Chappy New Year!!!
"Blessed be the Lord - day after day he carries us along" (Psalms 68:19, The Message).
(Incidentally, is that correct typefacing? You'd think that since I'm reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves I'd know, but I still can't get a consensus on how to cite Bible passages, i.e. what gets italicized, etc. Oh well.)
Happy New Year to all my Jewish brethren, and a warm wish for renewal and growth to all.
With tonight's festivities, Kehilla NYC starts it's first full lunar new year, and I've decided to get things rolling again as such. This blog is supposed to be about religion and community, so this year I'm going to help foster such. Every week (ideally sometime around Shabbat), I will try to post a provocative something or other - perhaps a Bible passage, a quotation, or just something on my mind. In other words, I'll give you a topic, you discuss (with a nod to Linda).
To start, let me briefly recount yesterday as I saw it at the time. My experiment didn't work but the other student's did, proving that it's something I'm doing but we have no idea what. Additionally, our new kitchen table order was cancelled due to permanent item discontinuation, but I'd already assembled the matching chairs. I was overwhelmed by responsibilities in lab, coursework, my teaching assistant position, and my personal life (both private and in relation to other groups). It was not a happy day.
However, in looking back, the experiment worked just fine, I had simply looked at the one bad sample. The chairs are being accepted back as a return for full value, including S&H, and we found a new set that saved us money! I got all my errands done in record time. My course let out early today. I have time to stop and breathe and appreciate life. Sometimes, it just takes that step back.
This is the point where you should ask, "Mike, what does this have to do with religion?" Well, I'm glad you asked (if you didn't, go back to the start of this paragraph and try again). When I made it back to my desk, I found myself today saying, "Thank you, God." Why did I say that?
Scriptural (Ancient) Judaism traditionally represents God as an entity that can act in every day life personified (God is omnipotent, afterall), although only a select few every see the Creator directly (although, are they only seeing Metatron?). In Talmud, God becomes more distant (I personally believe this starts in the middle of Prophets, around the time of the first Diaspora). In these later cases, God is there always, but acts more subtly, either through the world around us or through people themselves, rather than as a personified player.
So, does God act in daily life? Let's accept that God is omnipotent, and CAN do anything. With that said, what role did God play today in each of our lives and how? Did the Creator talk to us directly (George Burns style)? Did God act on our hearts and minds to influence our way of being? Did God act through other players, be they people or nature? Is everything that happens a manifestation of God? Is the Creator just a great watchmaker, only fixing things when they're broken, otherwise letting things run? How broken need things get? Does God exist only because we ask these questions?
I have no concrete answers. I know I don't expect to be hit by a lightning bolt every time I laugh at Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but likewise I did thank God for whatever happened today - was I thanking the Creator for making things go right in the world around me, or in my mind, heart, and soul?
Happy New Year, and (if it's something the Creator does) may God bless us all.
posted by Michael A. Seidman @ 1:03 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Mike,
Let me rise to your challange and discuss some of my thoghts about God. First of all, I do believe in God, or at least believe that there in the possiblity of God. I think it is very arrogant of human beings to think that we know or even could possibly know everything about the universe. My gut (which could be either a accumulation of a lifetime of experience or just wishful thinking) does believe that there is some kind of supreme being that has an interest in humanity and, perhaps, individual lives. That being said, I cannot tell you how I know that, but that I just know it anymore than I can tell you why I like butter pecan ice cream. There are more than one ways of "knowing" things with empirical evidence being only one way.
Now, as to how I think God affects what happens here on Earth, I have to confess that my belief is close that that of the now-canceled TV show "Joan of Arcadia". On that show, which centered around a young girl who is chosen by God to perform tasks, God does not perform miracles or directly influence things, but influences what happens through human beings. By chosing certain individuals, like Joan, and directing them to perform tasks, God has an indirect influence on human affairs. Of course, since they have free will, the individuals can choose not to perform those tasks. That is how I see God working. Since God, presumably, created natural laws (like gravity) and human free will, why would God violate them? Since God can see "the big picture", God can know that if certain small acts are performed, then larger outcomes will result. That way, God can have an influence on the larger outcomes without violating natural law or free will.
Now for something completely different! There is a facinating book that I read in grad school (way back in the dark ages of the 70's) that I think explains "God" in an empirical way. It is called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes. The following is a breif description of Jaynes' basic concept, according to the Julian Jaynes Society, which is intended to "...foster discussion and a better understanding of the life, work, and theories of Julian Jaynes (1920-1997)":
"At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing... [The book p]resents a theory of the bicameral mind which holds that ancient peoples could not "think" as we do today and were therefore "unconscious," a result of the domination of the right hemisphere; only catastrophe forced mankind to "learn" consciousness, a product of human history and culture and one that issues from the brain's left hemisphere. http://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php" According to this theory, before the origin of consciousness, ancient people did not think in the sense that they talked to themselves the way we do, but, instead, "thought" by hearing voices, since it was coming from their right hemisphere, and interpreted that as hearing God or gods. At some point, aroung 3000 years ago, with the origin of writing and breakdown of traditional social structures, the bicameral mind broke down and both hemishperes were used for thinking and the gods stoppped talking. Jaynes went on to do more research and writing on this and it never became a widely accepted or well-tested theory, but it is very interesting and does provide some kind of empirical explanation for "God".
Thanks for rasing this topic, Mike. It is something that all of us need to talk about more.
L'Shonah Tova! Happy New Year!
I've been having some difficulty elucidating my thoughts here. I wasn't expecting to get a major philisophical dilemma out of a quick comment, but you seem to have brought me to one just the same.
I was taught in Hebrew School that God is everywhere and, in fact, a part of everything. If this is so then, clearly, God is all-knowing and all-powerful, since everything in the universe is a part of God, and thus nothing can possibly occur without God being aware. Further, God can affect the universe by influencing individual people or events. The biblical "hand of God" is not necessary - I have to believe that God is far more subtle than that.
The dilemma that this belief causes is that if God is a part of everything and everyone, and can thus influence our actions and the actions of people and things around us, does that mean there is no such thing as free will? I have a very hard time not believing in free will, but I also cannot imagine a God that is not powerful beyond human comprehension.
My only solution, thus far, is that while God is all-powerful and can influence us and our surroundings, perhaps God does not always choose to do so. Perhaps we mostly pinball our way through life, bouncing around of our own volition, but are occasionally given a nudge in a certain direction.
That's my 2 shekels. Happy New Year.
The other quandary that I see with God being all-knowing and all-powerful is, why does God allow really bad things to happen? There is sort of an "iron triangle" - people refer to God as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. However, it is hard to see him as all three at the same time in light of things that happen in the world. [putting on my Linda Richman voice] Discuss...
Val, I definitely think we have to defer bad things/good people for another week. Rest assured you'll get credit. ;-)
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