Where The Religious And The Atheists Can Meet

Dear Readers,

I am not against religion per se. What I oppose is a misunderstanding of religion - which is why I have no sympathy for those who are religious fanatics or atheists who refuse to acknowledge the benefits of religion.

Why we can’t take religious text in the literal sense

People who lived at least 100 years ago don’t see the world the way we today see it. Time changes things. Our historical situation, psychological make up, natural disposition, individual experiences: these are some factors that influence our understanding of the world and ourselves. Understanding is interpreting. Seeing is interpreting. Reading religious texts is an act of interpretation. A word, a phrase, gets its meaning through its relationships with other words and phrases. ‘Freedom’: what does that word mean to a Muslim, Christian, fundamentalist, atheist, individualist, socialist, capitalist? That meaning of a word derives its historical relevance within a network of other words. That network is the general outlook of the world. The network shifts though time and history. There was never a time that it stood still. Conclusion: It is impossible for everybody  to agree on one definite interpretation of the Koran or the Bible.

Creating God in our image

To say that God is angry and jealous and all merciful and all forgiving and is one who somehow plays favorites with those who submit to him completely and wholeheartedly is a mere projection of the powerful people in society. It is an anthropomorphic description of God. Anything that you project on to something that is not you, is not what it is. It’s what you would want it to be. For many of us, it’s the only way we know how to relate to some being we feel to be beyond us. But, what it is, it surely is not what we want to believe it to be.

Atheism: the good and the bad

To learn something from atheism is a way of being critical of one’s attitude towards God and religion. Atheism puts the mirror in front of you. It is that window pane of the Johari windows that tells you what others see in and about you that you are not aware of yourself. If you believe that there’s something about you that you are not aware of then you shouldn’t think or believe that you have all the right answers. This is not the same thing as self doubt. Self doubt is an inability to believe or to be confident in whatever you have to say. Self criticism, on the other hand, implies that you have the courage to look yourself in the mirror, with the hope that you can better yourself.

Atheism tells you that you created God (or, whatever being you emulate or worship) in your own image. Atheism reveals the contradiction in  your belief in an all good God, who at least allows evil to exist, the amount of evil to be inflicted on innocent women, children and men. Atheism, in other words, tells you that there is something seriously wrong about your notion of God.

Atheism has its faults, too. It does not distinguish your notion of God from God himself. That’s because atheism treats them as being one and the same. There is a difference between a notion of X and X itself. Atheists couldn’t get themselves to admit that these two are to be treated separately, otherwise they would have to acknowledge X, or, in this case, God’s independent existence.

How to approach religious (or, spiritual) texts

I have no problem with people believing in a god. It’s their right, and I respect that. But, I will never approach such a being in an anthropomorphic way. That is why I do not pray for favors. I will not pray for a victory over my enemy at his expense. I find it utterly stupid for both enemies to pray to their gods for the destruction of the other. Those who pray to bend the will of their gods to theirs are guilty of idolatry. That’s what idolatry is essentially about. And, anthopomorphism, you could say, is a form of idolatry.

I also have no problem with people wanting to be atheists. It’s their right. But, I will never be one with them in declaring that there’s nothing good about religion. There is certainly something valuable to learn from reading religious or spiritual texts. It teaches one to acknowledge a presence that transcends our puny egos. So, ultimately, it comes down to this:

Really, what do we humans know? What could we get a handle on?

Socrates once said that one should not try to change the other. It is terribly difficult and next to impossible especially if the other resists change. The best and simplest way is to improve yourself. And, in my opinion, religious texts should be approach with the intention of improving one’s self.

Religious texts teach you how to relate to the other; but in order to relate to the other in an ethical way, you must set out to improve yourself. This requires a lot of understanding, reflecting, being engaged in a dialogue with the other, and critical thinking.

It does not matter whether you believe in a god. But, if you do decide to hang on to your belief in a god, then you ought to do so with the intention and the determination to improve one’s self. Also, if you do decide to not believe in a god, then realize it’s useless to  waste time and energy criticizing religion. If your intention is to show that it’s wrong to kill people in the name of religion, then improve yourself.

If people begin to see that you are a good person, and have no intention of turning them into what you want them to be for yourself, then, maybe, just maybe, they will change.

With that, I will stop writing about religion.

If there is a God, why is there so much evil?

The question assumes certain things about man’s notion of God. Let me list them:

1. God, being the creator of the universe, existed before the universe did. God and the universe, therefore, are distinguishable from each other.
2. God is an all powerful being (omnipotent) and is all good (omnibenevolent). And, he is also all present (omnipresent) and all knowing (omniscient)
3. That God has a plan for the beginning and the end of the universe. He had that plan even before the universe was created.


Now, it is a fact that there is suffering and evil. Many religious believer believe that:

1. Satan is the instigator, the seducer
2. Man is free, and therefore has the choice to do what is good, and to avoid what is evil
3. Man suffers from two kinds of evil: from natural disasters and from other fellow human beings.


Many religious believers also believe that God allowed evil so man can choose the good and learn from the experiences of evil. Many would argue that evil in human history is a step towards the better good. For instance, some race had to suffer from slavery in order for humankind to realize how wrong slavery was. Today, slavery is a crime. There are no slaves. Evil is necessary for humankind to learn from it like a child who learns how to balance upright after he undergoes the pain of tripping, and falling, and of getting hurt as a result. Parents punish their children so that the children may learn the value of self-discipline and moral values.

Perhaps, the problem of evil would not have arisen if the problems encountered by humans were as simple as the examples above. If there were no holocaust, no genocide, no murder, etc – none of those heinous crimes; then it would be irrelevant to ask the why there is evil if God is all powerful, who knows what is going to happen before it happens, and is so good that there is a valid reason for his allowing evil to happen.

But the problem of evil, unfortunately, had to be asked not because there is suffering and evil, but because there are some sufferings that should have been avoided. Like the holocaust. Six millions Jews systematically killed. There were other genocides. But the holocaust was the worst for the fact that it was planned systematically. The evil was just downright too much.

Now, let us imagine a scenario. Suppose you went out for a walk in the park and you saw some children playing soccer. They were around 8 years old. One boy kicked the ball so hard that the ball rolled out into the busy streets. There was a truck. It was going 60kph. A boy runs after the ball. You can see before it happens: the boy is unaware of the truck, neither is the truck driver aware of the boy. Boy steps into the street, in the path of the truck. You can see it happening. You feel in your guts that you have ample time to run after the boy and grab him to safety without having to sacrifice yourself. You know it’s the right thing to do. You chose to act and the boy was saved.

If God had devised a plan for the universe and everything in it before the universe was created, then He would have foreseen this incident of the boy and the truck thousands of years ago. You prevented it from happening because you knew it was the right thing to do. Even if you were to fail, at least you tried. But, if God is infinitely good, and we're not, why didn’t God prevent the holocaust from happening?

Jesus does not sit on his hands

People who claim to know the truth or who believe that they’re on the right, truthful path with Jesus, Allah, or the Buddha, seem, to me, to be complacent. They behave as though there’s nothing more to learn. They read the bible or the Koran, and they see the same message over and over again. They become stagnant in their knowledge and actions. They become mired with biases and prejudices.

But are Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Socrates, to name a few of these spiritual thinkers, as complacent as their so called followers? Has knowing THE truth made them as dumb as their followers? Has knowing THE truth made them as biased and prejudiced, and stupid?

When you are on the right path, when you feel that this is what you have to do, destined to do – be it in science, art, literature, philosophy, architecture, social work, medicine, etc – you could feel yourself expanding in knowledge. You want to know more although you have, being driven by passion for what you do, feel that you have learned a lot. It is never enough. There is always something, you say to yourself, that waits to be discovered. It’s a never ending process of knowing. That is why you are always searching. You never stop searching, and being ON the right path is what motivates you to move on. You are never complacent; yet you are most happy.

If you want to emulate these people of passion, then you should not idolize them.

Philosopher: The misunderstood being, but a happy one.

Colin McGinn, in his Philosophy By Another Name, does not like to be called a philosopher anymore. He wants to change his title to 'onticist.

It is a valid concern that I, too, had dealt with a long time ago when I taught philosophy. My concern with this issue was more of what do philosophers really do.

I like science. It would not be wise to ignore science and its discoveries of the world in which we live. But, I would be cautious to not use a particular science as a model for philosophizing. Philosophy had once committed the mistake of trying to model after the physical science. And, that to me, was the beginning of Western philosophers' identity crisis in the last 500 years.

I like literature because the novelists write about the universal conditions of human existence. Philosophers would be wisely advised to take up literature.

Where does philosophy come into the picture?

This is not the right place to write an exhaustive treatise on what philosophy is and what it has to do with science and literature. Nonetheless, I will to spell out a general outline as to what I think philosophy is.

Colin McGiinn is right in saying that philosophy is the only discipline that deals with the general nature of being. Recall the great metaphysicians like Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger and, may I add, Derrida and Levinas (I know that some of you who are acquainted with the last two may disagree with me), and in the East, Lao Tzu.

They all deal with the nature of being: that is, they explore the original relationship between consious being and Being.

Let us put it this way: scientists have devised a way to approach and study the world. It is called the scientific method. Novelists feel more and are very self consious of their feelings and the experiences of the others. This is why they write about love, suffering, the meaning of life.

Scientists adapt a certain mode of thinking that formulated the scientific method. What scientists do not consider to be part of their study is their very mode of thinking that hides and is determined by their fundamental assumptions about being.

Novelists, too, have a fundamental attitude towards Being (themselves and their fellow human beings and nature). However, they do not study the nature of that fundamental attitude that determines their approach and their relationships with themselves and their fellow human being.

The study of these fundamental approaches and attitudes, to me, is that concern that properly belongs to philosophy (or, in the words of Colin MGinn, 'ontics'). And, to best understand 'the general nature of being' the philospher (i.,e onticist), must, in the words of Plato, be interested in everything, from science and literature. Philosophers must stay in touch with these discplines. Otherwise they would be studying empty shells of Being.

Question: why do you philosophize?