reluctant to dig deeper into their religious teaching, resulting in widespread reticence and ignorant uni-dimensional perspective of religion. As a rational being, of course we have to seek deeper, to question religion and its conception of morality, and to check the infallibility claim of the holy book. As an ex-apologetic, I’ve seen contradictions and discrepancies in two of the biggest holy books, Bible and Qur’an, and this is the view that I’d like to sound: that no religion is perfect.

Here is the thing, although in my view, religion is self-justifying, paradoxical, and contradictory, doesn’t necessarily mean that we as rational being cannot embrace it. As Kierkegaard also noted, to embrace religion is to do the “leap of faith.” But this “leap of faith” cannot be completely devoid of reason. This “leap of faith” must be justified because somehow the religion that we pick is in accordance with our moral sense and our idea of a good life, and therefore shaping our life experiences. As we are all beings in a dynamic society, changes in this moral sense and idea of good life are to be expected, hence, we must revise our belief system according to these days’ moral conception, although this doesn’t necessarily entail outright falsity of our belief system. Since the moral sense and idea of good life of everyone is different, one must also firmly adhere to the notion that one’s religion is justified to her and her only. To each is their religion, and we must not interfere nor judge them as wrong.

It is by opening our mind to other religions that harmony can exist. Interfaith discussion and peaceful coexistence may not be working if people still think that religion is a “sensitive” issue. It is funny that religious liberals who are interested to go against extremism and for peaceful religious coexistence are persecuted and deemed “infidels” by their fellow religious members. It is therefore very important for us to become spearheads for socially disseminating these non-violent religious views, via social media and conversations with family members or friends.

Re-contextualizing and Testing Religions for Morality

One common thing that has always been cited of religion by its proponents is on its status as inerrant and infallible Words of God and therefore the ultimate source of morality (objective moral value, if I may.) But then it’s a shame if such guidance of morality and peace also condone war (see war on Amalekites on Exodus 17 and war on Jericho on Joshua 6, and also Qur’an Sura Al-Anfal verse 60, At-Taubah verse 29.) Should these verses taken literally, you got recipe for religious discriminations and religion-motivated wars, as what I’ve mentioned in paragraph one. A rational being will always re-contextualize religious tenets with current situations***.

However, re-contextualizing religious tenets need moderation, and moderation generally means having some doubts to the claim of absolute validity and inerrancy of religious credence. One must be open to the questions such as: “What if my belief is wrong? Why are there some foundational questions it cannot answer?” This is why it’s important to sow doubt and to force ourselves into coping faith with reason - apologetic-style. The calling for religious war aforementioned, for instance, can be taken as “spiritual war”, between good and bad. Or you can simply contextualize it into the condition of Middle East during that era, with all the hostility, and thus war can be viewed as preemptive self-defense (which is, perhaps, no longer appropriate these days as now we have ICJ to settle international conflicts.) Or, you can also think that actually, calling for war is something that was reluctantly done by God to ensure the continuity of His people; that God basically regretted it (God CAN indeed regret something, viz. Noah flood.) Or you can simply regard that as proof that some of the religious tenets are no longer relevant these days and must be changed, whatever you may.

Christianity was also actually born by re-contextualization of Jewish teaching. If you read what Jesus said in Gospels, it is actually a critic toward a strict and literal application of Torah. Jesus reconstructed everything that in the end, the compassions and love for other human being is equally important to the love for God. Using this as a pretext, the condemnation of LGBT, for instance, can also be re-contextualized****.

So, the question left, if the Words of God are not absolute objective moral source*****, what is it, then? My simple explanation is that we don’t have such absolute objective moral source, yet we don’t necessarily be a fatalist and moral nihilist. We can simply construct morality using our logical and ethical capacity as humans. I always think that morality is related to the intentions and actions whose purpose is to maximize collective well-being of environment and other conscious creatures. Such conception of morality must stand on several tests. One, the test of rationality: what would I, as an average reasonable person, free from bias and mental defect, and have sufficient IQ and information, think of moral value? This is done to establish boundary for the possibility of radically different moral preferences. One that thinks genocide or rape as something delightful must be declared insane.

Second, the test of justice. Borrowing John Rawls’ concept, morality must allow the collective well-being to be maximized through mutual benefit, or, at least a Pareto optimum condition. Should discrepancies occur (for instance, dichotomy between religious majority and minority,) morality must prevail to give the greatest benefit for the most disadvantaged, for the ongoing of social cooperation. This is the duty of civility for every rational being to make a harmonious society.

The Conception of Liberalist Government

With different point of view of what is construed by each individual as religiously moral, one will ponder on how to ensure the stability and the obedience of citizen towards law in a liberal society. The most desirable method in achieving stability will happen if citizens have overlapping consensus, i.e. supporting the same basic law inasmuch for different reasons, e.g. a reasonable Christian doctrine, a reasonable Islamic doctrine, a reasonable atheistic doctrine are all affirming the law supporting freedom of religion using their own perspective. But this is somehow difficult to achieve as some worldviews are exclusionary and often have conflict with each other, that’s why we must go with secularism.

It’s unreasonable for citizens to impose what they see as whole truth to others. Citizen must be able to justify their political decisions using publicly available values and standards (using Rawls’ term: public reason.) Public reason encompasses all aspects of social cooperation. To name some: freedom of religions; equality of women, racial minority, religious minority, and LGBT; efficiency and equality of economy; preservation of environment and public health, etc. Nonpublic reason only incorporates certain values that are internal to certain organizations, viz. bishops have to commit celibacy, Hajj pilgrim must be done in Mecca and Medina, etc.

Public reason is not taken whenever citizen is doing some mundane activities (such as singing) or activities outside of public sphere (such as praying in place of worship.) Public reason must be taken into inquiry whenever fundamental public/political decision is about to be taken or whenever citizen is engaging in some political activities, viz. when she is sitting in House of Representative. Using this, law banning LGBT marriage will violate this public reason, as not all citizen can be reasonable expected to accept Bible or Qur’an as authoritative set of political values and common standard to evaluate public policy. The usage of public reason, especially concerning different religious precepts, will be made possible when the government embraces liberalism.

The conception of liberalist government is then as follows: after relegating religion strictly into the realm of nonpublic reason and coming up with moral judgements that withstand at least two tests I’ve mentioned above, we develop political theory from the generalities of these moral judgements. This political theory then eventually be revised over time according to dynamic of society and be compared to other theories in terms of reasonability, consistency, coherency, and feasibility in accordance to moral judgements that we’ve developed at the very first time (although our moral judgements can also be revised over time.) This government then must also come with severe legal punishment for the violators of the moral judgements and empowerment for the supporters of peace. As the policy of religion often depends on who is the religious leader in power******, government has to ensure that the grip religion have on the political fabric of society be checked and reduced if necessary. Government must also not endorse having no religions above having religions and vice-versa, or endorse having a certain religion above the others.

Religion as Intuitively Good Thing

Religion, morality, and science have one thing in common: that they are, at very best, based on intuitions and concepts that can’t be reduced nor justified. Mathematical axioms are intuitive (see also Godël incompleteness theorem) and sometimes it is very intuitive to help someone in calamity (what if the person I help turn out to be a criminal?) as human knowledge is limited and it’s impossible to attain perfect information of everything and to justify everything (see Gettier problem and problem of infinite regression.) Intuition can also be wrong. We often have intuitive “physic”, but much of our intuition of physic is wrong – with regards to how matters behave, quantum physics, relativity, etc. We often have intuitive “morality”, but much of it is also wrong – with regards to test of rationality and test of justice. But, just because something is intuitive doesn’t mean that it always wrong, otherwise we are afraid to do anything and believe in anything. Although I have left religion myself, I can still see why it’s intuitively good. In my opinion, religion, at its best, is beautiful. There is always compassion, understanding, love, peace, patience, and harmony inside the core every religion. Unfortunately, I see this beautiful core grows weaker every day.

Post Scriptum:

* For further reading, see book by Farag Foda titled “Al-Haqiqah al Ghaybah.”

** Theists often cite the massacre done by Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot to show that atheistic persons can also commit atrocity. First, CMIIW, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot didn’t kill in the name of atheism. Second, even if they did, this is not a contest of “who kills less therefore it is right.” This is a classic “lesser of two evil” logical fallacy, as genocide done either by atheists or theists are equally evil.

*** Also called hermeneutic or takwil, as the counterpart of exegesis or tafsir.

**** On the basis of condemning LGBT using Leviticus (particularly Leviticus 18:6 and 20:13,) I can make an objection that is how Leviticus is mostly irrelevant these days. Practices such as marriage is only valid when the woman is virgin; covering women’s head with veil; prohibition on eating pork, getting round haircuts and shaving beards, tattoo, working on Sabbath, wearing mixed garments, are abandoned by mainstream Christians these days. Why not on LGBT?

***** As an objection to divine command theory, how can we, humans that were made in God’s image (thus retaining God’s characteristic – I assume His conception of morality as well) can think that murder on the basis of differences is immoral, yet somehow God who created us think that it’s okay, even endorses it? I think that problem of evil is solved by Alvin Plantinga’s defense of free will, yet the question of how could an all-loving omnipotent God kills via disasters and famine and didn’t answer to Jews prayer during Holocaust, is still unanswered.

****** When the conservative Ratzinger became pope, many Catholics express their concerns as to his stance may reverse the progress of interfaith discussions that had been earlier forwarded and campaigned by Pope John Paul II. We can also observe various ludicrous laws passed by religious authority such as ayatollah in Iran or those in Arab Saudi. Should the leader be more moderate, we won’t find any of these idiosyncratic laws.