Agnostic Buddhism - Buddhism Without Beliefs

Stephen Batchelor, in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs, describes an agnostic Buddhism. He does not describe Buddhism as a religion per se but as a method. Buddhism, he says, is not so much something to believe in, but is something to do. It is an activity, a lifestyle and a practice that we can integrate into every aspect of our experience. To be a Buddhist, do you have to be someone who believes certain propositions such as the four noble truths or reincarnation? According to Batchelor, the answer is no. He says Buddhism is not particularly religious or spiritual in the usual ways we understand these terms. It is simply a way to be in the world. Rather than being focused on deities, beliefs and supernatural claims, Batchelor claims Buddhism is founded in the agnostic tradition.

T.H. Huxley first coined agnosticism in 1869. He explained it as a method “realized through the ‘rigorous application of a single principle.’” This principle has both positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect exclaims, “Follow your reason as far as it will take you.” The negative aspect asserts that one should “not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. “ An agnostic Buddhist would not regard Buddhism as a source of answers to questions of where we came from, where we are going or what happens after death. Batchelor says an agnostic Buddhist would seek knowledge in the appropriate domains such as science. As for supernatural claims and questions about the origin of the universe or what happens after death, the Buddha himself remained silent. These questions were seen as distractions, as irrelevant to our human condition, irrelevant to the reality of suffering.

Buddhism however can become a dogmatic system when we elevate the matter of fact-ness of the four noble truths to holiness. They can become propositions to believe in. (Western scholars even superimposed the term Buddhism. This label allowed Buddhism to become a creed, which could be then compared to other creeds around the world. It can be easy to reduce a tradition and a religion such as Buddhism to a list of beliefs and practices that obscures its agnostic heritage and complexity.) Supernatural questions are seen as mysteries, not problems with answers that can be solved through meditation or prayer or through belief in a set of doctrine. Arbitrary answers to supernatural questions that are not demonstrated or demonstrable are simply irrelevant.  Strategies such as prayer and beliefs in doctrine merely replace mystery with beliefs in an answer that are often clinged to with such fervor that they distract from true ethical conversation and can even cause a great deal suffering, hatred and divisiveness.

Batchelor makes an important distinction between existential confrontation and existential consolation. Most of what we understand as religion can be seen as consisting of condolatory elements such as assurances of a better afterlife. Buddhist practice can be said to start not with belief in a transcendent reality but through embracing the “anguish experience in an uncertain world.” This is the essence of the first noble truth. We must have the courage to face whatever life throws at us without recourse to supernatural claims or consolations. To accept whatever comes with equanimity, and the humility to learn from every situation. Agnosticism shifts concern away from the future life and supernatural dialogue and brings it back to the present moment. Agnosticism is not passive. Instead, it is a dialogue, an ongoing encounter and existential confrontation with the unknown and mystery of our existence. Buddhism in this way, Batchelor says, might have “more in common with godless secularism than with the bastions of [western] religion.”

We must also make a distinction between ethics and morals, or more specifically ethical integrity as being distinct from moral certainty. A priori certainty about right and wrong is simply at odds with a changing and unreliable world. An ethical question should not be framed as ‘what is the right thing to do?” but “what is the compassionate thing to do?” This question can be approached with integrity but not with certainty. Likewise, agnostic Buddhism demands ethical conversation rather than moral claims based in supernatural hope and fear. This dialogue inevitably forces an encounter with our moral conditioning, which is based largely in psychological and social habit. We tend repeat the gestures of parents, authority figures, or religious texts. And while this sort of moral conditioning may arguably contribute to some aspect of social stability, it is nonetheless inadequate as a paradigm of ethical integrity. Encountering our socialized norms of morality, ethics, and supernatural claims and assumptions is precisely the type of encounter that agnosticism and Buddhism seek out. It is a creative and ongoing process that can be said to be the very basis of a genuine religious lifestyle, of genuine ethical conversation, both as individuals and collectively. Moral certainty based in supernatural claims that are not demonstrated or demonstrable, also inevitably lead to fantasies of moral superiority. As Batchelor said, “Instead of creatively participating in a contemporary culture of awakening, we confine ourselves to preserving those cultures of a vanishing past…we repeat the clichés and dogmas of other epochs.” We have seen many times how fantasies of moral certainty do not foster compassion or ethical dialogue, but usually result in arrogant, elitist and confrontational perspectives.

Our definition of religion itself is being challenged and expanded. Publishers Weekly, in reviewing Batchelor’s book said, “Buddhism is not strictly a religion, since it does not adhere to a belief in God; that the Buddha did not consider himself a mystic or savior, but a healer; and that Buddhism is less a ‘belief system’ than a personal ‘course of action’ that naturally instills morality, compassion, and inner peace in the practitioner.” The problem with this quote however is that it equates religion with theism and having a belief system. Buddhism is better said to be a nontheistic religion. After all, a tradition can be a religion even if it does not believe in a God or gods or have supernatural beliefs. Buddhism instead, can be thought of as a method. It is continuously evolving and adapting to the needs of the human condition without recourse to supernatural claims and without belief in a god or deities. Agnostic Buddhism is at its core, a confrontation and dialogue with our human condition. For further elaboration on the definition and understanding of evolving religion, see my previous post on Ken Wilber. 

Batchelor, Stephen. (2008). Buddhism Withouth Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening. Riverhead Trade.

Meditations for the Humanist – Part 1 – Moralism

Oscar Wilde famously said, “a man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite.” According to A. C. Grayling, a moralizer is a “person who seeks to impose upon others his [or her] view of how they should live and behave.” It reflects a coercive and exclusive worldview that is inherently opposed to democratic and pluralistic ideals.

Moralizers want others to conform to their views. They do this through coercive measures such as social disapproval as well as their more preferred option: legal controls. You can see this reflected in our nations history with blasphemy laws as well as more contemporary, hot button, issues such as gay marriage, abortion, religious symbols and text in public areas and prayer in public schools. 

Attacks on liberal policies such as these are expressions of hostility towards lifestyles moralizers personally dislike. Their hostility is brought into the public sphere, often through declarations of religious freedom, and manifest aspects of insensitivity, intolerance, ignorance of alternative interests and needs in the human experience and arrogance in believing there is only one acceptable way of living. They claim to have a “monopoly on moral judgment.’” We can recognize the familiar rhetoric of those claiming to defend the “traditionalist fantasy of ‘family morality’”. But the true attitude underneath moralizers is fear. The moralizer fears policies and practices that allow and encourage diversity in lifestyle and the freedom of choice.

Justification for their rigidly and arrogance comes from so-called religious doctrine and values. This is a pure reflection of exclusivist religion, which I’ve spoken about plenty in previous posts. This fear and its effects are inherently anti-pluralistic and anti-democratic. Diversity of thought is not allowed or encouraged. The demand conformity to lifestyles they see as personally acceptable. The external world, others, must conform to their internal preferences. Compromise is shunned and viewed as weakness. Their religious anxieties compel them to prevent the rest of society from “thinking, seeing or doing what they are afraid to think, see or do themselves.”

Secularism has become the enemy. Atheists and humanists alike are seen as being deviant and unworthy of any serious dialogue. Christianity is seen as being under attack. But secularism, in actuality, does not attack religion just like an umbrella does not attack rain. It provides a platform and foundation for diversity of thought, conscience and lifestyle. It protects all citizens’ right to have equal protection under the law, to have equal opportunity, voice and representation. Secularism encourages an ongoing, ever-evolving, creative process in public policy and societal norms. It sees culture and values as something malleable and dynamic, not fixed and rigid. And most of all, secularism, is not coercive or exclusive. All have a place at the table. Unfortunately, it also allows for the voice of the intolerant and the fearful (See “Tolerating the Intolerant” post).

Grayling, A. C. (2002). Meditation for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Religion Does Not Make You Behave

Anyone claiming to act ethically merely for fear of punishment or hope for reward (presumably in the afterlife) is completely bonkers. And they (or you) know it. Kant discusses this very clearly; that any sense of ethical behavior must be based on treating people as ends in themselves, and not as means to an end. Meaning that ethical acts should not have any other motivation than the ethical act itself. They do not seek reward and they are not done out of fear of punishment.

Nonetheless, faith is seen by the majority to be the source of our morality.

In his book, God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens asks, “Where would people be without faith? Would they not abandon themselves to every kind of license and selfishness? Is it not true, as G. K. Chesterton once famously said, that if people cease to believe in god, they do not believe in nothing but in anything” (184)? Hitchens answers by first speaking of a debate between Professor A. J. Ayer and Bishop Butler. In this debate, Ayer asserted that he saw no evidence whatsoever for the existence of any god. Bishop Butler broke in to say, “Then I cannot see why you do not lead a life of unbridled immorality” (185). This is an interesting claim and leads one to wonder, was Bishop Butler suggesting that if he personally did not have his beliefs that he was then choose to live a life of “unbridled immorality”? That his beliefs are somehow the cornerstone of his ethics?

“Faith”, according to Sam Harris, “drives a wedge between ethics and suffering” (168). A rational approach to ethics, he says, must come about questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient beings. With these concepts as our starting point, the vast majority of what people consider moral today is seen to have no bearing on the subject at all. For example, certain actions that cause no suffering whatsoever, religious dogmatists say, are evil and worthy of harsh punishment such as sodomy, homosexuality and smoking pot. Yet in cases of direct suffering and death, the causes of religious dogmatists are seen as being “good” such as withholding funds for family planning in the developing world, prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders and denying homosexuals their human rights. Even as Obama announced that religiously affiliated programs such as hospitals must provide employees with contraceptives, religious conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum claim that its an attack on the freedom of religion, an attack on Catholicism and on the first amendment itself. This inversion of priorities, as Harris says, only victimizes people and wastes valuable time and resources that could be spent trying to alleviate the suffering and increase happiness. “It is time”, he says, “we found a more reasonable approach to answering questions of right and wrong” (169). More to come...

Morality Does Not Come From Religion

How many times have you heard the argument that religion is responsible for our morality and ethics? Some people who don’t even identify as religious say that when they have children they will raise them with some aspect of religion or will take them to church in order to instill them with morality that they otherwise would never get. Perhaps in a dialogue between two religious people this is an assumption that is never directly engaged in. However, atheists, secular humanists, scientists and on occasion, non-theists, are thankfully challenging this absurd argument.

I wish to start a series of blogs to address this and tangent issues, such as absolutist truth claims, scriptural infallibility, in-group/out-group dynamics, religion as child abuse and various other human rights issues such as family planning, AIDS and homosexuality. For this blog entry I want to talk briefly about the holy trinity of atheists: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and what they have to say on this subject of religion and morality. Later on I’ll be reading Karen Armstrong and Ken Wilber among others and will be continuously adding to the debate.

We are all familiar with the “scary” parts of scripture in the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. It would be lengthy indeed to list them here. Suffice to say we are all familiar with the fact that these scriptures are full of genocide, murder, xenophobia, rape and misogyny.

Any religious moderate will simply chuckle and say that you have it all backwards. These passages aren’t meant to be taken literally! They are metaphorical, symbolic or allegories. But this statement raises an interesting point. That religious moderates simply pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories, or simply, which ones to ignore. Pick the nice bits and reject the nasty. What’s wrong with this process? Well, for one it simply shows perfectly well, that our sense of morality does not come from scripture. Just ask yourself, what criterion do you use to decide which passages are symbolic and which are literal? You will employ independent criteria divorced from scripture in which to judge which aspects of scripture to take as literal and which as symbolic. But what are these independent criteria? And where do they come from?

In Dawkins book The God Delusion he speaks about a changing or evolving moral zeitgeist or “spirit of the times”. He says, “There seems to be a steadily shifting standard of what is morally acceptable. Donald Rumsfeld, [for example] who sounds so callous and odious today, would have sounded like a bleeding-heart liberal if he had said the same things during WW2” (304). Wildlife conservation, the conservation of the environment and our many, taken for granted, human rights have become adopted values and are similar to the same moral status as was once accorded to keeping the Sabbath and shunning graven images and other various dogmatic morals of the pre-modern era. For example, in the context of first commandment against rival gods, the statement that God is a jealous god is a bit of an understatement. “God’s monumental rage whenever his chosen people flirted with a rival god resembles nothing so much as sexual jealousy of the worst kind, and again it should strike a modern moralist as far from a good role-model material” (Dawkins, 276). To our modern morality it seems to be a rather miniscule sin to have another god than to stone homosexuals, sell your daughters into slavery or offer them for a gang rape. Our attitudes towards slavery, women’s suffrage abnd race have all shifted dramatically, especially in recent times largely due to liberalism, globalization, mass communication and improved technology. Dawkins says, “Religious people don’t think in a biblical way anymore…our morals, whether we are religious or not, come from another source; and that other source, whatever it is, is available to all of us, regardless of religion or lack of it” (289).

Apologists and religious moderates simply can no longer claim that religion provides them with some sort of privileged guide to morality that is unavailable to atheists and secular humanists. Modern morality does not come from scripture. The zeitgeist progression itself is more than enough evidence to disprove the claim that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good and what is morally reprehensible. The shift has no connection with religion and more than likely, as history has shown, it happens in spite of religion. More to come...

Religious In-Group/Out-Group Dynamics

I’ve been reading the spectacular Richard Dawkins. Along with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, his book The God Delusion, is a necessary contribution to the atheist discourse on religion, religious violence and the psychology and philosophy of religion itself.

In chapter 7, The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist, he summarizes a study done by Israeli psychologist George Tamarin, who presented more than a thousand Israeli school children, ages eight to fourteen, the story of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua:

“Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go in the treasury of the LORD.’ … Then the utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…and they burned the city with fire, and all within it, only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.”

Tamarin asked the children a simple moral question: ‘Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?’ They had three choices: A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). Sixty six percent gave total approval and 26 percent total disapproval, with eight percent giving partial approval.

Here are three examples of a typical answer from the total approval (A) group:

1.    In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them the land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.

2.    In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and leanr their bad ways.

3.    Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.

The reasoning for the massacre was religious in every case. Surprisingly, some in category C (total disapproval) did so for backhanded religious reasons. For example, one girl, disapproved because in order for Joshua’s to conquer Jericho he had to enter it: “I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.” Two others disapproved because Joshua destroyed the animals and property rather than keeping some as spoils for the Israelites:

1.    I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.

2.    I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.

These children are young and innocent. These savage views must come from somewhere else such as their parents or the cultural group and context in which they’ve been brought up.

Tamarin ran a fascinating control group. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same scenario and text but with some key changes: Joshua’s name was changed to ‘General Lin’ and ‘Israel’ replaced by ‘a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago.’ This group yielded entirely opposite results. Only 7 percent approved of General Lin’s behavior, and 75 percent disapproved.

Simply put, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed, the majority of children would agree with the moral judgments of most modern humans. However, it looks drastically different from a religious point of view. Religion made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it. And this is its immense power: to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas. More to come...