Snarkily rebutting a claim that AA is “secular”

An acquaintance of mine, at a conference, ran into an apparently long-term AA member who defended, probably vociferously, the idea that Alcoholics Anonymous is a secular organization.

Just how did he defend the idea that AA is secular? Your “higher power” can be a doorknob? I know people everywhere at the end of AA meetings don’t actually pray the religious Lord's Prayer, but instead:

Our doorknob who art on the door
Hallowed be thy brass;
Thy key tumbler work;
Thy doors open quickly, at home as at work.
Give us this day our daily security;
Forgive us our fumbled keys
As we forgive others who drop theirs, too.
Lead us not into stripped-out locks,
But deliver a locksmith quickly.
For thine is the safety, and the reliability, and the universality.
Namaste.

Prayer vs. self-insight in decision-making

I’ve long and often said, in riffing on the classical Western religious description of prayer as a “heart-to-heart talk with god,” that it’s really a “heart-to-heart talk with one’s self.”

First of all, once you recognize and accept that, even if you still believe in some sort of deity, you can’t pray to him/her/it; certainly not in the way you considered prayer to be before this light went on.

The flip side, though, of losing out on the belief of being able to tap into god as “deus quam machina,” no matter how capricious this machine is, one gets the empowerment, small as it may be, of being able to look to one’s own self for insight.

But, the flip side of that is that any decisions one makes can no longer be passed off, or buck-passed, to somebody else, as in “I thought god was telling me to, …” (Of course, if you still believe in a critter “downstairs,” you still have recourse to the infamous “the devil made me do it” plea.)

For me, probably in part as a reaction to events of childhood, I have trouble decision-making anyway. In part, it’s a fear of somebody — god (in my pre-conversion days), a boss, some other authority figure, or someone else to be affected by my decision — judging or criticizing me for making that decision. In fact, often, the decision itself isn’t the problem; facing up to the consequences, including this judgment, is.

And, now, I don’t have any god as daddy the tear-wiper, daddy the hand-holder, or daddy the giant daddy to make it all go away, to comfort me.

I have me, and human friend to whom to talk these fears out.

On the other hand, a god both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by definition can’t have an experiential concept of evil, psychological pain or sorrow anyway, and so is of limited use as a hand-holder.

All in all, lumps unfortunately included, I’m better off wrestling with my decision-making on the only plane I know we actually have, with the only, limited, human help I know is actually available.

Disingeniousness alert — Martin Novak

Biologist Martin Novak likens religious statements to mathematical ones for not needing scientific confirmation:

“Like mathematics, many theological statements do not need scientific confirmation. Once you have the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, it’s not like we have to wait for the scientists to tell us if it’s right. This is it.”

Err, mathematical statements DO do need mathematical confirmation, though, in a process every bit as rigorous as the scientific process.

If Novak can point me to a “religious confirmation process” that meets the same standards, I’ll eat my hat.

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.

What is religion?

I am not going to give you a Webster’s definition, nor a Latin etymology-based one. Instead, based on my own academic experience and insight, I am going to offer one of my own, which will also illustrate why, in contradistinction from many of its adherents, I consider Buddhism a religion.

First, I believe religion arises from the juncture of philosophy, psychology and sociology. Most people could readily see the first two, but sociology? Yes, even for a hermitic monk. Even that monk’s idea of religious expression and devotion were originally developed in a communal setting and out of guidelines developed by a religious community.

Second, looking at the main branches of philosophy, I see religion as being concerned with metaphysics, ethics, epistemology and ontology. Even Buddhism falls into the first area, on a couple of grounds. Karma, as a law, is not a law about material substances, but the metaphysical idea of reincarnation. And, even if Buddhists reject the idea of an individual soul or the collective atman, something metaphysical, that is, something beyond the material world, is believed to be reincarnated. Not that I agree with Paul Tillich’s use of words, but if we want to talk about “ultimate grounds of being,” Buddhism has one, as I see it.

Ethics is obvious. By that, I am not saying that it is the primary, let alone sole, preserve of religions, just that every religion has some ethical focus. It may be minor in some, great in others, but it’s there.

Epistemology? Yes. Every religion is teleological in some way, and its mythos is in part, to riff on Aristotle, an attempt to explain either an efficient or a final cause of things.

Ontology connects with metaphysics as to the nature of what that cause might be, the nature of metaphysical objects, and the nature of anything, be it individual soul or individualized soul or not, the nature of humanity.

And, there is where psychology enters. Psychology in religion is about more than faith in the religious sense of “hope in things unseen.” Rather, it’s about how one orients toward the ultimate object of one’s concern, whether a personal God with a salvific-based resurrection, or moving beyond karma and its rounds of reincarnation to a depersonalized nirvana. As part of that, I can’t think of a major religion that doesn’t have prayer or something roughly analogous to it.

More proof the Buddha was no Buddha

It’s likely that Siddhartha Gautama’s most famous phrase is:

“Life is suffering.”

If you’re a good Buddhist, life CAN’T be suffering, because you’re supposed to be in a state of satori. Rather, if the Buddha himself had actually obtained Buddhahood, he would have said, “Life appears to be suffering.”

Update, July 11: For some reason, Blogger's comment window isn't working for me today at work, either under my identity, or as an anonymous commenter. So, I'm posting here:

I don't think it's "sterile" nor do I think it's a matter of "dueling sound bites," the difference between "life is suffering" and "life appears to be suffering."

This hinges in part on other issues of Buddhism; I've already mentioned maya, which I know Theravada accepts, and I don't believe Mahayana rejects, at least. If life is an illusion, then the idea of suffering is ultimately an illusion.

It also hinges on the Buddhist rejection of atman, in another way. Arguably, can a good Buddhist even talk about "life" in this way if there is no reincarnation of an individual soul? I say not. In other words, what I see as implied invitation in the statement "life is suffering," for the listeners to agree that, "boy, yes, my life sure is suffering," or similar, can't logically follow if Siddhartha is enlightened enough to believe there is no "I" to be suffering.

Of course, I have other disagreements with the idea of karma, which I've blogged elsewhere on this blog. Frankly, I find it, more so in its Buddhist than its Hindu form (since Hinduism allows for an individual "soul"/life force which theoretically, at least, could remember the misdeeds of a past life which brought on an [apparentely] poor incarnation in this life), as appalling as fundamentalist monotheist ideas of hell.

Now, the people who have been posting here may see this as "village idiot anti-Buddhism" akin to "village idiot atheism." I don't. The original post and my comments to other commenters aren't snarky potshots but real issues. I made similar comments about Sam Harris' "End of Faith" on my Amazon review.

I find Buddhism to be a an interesting and enlightening psychological philosophy, but where it ventures into metaphysical issues as a religion, find it no more enlightening than any "Western monotheism."