Month: January 2018

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. — Alan Watts

Despite the many cliches on life being all about change and how the only constant is change, people (including myself) still find themselves very much attached to the idea of permanence. In fact, a huge chunk of our time and effort is devoted to securing a stable job or income, being able to build a home with solid foundations, and securing wealth that will last for generations.

For others, it is not so much about wealth but about preserving one’s honor and reputation, making sure not to tarnish the family name. Or it might be about having a set of friends or a life partner who will be with you through thick or thin.

The desire for permanence is especially evident in our ideas of the afterlife — when we look forward to an eternity of pleasure and bliss in whatever form that may take — mansions, virgins, being reunited with loved ones, being in the presence of the creator, or being one with the universe and everything.

So for many of us, happiness became attached to attaining some measure of stability in life, which has meant to most people, the endless acquisition of wealth, power and stature in order to better deal with life’s challenges. We tend to think, “If only I had this or that, or him or her, I would be happy,” only to find out that once we have attained what we once thought our greatest desire, we become happy only for a short while and then we are once more miserable and unsatisfied.

The key to a happy life is to cultivate detachment, but not indifference. When we are disappointed, we tend to say “I AM disappointed,” and when we are sad we say, “I AM sad.” But are you really your disappointment or your sadness? The reverse is also true, when you say, “I AM happy” or “I AM excited,” you are not your happiness or excitement either.

Recognize the presence of these feelings but be aware that they are not you, nor should they define you.

The student once complained to the master, “You keep questioning and knocking down beliefs that I have held dear since I was a child.”

“And what is the problem with that?” said the master.

“I feel like you are not leaving me with any solid ground to stand firm on,” said the student.

“What is the solid ground of an eagle swooping down the cliffs? Or of a dolphin slicing through the ocean?” replied the master. “When will you realize that life is not about finding solid ground but learning to navigate through the winds and tides of change? Imagine entering a tower and climbing up a spiral staircase. You do not know what is on top and you can only see a few steps ahead. At each step you take, the step behind you falls away into the darkness. That is what life is all about.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

As promised, this is my reaction to Gelo Strikes Back, published last week. If you’re only just getting on board now, I suggest you read the 2 previous articles before that to get a complete picture: Good News and An Eternity of Torment.

I do agree with Gelo’s first statement that his view is “difficult to discuss since it asks one to assume so many premises that all individually need a boat-load of unpacking.” That is, to really understand where he is coming from, one needs to delve into the reasoning and philosophical arguments that lead him to make such conclusions or statements.

This is why a lot of theist vs.atheist debates usually end up with bashing and name-calling, probably because it is so much easier to do than to really listen and understand where the other person is coming from. But Gelo is one of those people with whom I’ve gotten past this stage and we can dive into each other’s arguments without the usual frivolous animosity found in these sorts of discussions.

So my main contention is that he makes so many statements about the soul — what it is, how it behaves and acts, and so on — but how do we really know that any of that is true or that the soul actually exists? Yes, Thomas Aquinas has written about this which is really based on Aristotelian philosophy but it would be too long to recreate the arguments here. But let it suffice to say that there has been a certain amount of thinking behind this — and I recognize that — and it’s not as if these assumptions were just concocted out of thin air because good old Tommy A had nothing to do one afternoon and dreamed up all these things.

Yet, still, at the heart of it and no matter how logical the train of thought is, these are still assumptions, because no soul has ever come back to tell us conclusively what the afterlife is like. Although there are many individuals who have testified on “coming back” after having a near-death experience (NDE), their accounts of the afterlife don’t really match each other’s accounts and seem more a product of their mind and existing beliefs about it than any real experience. That is, a Christian with NDE would most likely see Jesus (a Catholic might see “Mama Mary”) and someone exposed to Buddhist teachings, would most likely have feelings of being “one with the universe.” I’m not saying they’re lying but that their mind may have created situations that seemed so real that even they believe it actually happened.

The great physicist Richard Feynman said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Reality can sometimes be stranger than fiction and may not necessarily follow logic as we know it. For example, it was logical for scientists to assume that the atomic model follows the same gravitational model they observed in space. They assumed that there was a huge nucleus in the middle with the smaller electrons going around it in orbits much like the planets go around the sun. But actual experiments showed this was just not true and so the whole new field of quantum mechanics was developed and contained many new theories that seemingly defied the logic of that day. One of these was Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which even Einstein could not accept.

Now it doesn’t bother me so much when people make their own assumptions about the afterlife and their picture of reality. What galls me is when they tout their own assumptions as fact and don’t even bother to recognize or acknowledge that they may be dead wrong about it all.

But in the end, even Gelo agrees that he does not know with certainty, only that the arguments from Thomism make certain conclusions that are hard for him to deny.

I, on the other hand, prefer to remain skeptical and would probably wait until this life is over to find out if there is indeed something that awaits beyond. As Anthony de Mello declares: “Too many people worry about the next life when they don’t even know what to do with this one.”

So I’ll figure out this life first.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

The following is Gelo’s response to my previous article, An Eternity of Torment, which I have decided to publish in full, with only minor edits for brevity and correctness. My own reaction to it will come out in the next article:

The Catholic view is kind of very difficult to discuss since it asks one to assume so many premises that all individually need a boat-load of unpacking. But you asked for it, Andy.

Before any talk of why a ‘soul’ that’s destined for hell after the death of the body remains so destined, it’s important to know, first, what exactly a ‘soul’ is, and second, what our natural knowledge of God is in this life.

On knowledge of God: it will suffice for now to say that God is the good. The Good Samaritan knows God insofar as he knows the good, despite that he doesn’t know God in a completely theologically sound manner. Now, with that aside..

On the Soul: Aquinas argues that a soul–or that part of us which remains after death–is pure intellect and will. (This wasn’t concocted willy-nilly, btw, as it all follows from his metaphysic, which all follows from his Aristotelian philosophy.)

Now, the Will follows the Intellect insofar as the intellect chooses the good towards which the will becomes directed.

1. The difference is that while the soul is attached, so to speak, to a corporeal body, its intellect has the ability to reason discursively–viz. it reasons from premises to conclusions, it favors one appetite over another, etc.

All that is to say the intellect can decide (or choose) between seemingly good things. But once the soul is detached from the body, there now exists nothing (be it cognitive processes or competing passions and appetites) that could lead it away from what it had already habituated itself to think is good. And, lacking the ability for sensations or imaginations–an ability it once had when attached to the body–there now exists for the soul no way of obtaining new knowledge.

On the issue of death being the point of no return for the soul:

1. From A, therefore a soul that had been habituated, prior to the death of the body, to be directed to some good other than God will have its will directed to that other good and be locked-on to it eternally.
2. From 1, a soul whose intellect had been so habituated will be forever separated from God.
3. Also from 1, a person who was habituated to hate God (or, the good) in this life will very likely be bound to have his will directed away from God upon death.
4. As an aside, it’s probably not as bad as one tends to think. Well, it is, but not from the perspective of the damned, because if the damned are damned because they will some good other than God, then that entails they probably don’t know what they’re missing. They think they’re directed towards some higher good, afterall.
5. As another aside, one must understand that the orthodox Christian understanding is that God is the ultimate good, therefore being with God just is what heaven is about, and being away from God just is what hell is about.
6. As another aside, this isn’t the only theological explanation of the matter. There are others, and ‘universalism’ seems to be the one that’s attractive to most. So a Christian (or anyone interested in concocting a disproof for Christianity for that matter) would do well to consider other explanations should he find this one unattractive, before throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

All is not lost for the…ehrm.. lost soul, however. What is explained above is the ‘just’ side of God. There is a merciful side as well. I believe this has to do with some form or purgation of the soul after death. As to who will be so treated mercifully, I don’t know. It’s up to Him, I guess. But, like I said, accepting Jesus’ sacrifice is what I believe will make the difference.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.