Oranges and minor miracles

[da]

This evening I paid a visit to see lovecraftienne, persephoneplace, and joymoose, and to drop off some oranges as a thank-you for watching Rover a week ago.

One reason among many I like these folks is that they ask wonderful questions. So we were talking about the Quaker gathering I was at with melted_snowball this weekend, and the question came up, how is being an atheist Quaker different from being a Quaker who believes in God?

To begin with, I do think there are differences. In the Quaker experience, people learn to do verbal translations all the time. A Christian Quaker might say "the Inner Christ", another Quaker will understand that to mean "that of God within," a third might translate the same as "the Inner Light". This translation process is fundamental, since Quakerism is Experiential (that is, one is not called to believe any doctrine that doesn't stand up to being tested against one's deepest soul/heart). When I'm translating, some things get left aside, the parts that don't speak to me at that time. In Quaker Meeting, we're trying to recognize and speak to the Eternal within each other; understanding the words is only part but it's an essential part.

An irreverent description I've heard for the process is "listening in tongues".

Going back to atheist Friends: there are translations I don't know how to make, going from theistic Quaker speech to atheist Quaker speech. The two I thought of in the discussion were miracles and blessings, things I can't explain in rational language without invoking the placebo effect. So, sure, it's possible that random events can seem like signs when you're paying attention to them. And a strictly rational person can say that the subconscious mind makes connections that the conscious mind cannot, so intuitive choices can feel like one was guided by something outside one's consciousness.

But by definition, faith goes further than rational explanation. As I was reminded a number of times this weekend, having faith to take a step when there's no evidence that the step should hold can be tremendously rewarding. Not necessarily at first; part of the faith is to keep going, and the claim (which, in all truth, I've not tested completely myself) is that the faith will be enough to keep you going so long as you follow what God wants you to do and continue to have faith. So there it is. A little work, plus faith, turns into the God Perpetual Motion Machine. How irrational is that? How can an atheist internalize this and use it? It is a miracle (if indeed miracles exist), and I believe it is one of the fundamental things that Friends ask for, say, when we gather to make decisions (which are meant to be coming to Unity with God's wishes for the collected body; instead of unity with each other).

So, that's my inconclusive thoughts about Atheist Quakers.



I'd welcome comments and other opinions on this; I feel like I'm oversimplifying the strong atheist position.

Comments

Faith

[pnijjar.livejournal.com]

Even atheists are not omniscient. They may have knowledge that God doesn't exist (I guess..) but they don't know everything in the universe or even in their own lives. Furthermore, they have to make decisions under uncertainty. It seems to me that faith means "making an uncertain decision with the (necessarily unreasoned) belief that the decision is beneficial".

It is possible to make decisions without faith -- given a set of choices with no supporting evidence, make a decision arbitrarily (or randomly) and have no expectations for it being beneficial. So where does atheistic faith come from? Here's one idea: an atheist might think of reality as some system determined by probabilities, where some of the random variables are hidden.

There is some system going on and the system has rules, but we don't know the rules and don't have enough data to "learn the model". Faith means we believe that such a system exists, and that following our hearts will lead to good outcomes in this system, even if we don't understand why.

A blessing in this system means some positive event that we do not predict, but which we (irrationally) believe is a property of the system, as opposed to "luck", which has connotations of some low-probability event happening. I would think that "miracle" has some sense of low-probability associated with it, maybe combined with properties of the system?

I don't know whether that is a sensible explanation or not, but it does not require existence in God in order to work. It also jives with what you have written about Quakerism: "unity with God" is "behaving in accordance to the unknown rules of the universe". The key for an atheist is that you don't need any kind of God twiddling knobs or pulling strings -- reality is what it is, and it's our job to listen to reality and act in accordance with its laws.

I think of non-religious Buddhism in much the same way, but I think I am on shakier ground there. Unless you define Nirvana as "being wholly in tune with the workings of the universe", I am not sure the concept makes sense.

Disclaimer: I know actually know anything about Quakerism, Buddhism, atheism,
or reasoning under uncertainty.

Re: Faith

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Paul! Yay.

This explanation is useful to me, I think.

...I'm not entirely sure it's complete, because one can argue that such an allowance for unknown (or unknowable) rules is more agnosticism than atheism; a sort of "strong agnostism" that one doesn't know what one doesn't know, so how can one make claims about it, other than to describe its effects on oneself?

Or, the argument can be made that these rules suggest a non-agnostic, non-atheist Belief in an unknowable/ineffible mystery, which is getting awfully close to the kind of faith I find most defendable. Theism, but not Deism, I suppose- where the word "God" stands in for everything that we can't possibly know, but be know is there.

Re: Faith

[dpolicar]

Ah!

Reading this helps me make more sense of the conversation we're having below.

Yes, if an atheist in this conversation is someone who believes they need make no allowance for unknown rules or mystery, then I think I agree with you that no translation between the atheist and the theist is possible. But I wonder if the definition you're using here actually describes the people we started out calling "atheist Friends".

I also find that definition of atheist amusing, in that it is very similar to the definition I think many atheists have of theists -- that is, the same attribution of complacency is made. I'm not sure it's entirely fair in either sense.

Re: Faith

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think it's terribly fair to paint that restrictive a picture for atheists; it was just an idea I was trying out... and definitely not what I was thinking about in our discussion below.

I do vaguely wonder what would happen if somebody with that degree of certainty about the universe tried to become involved with a Quaker Meeting.

Re: Faith

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

for everything that we can't possibly know, but we know is there.

...and by this I meant the royal 'we'... I probably should've said "the theist". I didn't intend to make claims for your belief!