The Non-dualogues share the conversations between slumberfogey and the pilgrim, in slumberfogey’s flat in London. Sometimes, the pilgrim brings friends, who join in the discussion.
​
slumberfogey: Pilgrim! At last. You're late!

pilgrim: Isn't 11am a good time for you?

s: No, I mean two months late. My biscuits ran out seven weeks ago.

p: slumberfogey, I told you I'd be away for two months. I've been on a building project in Central America.

s: Oh, I remember now. Still, no biscuits.

p: I've got biscuits with me. Shall I put on the tea? What are we discussing today?

s: Who are you?

p: You recognise me, don't you? I'm Gary, but you always call me pilgrim.

s: So "Gary" is your name or "pilgrim" labels you, but is either who you are?

p: Oh, I get it. We're diving straight in, then. So I'll skip the bits covering where I'm from, what I do for money, what party I vote for, my ethnicity and my religion, because knowing you, you're looking for something different...

s: So, you are...?

p: Well, just a bloke. A person. A human. (An Arsenal fan.)

s: Don't sell yourself short. You're not "just" anything. But let's take "person." Did you say you had biscuits?

​p: Yes! I'm bringing them out with the tea. Okay, so yeah, I'm a person.

s: And when you say you're a person, you mean you are... what? What is a person?

p: An individual. 

s: Interesting. Let's remember that word and come back to it. So an individual what? And don't say "person," because we don't want to go in circles. You've already said a person is an individual.

p: An individual body, I guess.

s: Anything special about the body? Would a cadaver count?

p: No. A living body.

s: Ah. So you are a living body. How are you aware you're living?

p: Being alive is obvious. I'm moving around and stuff.

s: To pick up on the line of questioning I'm taking you on, pause for a moment and hearken back to our discussion last time about "what is happening." Although two months have passed, I hope we don't need to replay the whole discovery.

*** Intermission ***

p: Right, so I'll try to keep my answers to what I can be certain of. My direct experience.

s: Excellent! So, according to your direct experience, what is the body?

p: Well. I see it when I look at my hands, chest, legs or feet. I see my face's reflection in the mirror. So an aspect of the body is images I experience.

s: Great. What else?

p: I feel it all the time. My hand can touch my belly or slap my thigh. I feel my teeth chatter. My stomach rumbles. (I hear that as well.) My heart beats. I sense my limbs' position. Body movement, warmth, cold, hunger. So I guess the body is also a bundle of sounds and sensations.

s: Super. Anything else?

p: I smell my breath, too. I taste my lip bleeding or sweat rolling into my mouth. I guess the body is a collection of the same types of perception that come from "out in the world" plus the internal sensations.

s: Interesting. "Internal." Internal to what?

p: Internal to my body.

s: But you say - as far as you can tell from your direct experience - your body is those things. So some of those things can't be "internal" to the body. That's saying bits of the body are internal to itself, while other bits aren't.

p: I'm not used to examining the body this way, so I get tied up in how to express myself.

s: You're doing great. Just consider more carefully within what those perceptions and "internal" sensations rest.

p: Wait! I've got it! They sit in my mind. I am my mind!

s: So you are not your body but your mind?

p: Well, perhaps it's not so simple, since the mind is dependent on the body.

s: How so?

p: The mind depends on the brain, which is part of the body.

s: How does your direct experience tell you this?

p:

s: How do you experience your mind's dependence on the brain?

p: I guess I don't. I base it on what others say and what I've read.

s: Okay. I'm not saying it's wrong. The mind may be dependent on the body, but let's stick with the things you can know, from your direct experience.

p: Yeah. So I'm sticking with saying I am my mind.

s: Do you, as a mind, include or contain anything else beyond the perceptions and sensations of the body?

p: Ah! Well, I have millions of ideas, memories, emotions, expectations, wishes and judgements in my mind. I guess my will sits in the same place.

s: Yes. Lot's more stuff, huh? When you say those things sit in the same place, what is that place?

p: My mind.

s: But if you are the mind, what is the "My" bit? If you are the mind, then saying "My mind" is equivalent to saying "My me."

p: But I'm distinguishing my mind from other minds.

s: What is your direct experience of other minds?

p: Ah, I get you. My experience is only through sights, sounds and other perceptions, which we've covered. I don't experience other minds. So are you saying they don't exist?

s: Well, that would be hard for me to say, since slumberfogey is one of them! No, they may well exist, but let's stick with what you can be sure of from your direct experience. We're taking empiricism seriously.

p: Okay, so I'll get rid of the "my." All those forms of thought and all perceptions of the body, plus all body sensations sit in me.

s: You say the perceptions of the body sit in you. Do the perceptions of the rest of the world (the images of the surrounding room, the sound of passing traffic, etc.) sit somewhere else?

p: No. Same place. 

s: So all perceptions, sensations and thoughts sit within you, yes? So who or what are you?

p: I am the mind.

s: What is the mind?

p: I'm getting tired. I dunno. The container of those things?

s: Seeing things in a whole new way can be taxing. Those "things," those perceptions, sensations and thoughts. Do you remember how we rolled them up in our last meeting?

p: Oh yeah. I worked out (with your help) that I don't ever experience those different categories. They all come in bundled, undivided experience.

s: Exactly! And my little term for undivided experience is "What Is Happening." So, who or what are you?

p: If the mind is What Is Happening and I am my mind, I guess I am What Is Happening. Right?

s: You sound uncertain. How can you be certain What Is Happening is happening?

p: Arrrrrggggggghhhhhhh! This is exhausting. I always feel stupid when you do this.

s: Sorry. Maybe The Trial of Socrates is inaccurate. Perhaps his students killed him out of frustration.

p: What? What are you on about?

s: A classical allusion, young man. You guys have lost touch with your roots. Not enough time. Back to my question...

​p: How do I know What Is Happening is happening? Because I'm experiencing it! It is my direct experience.

s: Right. You're not an inert container of those aspects of experience, of What Is Happening. You are its experiencer. So who are you?

p: I am the experiencer of What Is Happening.

s: Perfect! And What Is Happening is the flow of experience arising to awareness and receding to make way for the continuing flow "behind."

p: So I'm the experiencer, but I don't know what the experiencer is. I'm not the body - I experience the sensations and perceptions making up my direct experience of the body. Likewise, I'm not the mind - I experience the thoughts that are my direct experience of it. And, I'm not the external environment - I experience the perceptions composing my direct experience of the external world. So what am I?

s: That's what I asked you! And you've peeled away a lot of confusion. You've worked out that you are no thing (nothing). The things are aspects of What Is Happening. You are the experiencer of the things. If you still seek yourself as an object, as a thing, you'll come up empty. You - the experiencer - are not a thing.

p: I'm not sure how thrilled I am to be nothing. So my school teachers and ex-girlfriends were right.

s: Maybe it's not so bad. You used to believe you were a thing - a body or a mind or their union. You now see you are not a thing. Perhaps a further step awaits discovery. Are you willing to take on some homework?

p: Sure.

s: Okay. Between now and when we next meet, look for boundaries.

p: Huh?

s: I'd like you to investigate different boundaries on several "levels." I'll email this to you, but hear me out.

• Looking at any visual object relative to its surroundings, try to find the boundary between it and "not it." Can you find anything other than a difference in colour, shade, degree of transparency or texture. Is your visual experience made of separate "things" or a flow of difference?
• Listening to a specific sound relative to background noise, try to find the auditory equivalent of the visual boundary I described above. Does anything other than a difference in pitch, tone, timbre or amplitude distinguish one sound from the general sound field? Is your auditory experience made of separate "things" or a flow of difference?
• Back in the visual realm, try to find a boundary between the visual object and your seeing of it. Is there a place where the object "stops" and your seeing of it begins? With vision or any other perceptual sense, is the object of experience in any way separated from your seeing (or hearing, etc) it?
• Further comparing across senses, do you detect any boundary between your seeing something and your experiencing it? Between your hearing something and your experiencing it? In other words, are your senses separate from or additional to experiencing?
• The same for your thoughts and your sensations. Do you detect a boundary between a thought and your thinking it? Between a feeling and your feeling it? Thinking something and experiencing the thought? Feeling something and experiencing it? Is your experience of What Is Happening broken in separate streams or locations at all?
• Finally, do you detect any boundary between the action of experiencing  and you, yourself, as the experiencer? Is there a place where experiencing stops and you begin?

All of these build to a final question. Does any evidence in direct experience reveal a boundary between What Is Happening (as a whole) and you (as the experiencer of it)? Does experiencing require something experienced (What Is Happening) and something that experiences it (you)? Or might experiencing, the action or process of experiencing, be all there is?

What would this imply for what you are???

Let's discuss what you find.

Until next week, pilgrim.

Phil Grimm's Progress is off for its final edit, with Phil Owens. Unless I hit unforeseen snags, I'll publish it - in ebook form - by the end of April. We'll see about print.

It started last summer, a week after returning from a camper van trip with J to Holland and Denmark. I often have wakeful periods in the middle of the night. Those periods began to fill with ideas for a story - in mythic form. I'd recently re-read Parzival and the Stone from Heaven, and I pictured a spiritual seeker with little self-knowledge, on a quest to discover himself.

I'd read lots of nonfiction about Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and non-dualism more generally, but I'd never come across a modern allegorical approach. In my less humble moments, I imagined penning a cross between Parzival, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Tao of Pooh and Sophie's World. My aim was a fictional work that illuminated, entertaining along the way.

The book wrote itself over the next seven weeks, although it was only just over 50k words in that first draft. Realising I had no idea how to write a book, let alone get one published, I turned to professional help from Alice Peck. Because she's such a pleasure to work with, Alice is very busy. I paused for a while for her to come free and tear into my manuscript. In the meantime, I gave it to a few patient early readers.

By Christmas, the draft was back in my hands, along with feedback from Alice and the first readers. After a few weeks' work, the second draft went out to a next round of helpful guinea pigs. The discussions with them raised three significant points:

• The characters - including the one I wanted to be the strongest - in the book's "real world" subplot were thin. That story rushed at the end, oversimplifying complex relationships and wasting potential.
• The whole conceit for the trickiest subplot was too jarring, poorly integrated with what else was happening. It felt like little more than interleaved expository, arcane essays (because that's what it was).
• Despite my self-image as a feminist man and my seeing the book as a voice for women, one reader (yes, you guessed it, a woman), showed me how tone deaf several themes and passages were.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

So, a major re-write occupied and entertained me for another four or five weeks. Then I tucked into an involved round of self-editing - reapplying the "rules" that Alice had taught me. The book expanded to just over 80k words.

Then, when I learned that Phil helped one of my favourite new sci-fi authors, Ian Sainsbury, I contacted him for the finishing touches.

There you have it, the story of Phil Grimm's conception and impending birth. Watch this space for updates and launch announcement!

The Non-dualogues share the conversations between slumberfogey and the pilgrim, in slumberfogey’s flat in London. Occasionally, the pilgrim brings friends, who join in the discussion.
​
slumberfogey: Ah. You’ve come back! Excellent. Did you pass the Sainsburys on your way here? It’s just a few doors down.

pilgrim: Don’t worry. I have biscuits.

s: Biscuits. What a wonderful idea! Thank you.

p:    While I make the tea, can you tell me how we’ll get started?

s: You are a quick study, aren’t you? Okay, why don’t you start by telling me what is happening?

p:    Let’s see… Arsenal lost to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup this week, which has put my knickers in a twist. My mum’s boiler’s on the blink, so I have to find someone to sort that. I got a pay rise, which brings me almost up to minimum wage…

s: Slow down. Everything you’ve said (except perhaps the knicker thing) is about the past or the future. I mean what is happening, now? Let’s even capitalize it - What Is Happening?

p:    Right now, I’d say, Prime Minister’s Questions are happening, for what it’s worth. Polar bears are starving. Tottenham fans are having a giggle.

s: Pilgrim. Are you in a grumpy mood? Have a biscuit, and let’s be more precise.

p:    I’m not sure exactly how many polar bears are starving.

s: I mean, none of those things is in your direct experience right now. Ideas about them are, granted. But tell me What, in your direct, indisputable experience, Is Happening. Now.

p:    I’m sipping tea, chewing a biscuit, and trying to speak at the same time.

s: That’s an excellent start! How do you know you’re sipping tea?

p:    What do you mean, how do I know? I’m right here, sipping. And this, (slurp) is tea!

s: You’re handling this moment with the precision of a World War II bombardier. Imagine yourself more like a laser eye surgeon. What Is Happening?

p:    I’m imagining myself as a laser eye surgeon.

s: Are you taking the piss? Okay. How are you certain you’re imagining yourself as a laser eye surgeon?

p:    I feel like I’m missing something here. Or maybe you are.

s: How are you sure you’re not dreaming of picturing yourself as a laser eye surgeon?

p:    Because I’m sitting here, awake, and a bit annoyed.

s: If you were dreaming, wouldn’t it also seem like you were awake?

p:    Okay. I think I see what you are getting at.

s: Good. Let’s try again. See this photo? What Is Happening?

p:    Light is reflecting off of a photo in your hand. Some of it is entering my pupils and striking my retinas, sending signals up my optical nerves to my brain, which creates a disturbing mental image of you wearing a mankini and stroking a llama.

s: Ah. A scientific explanation. First, that’s my mate, Phil in the llama suit. I had a beige leotard on under the mankini, so relax. It was a fancy dress party. Outrageous! Second, I love science. Can’t get enough of it. But the scientific answer gets updated. Newton updated the theory of light. Maxwell updated that. Quantum mechanics updated that. What description would have been accurate in any of those eras, would survive science’s future advances, and would be accurate whether or not you were dreaming?

p:    I am seeing an image of you stroking a man in a llama suit.

s: Better! Now, can there be any doubt you are seeing it?

p:    Well, I’m not smelling it, am I? Thank God.

s: What if you were in a terrible car crash a year ago? What if the doctors could only save your brain and keep it alive in a vat? What if they could stimulate the visual cortex with electrodes to produce images of me in a mankini?

p:    Then I’d say science got its priorities terribly wrong at some point.

s: (Sigh.)

p:    (Sip.)

s: What description would be accurate in that scenario and all the others we’ve mentioned?

p:    I have an image of you in a mankini, stroking a man in a llama suit.

s: Better. Better! But, you have it? What, are you inert? Like a bowl?

p:    I am experiencing an image of you in a mankini, stroking a man in a llama suit!

s: Even better! But does the image, in itself, convey that it is me stroking a man in a llama suit?

p:    Is this ever going to end? Okay. I am experiencing an image of you holding an image. I am also experiencing a belief that the image you hold is of you stroking a man in a llama suit.

s: Super! Terrific! Laser surgery standard. What was different about that final description?

p:    I only appealed to my direct, mental experience.

s: That’s right. All of your older descriptions might have been accurate, but you can’t be sure they were. That last one, you could know. It was only imperfect in that you had to use words to render it for me. But now, it’s just a memory that may or may not be accurate. You see. What Is Happening is your complete, instantaneous, experience. Nothing more and nothing less. Shall we look at it more closely?

p:    Closer than we already have? Are you kidding? Can we move on from the mankini?

s: You’ve sharpened your attention, but you’ve narrowed your focus to do it. Let’s see if we can maintain the attention but with a broad, open awareness. Are you up for it?

p:    Let’s go.

s: Okay. Close your eyes.

p:    Please promise me you won’t take off your clothes.

s: Of course I won’t! Please!
For the next few minutes, don’t reply by speaking. Just think to yourself.
Do you notice the sound of my voice? Its pitch? Its volume? What other sounds are you aware of, now—between the words or beside them?
Do you sense the pressure of your bottom on the seat? Of your feet on the floor? The feeling of your clothes against your skin? Of the air on your face? What other touch are you aware of?
Do you notice any tastes? Does the breath moving through your mouth have a taste?
Are you experiencing any smells? From your bath or your meal? What other smells are you aware of?
Now open your eyes. Experience the surrounding light. The array of colors. The shadows. Do you notice my image? Images of other objects? Which images are clear and which blurred? Do the images change, move? What other sights are you aware of?
Eyes closed again, notice the position of your arms, neck and head. Which muscles are taut and which relaxed? Do you feel warm or cool? Hungry?
Is there any sense of fear, comfort, impatience, or peace? Feelings of love or anger?
Do you notice thoughts? A succession, each arises and dissolves as the next replaces it. Memories. Anticipations. Questions. Decisions. Are you aware of a sense of will?
All these components of experience—these phenomena—in ever-changing, varied combinations, make up What Is Happening in every second of life.
How was that?

p:    Wild! In a way, I know all that is always going on, but it has never struck me so clearly.

s: See how comprehensive, how complete, What Is Happening is? How everything—including any thoughts or feelings of approval or dissatisfaction with What Is Happening, any wishes it were different—is an aspect of What Is Happening, within experience itself?

p:    A lot of it is thought, especially if you include memories, anticipations and judgments. I guess a lot is emotions as well.

s: Your experience can be conceptually broken into sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, thoughts and sensations (where sensations include emotions and other bodily sensations). But do you realize that all those categories are just concepts? Do you experience things in those separate categories?

p:    I guess not. It’s all just one big multimedia wave, isn’t it?

s: That’s right. There are no boundaries within your experience. Those categories, when they occur to you, are just thoughts. We’ll talk more about boundaries next week, and about where you fit into all this.

p:    Where I fit in? I’m right here!

s: Perhaps. Let’s see next week. Until then! Mind your step.

​

I once read that one way to undertake life is to act so as to minimize the regret you will feel on your death bed.

Is this a legitimate mechanism for sifting the important from the unimportant?  I don’t mean the theoretically important, the universally important or any sort of externally important.  I mean what really matters to you, what makes you deeply happy.  Might this Death Bed Test provide a useful perspective onto what constitutes a good life?

Why should it matter what you would think on your death bed?  The vast majority of your life is not spent on your death bed.  What makes that perspective especially legitimate?  Might it be an intuitive test for what our unmet human needs are?

Indulge me for a moment on a little stroll through a ‘what if’ scenario.  I think that it could be enlightening.  What if we were really made in a certain way – whether by evolution, by design or by design executed through evolution? What if our make-up was such that certain activities or states of affairs were inherently rewarding, fulfilling – made us happy, while others did not?  What if some activities and states did quite the opposite?

What if the happiness-producing activities included the ones that satisfied one of the 'Four Fs' when they were called for?  Eating when hungry, successfully escaping a predator and retiring to a safe location, successfully fighting off a predator or competitor for your hunting territory, mating.

What if they also included those activities that defined a purpose or meaning for us in the face of our own mortality, the ones through which we experienced agency, the ones by which we authentically presented ourselves to the world, the ones through which we found belonging?

What if our minds were more adept at pursuing the basic activities than those that met the younger, higher-order needs? What if we were lucky enough to live in an environment in which those most basic needs were routinely and reliably met?

What if the mind detected a shortfall in the higher-order needs but misattributed the longing to a non-existent shortfall in one of the basic ones? What if, despite continued pursuit and over-fulfillment of basic needs , the mind continued to sense some  longing that was obviously not being met?

Would the mind go into overdrive?  Would it obsessively and counterproductively adopt a competitive posture, flushing the body with hormones to prepare it for a Four F-type encounter?  Would it keep reminding itself of its own inescapable dissatisfaction?  Would it ‘pull up’ the drawbridge, focusing relentlessly on its apparently urgent, basic needs?

In short, would it, in the face of unmet needs of the younger, higher-order kind, still accidentally neglect those needs while counterproductively pursuing activities to meet basic needs that in truth are already met?  I think you see the point I’m making.
Now, fast forward.  What if the patient is on his death bed.  Despite all attempts to deny it, he now faces the inescapable truth that his time on Earth is ending.  He knows that no food, no money, no sexual partners, no Stuff will pass with him from this world.

What if, in this extraordinary state, the mind finally calls a halt to the churning pursuit of those ancient, animal needs? What if, in those moments of clarity, the smoke of spinning mental activity cleared, the veils of primordial obsession dissolved, he is able to see, with a simplicity that surprises him, what the unmet needs were all along?  What if he sees what his unique human needs were?  What if he sees with shining clarity the happy, fulfilled life he might have led?

Would this constitute a privileged perspective?  Would being able to fast-forward to that perspective sooner rather than later be of value to the (hopefully) long life yet to be lived before the death bed?  I think so.

So what do most people, on their death bed, say they would change?  What are the things they now realise were the unmet needs?  The needs that sprang from their being a human but were clouded, hidden and confused by their being an animal.  Writer and pastor John Ortberg has most often heard, ‘I would have loved more deeply.’ ‘ I would have laughed more often.’ ‘I would have given more generously.’ ‘I would have lived more boldly.’ Palliative care worker, Bronnie Ware, whose patients were home for the final weeks of their lives, identifies five themes:

• I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
• I wish I didn't work so hard.
• I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
• I wish that I had let myself be happier. 

Obviously, these are anecdotal and not scientific findings, but a quantitative meta-analysis by Roese & Summerville of 11 studies surveying people (not on their death-beds) about their regrets points to some similar conclusions.  Forty-three percent of the regrets expressed fell in the domain of better developing / taking care of oneself (education, health, leisure and character).  A further 29% concerned relationships (parents, siblings, partner, children, friends).  While 25% fell in the realm of career and finance, you can bet that they weren’t saying they wished they’d worked harder and earned more money.

Really though, my point is less about what people do actually say when asked such questions than about what your own calm contemplation suggests you might say.  As I’ve discussed this with a number of friends and colleagues, themes emerge around self-understanding, being true to one’s self, pursuing one’s real ambitions and nurturing and appreciating one’s most treasured relationships.

I suggest that you reflect on this hypothetical look back on life.  Rather than simply doing from this negative perspective of life regrets, flip things around to pen your ideal eulogy.  What is the short passage by which you would like to be remembered?  What elements of your life does it draw on?

While I think it is important to work out what matters, I suggest pursuing your answers in the form of pragmatic wisdom rather than certain knowledge.  I would warn against subscribing to ‘systems of thought’ that claim to deduce logical certainties and irrefutable truths. Instead, I suggest carefully considering and testing the assumptions at the foundation of your beliefs, the ultimately unprovable axioms from which we all must start.

I think that some useful rules of thumb for this reflection are to:  keep an open mind, judge pragmatically, favour (among pragmatically successful alternatives) simplicity and beauty.

On our hedonic treadmill, like the Red Queen in Alice’s adventures, we seemingly have to run at full steam just to stay still. Might our real mistake be that we’re chasing the wrong things? Is there a mass misdiagnosis of our needs?

Technological and other cultural evolution have supplanted biological evolution as the prime drivers of change for humans and for Earth.  The culturally-dominated modern environment is profoundly different from the evolutionary environment that shaped us, and life for most in developed western countries (despite a growing class of the left-behind) is characterized by abundance rather than scarcity of material resources. Why can’t we just relax in comfort? Might our evolutionary programming now be leading us astray?

Because our antennae sense relative rather than absolute need, unquenchable human longing follows a seemingly endless trail of desires and aversions.  Constant comparison and competition drive an undercurrent of discontent – the wish for more, different, better things.  The hyper-capitalist economies of English-speaking countries feed and amplify this discontent to a fever pitch while enticing the individual to invest ever more exclusively in an all-consuming work life to finance material acquisition and social status.

Work life crowds out the relationships and diverse activities that would otherwise enrich life. The individual’s overreliance on his work for so much of his sense of well-being and self-worth leaves him in a precarious position, in thrall to others who are under intense pressure to optimize his contribution as a resource rather than his well-being as a complex person.

Our human longing is telling us something, but we are misunderstanding the ache we feel.  Beyond a quite basic level of material need, our satisfaction, happiness and well-being aren’t to be found in an increasing reliance on material wealth, a narrowing focus on extrinsic success and a shrinking sphere of concern limited to our most basic drives.  As with all addictions, satisfying one desire brings a brief sense of bliss followed by the rapid arousal of yet more subjective ‘needs’.  Desires, like cancerous cells, multiply and refuse to die.

Our true satisfaction is best served by freeing ourselves from the shackles of our multiplying desires.  Our lives become richer when we place proper value on our own time and energy, when we nurture the most durable and important external ‘assets’ we have, our relationships with others.

All the harder, I know, when our ‘communication’ technologies (like where you are reading this) are in truth finely-tuned mechanisms for stoking exactly the covetousness that keeps the hedonic treadmill turning.

I read an unfortunate story in the news some years ago.  An elderly man, suffering from dementia and obviously not fit to be behind the wheel of a car, accidentally turned into Third Street Promenade, a pedestrianised street in Santa Monica, California.  Realising that something was wrong, he pressed down his foot to brake, but his foot was on the accelerator.  The car sped forward.  The man could tell something was wrong, as people leapt out of his way or bounced off his bumper.  He just didn’t realize he needed to shift his foot to stomp on a different pedal.  He pressed harder and harder on the accelerator in his efforts to stop, and the car sped down the crowded plaza, killing a number of people before crashing to a stop.

The man didn’t understand what was going on.  First of all, these people shouldn’t be in the middle of a road.  He was in a car, and cars travel where people are not.  He found himself in an environment that didn’t fit with his (deteriorating) understanding of driving.  Second, he failed in his corrective actions.  He knew he should slow down.  He knew that he needed to press down his foot to brake.  But his automatic muscle memory that should have shifted his foot to the brake pedal from the accelerator wasn’t functioning properly.  From his perspective, he was braking, but inexplicably, the car was rocketing forward.  All he could do in his confused state was continue pushing his foot down, because that was supposed to work.  

While this is not a perfect analogy for our mind in the modern environment, I think that there may be some illuminating parallels. We’re not seeing the world clearly. Our evolutionary and historically-programmed short-cuts are unreliable in a much-changed world. We’re pushing on the wrong pedals in our efforts to improve our situations.

First posted 6 Aug 2005. I have edited this old post before including it here - not to bring it up to date with my current thinking but rather to change the tone from one that was quite aggressive and disrespectful of fundamentalist theistic views. Over the past 12 years, I've learned that no good is served by being rude to people who think differently than you. I hope that the post manages to raise questions and points without being offensive.

I have much more love for the bible than I did at the time of original posting, but I have no greater agreement with those who interpret it literally rather than mythically. I believe that the Christian bible and other great religious books each provide a window onto a beautiful, ultimately indescribable, Truth. Each window looking at the same mountain summit, but one may be viewing it from the tropical forests of a village at the great mountain's southern base, while others take it in and describe it from quite different locations and therefore perspectives.

A spider could never understand the theory of gravity or the existence of other lands, oceans and planets. Yet gravity's law, along with those lands, oceans and planets, exists and applies to spiders. Our celebrated mental and scientific capacities are of no greater use than the spider's when it comes to rationally understanding God's wonder. So how can we deny, based solely on our inability to comprehend it, God's power? This is one argument of the believer against those who set science or philosophy against religion.

It is an argument for which I have a lot of time. Human reason does not reach the breadth and depth of existence. There is a large gap between what we know and what we can know, and there is a much larger one between what we can know (intellectually, versus experientially) and what is actually the case. My failure to make rational sense of God does not preclude His existence. In that sense, I am agnostic with respect to the existence of God. Count me as 'on the fence' up to that point.

But when the question before me shifts from 'Does God exist?' to 'Does God play an active part in the world, in the very specific way that is described by the canon of the major western religions, when interpreted literally?' I come down from the fence very firmly into the negative camp.

Why is this so? First, I guess I’d have to say that I find it hard to believe that - on God’s scale - humans are that special. Doesn't it seem like a very convenient coincidence that the universe's one all-powerful being created a world for the benefit of beings who just happen to be.... us? Isn't it striking how anthropocentric the biblical creation story and all that follows from it is? Isn't it... well... perhaps arrogant ... to assume that amongst all of creation, and within that among all of life, God should take a personal interest in Man and only Man?

I mean, if elephants had written the bible, don't you suspect that it would say elephants were created in God's image and that only elephants have a soul because, of course, only they, like God, have trunks? Birds would write that God can fly; fish that He was a swimmer. Each would claim their own unique characteristic as the one that qualifies them as God's chosen species. The unique characteristic we seek to base it on is the size and complexity of our brains and our concomitant ability to reflect upon our own thoughts.

Isn't it equally possible that He just watches the universe evolve as we watch a top spin or a pin-wheel twirl, with no moral stance at all? Or if He does make moral judgements, mightn't His rights and wrongs be quite different from, even diametrically opposed to, what the Bible says? Or if he takes particular interest in Life, mightn't he be equally interested in all life? Or mightn't he care about some others more than or rather than Man?

Yet, we find ourselves with a God who happens to care only about us. He tells us very specific things we must or must not do, and these all line up quite well with the needs of the ethnic group from which the authors of the bible come. He puts us centre stage. Quite convenient. We get to hold the pen, so we get to write the story, so the story says that God cares most about us!

And how do we account for all of the differences among the world’s religions? I guess followers of any one simply say the others got it wrong, huh? Do you think that maybe each religion puts its main constituency(with its particular history, traditions, economy and geographic peculiarities) at centre stage within humanity, just as humanity places itself centre state within existence as a whole? This again just strikes me as... just, possibly, arrogant.

I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility of God's existence. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that God must place Man at the centre of the universe or my friends and me at the centre of the human race.

A second line to my reasoning is that - as implied in my question of biblical imperfection above - I am too much of a cynic to trust the powerful men of history (men whose names are not necessarily the ones that get official 'billing' on the books) to have faithfully transcribed God’s word. And I can’t think of the bible as something other than an amazing, powerful book of great depth that was written across centuries by different men, each of whom was a cultural captive or a cultural rebel in his particular time and place. The earliest writers have - I can’t help suspecting - had their original words edited many times over by the later powerful men, as they felt necessary.

I’m not saying that these men were bad or self-serving (although some, being human, probably were). It’s just that they were trying to make sense of the infinite using their meagre words, writing from within their own narrow setting. I see them as vaguely equivalent to the spider trying to write a book about thermodynamics.

I’m also not even saying that they got things all wrong. I’m just saying that the things that are ‘right’ are ‘right’ in a poetic, mythical, metaphorical way rather than in a rational, literal, factual way.

Finally, I’m not setting out to, and I don’t thank that I accidentally manage to, ‘prove’ that fundamentalist theists are wrong. I can’t. I do think that, on items of detail, they are wrong. I do think that there are better, worldly ways to address some of the questions that they look to resolve by biblical reference. But I know that I, like them, have no special licence on Truth with a capital ‘T’.