Transparent Eye

Doug Muder has, as a member of the UU Lay Theological Education Task Force, called for a discussion on what needs “lay theological education” ought to satisfy.

First, as a quibble, I’d prefer the task where defined as “philosophical” education rather than theological, since theology is centered on god, which may not be the appropriate focus.

But moving beyond that, and writing as someone who has not been systematically trained in philosophy, but has thought about it for quite a while, it seems to me that first thing to focus on is two mysteries, the mystery of existence and the mystery of consciousness.

The Mystery of Existence

Why is there something rather than nothing? The starting point for many theists is the First Cause Argument, which holds that a Creator is needed to explain existence. The atheist riposte is, “Who created God?” I find this riposte good as a debating point, but ultimately not satisfying. While insisting that things must have causes leads to infinite regress, postulating that things can come into existence without a cause is kind of like an appeal to the miraculous, with the restriction that miracles only occurred 13 billion years ago!

There really is a paradox here that is currently insoluable. People find uncertainty (agnosticism) unsettling, and in my opinion to quickly adhere to pat answers. It may be that human intelligence is not capable of understanding the true nature of reality. We are after all creatures that evolved in a specific ecological niche, and understanding the universe is not strictly necessary for our survival.

The Mystery of Consciousness

Just as strange as the fact that we exist is the fact that we know it. Rocks exist but do not know it. Why do we?

I think it’s critical that lay theological education address debates about consciousness, because they bring into question whether we can really be free and responsible.

All adults and anyone who come to Unitarian Universalism will know that there are people who question god’s existence. Conflicts between believers and non-believers and debates between theists and atheists are commonly covered in the news media.

The average adult, perhaps even the average educated adult, is probably not aware of debates regarding the nature of the mind and body. Cartesian dualism, while in disrepute in the scientific community, is still the “common sense” position of everyday speech.

There is something mysterious about the fact that we know we exist. Scientists are learning more and moe about the brain and the neural activity that goes on when we experience and pay attention to what we sense, and when we recall the past. The standard view is that the mind reflects what is going on in the brain, but does not affect the brain (cause future brain states). This also means that there is no freewill in the conventional sense–the sense that our mind makes choices is an illusion.

An yet, there is at least an apparent paradox here. If the mind or consciousness has no effect on the brain, how does it contribute to our survival? If it does not contribute to our survival, why did we evolve to be conscious? Some scientists speculate that consciousness is a spandrel, a side-effect of evolution not specifically selected for. I find this suspicious and an easy out. Mystery remains.

Still, I think its important for every UU to know that a debate about freewill exists. It seems almost un-American, unconstitutional, to question it, but human laws cannot change basic facts about the universe. Undermining freewill also undermines notions of responsibility. If we are not free, why should we be punished for what we do.

My own view is that we have a sort of pseudo-freewill. It may be that at the deepest level, what we do is a combination of determinism and randomness, without any soul or self making choices. But there is enough recursiveness and self-consciousness in the brain that it can adapt behavior to meet laws, rules and expectations. We may not be free in principle, but in practice we have a lot of flexibility, and should be held accountable.

How We Know Things

I think UUs should deal with questions of how we know things to be true. When I read atheist blogs, I find an overvaluation of reason and rationality. It’s not that I love irrationality. Rather, I see an overestimation of a narrow rationality modeled after the calcuations of a digital computer. In fact, neuroscientists are finding that human rationality is constrained by our emotions. Scientists are also beginning to see intuition not as mystical, but as relying at human skills in pattern recognition.

Prayer and Meditation

Most people who come to a UU church will know what a prayer is. So the question for UUs is how and whether to pray. While there is no good evidence that prayer helps those at a distance who don’t even know they are being prayed for, I think it’s pretty obvious that expressing a hope through prayer can help the person who is praying, and also affect those who witness it. Prayers can be expressed in ways that don’t offend the sensibilities of humanists and naturalists.

On the other hand, its quite likely that people who come to a UU church will never have had first-hand experience with meditation. Without specifying how one meditations, since there are so many methods, I think I UU lay curriculum should expose people to the practice of meditation and allow them to experience the phenomenon of the quieting of the mind. Before I first learned to meditate (at the YWCA no less!) I simply didn’t understand what people were talking about when they spoke of quieting the mind. It’s not something that can be observed from the outside. It has to be experienced.