Spirituality Without Faith

Sermon

The title of my sermon today is "Spirituality Without Faith," and it was inspired by a book called The End of Faith, by Sam Harris.*** Both titles seem to suggest that faith is a bad thing, which may sound jarring to many people. How can you live without faith? Why would you want to live without faith?

I think one reason for this is that the word "faith" has a lot of meanings, so let me explain exactly what we're talking about here. We're not talking about faith as in "I have faith that my data is correct." That just means that I have checked it over and over, and am convinced that I haven't made any errors. It's also not "I have faith in Bob Ryan's weather forecasting." That merely means that from what I've seen, he does a pretty good job. If he were to blow the forecast over and over, I would admit that my faith in him was apparently misplaced. It's also not the sort of faith we mean when we say "I have faith in you." That's a way of encouraging someone and being positive.

Sometimes, the best way to prevail against long odds, to perform above your usual level, is to have faith in something irrational. Like "I'm going to ace this test, even though I failed the rest," or "I'm going to run this 100 in under 10 seconds!" We know deep down that the odds of these things coming to pass are slim, but having faith in them for the moment can help us focus and perform better, or, in other circumstances, may help us cope in difficult times. We're intentionally choosing to believe in something irrational.

There's an episode of Star Trek in which Dr. McCoy and Kirk think they've finally trapped Spock into admitting he acted illogically. And he responds "I merely realized that an irrational action was the logical thing to do." This kind of faith can sound like religious faith, but it's quite different. You can tell, because if I psyche myself up for a race by claiming I'll perform impossibly well, you'll probably just give me a chuck on the arm and say "that's right, you go for it!" But if I continued to make the claim that I will run 100 meters in under 10 seconds in earnest, even though I'm old and slow and getting slower, you'll begin to assume that I have a mental condition of some sort.

The faith we're focusing on today is quite different: it is belief in something with no logical proof--especially fervent, absolute belief in things for which there is no evidence. Now, if you're in an argumentative mood, you might say "Come on, you believe lots of things without evidence! You get up in the morning, having faith that there's a floor under your feet, you eat food having faith that it's not poisoned, you turn a doorknob having faith that it's not really a venomous snake, etc. You have faith in the weatherman and bring your umbrella to work. Heck, you don't even have any evidence you exist! So how can you say anything about religious faith or the existence of God! Hah! I rest my case!"

There, I've done your cross-examination for you!

To which I'd say just two things: first, through that line of reasoning, one can justify the belief in anything from leprechauns to flying, polka-dot covered hippopotami. It's basically saying "you can't know anything, so anything could be true." There are many refutations of this logic, but I think the quickest way to deflect it is by merely pointing out that people who make that argument clearly believe in some things over others. The process used to pick and choose those beliefs is our field of discourse in this sermon.

Secondly, I freely admit to believing things on the word of experts. "So, you have FAITH in them!" you interrupt. Sure, but that's an entirely different use of the word faith. I have faith in Bob Ryan only to the extent that his forecasts prove reliable. I would lose faith quickly if Bob Ryan's forecasts became clearly unreliable. This is exactly the sort of fair-weather faith that religious books warn against. In the New Testament, John writes "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." The sentiment is also expressed in another New Testament verse, in Hebrews 11:1: Faith is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Having assurances of things hoped for, and conviction of things not seen is precisely what Harris argues against in his book.

Like what? Well, 35 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible is inerrant, from the first sentence of the Old Testament to the last sentence of the New. An infallible source of historical and scientific information, including the creation of all life forms and the age of the earth. Now, I just want to let that sink in, because we sometimes think, "oh, sure, maybe a few chuckleheads living out in the boonies actually believe stuff like that, but come on." No, this is what much of mainstream America believes, including many of our legislators.

Another 48 percent believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but requires a little interpretation to unlock its true meaning. So 83 percent of Americans believe that God said "a woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment," and also "a man must not lie with another man as with a woman." Also, most Americans believe that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our legal system and are, again, the inerrant word of a Supreme, Omniscient Creator.

Now you might think that that one's a good idea--after all, there's nothing wrong with not killing or stealing, or taking Sunday off, or not saying bad things about your parents. But remember that the punishment for breaking any of the commandments is death, including speaking ill of your parents. So anyone who says "Thou shalt not kill" should be taken as God's condemnation of the death penalty has not read very carefully, for God goes on to say that he LOVES the death penalty. It is his FAVORITE penalty. In fact, you don't need to break a commandment to deserve death. If you have a stubborn son who will not listen to reason, bring him into town to be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 21:18.) If you have a son or daughter who decides to study another religion, not only must they be stoned to death by everyone in town, but you yourself must land the first blow. (Deuteronomy 13:6.) And in case you think any of this is open to some reasonable interpretation, God is one step ahead of you. In Deuteronomy 12, verse 32, he states unequivically "Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it, or take from it."

For those who may say that the New Testament or the Koran offered relief from this sort of barbarism, all I can say is just read them. Christian pacifists point to the Sermon on the Mount for example, but not the horrors of Revelation, the bilious anti-Semitism of Matthew or Jesus' parable of the king in Luke that ends "As for those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me."

The Koran and even more, the hadiths--which recount the sayings of the Prophet--repeat over and over the obligation of all pious men to take up arms in the defense of Islam, to convert or subdue infidels, and to kill any Muslim individual who speaks against the faith. Very few Muslims spoke out against the fatwah against Salman Rushdie for blasphemy. A majority of those polled in most Muslim countries responded that suicide bombings of civilians are either "often" or "sometimes" justified. The hadiths say not to kill women, children or the aged-but there is an exception if you're doing so in defense of Islam. It's also clear that "defense of Islam" from infidels will only cease when all of them are either killed or subjugated. In Islam, the world is divided into two "houses": The House of Islam and The House of War.

It does not require a selective reading of these texts to come to this interpretation. Calls to violence far outweigh calls to pacifism or moderation. Moderates who cite scripture at fundamentalists to try to convince them that they're wrong should save their breath. If the Old and New Testaments and the Koran really are the inerrant word of god, then the only thing fundamentalists and extremists could be accused of is being insufficiently fundamental and extreme. If they actually follow the letter of the texts, they should be slaying like crazy. In fact, their very failure to slay all adulterers, all stubborn and disrespectful children, all those who learn about other religions, is itself a capital offense. There would be scarcely a person left alive.

Remember, 35 percent of Americans say the Bible is completely factual and inerrant, with no interpretation allowed, and another 48 percent say it's factual but sometimes symbolic. It's a good thing we have enlightened and knowledgeable leaders who insulate our country and the world from fundamentalist doctrine, right? Like, say, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who, while speaking at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said that "the government derives its moral authority from God." He continued: "Indeed, the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral…." He meant this as a compliment to the United States, as opposed to the godless heathens in Europe, who refuse to wield God's sword. He concludes: "The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

Is it surprising that we have public health agencies refusing to distribute condoms on religious grounds, and our government now withholds funds from groups providing information on safe sex? And we have severe restrictions on stem cell research because of a belief that blastocysts--which are small clumps of undifferentiated cells--have the same rights as desperately ill adults and children? We have a small but influential group of religious right politicians who base their policy toward Israel on the belief that the Jews must be in the proper geographical position to allow the return of Jesus to earth, and the ensuing Apocolypse that will doom them. Tom Delay is one of them, and says he went into politics to promote a Biblical worldview. That apparently was behind his observation that the killings at Columbine High were the result of our schools teaching evolution.

How can Supreme Court justices and legislators openly proclaim such ludicrous beliefs? Because it's considered unseemly to criticize someone's religion.

I attended the funeral of a neighbor last year at the church at which he was a deacon for many years. In his eulogy, the minister spoke of his joy that Oscar led the sort of exemplary life that would make him well-positioned for the Messiah's imminent return. Then, in a kind of ecstasy, he spoke of his conviction that in his own life, Jesus would return, bringing fire and fury, and would crack open the earth and raise the dead, shielding the righteous and bringing them with him to heaven, while casting the rest of us into eternal hell fire. He was not, I assure you, speaking metaphorically. Twenty-two percent of Americans, by the way, are firmly convinced that the Apocolypse will happen within the next 50 years. Another 22 percent think it probably will. These beliefs, which are insane, inform and motivate tens of millions of Americans. Similar beliefs inform hundreds of millions of other people around the world, with the added requirement that they not wait for god's return to begin the purge.

The subtitle of Harris' book is "Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason." He got his degree in philosophy from Stanford and has now gone back to get his doctorate in neuroscience. Harris began writing The End of Faith on September 12, 2001, in an attempt to discover why people--mostly educated, intelligent people, contrary to their portrayal in the media--would fly airplanes into buildings filled with innocent people, killing them and themselves. He concluded that they did it for exactly the reasons they said they did: as part of their jihad to protect the house of Islam from infidels, and to claim their reward in paradise.

The more he studied Islam, and Judaism and Christianity, the more he discovered a system of fervent beliefs that have remained unchanged since Medieval times--beliefs that are, for the most part, still steeped in tribal warfare. Beliefs that require no evidence--in fact, that ridicule and marginalize anyone who demands evidence. And that's the worst part. Because once you accept anything blindly, you've accepted it all. You've blessed a system of irrational belief that leaves the door wide open to all manner of violence and bigotry. And you've placed those beliefs beyond question, beyond even discussion. That's what Harris wants to change. Really, that's what he says MUST change.

He describes a system of rational, compassionate thinking, going into great detail on the role scientific reason and meditation could play.

Harris is much better at making his case than I am in this sermon. His book really is a clear and brilliant piece of writing, and I highly recommend it. He takes particular aim at Islam in a very politically incorrect manner. I've left most of this out of my sermon, not because I find fault with his logic, but because he builds his case so intricately and methodically that I couldn't really do it justice in a brief sermon.

So Harris very effectively in his book, and I, in a far less effective and scattershot way, both run roughshod over religious faith. Where does this leave us? In a world that admits only scientific truths?

When people say,"I don't want to live in a world without faith," I don't think they mean they want to live in an irrational world. I think they're saying that science is a light that illuminates, but does not warm.

It's a fair point. My response would be, it doesn't have to. Because the warmth is inside of us. We thrill to a beautiful sunset, or to the smile of a loved one not because of some outside God, but because of who we are. You can call that thrill, that warmth, "God" if you want. I don't because there are too many people who will intrepret that to mean the biblical god, who sends us commandments and firebolts, and who promises to come to earth very soon to embrace Tom Delay and send me into eternal hellfire. But whatever you want to call it, we undoubtedly have the capacity for great happiness, wonder, and love for one another.

Religious professionals have told us that we feel this because of religion. That without religion, we would lose the wonder, lose the happiness, and the love, and become snarling savages or soul-less zombies. The funny thing is, concepts of love, altruism and morality are pretty much the same the world over, regardless of religion. Also, surveys have shown that a person's religion, or the lack of religion, has no significant effect on that person's altruistic behaviors--for example, his or her donation of time and money to charity.

Some of you may remember the movie Dumbo, in which the baby elephant's big, wing-like ears give him the power to fly, but he doesn't believe he can do it. Then he's given a feather, imbued with the power of bird flight. He holds on tightly to the feather and flies and flies. Only at the end of the film does he discover that he never needed the feather. The flying was within him.

In the same way, many religions also tell us that our ability to soar, to rise above our baser natures, to love, to give, all derive from them. From their magical texts, and rituals, and sacraments. And we are afraid. We are afraid of falling. What if we let go of that feather and fall into a pit of hellfire? Or meaninglessness. Or despair. So no matter what reason tells us, no matter what ludicrous claims we're asked to swallow, we hold on to that feather.

And every now and then a prophet comes along to tell people "you don't need any of that. You have the power to fly." I really believe that's what the historical Jesus was trying to say. Not Jesus, some sort of deity or Messiah. Just Jesus, a very sharp, observant guy who, sadly for all of us, got misquoted a lot. But one message that still comes through is: God is within all of us, not up in heaven. With love and compassion, we can create the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. It's within our capacity. But we can't do it if we hold on to irrational and exclusive beliefs--beliefs about holy territory or how a supernatural being will sort us out, or the dispensation of our souls after we die. Leaving these beliefs behind won't turn us into immoral, spiritually-empty narcissists, as I've heard claimed. It will help us understand that we have to rely on each other, and not a supreme being, to make the world better. That we have to get along in this world, because there may not be a next.

So for the New Year, let's make a resolution to devote time and energy to our spiritual fitness. We've been couch potatoes long enough. It's time to warm up our social consciousness, elevate our mindfulness, spread reason and instead of praying to a Supreme Being, let's start listening to the prayers of others--and answering them. That's not God's job; that's our job.

***NOTE: Except where otherwise noted, the main sources for this sermon were Harris's book and The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Edition. Survey information and statistics are taken from The End of Faith and, in some cases, were not checked (hey, you were expecting a doctoral thesis?) For an exhaustive list of references on the topic, please refer to Harris's bibliography

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Opening Words
Our opening words come to us from Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, from a Rosh Hashanah sermon she gave in 2000. Rosh Hashanah comes in October and marks the Jewish New Year. I've paraphrased a little bit to make it less specific to Judaism.

"How many people here this morning have a regular physical work-out routine at least once a week: exercise bike, treadmill, swimming, power walking, jogging? Twice a week? Three times? Okay, now how many people have a regular spiritual work out routine at least once a week: prayer, blessings before or after a meal, meditation? Twice a week? How about three times per week?

"We are obsessed with our bodies, body image, body culture. We are definitely not obsessed with our souls. We get up at 5:30 in the morning to jog, but what jogs our spirit? What spiritual exercises would we be willing to rise before the sun to do?"

Meditation: In Words and Silence

The word spirituality, or spirit, comes from the Latin word for "breath." As in "respiration." Coincidentally, or maybe not, one of the most basic forms of meditation involves paying attention to your breathing. The last part of Sam Harris's book The End of Faith, which inspired my sermon today, deals with meditation, and increased "mindfulness." He offers this as an example of a rational approach to heightened spirituality, since it doesn't require faith in anything supernatural, just a greater awareness of consciousness. Like the Dalai Lama, Harris suggests that this activity can lead to important insights about ourselves, help us deal more calmly and rationally with others and help us lead a more fulfilling life.

Meditation is to mindfulness as exercise is to fitness. There's nothing magical about it, anymore than there's something magical about running or doing jumping jacks. There are zillions of ways to get fit, and there are zillions of ways to become mindful. Meditation, like callesthenics, just happens to be a simple and effective method.

One way to do it is to sit comfortably, close your eyes, and focus on your breath as it flows in and out of your nose. Even though it's a simple idea, completely focusing one's attention on anything is extremely difficult. You start thinking about the sounds in the room, or something you forgot to do, or just about how boring it is to sit and pay attention. See if you can just save all those thoughts and distractions for my sermon, which is coming up. For now, let's see if we can focus completely on the sensation of breathing, just for a minute or so. Ready. Set. Go.

Reading
From the poem "The Shoes of Happiness," by Edwin Markham:

At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,
And flinging the clouds and the towers by,
Is a place of central calm.
So, here in the roar of mortal things
I have a place where my spirit sings,
In the hollow of God's palm.

Benediction
"Expect Life" by Elizabeth Tarbox

Do not live too far in the past or the future. Live now.In each moment expect a miracle: ten kinds of birds at the feeder, and the tracks of a fox in the snow.

Pick up a magnifying glass and scrutinize that crocus. See the pollen at the center of the daffodil, life's dust, death-defying life. Be astonished at the flower, arrested by its beauty.

Run naked through the garden early in the morning and hope the wild geese fly by.

Get silly and laugh loudly with your grandchildren or your grandparents. Refuse to leave the dead behind, but bring their memory to all your chores and games and corners of quiet, warm tears.

Know always that joy and sorrow are woven together; one cannot be without the other. If you love, know that sometimes your love will bring you tears; if you grieve, know it is because at some time you were willing to love.

Do not be afraid to die today. But expect life!