Rational Belief

Peter Wycherley

Description

A Rational Belief is an intelligent layman's attempt to elucidate the relationship between God and Man from a contemporary standpoint, in order to make clear its relevance and importance to the individual and to society in the modern world. The book develops the proposition that belief in a Creator is entirely compatible with the discoveries and hypotheses of science, and that there is no such thing as 'supernatural'. A second radical theme is that there are certain 'sacred cows' in Western society such as competition, democracy, and human rights, that evil is using as stalking horses to deflect us from the responsibilities for our species and our planet that God has delegated to us. The author contends that we can solve most of the problems that the world is now facing by the use of our own spiritual abilities and the resources that God has made available to us. He offers tentative suggestions regarding how this might be achieved, and what a future society committed to God's purpose might be like. It is an unusual and original contribution to current debates about the politics of moral engagement, and the significance of religious belief and practice.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy of religion

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780889597
• Langue: English

Extrait

A RATIONAL BELIEF

Copyright © 2010 Peter Wycherley
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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The majority of the biblical quotations are taken from the King James Version, with the permission of the Cambridge University Press. The quotations from Wisdom 1:6; Ecclesiasticus 2:1; Mark 3:29; Thessalonians 5:21-22; are from the New Jerusalem Bible, reproduced with the permission of Darton, Longman and Todd.
In a work of this kind, it is almost inevitable that some brief quotations will remain unattributed or will have been wrongly attributed. If this has happened, the author apologises unreservedly to anyone whose rights may inadvertently have been infringed and will happily make alterations for future editions.
ISBN 978-1780889-597
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To my wife, Elizabeth, an intrepid companion on my spiritual journey.
CONTENTS
Author’s Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
This book presents a contemporary model of spiritual reality, a New Theism, that owes more to modern science and rational deduction than to revelation and traditional religious authority. It invites agnostics and atheists to rethink their positions, given the probability that the God in whom they do not believe, and the religious models they reject, are as far removed from actual spiritual reality as the first chapter of Genesis is from the modern theories of the Big Bang and biological evolution.
It aims to encourage believers from the traditional faiths to update their beliefs and to discard redundant and divisive dogma, in order to combine their spiritual power most effectively in the struggle against evil.
I have tried to be concise: readers who are most likely to be influenced by this book are unlikely to favour a repetitious ‘softly, softly’ approach, when matters of great urgency and importance are involved. Chapter 1 is an introduction; in the first instance, anyone who wishes to discover whether the New Theist model is a platform that supports his or her own spiritual needs and aspirations may omit it.
Literary purists may deplore disjointed paragraphs, and an excessive or inconsistent use of punctuation: these result from the editing, ordering and pasting together of the random products of fifteen years of musing and meditation on matters of spiritual importance. The book is not a literary work, nor a continuous narrative. Its only style is message .
CHAPTER 1
‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’
John 8:32
If you are on a hilltop far from the lights of town, looking up at the stars in the night sky, it may well seem unlikely to you, as you stand in awe of the distant glory of the firmament, that what we human beings do now on this small planet Earth significantly affects the destiny of the universe. From our limited human perspective it does seem unlikely, yet it is the truth, and nothing can be of more significance to you than understanding why this is so. That is what this book is about.
The universe in which we live is vast beyond our imagining, its only limits space and time themselves. Within those ultimate bounds are countless galaxies, each one made up of many millions of stars and enfolded by great clouds of lightless dust. The existence of mysterious ‘dark matter’ with a mass exceeding everything that can be seen with our telescopes is also suspected, yet the volume of space is so great that it seems almost empty. Men and women who are aware that this virtually infinite universe lies just beyond our human horizon respond to that knowledge in a variety of ways. If they find the idea uncomfortable and disquieting, they may choose to ignore it; others turn their backs on it because they feel it has no relevance to human affairs. Conversely, persons who see it as an exciting challenge and who elect to study its physical nature may come to believe that it is human affairs that are of little real importance. These responses are misconceived: human affairs and the wider universe are inseparably important.
The universe our instruments detect is a substantialised expression of the existence of God, i.e. the response of physical reality to the Eternal Truth that encompasses the nature and being of God – and also of Man: a Truth that affords us so little perceptual and conceptual purchase that present human language cannot formulate it precisely, even in thought. Our scientific description of fundamental physical reality can be expressed only in mathematical terms, and this is just one facet of the Truth. Because we do not comprehend the spiritual totality, when we think about and discuss such matters we need a conceptual model with which to work. The conceptual model that Westerners are most likely to be aware of is Christianity, which is used as a basis for discussion and example in this book. Adherents of other faiths must forgive this. This book will develop a more general and less idiosyncratic schema, termed ‘New Theism’ to distinguish it from existing monotheistic models. This chapter will explain why this new approach is needed.
Why do people need to ‘think about and discuss’ spiritual reality at all? The answer – ‘to defeat evil and save the world’ – may look as if it is taken from a comic strip or a computer game, but it refers to you and the real life you lead. Ignorance and indifference are two of the most powerful weapons in evil’s arsenal. Your defence and your means of positive resistance start here.
The primary motivational premise of New Theism is this: only if the majority of men and women come to believe – and to behave as if they believe – that they exist to serve God’s Purpose will catastrophe be averted for humankind, for life on Earth, and possibly for the entire universe. If you do not accept this premise, your own life will inevitably lack the meaning and significance that is the privilege of every spiritually aware human being. Yet because it is such ‘good news’ that our human existence actually makes sense when seen in terms of a larger Divine purpose, you would be justified in questioning its validity merely on the grounds that it seems too good to be true. And not only on those grounds: one of the aims of this book is to dispel any doubts you might have, whatever their basis, in the hope that you will choose to become an agent of God’s Purpose yourself. You will need to read more of the book to discover what New Theism understands by ‘God’s Purpose’ – what a Christian might term ‘personal salvation’, and ‘establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth’, refer to the human means by which that Purpose is to be achieved, and are not to be seen as an end in themselves.
Four thousand million years of biological evolution have taken place on this planet in order to bring into existence the imperfect spiritual beings that we are at present. If you deny your spirit its destiny in God, your own share in that relentless aeons-long struggle for biological progress will be wasted, and your life will be wasted now. Your life is your chance to seek God and to find Him, immeasurably enriching your life-experience in the process. And if you do not find God while you live, you will not find Him when you die. Surely no rational spiritually aware person – the Faustus legend notwithstanding – would knowingly renounce his or her eternal inheritance, even for a lifetime of worldly power and pleasure? Of course, most people who deny the relevance or importance of God in their lives are not making such a choice: they are likely to be less than contented with their worldly existence, hence they are losing out both in this life and in whatever waits for us beyond it. Not that New Theism can offer you any secure hope of a heavenly paradise after death; precise and reliable information regarding the nature of the afterlife is lacking. In any case, if we do not follow the advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola: ‘To give and not to count the cost;…to labour and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will’, then we are not doing His will at all. What New Theism does promise you is that you can experience God’s presence in this life, and that you can make effective use of spiritual power, through prayer, to directly influence the future. This will be discussed in later chapters.
The monotheistic frame of reference that has its origin in the Bible gives Mankind an external perspective, which is essential to considerations of morality. Humanists may claim that other human beings have dignity and deserve respect just by virtue of their status as intelligent animals, but this presupposes that there are independent external standards by which such values can be assessed and humanists deny the existence of such standards. Humanistic (i.e. Godless) morality is thus logically restricted to self-interest and survival, and were we each to put ourselves first and ignore the needs of others the future survival of Mankind would seem somewhat less than secure. Our God Universe gives