This topic is about the role of spirituality and myth in people's lives. Andrew will kick off the discussion on it, on Friday 16 September 2016.

Spirituality sounds either like something silly and woossy – like the image many have of crystal-gazing New Agers, or something hypocritical and pious, like the image many have of Cardinal Pell. To discuss it in a way that doesn’t lead to immediate contemptuous dismissal, we’ll need a plausible working definition.

Here’s one I made earlier:

Spirituality is the activity of trying to address concepts and feelings that relate to powerful emotions, which cannot be understood or resolved by logic.

Most things in life are very amenable to logical treatment. People don’t necessarily always take an explicitly logical approach to addressing those things (although there will always be a good logical reason why they take the approach they do), but a successful logical approach is generally possible.

But there are things that are beyond the power of logic to address, partly because logic is based on language, and there are limits to what language can express. A profound limitation of logic is that it cannot analyse itself. Self-reference is a source of many a paradox, such as the liar paradox: ‘This sentence is false’ – if it’s true then it’s false but if it’s false then it’s true. Kurt Goedel proved in the early 20^th century that, in any logical system that is sophisticated enough to express just basic arithmetic, there must exist propositions for which it is impossible to determine, within that system, whether they are true or false. We can sometimes escape that limitation by stepping outside that system to a bigger system that includes the first one, and we may then be able to determine whether propositions in the first system are true or false. But then there will be new propositions in the bigger system whose truth cannot be determined. There is no escape from indecision.

The inability of logic and language to deal with certain types of self-reference comes to the fore in certain issues that people have traditionally seen as of great emotional significance:

In eighteenth-century Scotland, my personal hero David Hume went in search of his ‘self’ (see section VI of his A Treatise of Human Nature) and concluded that there was nothing substantial to be found – only a bundle of sense perceptions.

I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.

The ‘observer’ – if there is an observer – cannot see itself. Alan Watts uses the example that we can touch just about anything with the tip of our left index finger, but one thing we cannot touch with that is the tip of our left index finger.

We might think about what it means to die, both for ourselves and for those that we love. A pragmatic approach, like that of Epicurus, is to say that we just won’t exist any more and that that’s no big deal, just as there’s no big deal that we didn’t exist before we were conceived. He gives good reasons, in that and other of his statements, why death is nothing to be feared. Yet I still can’t help wondering about what it really ‘means’ to die, or what it is ‘like’. Those words are inadequate – of course, because they are poor limited human language. But there is still a wondering going on there. My brain is simply unable to process into an orderly form the notion of this consciousness no longer registering anything. Probably because everything I know is from the perspective of this consciousness, so an act of self-reference, that is beyond the power of logic or language, is needed to try to imagine what it is for this knower not to be. It may not be scary, but it’s damned weird.

Consciousness is another puzzle that it is hard to imagine logic ever resolving. Not only has no progress ever been made on the question of why there should be consciousness – as distinct from the mere processing of information via electrical signals in an organ called the brain (cf David Chalmers' p-zombie concept) – but, given that there is not even any scientific vocabulary to discuss consciousness (because science can only deal with what is measurable and consciousness is, by its very nature, undetectable), there is no visible possibility of science ever having anything to say about consciousness.

Under my definition above, spirituality then, is an attempt to address these weird concepts. By ‘address’ I mean something like contemplate or come to terms with, but again our language is inadequate to express what is really happening.

A similar word, that I think is mostly interchangeable, is ‘mystic’. Like ‘spiritual’, it is a term that is sometimes used in a disparaging way by people that like to think of themselves as hard-headed realists, about people that are not. I was such a hard-headed realist for a while. But after studying quantum mechanics and philosophy I came to see how deluded such realists are, taking for granted models of the universe that are not only unverifiable but are in some cases directly contradicted by modern science. To me, it seems that to be a true realist one must also be a mystic because otherwise one is in a state of denial about how ultimately incomprehensible the world really is. That is why some of the greatest scientists, people like Einstein, David Bohm and Werner Heisenberg, had mystical leanings.

When we talk about a chair being solid, galaxies existing beyond the Hubble Sphere, or the discovery of the Higgs Boson, we are using metaphors – also known as myths – to make sense of our world of experience. Naïve realists may think that there ‘really is’ a chair, yet they will be powerless to explain what that ‘really is’ means, and how it differs from ‘I can sit on that if I want’.

If concepts like chairs, galaxies and Higgs Bosons are simply metaphors, is our daily use of those metaphors any different from using metaphors that involve a JuJu spirit that lives on the mountain, a lightning-hurling Thor, a resurrecting Jesus, a four-armed Shiva, a dreamtime Snake spirit or the world being the dream of Brahman? The Alan Watts talks discuss the role of mythology as a positive and useful part of one’s intellectual life.

One answer might be that myths of chairs, atoms and planets have a practical use because they enable us to achieve things that we otherwise couldn’t, like sit in comfort, manufacture computers and get photos of craters on Mars. But could we not also say that well-designed spiritual myths can also allow us to achieve things that we otherwise could not? For instance:

• After-life myths can help some people overcome fear of death and grief at the death of a loved one;
• Myths about virtue and heroism can give some people courage to do dangerous, necessary things that they otherwise might not be able to achieve;
• Myths about what lies beyond what we can see and understand can make people feel more comfortable about the world they inhabit;
• Myths about people with remarkable compassion can inspire us to be more compassionate than we otherwise would (it have read that Florence Nightingale wasn't actually very nice, but how many people has her myth inspired?);
• Myths about the sacredness of a particular day, that needs to be marked by a ritual, can bring people together and build bonds by their participation in that ritual (not unlike how the Sydney Olympics brought people together and made Sydney a nicer, more friendly place to be during the Olympics and for a while after that).
• Myths about private rituals, such as prayer or chanting, can help people to ease a troubled mind and give them strength to face their adversities.

In his book ‘Reclaiming the Bible for a non-religious world’, John Shelby Spong emphasises the importance of the metaphor in certain Bible stories, and how they can enrich people’s lives. He stops short of saying it is myth – he would get too much flak from the fundamentalist lobby if he did that – but I get a strong sense, reading between the lines, that his thinking is in that direction. For instance his position is that the Bible text is quite unclear about whether Jesus really rose from the dead and, if he did, what that meant – in particular whether it was a physical resurrection or some form of ghostly apparition. And, he says, it doesn’t matter whether there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, who really did physically arise from the dead in the same body, because that’s beside the point of the story. It’s a while since I read it and I can’t recall what Spong saw the point of the story as being. Probably something about love, hope, courage and shared human suffering. It was a great read though, and I learned all sorts of fascinating stuff about ancient Middle Eastern history from it.

An interesting religious movement that seems to unflinchingly accept the tag of 'mythology' is Progressive Christianity (aka Emerging Church and sometimes even 'Postmodern Christianity'). Progressive Christianity is naturally appealing to people who have an intuitive feeling that there is a God of some sort but do not want to place blind faith in dogma or tell others how to live their lives. It places a strong value on love and compassion and regards most of the Bible as metaphorical or even just mythical. Is it rationally credible or is it just a cop-out for those caught between atheism and fundamentalism and liking neither option?

Influential Progressive Christians, apart from (arguably) Spong, are Richard Holloway, John Dominic Crossan, Karen Armstrong and Marcus Borg. Some might consider the well-known (in Australia) Father Bob Maguire to be a Progressive Christian.

Lest you fear that I am going to become a Christian and try to convert you, fear not. My early-life exposures to less benign manifestations of Christianity have left me with an ingrained aversion that would prevent me from ever feeling at ease as a member of a Christian group, however benign. In addition, I am much more attracted to Eastern varieties of mysticism, particularly Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Taoism, just by dint of my philosophical leanings and personal aesthetic preferences. That's not to say they're better – just that they appeal to my personal temperament more. But I have great sympathy for progressive movements in Christianity and also – should they ever become detectable – in Islam, because I think the only hope of neutralising the harm that institutionalised religion can do is by people of goodwill working from the inside to civilise it, rather than just throwing rocks and insults from the outside.

Additional References

• Conversation with Richard Holloway. Podcast.
• Conversations with Father James Alison, homosexual Roman Catholic priest. Podcast. NB I don't think Alison would go as far as saying that what he believes in is a myth. His progressivity is more marked by a rejection of the Church's punitive rules about sex and a belief that God will not punish any of us, rather than by saying God or Jesus is a myth.
• Dear Kim, this is what I believe. An apologia by a Progressive Christian, describing what they believe. He doesn't sound as inclusive as Spong, but he's mostly OK (IMHO).
• Short paper (four pages) on 'Myth and Therapy', which I have distributed by email.
• Podcasts of Alan Watts talks, distributed by email.
• 'Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World', John Shelby Spong. Book.

Questions

1. Do you think myths can have a positive role to play in some lives? What about all lives? If yes, what might the potential benefits be?
2. Is there anything intrinsically wrong with believing something for which there is no strong evidence? What about behaving in accordance with the belief, even if one doesn't, strictly speaking, believe it?
3. Is it important to distinguish between the myths one accepts without strong evidence and the beliefs that are based on 'hard scientific evidence'?
4. If we answer Yes to the previous question, how do we deal with the observation that we cannot be sure of the truth of 'hard scientific evidence'? For all we know we could be locked in the Matrix.
5. If we concluded that myths are not good, should we then do our best to persuade not only Christians and Muslims, but also traditional Indigenous peoples to discard their myths? Is it patronising to support notions like Sacred Sites, to include dreamtime stories in children’s books and to value modern Aboriginal paintings on dreamtime themes if we think the myths are silly?
6. What are some myths that you see as helpful, either to yourself or to others in society?
7. What are some myths that you see as harmful? Let’s not include myths of the kind that are really just ‘demonstrably false beliefs’, such as are dealt with by Myth Busters, and of which the belief that vaccination causes autism is a classic example. These are simply mistaken beliefs. A key feature of a myth under my definition is that it be not only unprovable but also unfalsifiable.
8. Do you have any myths, rituals or sacred things you would be prepared to tell others about?
9. What religious or spiritual groups do you know of that are actually prepared to admit, if pressed, that what they are purveying is a mythology?
10. The only Christian writings written within 40 years of the death of Jesus were those of Paul. Spong's analysis of those show there is no evidence that Paul believed Jesus's body came back to life, but rather that the resurrection and the appearances were spiritual events. Yet the Gospels, written between 70 and 95 CE, make claims, that increase in specificity the later they were written, that Jesus's corpse was physically reanimated. Those claims are now core dogmas of mainstream Christianity (RC, C of E, Eastern Orthodox). Is this indicative of dishonesty or simply of confusion and lack of scholarship on the part of those that determined church dogma?