The Idyllicist

Studying wisdom of the past to build a better future

  • The Song of Sooth

    By

    Note from the Author: This past week was incredibly busy, and I had no time to prepare a new post. So, I’ll be sharing more of my own writing here. This is “The Song of Sooth.”

    Here we discuss the First of the Beams.

    There are three highest orders for man,
    Three provisions of the Moral Law
    By which seekers of caste must abide.

    The first of these orders is called sooth,
    For truth is the noblest of all speech
    And the lifeblood of all which is good.

    The truth is a two-way thoroughfare,
    For one may speak no lies to others
    But deceive themselves on the inside.

    There is one kind of lie to be told
    Permissible in the eyes of caste:
    Those which serve to later advance good.

    For it would be unwise to disclose
    One’s location to an enemy
    With intentions to hurt, maim, or kill.

    Those who follow their own self-interest
    And who put themselves before others
    Have forfeited their right to the truth.

    They who attempt to control the truth
    Spit in the face of all creation.
    The cosmos rejects their endeavor.

    Oblivion be to the liar!
    For while the truth may weaken today,
    It will emerge stronger tomorrow.

    In these days when truth seems pliable,
    One can take solace in the known fact
    That the real truth will always break free.

    What is the definition of sooth?

    The truth is unbending, unfailing,
    The strongest of any steel alloy.
    It does not compromise for evil.

    The truth is unbiased, unallied,
    The most objective of perspectives.
    It does not change for falsehoods and lies.

    The truth is upsetting, unnerving,
    The highest standard to emulate.
    It does not lower for anyone.

    The truth is unruly, uncivil,
    The chord most raw upon the eardrum.
    Dissonance can be necessary.

    The truth is unmoving, unerring,
    The feather laid upon the scale.
    There can be no hiding from the truth.

    The truth is unending, undying,
    Eternal warden of the cosmos.
    It will outlive the final protons.

    The truth is unravelling at times,
    But honesty is the highest call,
    The test of a soul in self-conflict.

    The truth is unforgiving at times,
    For it may take years to build the walls,
    But mere seconds to level them all.

    The truth is unbearable at times,
    But the soul who weathers the thunder
    May attain the power of lightning.

    Seeking truth is a lifelong journey.

    The truth may seem to be elusive,
    Swirling close around, yet out of reach,
    Taunting, tantalizing the seeker.

    Thrown about in the turbulent air
    Like debris in the midst of a storm,
    The truth may pass within reach, but just.

    Resting upon the tip of the tongue,
    It starts and teases incessantly,
    Daring the world to unleash it.

    The truth may seem to be everywhere,
    So obvious, yet esoteric,
    Purported truths reveal naught but lies.

    Held in the ancient tomes of the past,
    Concealed by the letters of the gods,
    The truth flutters between the pages.

    Laid bare by modern applications,
    False prophets all around the world
    Claim to provide the truth for a fee.

    The truth may seem to be secluded,
    But hidden within the upright heart
    Is the key to all understanding.

    Ponder your place in the universe:
    What are you, a speck, to the vastness
    Of the cosmos above and around?

    You are everything to existence,
    Necessary and wanted as well
    By the rest of all of creation.

    Isn’t the truth a beautiful thing?

  • Reach Out, Touch Faith

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    “But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’” – John 20:25b

    Skepticism is a key driver of the human tendency towards curiosity, innovation, and progress. No institution that values real, effective, positive change mandates blind faith. 

    Blind faith is a slippery slope – while it relieves the believer of the burden of decision-making, it can so easily be weaponized into an agent of mass destruction.  

    When I was neck-deep in evangelicalism, I remember being told that Christianity was not a religion, but a “faith.” In hindsight, this was simply another method of distinguishing Christianity from the rest of the religions and cultivating the us-versus-them dynamic that any institution of fear thrives on. But at the time, it was a badge of honor. 

    The idea that faith – believing without seeing – is a superior trait goes back to the Gospel of John. Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw and touched his wounds for himself. In this narrative, Jesus appears and allows Thomas to do just that. After this, Jesus blesses those who believe without seeing. 

    On the surface, this is a fairly wholesome tale. A dear teacher and leader has been miraculously resurrected, but one of his followers, perhaps stricken still by grief and reluctant to be disappointed again, doubts the good news. For this, Thomas was branded as “doubting.”

    What this story actually reinforces, however, is the very blind faith that often precludes curiosity and investigation. Of course, there were many in the history of scientific discovery who were devout Christians or Muslims, and many were driven by their faith. But they all fell short in that they presupposed their faith to shape science, and not the other way around. 

    As proud as I was to be a blind-faith follower of Jesus back then, I could never quite silence the voice that encouraged me to investigate. Often I found websites and misinformation that confirmed my biases, but eventually this tide began to turn. I simply could no longer ignore the fact that there was no evidence for much of what was in the Bible – and not just that, but heaps of evidence against much of what was in the Bible. 

    Accepting reality quieted a long and painful tumult within me. And though it hurt to leave the church, it was the right call. 

    A skeptic mind is seen as dangerous to these institutions that want nothing but control, so skeptic minds are villainized and cast out as “faithless,” “godless,” and “demonic.” Another common refrain is that people who leave the church “just want to sin.”

    Nothing could be further from the truth. Curiosity and investigation are part of what makes us human, and to lose that is to lose our humanity. We will revisit the pain of leaving the church in a future piece, but it felt applicable to this topic as well. 

    I do not think religion is “bad” for science or society. Religion, just like scientific investigation, is simply one method of embracing the human experience, a method that happens to be tied to the subjective rather than the objective. I think it can and very much has been a force for good. 

    But I do know that blind faith and loyalty with no skepticism is a dangerous idea, and one that can – and very much has – led humanity into its darkest depths.

  • A Spiritually Moribund Religion

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    “Let not the moving about of the disbelievers in the land deceive thee.” – Sūrah 3:197

    Being evil gets you far in this world. Take a look at the highest echelons of government and corporations. Evil pays, and it pays a lot. It pays even more when the masses have been conditioned to champion an evil cause through the guise of religion. 

    One issue I take with religions that promise divine retribution against “the disbelievers” in the afterlife is that this idea keeps the masses complacent and relatively pacified. We may dive further into this idea later, but today’s post concerns the success of evil people and the importance of deep, critical thought about one’s religion. 

    I am staunchly against the notion that religion arose as a method with which to control others, but it is undeniable that evil people manipulate it to their gain. This is one of those situations. 

    Take a moment to think about this. The teachings of Jesus were more or less socialistic in nature. He seemed to care very little about homosexuality, but very much about greed, thievery, and hospitality. There are countless verses attributed to him in which he urges his followers to welcome the foreigner, share the wealth, and put the self last. 

    Modern American Christianity stands in stark contrast to this. With the exception of a handful of disparate churches across the United States, American Christianity preaches rabid intolerance, prosperity gospel, and, in a historic twist of irony, a thinly-veiled egoism cast as piety. 

    The modern church would be unrecognizable to the early church. This is true of many religions. Like people and societies, religions evolve and change over time. They adapt, they transform, and they often split. 

    And they are not immune to people who seek naught but personal gain. 

    It is almost insulting how willingly the supposedly pious lay down their values to worship their idols. It makes one wonder if there were values to lay down to begin with. People like those at the helm of our government today are so transparently evil and antithetical to the maxims they preach – and that are parroted by the masses – that it is nearly unbelievable how thoroughly their followers have been conditioned and brainwashed. 

    There are many points of Christian theology I stand in disagreement with, but the core message of the religion is one I can relate to and support, and even admire at times. American Christianity does not fall under this umbrella. Evangelicalism has set society back countless decades and threatens to set us back centuries to come. 

    Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” He was a Southern Baptist. 

    This quote and the idea behind it inspired some as-of-yet unpublished work of mine: “A religion which places human well-being second does not deserve to persist. This is not to say that a faith may change and adapt, but rarely throughout history has religion been a driver of progress. Thus it is necessary and overdue that something new comes to blossom.”

    It seems obvious to me that American Christianity is a thoroughly spiritually moribund religion. This statement only applies to the intolerant evangelical congregations, but it still applies to the vast majority of the church as a whole – enough so that it represents an existential threat to progress. 

    I am a firm believer in universal justice, and I believe the arc of the universe bends toward justice in the end. That does not alleviate us, in the here and now, from working to make our world a better place and protect it from people who would gladly subjugate others for their own gain.

  • ‘Sola Fide’ Repudio

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    “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” – James 2:14

    A cornerstone of Protestant Christian theology is the notion of sola fide, or “faith alone.” I struggled with this even as a devout Christian – although I refused to admit such – and through much reflection eventually abandoned the idea. 

    In a nutshell, sola fide is the idea that to be saved, in the Christian sense, one simply must believe that Jesus was the son of God and died for the sins of humanity. That’s it. 

    Running against sola fide is fides formata – “faith formed by charity.” Those who subscribe to this idea maintain that one’s acknowledgement of Jesus’s divinity and sacrifice is meaningless if they do not do good in the world too. Those who cling to the idea of sola fide believe that deeds are a natural result of faith, but are unnecessary for salvation. 

    Sola fide is not an original teaching of Jesus. Yes, there are many places in which he tells his followers to have faith, but the other half of Jesus’s teachings – the half many are so quick to forget – involves actively bettering the world around oneself. 

    Sola fide arose as part of the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s and traces its lineage to Martin Luther himself. Luther added the word “only” into a translation of the Bible to support his case that sola fide was the tenet “upon which the church stands or falls.”

    Even so, many Protestant denominations reject sola fide or hold to a softer version of it. 

    Naturally, the idea of sola fide begs the question: What happens to a good person who does not believe in Jesus? In many churches, they would be condemned to the fires of Hell. In others, there is the possibility of negotiation. Neither answer sits right with me. 

    On the other hand, what happens to a bad person who does believe in Jesus?

    Growing up, I asked this question of many spiritual leaders and role models, and I often received the same response. If a truly evil person truly believed in Jesus, or truly repented moments before death, they would be saved. Often the example of a certain German dictator was used to support this claim. To these church leaders, the idea that Adolf Hitler might be lounging around in Heaven was somehow not upsetting. It makes me wonder if they would be so forgiving for Islamic fundamentalists. 

    For a while, I was young enough that the other question had little meaning to me. I assumed everyone believed in God. I do not remember the first time this happened, but I do remember the horror I felt when I discovered someone I loved, someone I knew was a good person, was an atheist. 

    Of course, as I fell into evangelicalism, I had no issue with the other question, but it still bothered me that someone like Hitler could even be considered for paradise. I accepted it, but only reluctantly. As I broke free from the chains of that belief, a little voice in my mind began asking the other question again. 

    The idea that God is merciful but throws potentially the best of humanity into Hell simply because they were skeptical – or had not even heard of him – is impossible to rationalize. And, for all the talk of “free grace” and “free salvation,” attaching conditions renders these points moot. 

    This is not to say that salvation, whatever it is, should be without conditions. I believe it does come with the condition that one must do good in the world and to others, though my idea of “salvation” is more along the lines of acquiring an everlasting soul rather than lifting oneself from eternal flame. I also believe this is simply the nature of the universe, not a decree from on high. 

    Either way, faith in an event and another person’s identity as a condition of salvation is completely arbitrary. More worryingly, it gives bad-faith actors an easy loophole to salvation. For a child abuser, it is far more preferable to declare their faith in Jesus rather than amend their wicked ways. 

    On a human level, belief in Jesus labels one a Christian. Christianity is ubiquitous in our society now, but those who are outward in their devotion – which Jesus explicitly commanded his followers to avoid – are perceived as godly and pious regardless of their actions. Case in point – a while after I left the church, I learned that my former youth pastor had been cheating on his wife and had a baby with his lover. 

    I do not gamble, but I would bet that everyone has a story like this. I certainly have more, but cheating is among the most evil of actions in my mind, so this example has always stuck out to me. 

    Pastors rake in profits, cheaters retain social standing, and bigots spew hate that would make Jesus question his sacrifice. But because they have faith, they are unquestionable. 

    So, it is for all these reasons that I say confidently: ‘Sola fide’ repudio.

  • The Anomaly of Bigotry

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    “Treat the small as great and the few as many. Requite enmity with character.” – Daodejing 63

    Nature versus nurture – this debate has raged since time immemorial. I tend to ascribe more to nature than to nurture, but nurture reigns supreme in one particularly ugly aspect: bigotry. 

    At its core, bigotry is a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. Eons ago, unfounded paranoia may have enabled a species to survive, but humanity has long outgrown this trait. Sapience, compassion, empathy – these are what enable a species not just to survive, but to truly thrive. 

    Bigotry is a grotesque outgrowth of this ancient survival instinct, one that our modern world must move past. And, at least during the earliest years of one’s life, this toxic trait has been abandoned. 

    Now it would be silly to claim that no one is born bigoted, but the vast majority of bigots were taught this toxic trait. Bad dogs are not born, only made. The same applies to humanity. 

    Humans are generally naturally curious creatures. On the surface, this may seem antithetical to survival, but a cautious curiosity allows life to surpass the bounds imposed upon it by the cold, unfeeling laws of nature. 

    Curiosity naturally begets education, and education begets understanding, compassion, and ultimately empathy. This is why curiosity is one of the three core pillars of my belief system – it is absolutely crucial to progress. 

    While some are more curious than others, it is safe to say that nearly every human is born with a vast capacity to learn and to question. Unfortunately, many are born to those who do not value curiosity and education, or even disparage it in order to impose a strict ruleset of their own. 

    So, as a naturally curious child grows up, the unlucky ones are taught by example that curiosity has little use, that the world is simple, and that difference is dangerous. The fortunate ones are taught, both by example and often in words, that curiosity is a virtue, that the world is beautifully complex, and that difference is what helps us to thrive and progress together. 

    In the United States, there is a common refrain among conservatives that teenagers are indoctrinated by liberal professors. This simply is not true. Good professors facilitate critical thinking and curiosity, which causes a person to question the constructs they held so dearly. A sheltered teenager also meets a wide variety of people they never knew could exist, and they see these people not as the crude villains somewhere outside of their rigid worldview, but as the beautiful people they are. 

    Curiosity leads to more than education and understanding – it leads to questioning. And to anyone obsessed with maintaining power and control, this is exceedingly dangerous. This is why religion has doctrine. This is why political movements built on this fundamental misunderstanding of the world tend to become so extreme. This is why abusive parents raise obedient children. 

    In a twisted way, most bigots begin as victims of this system. This in no way excuses their behavior or any harm they have caused, but it is key to a deeper understanding of what went wrong. 

    I still struggle with the idea that anyone can unlearn this behavior. After a certain point, this simplistic, fear-based worldview is so ingrained that it has what is left of the person in a stranglehold. At the same time, there are many who are taught by example that curiosity is unnecessary, but who still champion it despite the conditions of their youth. 

    To me, this indicates that curiosity is the default. Even in these harsh and abusive conditions, children being brought up to be obedient and unquestioning often sense that something is deeply wrong. Bigotry, on the other hand, nearly always has a source external to the person. 

    I may not be a parent yet, but I know that the best way a parent can answer a curious child’s question is to explain it – both honestly and in a way that they can understand and build upon later. And this extends to rules, too, for the most fundamental parts of a child’s worldview are formed around the rules by which they are bound. Certainly they have a place in rare situations, but possibly the four worst words a parent can utter are, “because I said so.”

    By and large, bigotry is taught. Curiosity is natural. Empathy is natural. To live life as a bigot is not just harmful to others, but it is a squandering of one’s own life and potential.

  • Beacon of Hope

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    “Why the laughter, why the joy, when flames are ever burning? Surrounded by darkness, shouldn’t you search for light?” – Dhammapada 11.146

    The world is a flawed place. Society is flawed, that is – nature is perfect in its own way. Amidst unmovable egos, covetous tyrants, and seemingly endless violence, it can be difficult to remain hopeful and joyous. 

    But progress is not linear, and hope and joy are allowed to waver. That is just human nature. What is most important to remember is that a temporary regression is just that – temporary. 

    This is not to say that regression is not dangerous or something to be concerned about. Anything that works against the arrow of progress is something to be strived against, and no future amount of progress will negate the damage of past or present regression. But what keeps one’s spirit alive is the prospect of progress, the notion of a better world. 

    Utopia is far from attainable in our current state. Indeed, many still operate on the more base desires of evolution: competition, greed, and selfishness. And so long as these traits persist, utopia is impossible. 

    Humanity is capable of so much more, but in order to achieve these higher feats, we must almost shed the shackles of our prior existence. Competition must be replaced by cooperation. Greed must be conquered by generosity. Altruism must supplant selfishness. 

    And any loving and omnipotent God would make it possible for all to achieve this level of greatness. For the individual, Heaven should not be difficult to enter, though Heaven for the whole may still be trillions of years away. 

    It is often frustrating to engage with those who refuse to let go of the traits that hold them back from progress, but patience is a virtue that will certainly offer reward to those who indulge it. Often the act of debate is not for the debater, but the observer. 

    To tell the observer that, despite all the cruelty, despite all the bloodshed and needless violence, there is someone who recognizes and celebrates the human condition, that is true camaraderie. That is the mark of a deep, genuine human bond, one whose brilliance is made yet more manifest by the darkness that threatens to choke it. 

    But remember – regression is always temporary. What is eternal is the human condition and the joy of life, existence, consciousness, and reality. What is fulfilling is sharing that with another. 

    Reality is awe-inspiring enough through one pair of eyes. How much more wondrous is it, then, through two?

  • Wives, Do Not Submit to Your Husbands

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    “Both partners must be fully equal, for neither should absorb the other, but both should unite as a couple.” – Lethe 15:11

    My wife and I had the privilege of attending a wedding this past weekend, and I was pleasantly struck by both the genuineness and the egalitarianism of the ceremony. 

    Traditional weddings often include a call to the bride to submit to her husband and his will, and this has never sat right with me. To each their own, I suppose, but the idea of one partner subsuming the other seems antithetical to love. 

    Now, I do not want to make the assumption that all those who have ceremonies including this line, sourced from the Epistle to the Ephesians, subscribe to this idea. Indeed many of that faith read the line in reference to a sort of mutual respect, but it is clear that this line and others like it have been used to justify inequality in what should be the most equal partnership of all. 

    That said, when a sacred partnership such as this is overtaken by jealousy, paranoia, and inequality, it is a sad sight indeed for all involved. Some marriages are not meant to last, but an ideal marriage sees both partners give equally, sacrifice only when necessary, and generally enjoy each other simply for who they are. 

    The second a hierarchy is introduced, these goals become much more difficult to achieve. 

    In preparation for my own wedding ceremony, I wrote the verses to be recited and asked my wife – then fiancée – to approve them before sending them to our officiant. In these verses, I made it clear that those who seek to enter into marriage with each other must be equal with each other, regardless of gender or sex. The verse at the top of this piece was one of those recited during our ceremony a couple months ago, from “The Song of Wedlock” that is included in the Fithwrit. 

    The wedding this weekend was also a wholesome one, with the officiant telling the story of the couple’s journey together and the bride and groom both crediting each other for helping them through their most difficult and vulnerable of moments. I had never formally met the groom, but hearing his vows, I knew he loved his bride as much as she loved him, and that this would be a joyful marriage. 

    In my own marriage, I also did not invoke a higher power. Similarly to my views on morality, I do not believe an external being is necessary to hold together a marriage. If anything, such focus on an external being may obscure those who are actually married. Again, to each their own – this is simply my thinking on the subject and what my wife and I agreed upon quite readily. 

    Regardless of what is or is not read in a ceremony, one partner making the call over the other is unhealthy. The “tradwife” movement of late is especially unnerving. Similarly to my views on individuality and spirituality, to give oneself up so fully to another’s whim is to forsake one’s humanity and agency. 

    Marriage truly is a wonderful thing, and something I do believe to be sacred. My daughters, should I have any in the future who choose to marry, will certainly know their worth as people in their own right, and not simply as another person’s wife. 

    Wives, do not submit to your husbands.

  • The Mark of a Hypocrite

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    “It is not speech which we should want to know: we should know the speaker.” – Kaushitaki Upanishad

    I once was told, “Do not judge a religion by its worst, but only by its best.” While I understand this sentiment, I cannot say I fully agree with it. 

    With any widespread religion, there will inevitably be those who twist it to serve their own selfish purposes. No religion is immune to this. But, I would argue, some religions are more susceptible to it than others. 

    And a lot of this comes down to a religion’s scriptures. 

    Take Islam for example. There are plenty of verses in the Qur’an that not only encourage but command violence against those of other religions. Some of these verses do get taken out of context, and some are intended for self-defense, but it is not hard to use the Word of God to justify heinous acts. 

    Christianity has a similar problem. Yes, Jesus spoke of radical love and called his followers to serve others. My disagreements with Christian cosmology and theology aside, this is objectively a wonderful thing to base any system of belief around. 

    But the same text calls queer love unnatural. The same text orders wives to “submit” to their husbands’ every demand. Even Jesus called a Gentile woman a “dog” and told her he was only here to save the Jewish people. 

    And that’s just from the New Testament. Over the last two thousand years, the Bible has been invoked to justify some truly heinous things. Entire sects of Christianity were either forcibly converted or massacred. Women were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Slavedrivers used scripture to justify the ownership of other human beings – and reading parts of Leviticus, this was less of a stretch than one might think. 

    And today, the same scripture is invoked in Christian nationalist circles, alongside a revised version of history claiming that this country is and has always been a Christian one. 

    Again, no religion is immune to this, but some are more susceptible than others. There are not many Buddhist radicals or Sikh fundamentalists. There are many, many of these in the world’s two most dominant religions, however. That alone should be cause for reflection. 

    Religion must either adapt or move out of the way. It is not that religions are incapable of adapting – Christianity today is far, far different than the early church. One may even call it unrecognizable. It is a matter of whether the religion itself embraces positive change. 

    Many churches have, and I commend those congregations with all my heart. Those that are welcoming, inclusive, and use their religion not to subjugate others but to serve them, those people deserve all the best and will truly be rewarded in the afterlife. 

    But the reality is that there are also many churches that discourage change and act to root out authenticity. And while it is easy to combat these ideologies with their own scripture, it is even easier to justify such anti-human sentiment with the same scripture. I could wait no longer for Christianity to adapt, so I struck out on my own. 

    The heralding of any writing by human hand as divine instruction is dangerous – especially writing that diminishes the human spirit in favor of submission and control. 

  • Wrong from Right

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    “Then the Lord God said, ‘Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!’” – Genesis 3:22

    The foundational story of the Bible – and therefore all of the Abrahamic religions – fell apart for me once I asked one question: “Why?”

    Now I understand that this story is in no way based in reality, but because many do treat it as literal history and some very central doctrines derive from it, I will treat it as literal history for the purposes of this post. 

    Many years ago, my answer would have been simple and the same regardless of perspective. Why create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place? Why punish humanity for something they quite literally could not understand was wrong? Why create any of this with explicit foreknowledge of its failure? The answer was always the same: that God was testing humanity’s faith. 

    That answer was satisfying when I was satisfied in thinking no further about it. But the question remained of why God, in his supposedly infinite knowledge, would need to test humanity’s faith in the first place. Eventually, I could no longer ignore that question. 

    The story very quickly falls apart at the seams. If God was not omniscient, then perhaps he could be justified in testing humanity’s faith. But he is all-knowing, meaning he knew that humanity would fail at the first hurdle. 

    When this is pointed out, blame is typically shifted onto humanity. They were tempted, and they gave in to their temptations. They disobeyed God, so they deserved punishment. They knew it was wrong because God told them it was wrong. 

    These answers presuppose a few things – that humanity did not know evil but could comprehend what “wrong” was, and that any disobedience of God is automatically evil. 

    I remember learning in a sermon that Adam and Eve were effectively babies before the Fall. They did not know good from evil or right from wrong. They were fully innocent beings. Only after the Fall were they able to comprehend right and wrong. 

    So imagine that you, as a parent, set up a play area for your newborn child. You give him all the toys he wants, but you place one of them in the middle and tell him he is not allowed to touch it. 

    What happens then?

    Obviously, the baby will touch the toy. He does not know right from wrong or good from evil. Those words make no sense to him whatsoever. He simply assumes that you are a safe person and, since you are watching him play, that he might stop you if you are about to do something dangerous. Even that second point is generous. 

    Any reasonable parent would ask why you would give a baby access to something they should have no access to in the first place. They would also ask why this one particular toy is off-limits. And if your response to these reasonable parents’ questions was, “I told him not to,” you would be hated for very good reason. 

    And if your response to this “transgression” was even a fraction of God’s response to humanity’s Fall, any reasonable parent would report you to the Department of Children and Family Services. 

    Excepting the clear moral contradictions of this story, it still assumes that an action is evil solely because God said it was. Laws are not always moral – there is nothing immoral about driving ten miles per hour over the speed limit. While laws like this may have utility, there is still no utility to be found in God’s arbitrary forbidding of one tree. 

    On the flipside, laws of morality should arise from our humanity, not because of an external force’s command. Imagine asking an atheist and a Christian why murder is immoral. The atheist might say that murder is immoral because it robs one of their precious life and ability to experience it, it imparts undue hardship onto anyone the victim may know and love, and there is even an economic factor if one could be so cynical. Besides, the atheist would rather not be murdered, so it stands to reason that they would refrain from it as well, nothing else withstanding. 

    If the Christian is asked the same question and answers that murder is immoral because God says it is, I know I would feel much safer with the atheist. 

    The only way in which evil can be correlated one-to-one with God’s command is if God was unequivocally and unarguably moral. And there are plenty of stories in the Bible that show that this is very much not the case. 

    To take this point even further, God actually gives a reason for forbidding humanity’s access to the Tree of Life after they become knowledgeable of the difference between good and evil. Humanity has “become like” God, and if they eat from the other tree, they will “live forever.” 

    In this view, humanity is not punished strictly for disobeying God, but for the mere possibility of rivalling him in power. And not just power, but knowledge. The reason conservatives fear an educated populace is because more education generally means more questioning and critical thinking, which makes it that much more difficult to maintain control. 

    And even if all of the above can be disregarded, there is still the issue of God’s omniscience. No matter his motivations, no matter the definition of evil, no matter his reckless actions, the fact remains that he created all of this and allowed it to happen with the express knowledge that it would fail. 

    God set humanity up for failure, for suffering, and for death, no matter how you slice it. Evil did not enter the world – God created evil and let it take root. 

    Now the argument of free will comes into play. Free will is defined as one’s capacity to make choices unconstrained by external forces. In the Bible, God is said to offer free will to choose between right and wrong – with the caveat that if you choose not to obey his commands, he will throw you into Hell forever. 

    And what of Heaven? If Heaven is meant to be a sinless place, but sinlessness can only exist when humanity has not exercised its free will, do humans have free will in Heaven? Any of them could Fall at any point if so. 

    Freedom to obey does not make sense, and the threat of eternal torture for making use of free will seems unjust. Additionally, nominally having free will but being unable to exercise it is the functional equivalent of not having free will. 

    Of course, this is merely a story written by some religiously-inclined people of a vastly different culture and time period. I would not spill so much ink on this subject if it had no real-world application. 

    Because this is not just a story. This is a foundational piece of literature for billions of people. The very idea of sin is born with this story. Humanity is flawed, yes, but to define sin as a refusal to engage in a rotten deal with an insecure yet powerful man is nothing less than tyranny. To brand it as love and mercy is laughable. 

    The doctrine of original sin arises from this story as well. Every single person is cursed with pain, suffering, and death from before birth for someone else’s actions. If the Bible is God’s everlasting word, even God himself seems iffy on this idea. In the Book of Exodus, God announces his intent to punish “to the third and fourth generation,” but in the Book of Ezekiel, “the son will not share the guilt of the father.”

    Regardless, the message here is that every human is flawed and irredeemable without divine mercy because of someone else’s actions, not their own. Again, humanity is certainly flawed, but these flaws – just like our morality – arise from within us, not because an external force says so. 

    And that is an awful way to live one’s life – a way that no truly loving God would impose upon his creations. 

    For thousands of years, this story has been interpreted, justified, and re-interpreted by countless members of our species. There is nothing wrong with a detailed exegesis – that is what religion should be, ideally – but if one must dig so far through the exegetical crust that they hit the mantle, a re-examination is in order. 

  • The God Within You

    By

    “These bodies come to an end, but that vast embodied Self is ageless, fathomless, eternal.” – Bhagavad Gita 2.18a

    Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force. 

    Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well. 

    As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human. 

    The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge. 

    Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?

    The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event. 

    Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale. 

    Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience. 

    But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds. 

    If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know. 

    Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness. 

    There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do? 

    And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned. 

    God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.