Why God is a Disaster for Man's Spiritual Life

God as Spiritual Disaster (Ziporyn, “Being and Ambiguity,” Notes #2)

Thanks to everyone for the responses to the first post. We are still working through the Ziporyn book and its arguments against God. As before, please feel free to send any thoughts or comments, however cursory, whether or not you’ve read Z’s book. The various perspectives have proved very stimulating for our group.

The argument is about the disastrous pragmatic or spiritual consequences of the concept of God as omniscient observer and knower. Like the previous argument, which argued against God as cause and creator, this seems to have some antecedents in Nietzsche—God as a limit to human creativity, alternative perspectives, etc.—but with the addition of the Tiantai and general Buddhist ideas about non-dualism and suffering. I apologize if this is not perfectly lucid, as I am still trying to sort this out clearly for myself as well.

To see why God is such a disaster for man’s spiritual state, we have to give a diagnosis of man’s spiritual problem and its possible solutions. Man’s spiritual problem is not sin in the sense of, say, disobedience or even alienation from some particular being or state, but rather existential suffering. This is standard Buddhism. Ziporyn shows that suffering per se is a function of conditionality, which is to say, finitude as such. Why? Suffering means “a disparity between what I want and what is the case.” It is defined in relation to human desire. What is this desire? Z argues that it is not just pleasure conceived as some particular object, but rather the constant availability of pleasure, the power to get it when one wants it; the getting is the pleasure, not the object got. It is this power to get what one wants that one really wants behind all apparent objects of desire. But the power to get what one wants whenever one wants it is to be the sole cause of what happens to one. This would be to be unconditional. What humans desire can be described as increasing degrees of control, freedom, unconditionality or, in Nietzsche’s word, power, but Ziporyn points out that this is tautological: it means, “I want to be able to ensure that what I want to be the case will be the case.” This means to be the sole cause of certain effects. In addition to being tautological, it also involves a self-contradictory paradox: for it means that any finite condition, even “being powerful,” will not be a good in itself, but only a good to the extent that I happen to want it, and that attaining it (or really, re-attaining it, since to want a particular object I have to first have some conception of what it is, drawn from previous experience; this means I must have the power to maintain myself as a desirer across time) demonstrates my power to attain it. The power to attain the object whenever I want it, not the object, is what is wanted, even if it is “power” that is objectified as the desideratum (and also to get rid of it when I don’t want it—a good thing ceases to be good if it sticks to me when I don’t want it; good food is bad if it sticks to the tongue forever and cannot be scraped off—cf. nightmarish King Midas type scenarios); this means that to be able to be either powerful or not-powerful is actually more powerful than being “stuck” in the position of only being able to be powerful! But this impossible state is what would be required if one were to be a “self,” i.e., the sole cause of one’s own condition, and this underpinning of the commonsensical attempts to end of suffering: to become or assure oneself that one is the sole cause of what one experiences at all times.

But this is just what is impossible if the finitude (conditionality) of beings is the only relevant fact about them. There are multiple causes for the arising of any state, at least two qualitatively distinct entities. Most fundamentally, any state that is finite is contrasted with and excludes some other state. That is the definition of finitude (and also, by the way, Z’s definition of “to exist”). Suffering and non-suffering can only be what they are, can only meaningfully be said to exist as such, by being contrasted to each other, and excluding each other. Since this contrast and exclusion is necessary to their definitions and identities, it can never be eradicated from them; it is “internal” to their identities to “have an outside.” This means that right in the heart of their definitions there is a kind of contradiction: they cannot be the sole cause of themselves, or of their own apparent attributes, since these always depend on precisely whatever they by definition exclude. This fundamental “twoness” is hidden in the depths of every apparent “oneness.”

This also makes them “impermanent” in a very thoroughgoing sense. Neither of these states can be eternally the case, or the sole allowable interpretation of the total twoness. Suffering and non-suffering alternate (the pace and ratios, even the sequence, are irrelevant here). What is conditional, i.e., having more than one cause, not being caused by itself or its own “essence” alone, is necessarily impermanent—it alone can never ensure its own continued presence (or ensure that the total twoness “X plus non-X” will always be interpreted or felt as X rather than non-X). The threat of suffering is also a kind of suffering, and this threat is an implicit lurking presence even in non-suffering, since it must inevitably revert to suffering; hence angst, anxiety, fear, insecurity. I believe that for Ziporyn, even if, per impossibile, a state of bliss were to have infinite duration, it would still be “impermanent” in this sense of conditionality: it would always stand in danger of being “reread” as the suffering to which it is contrasted, which is inside it “as” its outside, making it equally interpretable as a state of suffering. It is this constant danger of being reinterpreted that is the essence of inescapable suffering, because to be finite is to be reinterpretable. It alone can never ensure how it will be interpreted, what identity it will be seen to have; this always depends on contexts, additional factors. But these are necessary consequences of being a finite, conditional being, i.e., a being who can never be the sole cause of what happens to him, a being which is a twoness (at least) disguised as a oneness. The problem, in short, is the classical Buddhist problem: the concept of self. But for Ziporyn this means specifically taking one’s self to be a “thing,” defined in the above way: as one entity or state or condition rather than another, with a fixed essence and a certain set of characteristics rather than others, for which to exist and not to exist would be mutually exclusive, an entity which definitively includes and excludes some other entities.

Hence the only spiritual solution for man can initially be described as the overcoming of conditionality. But this cannot be done by positing some other thing—God, Brahman, Substance, the eternal—which is unconditional, as opposed to man, who is conditional. This is because, first, the unconditional as opposed to, contrasted to, the conditional is itself really also conditional—it is “conditioned” by “not” being the conditional. It has a determinate, finite content, dependent on something not applying, or not being the case. (This is a restatement of Hegel’s critique of the “bad infinite.”) Also, as long as “this is this and that is that,” each being only taken to be what it is and nothing besides, having a single determinate identity, the existence of, even the relation to or the merging with, the unconditional does not alleviate man’s conditionality. The real problem is the idea that conditionality and unconditionality are seen as mutually exclusive, or that finitude is seen as the end of the story for a determinate being. Now existence IS finitude; but finitude, it turns out, is local coherence, which is global incoherence (more on this central Ziporyn idea in another post). This means that the identities of things are not finally fixed—they have “no self,” and always inherently entail their opposites, such that X and non-X, to which it is constitutively contrasted, are “non-dual.” I think he means that the real solution is not to try to escape conditionality to reach some other definite condition “unconditionality” (which would actually still be conditional), but rather to learn to experience the twoness in the oneness and the oneness in the twoness.

God, however, as the eternal determining observer and final arbiter of the real meaning, identity, value and significance of things, is the ultimate obstacle to the realization of this interfusion and interpervasion of identities, which is man’s only hope. One is seen by God, judged by God: God alone knows who you really are, and because God puts an end to the various alternate readings of oneself, God fixes one’s identity once and for all. No further interpretations are permitted, no further recontextualizations. To stop the suffering which is implicit in reinterpretability, man invents God; but suffering can really only be overcome by fully accepting this reinterpretability, finitude, multifariousness, and realizing it thoroughly, all the way to the bottom. The same goes for things. Things look different ways to different beings; the way they look to God is allegedly the way they “really” are. God, as the putative sole cause, author, and purpose-giver, is in a position to finally establish a fixed, definitive identity for each entity—its real value, what it was designed for, what its true purpose is, in contrast to the deluded viewpoints or perverse usages of various human beings. Ziporyn claims that if God is taken away, there is no such thing as “objectivity” (modern scientific ideas, or at least modern common sensical ideas, of objectivity are just aftereffects of the belief in God, even when he’s been dropped). This is another of those Ziporyn claims which rests on the local coherence=global incoherence model, and which I am only beginning to digest. Still, I two-thirds see the point, the flux of identities that make up the world when it is not stabilized by the authority of a final arbiter, a perspective that can override all the others. We step back into experience itself, its flux of constant unfolding of new aspects and identities and recontextualizations (considerable courage would be needed for this, since it applies also to “oneself”). Without God, a single unequivocal “way things are” is unthinkable. There are just various ways of appearing to various sentient beings at various times. But it is just the idea of a single “way things are” that is the underpinning of suffering. God is a projection of the idea of an unconditional ego, self-clinging projected outward and writ large, which would be the sole determinant of its experiences. In both cases—God and self–it is the uncritical acceptance of the premise that this literal form of unconditionality is either desirable or possible that perpetuates human suffering. In reality, according to Ziporyn/Tiantai, the end of suffering comes with an insight into a different relation between conditionality and unconditionality: determinate existence is local coherence is global incoherence is intersubsumption. Only when God is gone can we be freed of final unequivocal objectification, self-objectification, freed of the sense of actually being a particular object with a certain finite set of qualities, predicates, attributes; our multifariousness is restored; we are no longer merely “things.” Therein lies our freedom–which Ziporyn defines as “the fact that everything is relevant” i.e., every possible fact provides an alternate perspective revealing further aspects of our identity.

This seems like a better proof of the existence of God than I could ever come up with. It seems to me that all one needs to note is that man exists, and suffering exists, and one can trace the path all the way back through your reasoning to conclude that God must exist as well. You say that it is because of God that there is a single ‘way things are’, and because of the universal observer and judge that man’s rethinking of himself must come to and end. But you say it from a perspective as though you were God Himself- as though you have the luxury of creating the universe and everything in it. “The concept of an all powerful God leads to a determinate reality, and therefore suffering?” you seem to say “Well then, let’s have there not be a God: problem solved!”
But, if Buddism is worth paying any attention to at all, if it was ever worth thinking of, then the first thing we must accept is that there is suffering. Man is conditional, and even if you argue that there’s a Path to overcome that, it’s just that: a path, where we’ll never achieve the ultimate goal, but simply get closer (or further) until we die. Therefore, none of us will escape this condionality.
You say it yourself, even people who drop the idea of God suffer. A global dropping of the idea won’t solve suffering either. You haven’t worded the above in such a way to be an argument against the existence of God, but rather, a argument for why the idea of God is unappealing. And yet, there he is. What an unfortunate state you find youself in, as you demonstrate that God must exist if suffering exists, while at the same time building a strong case for why you wish it were not so!

Nice thoughts, Golem.

I might throw in the idea that ‘religion’ need not be defined as a theological concept in order to have life as an aesthetic concept. I believe that the originations of what we call mysticisms began only as a kind of artistic dramatisation of metaphor, rather than a discipline of piety and subservience to a ‘ruling’ and controlling force in the universe. It was only after the civilization had become larger and organized that what was once a form or entertainment and ritual metaphor in the arts of literature and drama became a substantial tool of politics used to control and induce fear into the psyche.

The ‘metaphysical’ mind of the human being evolved through stories, orations, simulations. It had no conception of reverence before the law or rule of religious authority until moral codes were endorsed. These codes were held to be objective and transcendent and man was placed in a predicament of either conforming to a rule or suffering concequences in an after-world.

I personally follow Feuerbach closely regarding the separation of religion from politics, and I think that mysticism as an expression of metaphor and art is healthy; the human being is a creature who has the capacity to fantasize and create wonderful fictions…this is its art. Some how the dionysian must be preserved and prevented from interfering with the Apollonian structure of politics or else everyone becomes deceived; there comes the possibility that some men control others with threats that do not exist, with hells that are not real, and man answers to a new master type- the priest.

[insert downward spiral]

I equate proper religious practice with the fantasy and metaphor created in art form, but it must be separated from ‘morality.’ Morality is a science while ‘ethics’ are aesthetic. Humans can involve themselves in unique culture and tradition but the implications cannot effect the objective material circumstances of their economy. If at any time a moral prejudice is formed via a false religious value of one form over another, it cannot remain aesthetic and becomes political by dividing culture and causing scientific conflict with the economy. This is a no-no.

If one wants to believe that they are the reincarnation of a cow while the other hopes for eternal orgies in hell, somewhere there is going to be problems because both are using religion socially and it pervades their economic interaction with others. Most likely both of em’ will end up as worm food, but when their right to exploit their metaphorical fantasies effects the pragmatic circumstances of their social relationships, we got problems.

Man is his own God because he makes his morality. This ‘disaster’ you speak of is, I believe, precisely this Feuerbachian ‘alienation’ of man from himself in reverence to a God, while the world should be working toward a Nietzschean and Spinozean conception of God and the over-man metaphor while in good keeping with conservative Marxist ideologies in politics.

How is this done?

I haven’t a clue. I’m not a philosopher.

I think that “spiritual life” is a false concept. Simply because it is a concept. Reality cannot be spiritual, nor can it be material, because those are both philosophical concepts.

Hi Golem,

There have been Christian theologians in the past who have stated that “concepts” of God are often the problem with piety. The Mystery or the Ineffable is only definable by what it is not. Many assumptions, especially in the fundamentalist emphasis of today, are by far too speculative. Our main concern in Christianity should therefore be the Way of Christ and discipleship, and less religious philosophy.

I agree, but that is what the Bible associates to alienation from what we are created to be. If there were no way to change this state, we wouldn’t have to talk about it, but Buddhism and Judeo/Christian teaching has discovered that there is a way out, even if it is just a different attitude to life. Christ formed a community (a family) that was to walk the path of faith, hope and love. His followers were called to disregard the lifestyle of the goyim and concentrate on their holy living, knowing that this could (and probably would) cause problems.

It was a path without control and without power in a worldly sense, albeit a life in the power of the Spirit, and extremely effective. This is where the church has often compromised itself by appealing to those in power and finding power appealing. Christians are called to find a freedom that people seldom have, whilst having the inspiration of the Spirit and being separated, showing compassion for all others, even the “enemies”. Paul spoke of the power of the cross, the power of the Gospel but showed that this “power” wasn’t human, but divine, however we want to understand that word.

The assumption that God has “a determinate, finite content” seeks to take away the ineffability or mystery of what we term as “God”. By all figurative language, we are still dealing with an awareness that we cannot locate. This awareness is something which, to my mind, is described in the trilogy of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which is essentially the description of the discovery of this mystical source of inspiration – which is an ongoing discovery.

It is those in power who need some-thing from which they can claim authority, and if necessary threaten people with (which seems to be an ongoing necessity for them).

I would say that only when concepts of God are seen to only be concepts, and we understand that whatever God “is”, still has to be located or found, are we free from the restrictiveness that religion can be. Until then, it is the spiritual inspiration that can help people discover themselves and each other, and perhaps show a way to becoming the image of God.

I read him as saying that because certain concepts of God exist, we determine reality and therefore suffering. These concepts restrict mankind and would have them bow down to an apocalyptic truth, robbing them of any hope to expand their understanding and perception, resigned to the fact that there is no future in this sinful world.

Even the perspective you assume he has taken makes your concept God all too human and less the Mystery he is. The idea is, as you rightly say, that we say let there not be a God – at least, not this concept. Let there not be the endless associations that are made with the God that rains fire and brimstone down upon Sodom and Gomorrah, or the God of the Apocalypse. Rather, let us follow the God of hope, faith and love, allowing him to be incarnate in us to redeem the earth.

Shalom

Bob

My question isn't with the goal, but with the reasons why. He seems to be taking a more hard metaphysical angle, than the pragmatic angle you take above.  The way I read him, he's saying that the idea of the world world being a [i]certain[/i] way (not a good way or bad way, but just [i]a way[/i]) is connected to the idea of there being a God that observes and directs everything. It reminds me of Berkely. The world being a certain way is why there is suffering-because sometimes that certain way is not the way we would like, and that can be directly traced back to God. This is an argument for why it would be nice if there wasn't a God, but somewhere along the line he gets his wires crossed and says that this is an argument that there isn't a God, or that in any event we should [i]claim[/i] there isn't- as though denial of God will result in the world losing it's rigid structure and becoming whatever we want it to be. Instead, I'm saying that the proper stance is to [i]note[/i] that the world is a certain way, and follow that reasoning back to God.

Golem

Man’s spiritual problem is not sin in the sense of, say, disobedience or even alienation from some particular being or state, but rather existential suffering. This is standard Buddhism.

Yes this is the Buddhist perspective and original sin in Christinaity. However, everyday sin from the Christian perspective only begins when a person has sensed their potential and strives towards it. Missing the mark in the context of this striving for “being” potential is sin.

This is one of the main reasons I’m much more influenced by Christianity than Buddhism. Christianity asserts that man needs help from above. Help from above can consist of several levels. Why not a highest of all levels that is a causal force to begin with? It seems logical to me.

Yes this is the human condition. We are stuck. Where Buddhism teaches the cessation of suffering, Christianity speaks of its transformation through the transformation of our “being.”. This is the message of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

This implies no purpose for man being in this condition to begin with. I don’t see any reason to assume the elimination of conditionality. However, in the context of evolution, it makes perfect sense to me that conditionality can reflect a much higher level of being man has the evolutionary potential for in service to the needs of creation in accordance with divine plan…

It’s not God that is the problem. Instead it is our conceptualizations of both God and God’s will. This is why I don’t understand much of the paragraph.

This is one of those things you will have to personally verify through experience. My own experiences have demonstrated that I am indeed the “wretched man” as described by St. Paul. making this insight academic and making clear to me the need for help from above.

This just denies objective human purpose. I agree with you that our current state of being is the nothingness described in Modern Buddhism. It does not have to be our potential. An objective purpose beyond our normal everyday subjective conditioned purposes though implies divine plan and God at the source. For some reason this appears completely absurd to many even though considering the universe and man without objective purpose seems much more absurd to me. Once again I’ve gone out of fashion and am hopelessly behind the times.