Atheism and Faith

[Note: This is the first post I've written for this blog in many months due to a lack of philosophical creativity and post-worthy ideas. Now that the fall semester has started and I've begun to read philosophy again, I will try and update this blog semi-regularly, but don't hold your breath if I don't.]

I am taking a class this semester called “faith and reason” and we are exploring the relationship between truth, rationality, and faith. The first book we read for the class was Christian existentialist-theologian-philosopher Paul Tillich’s The Dynamics of Faith. In this work, Tillich provides an existentialist definition of faith that I believe is compatible with atheism. How is this possible? Allow me to elucidate on Tillich’s refreshing idea.

Tillich essentially defines faith as an “ultimate concern with the infinite[or unconditional. I prefer "infinite."]“. Thus, if you are an atheist you can still have “faith” granted that you are ultimately concerned with something that is not finite. What does this seemingly mystic definition mean? Surely, it is too abstract and mystical to be of any relevance to a scientifically oriented atheist such as myself (that, granted, has many philosophical leanings) What does Tillich mean here?

First of all, in order to understand what Tillich means by faith, it is important to understand what he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t equate faith with a cognitive belief structure or propositional knowledge-based faith, such as “I believe in God because I have faith that God exists.” This is not true faith for Tillich because only the cognitive aspect of the human being is concerned in such a faith. As an existentialist, this is unacceptable because “ultimate concern” deals with the total personality and not just a limited aspect of the human being, namely theoretical and reflective cognition.

Utilizing Heideggerian terminology, I think ultimate concern can be conceptualized in terms of ontological comportment by a Dasein. That is to say, as ontologically oriented creatures, human beings comport themselves towards that which defines their being, which is their own individual existence. I am a life to live. Such a conception of humanity differs from the Cartesian tradition’s emphasis on self-consciousness and mental gymnastics, instead focusing on how we are engaged with the world in our own personal lives. Furthermore, we care about our lives: our being is an issue for us and in this sense, Tillich seems to be echoing Heidegger in his insistence that the most critical aspect of our total personality is our ultimate concern with the infinite.

So what is the infinite if not some metaphysically abstract mumbojumbo? Well, ultimately its a metaphor so take it as you will, but I think its useful to view the infinite in terms of the reductionist/holist debate. I see the infinite as that which can’t be reduced to the finite, i.e. the infinite is wrapped up in that which can only be captured in holistic vocabulary. Such as what? Well, for one, our ontological being, which is social in nature, can’t be reduced to the physical motions of matter which supports our constitution, but rather, resides in an existential matrix that is spread out ontologically amongst a community of involved and engaged language users. It is this matrix which provides the significance missing in crudely naturalistic conceptions of the human world.

So, the infinite, is transcendent in that it goes above and beyond the concrete realm holistically, but nevertheless, remains grounded in the physicality of reality. It is this conception of infinite that I think is useful for the atheist in coming to terms with Tillich’s existentialist theology.

So how does an atheist utilize Tillich’s definitions to provide existential perspective to his life? Well, for starters, one can appreciate that mostly everyone is ultimately concerned with something, whether that something is a child, their work, or a nation/idea/etc. However, for Tillich, all these concerns are idolatrous in that they aren’t concerned with the infinite. How does Tillich get around this? Well, as a Christian he is concerned with the religious symbolism of God as an unconditional infinite Ground of Being. While I can make this work in my own mind, I fear that in our day and age, such terminology will never be socially useful because it would be annoying to try and explain in existentialist terms what you mean by “ultimate ground of being” everytime you mention that you have faith in God. So what should a good philosopher-atheist do? Take the Heideggerian path: situate your ultimate concern in terms of what you are already concerned with as an ontological being: your own being, your own life and how you live it, engaged and embodied in the world.

[To be continued]

Ruminations on realization

Western interpretations of Eastern philosophy have used many different terms to refer to the enlightenment process. Such terms include liberation, awakening, realization, etc. In this post I want to briefly speculate on what it could possibly mean to have such an enlightenment.

My speculation runs as follows: I can predict my own intentional actions with a substantial amount more precision than almost everything in the environment. Early on in the developmental process for modern humans, social drives will reinforce the use of cognitive capacities to predict egocentric intentional actions(changes) over the changes of the environment, as predicted by evolutionary theory. Upon realization(liberation, enlightenment, etc) the weight of priority changes, allowing the body-mind system to spend equal if not disproportionate amounts of time “predicting” the world around them.

This is a fundamental psychical change which will be manifested in real brain terms, with the primary impact upon the inhibitory and excitatory circuits of the frontal, executive system.

Because of the shift of intentional prediction towards the environment, phenomenal effects of godhood(or Buddhahood) will likely be present. It is crucial that this feeling of godhood is realized within a non-Western context, otherwise it can easily lead to the grandiose delusions typical of schizophrenia. I believe that the proper context is a Brahman-esque interpretation of God.

Thus, enlightenment could be said to be the realization that you are Brahman, or at least a relative aspect of Brahman. This realization that your Self is God implicitly includes the conception that everyone else in the world is also God. Thus, upon liberation, one realizes his/her Godlike nature and simultaneously realizes that such ideas are essentially meaningless because if you are God, then everyone else is as well. This doesn’t diminish the impact of the initial realization, but the relative context alleviates the probability of the grandiose schizoid behaviors typical of young Western adolescents realizing they are the next Messiah. In other words, the knowledge of such a Godhead transcends the dualistic nature of our egotistic minds.

It is this contextual knowledge that allows one to live the “watercourse way” of the Tao and simultaneously be of this world in such a way as to impart the fruits of compassion and loving-kindness. Cognitive capacities devoted to processing egocentric reference frameworks slowly give way to more allocentric ones. Again, this is where the feeling of god/Buddha-hood stems from, because your intentional prediction faculties are more devoted to predicting what is going on outside the boundary of your skin. The implicit relativities of self/other, inside/outside, etc would either gradually or immediately drop out of perceptual awareness, depending on the nature of the realization.

More ruminations on what it means to be liberated

Upon “transcendence”, who would be left to be liberated? Upon realization, is there any logical medium left for there to be a realization? Who enjoys the fruits the enlightenment, after enlightenment? If I understand the Buddhist concept of non-self correctly, then I have not understood it, because there would be no “I” left to understand after realization.

What do I mean by this? I conclude that one “achieves” enlightenment upon realization of how empty such concepts are to begin with. Again, it is the necessary properties of language and minds that force this confusing paradox upon us. One should probably not struggle too much trying to understand what enlightenment means and to what degree the brain is actually “changed” or “different” when one could instead spend time listening to a sound, smelling a smell, or feeling a feeling. In the words of Alan Watts, this is it.