In case you missed it, here are links for the previous two notes in this series.
>> About Oug
>> Something More
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Enough is enough. This will be my last gasp of oug.
Here I will explain why the incompleteness-of-belief premise is itself incomplete. I mean, incompleteness is not just one thing. Beliefs can be more incomplete or less incomplete. If we can draw on beliefs from different traditions and perspectives, we might discover some existential principles that are more complete.
Theology is full of dichotomies, polar opposites that are quite incomplete by themselves. I won't bore you with seventy chapters of opposing Ontologically Untenable Gods (OUGs). Here is just one such pair. You can think on the rest yourself.
Consider a remote god as opposed to an immanent god.
Ancient gods were typically remote and inattentive to human concerns. It took ritual, sacrifice, submission, obedience, fasting, praise, song and dance, incense, meditation, strenuous ordeals, prayer, incantations, mushrooms: all of that and more to get the attention of a god who might grant what you want if you used the right magic. I suspect that none of that works by changing a god's mind, supposing it has a mind. It might, however, change the mind of believers who notice when their pious devotion seems to work and ignore when it doesn't. To my mind, confirmation bias cannot validate an Ontologically Untenable God.
Then came Abraham who, according to legend, was willing to butcher and roast his son, Isaac, to prove his devotion to his god, but was spared that psychotic task by sacrificing a ram in his place. As a son myself, that feels like progress. Good for Abraham. His belief became a bit less incomplete. Still, there is the ram.
A step further along, believers imagined themselves part of the divine family as children of the father god. That's even less incomplete. But if you aren't in the family, look out. Outsiders get smitten.
Next there's the man-god born to be exemplar of goodness. Some people who prefered coercion, put him to death as a rebel because he challenged their authority. Then some believers imagined that this violent death was a sacrifice that satisfied a debt. That notion has an appealing symmetry, a psychopath god who demands a sacrifice evolving into an altruistic god who is the sacrifice. But why sacrifice? As an existential principle, that is still, I think, untenable and incomplete.
At the other pole of this dichotomy, the Breath of God is an immanent, immediately accessible God-in-us. Because reality is at times arbitrary and dangerous, and we want something better, we may be inspired to make good things happen. Yet rain falls on the just and unjust. There's disaster, disease, and death, and something will get you. We can't fix it all even with inspired effort; and fixing one thing may damage others. So we continue to explore the mystery in the liminal space between beliefs looking for answers to our existential questions.
Then if we look ahead, and dimly see
a peaceful all-inclusive family;
and if the path to get there seems too rough,
a more complete belief might be enough.
What fills the space between the O U Gs
is wonder, thought and love. Equipped with these
let's try, and if we fail, transcend the pain;
then wondering still more, just try again.
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The Early Heretics: Martin Thielen, Doubter's Parish
Heal the World: Michael Jackson, Youtube
The Task of Religion: John Shelby Spong
The Neuroscience of Extremes: Abigail Marsh, Big Think
