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

[persephoneplace.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy talking to you about this stuff. I am going to think about this today and see if I can come back with some other thoughts about it.

[persephoneplace.livejournal.com]

i am thinking, but haven't had caffeine yet, so can't draw clear connections - that there might be a parallel with Buddhism as a philosophy, rather than Buddhists who think that the Buddha was divine.

any thoughts?

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the discussion very much, too. Hope you didn't feel too challenged about your beliefs - I just get curious about stuff.

As to what you've said...pondering.

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.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I have said to you (and will say here) that I actually have the hardest time with atheist Friends when it comes to Quaker discernment. If Friends are attempting in our Meetings for worship with a concern for business to discern where God is calling us, what's a nontheist Friend doing?

[dpolicar]

This business of religious "translation" is something I'm accustomed to in general... I was an Orthodox Jew in my youth, and that's still the ritual form I'm most comfortable with, but I attend other services from time to time, and look for ways to find meaning in them.

As for translating into and out of the atheist vernacular, in particular... my position boils down to acknowledging that we are part of a system far more complex than we are able to understand fully, and that what we perceive about that system and how we can change it depends quite a bit on the state of mind we approach it with.

One consequence: even if there exist no miraculous events (in whatever technical theological sense we wish to use), that doesn't necessarily mean that what a theist calls a miracle has no referent in the real world. It doesn't even mean that there's nothing I can learn/accomplish from approaching its referent as a "miracle" that I could not learn/accomplish by approaching it any other way.

The same thing is basically true of any other theological concept. Whether it strictly describes anything in the world or not, it may still be a effective concept to examine, or manipulate, the world in the context of.