‘I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.’
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
One difference in the debate that’s not being looked at is what is the role or purpose of Philosophy and Religion in our lives. If it’s a search for Truth, what do we mean by Truth? How do we define what we are looking for?
In the debate between the Theist and Atheist, I find they talk past each other a lot of the time.
Here the difference between traditions becomes clearer. They’re asking two different questions.
The theists are asking, ‘does god exist?’ and answer yes. However some Atheists and Buddhists ask, ‘can we know the difference [that gods exists]? With the answer No.
What going on here is different ideas about what truth is and where to find it.
Essence as Truth
Some see Ultimate Truth (or Truth with a capital T) as in the Matrix film. There is this code behind reality, a Metaphysical, ontological foundation or bedrock, not the ephemeral phantoms of our senses.
It makes Truth a Hypostasis, an essence to the existence, like a foundation to a pyramid below or behind reality. Or it makes truth a Hyperstasis(?!), the pinnacle of the pyramid, a creator god above reality.
The western religious, scientific, and philosophical aim was to eliminate uncertainty finding this essence, or Atomos, an uncuttable, unchanging basis.
- A personal self, a soul
- Self of things, such cats, pens, houses, etc.
- The self of the cosmos, an ‘unmoved mover’ or a god
Using Hebrew sources and classical Greek thought Theists developed an elaborate metaphysical narrative to explain the cosmos and its existence.
The Theist model is one sense is Dualistic, the Contingent changing world and the non-contingent reality of God, outside of Space-Time. (One point worthy of note, however, is the Abrahamic faiths can’t agree on the nature of this existence and of God.)
There is also another belief that runs alongside essence. Language and ideas (such as Scripture, philosophy, maths etc) point towards this code beyond the changing reality. Believers think they are like Neo; they have the sight.
It’s called Realism; language can and does give us knowledge of the truth beyond the contingent reality. (This is the actual point of contention between believers no Non-believers, what we can know, see the Intro).
‘I don’t know’ metaphysics – Spiritual Minimalism
People in the West mistakenly think Buddhism operates in a similar way as Western philosophy. (Scratching away reality will reveal the code behind it). But that’s a misunderstanding of Buddhism. It’s why some commentators doubt Buddhism is a religion.
In the East Buddhism rejects of the idea there is an essence to existence. This is truth as Anti-essentialism, Nothing is beyond the changing reality, no essence, hypostasis, soul or fixed Self.
They see it as a two-tier system. Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth. There is language and ideas; then there is the reality they point to. That is, the code sits not behind the reality but in front, and we made it. Beyond language, there is the Ultimate Truth of an interconnected, ever-changing reality, devoid of fixed existence; this is Sunyata or Emptiness.
The western attitude by comparison is seemingly like Pygmalion, it fell in love with its own creation, the art, the language we created had point towards facts.
In Buddhism they don’t make the mistake of trying to answer questions they can’t answer. Buddhism doesn’t care so much about the metaphysical labyrinths believers and western philosophers find themselves in.
There is a reason why Buddhists don’t show up in these debates because metaphysical questions like God are unanswerable. Grand metaphysical ideas about reality are just speculative fiction. There is no reason to think the cosmos obeys our ideas or beliefs.
This to me is what wisdom is, know that you cannot know. As Socrates put it, ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing’.
What we can and cannot know matters more because it helps us avoid the pointless task of answering questions that have no answer?
Truth or Security?
So, what are theists searching for if knowledge and certainty are impossible? Why do theists need answers, assurance, and God, whereas Buddhists, many atheists, and non-believers don’t?
Truth is no longer about seeking facts but about seeking reassurance and security in a changing world. People can’t accept the notion there is no bedrock like God, so there has to be.
‘Why does there have to be a bedrock to existence’, and ‘why does the cosmos have to conform the the ideas we have of it?’
Theists use religion to mollify uncertainty, to find comfort. I don’t think it works because it still leaves the next question, Why did God make existence this way? The uncertainty doesn’t end because of a belief in God.
If you claim a supernatural exists, you have to populate it, explain how it interacts with the natural world, and explain how you know all this. Indeed the grasping attachment to a god causes the suffering they speak of.
Buddhism is more pragmatic, teaching us that we would do better to accept uncertainty. When you realise some questions can’t be answered, the wise thing to do is stop trying to find them. No one wants to carry baggage they don’t need (Spiritual Minimalism).
The Buddhist message is that the quest for such a fixed, absolute truth or Self is why we suffer. The path of wisdom involves waking up to the Truth that there is no essence, no fixed self. Letting go of certainty and accepting there is no foundation to existence nor authority from above.
Life is not a problem to be solved, and the great answers in life are not to be found in something outside of us. The answers lie in the living of life.
Closing thoughts
There is tension and sticking points in belief, but there is peace in non-belief.
Apologists surreptitiously assume that religion has to be and can only be a relationship with a personified power. Yet religion in other parts of the world operates differently.
The two traditions of East and West, show a difference of opinion on what we are looking for, what we need, what we value in our lives. Buddhism, like Stoicism, doesn’t need to know why we exist and what the origin of the cosmos is. We don’t need such knowledge to pay out bills, feed our kids, or do our jobs.
To cite a Metaphor, Theists like scientists, and philosophers seek an island in a sea of uncertainty. To set their house of a firm foundation, a bedrock of certainty, of objective truths. Where as Mysticism like Buddhism see existence the Allegory of Neurath’s bootstrap. A ship that’s falling apart, and is being repaired by it’s crew, on an ocean. The meaning is the crew is ourselves, the ship is our ideas, knowledge and the sea is the uncertainty of existence.
The difference is between Spiritual Maximalism and Spiritual Minimalism. The West has a elaborate metaphysics, the mysticism of the east doesn’t bother.
What going on here is the role and use of language? Does it point towards truth, or is it merely useful and practical? Mysticism accepts its impossible to find a conceptual truth about existence; reality is always bigger than the little ideas we dream up.
The cosmos can’t be reduced and abstracted to fit inside our minimal analytical, conscious mind; our language and ideas will always be inadequate. It’s different from the western attitude that sees the truth in words, i.e. The logos.
If we can’t know the answer to metaphysical questions like God, then metaphysics becomes worthless. So they remain as such, opinions, elaborate webs of abstract concepts and metaphors that are worked to fit together.
A vivid imagination can’t test its own ideas.
What’s happening is this Hypostasis; the fixed bedrock is fast becoming a myth. People claim its there, but they can’t prove it is. Modern cosmology and Physics accepts the uncertainty quantum fields.
Asking questions like ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘why is there something rather than nothing rather than nothing?’ is understandable, but it’s impertinent.
It assumes there are answers and we’re smart enough to find them, putting us egotistically at the centre of the cosmos. But here’s the kicker the cosmos doesn’t have to make sense; it’s not obligated to us in any way.
Once you gain a tolerance for ambiguity and paradox, you’re liberated from the fetters of desperate, insecure neediness.
Buddhists and Daoists accept the mystery, and that’s okay. Not everyone needs answers to the big questions.
There is no essence or answers to grasp, So ‘Stop trying to grasp the wind.‘