Spirituality Panel Review

Extra credit was offered to students in my Physical Anthropology class for attending a Spirituality Panel. This was the same panel that I was on just a few years ago, so it was a joy to be there again, even if it wasn't me up there speaking. So here is the write up I had to turn in for my class, and here is video of me posing questions to the Hindu and Atheist panelists. The event ended up in the school newspaper. 

And hey, look! I'm quoted!  

Okay, here's my paper now.

Adrian Urias

12/03/2015

Phys. Anthro

Panel Review

Four different faith traditions were represented at the panel. Hinduism, Atheism, Druidism, and Native American spirituality. First up was Arcita Dasa to talk about Hinduism. He began defining what was meant by spiritual by contrasting it with the material. He briefly gave some reasons as to the existence of the supernatural by referring to the impossibility of the infinite regression of causes. He informed us that the Bhagavad Gita is the basis for their religion, and referred us to that on a variety of topics. He challenged the materialistic view by demanding an explanation as to how material substances can give rise to immaterial things such as consciousness, which was relevant because consciousness is central to Hinduism. A conception of God was given by saying that we are like God in a qualitative, but not quantitative way, and he put forth an analogy of water to help illustrate that idea. He concluded with some remarks on justice and how Karma provided a foundation for that.

Next was Adrian Novotny on Native American spirituality. Much of his talk wasn’t on spirituality but sounded much like an advertisement on the relevance and joy of being and participating in that native American spirituality. His main thesis boiled down to two basic propositions. First, that there is no particular religion, but rather their spirituality is a way of life. Even a brief walk is a prayer. Second, that way of life is deeply and intricately tied to nature, often referred to in the feminine or as “Mother” which is the source of all power. There was notably a feminist flavor to the presentation.

Robert Richert then gave his talk on Atheism and spirituality. Naturally, he denied the traditional understanding of spirituality, as he rejected anything spiritual or supernatural. So, he offers his philosophy of humanism as a kind of spirituality, if by spirituality you just vaguely mean you are trying to do something for something larger than yourself, and his case, it would just be humankind. He gave some criticisms of the afterlife, not on any factual basis, but on practical ones, by arguing that such views give incentive to not do any good here on this earth. Because there was nothing “out there” he insisted that we must find the answers in here, within us, our community, not in some religious text, God, or holy writ. That isn’t to say he didn’t have some appreciation of religion, but that they were simply unnecessary at best, gave foul incentives at worst.

Finally, Vance Shaw gave his talk on Druidism, which, if I understood him correctly, is something like a sect in the larger classification of Wicca. His talk was a bit hard to follow and came off as disorganized, but there were a few keys words that were able to clue me in on some more details. For example, he briefly mentioned, in passing, liturgical procedures, which tells me that there is something kind of ritualistic to his religion. As a Catholic myself, I can imagine maybe candles and incense as part of his rituals. Druidism, though the word is ancient, is actually a recent religion, and tries to recreate or recover some sense of British paganism, or synthesize it with something modern. Shaw distinguished Druidism with religions like atheism and Christianity by saying it wasn’t a philosophical or historical tradition, rather it was mystical. Throughout the talk, he went on tangents and gave off an impression that there is a kind of independence, fueled by a kind of apathy of these other religions in his case, and a lower sense of community. You connect with an inner self, not with another being.

So, how does one assess all this? Naturally, everyone will do so differently, because everyone comes with a different set of assumptions through which we view the world. Mine is a Catholic worldview, and that should be stated upfront as I don’t pretend to be unbiased about anything, though I am as objective as I can be.

To my surprise, I had a lot to agree with with Arcita, probably because he sounded like he had some philosophical training under his belt, and I am a philosophy major, so that really spoke to me. I agreed that a causal series cannot go back infinitely into the past, and I also am pretty interested in out-of-body experiences, though I don’t put too much weight into them. His statement that we are suppose to know, love and serve God is what I teach in my Catechism class, verbatim. We disagree on our conception of God, but we agree that this is proper living in relationship to God.

There were many things I didn’t agree with, however. I don’t think Karma is an adequate foundation for ethics and justice, for reasons that Robert gave. I asked him about this during the Q&A, and he responded by saying that Karma is infallible, which begs the question. By arguing that Karma plays into a selfishness, replying that it is infallible is just to repeat the very issue I’m challenging, so his response was unsatisfactory. I also took issue with his use of the word “belief”, which may or may not be me being pedantic about it. As a philosopher, belief means something very particular to me, and if he was trained in philosophy as he sounded, that is really an unforgivable use on his part. Belief is really just an adherence to a proposition, however, the way he used it sounded like he meant it as some necessarily unfounded adherence to a proposition, which isn’t true at all.

Novotny’s talk was something I really appreciated and didn’t appreciate. I was hardly indifferent to any part of his talk. Probably the biggest appreciation is the respect for the Earth, and just creation in general. He was right in saying that ancient Christians used to have a high respect for the Earth, something modern Christians have forgotten. I very much appreciated that for a couple of reasons. First, I have a garden that I have become very attached to. I grow food and roses, and I have a statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking it all. It’s not “Mother Earth” but it is very motherly. Second, Pope Francis just came out with his encyclical which many call an environmental encyclical, which is a huge exaggeration, and this treatment does a great injustice to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (the previous pope) contributions on human ecology, which many people ignored because he was seen as the “mean pope.” If people remembered that Christianity has a great teaching on treatment of the Earth, our public relations would be a lot better.

One thing I didn’t appreciate was the simplistic history of the conversions of native peoples. It was much more complicated than “convert or die.” Many natives were being brutally murdered by soldiers and when the monks witnessed this, they tried to put a stop to it, because we recognize the intrinsic value of human life, Christian or not. So, one way they decided to rescue them from the brutality of Spanish soldiers was to have them be baptized, which would deter a Spanish soldier from murdering a fellow Christian. Saying they were threatened unless they converted doesn’t really pick up that intention and complexity.

Robert Richart’s talk was disappointing. I myself was a third generation atheist, and many people in my family, including my mother, are still atheists today, and so it’s a topic that really interests me, and having studied this with philosophical rigor, I fancy myself well informed on the subject. What I did agree with him on was that there should be a pursuit of truth, no matter how uncomfortable the conclusions would be. However, he gave puerile waving of the hands and dismissals to any sort of reason a person may hold a view contrary to his own. When I asked him during the Q&A about what is perhaps the most popular form of the cosmological argument put forth by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, he readily admitted that he had never heard of the argument, which is just astonishing. You would think that an atheist, who believes there is no reason to believe in God, would at least be acquainted with the argument that convinced the two greatest minds, one pagan and the other Catholic, in history that there was a God, but no. I found his view of ethics also simplistic and wanting. Basically, he just referred to the humanist definition, which is just repackaged utilitarianism, which many atheists do not subscribe to, so this is by no means unanimous among atheists, and I thought that was a bit misleading on his part.

Finally, on Druidism. I actually don’t have much to agree or disagree with. His apathy kind of rubbed off I guess. I do want to focus on something he said, that Druidism was mystical. Well, many other religions have a mystical aspects to them as well. Catholicism has many of them, even in the recent past, and so does Islam, with their Sufis. So, I think he had this unfortunate view of these other classical religions that they were somehow indifferent to such experiences and that they were more focused on rules and what you can or cannot do. I mean, there’s also Christian meditation, you know. His view on the purpose of this experience was also something I was at odds with. He seemed to view it as a very personal thing. While it is indeed personal, for him, it remains so, while for other religions, they are not.