New Thought movement

"New Thought" is a spiritual movement which developed in the United States during the late 19th century which emphasized metaphysical and mystical/spiritual beliefs. It single-handedly helped convert the term "metaphysics" from an arcane and respected philosophical discipline to a grab-bag of feel-good and trendy concepts.

This school of thought consists of a loosely allied group of religious denominations, secular organizations, authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning the effects of positive thinking, the "law of attraction", mystical healing, "life force", creative visualization, affirmations, karma, energy fields (not the physics kind, but the mystical kind), and the development of personal power. It promotes the ideas that "infinite intelligence", AKA "god", is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, all sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect. Prayer and meditation are thought to lead to spiritual and physical healing through a type of spiritual mechanism.

In general, modern day adherents of New Thought believe that their interpretation of "god" or "infinite intelligence" is "supreme, universal, and everlasting", that divinity dwells within each person, that all people are spiritual beings, that "the highest spiritual principle is loving one another unconditionally . . . and teaching and healing one another", and that "our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living".

The three major religious denominations within the New Thought movement are Religious Science, Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science. Some New Thought adherents also subscribe to a monistic belief that spirit or consciousness is the sole universal substance and that all physical processes and events are either illusions, or are condensations of pure intelligence and consciousness into material form. Thus sickness is just a degenerate manifestation of an unhealthy spirit, implying that if the spirit is healed, the sickness will vanish. In any case, according to their view, the material world is only a pale shadow of the spiritual one. These movements all share the common ideal that one's thoughts and your feelings create one's life.

Modern manifestations of New Thought can be found in "The Law of Attraction", "The Secret", and "A Course in Miracles".

God of the Gaps

There are aspects of life for which no explanations can be found in science, economics, history, sociology, or other areas of empirically or rationally obtained human knowledge. For many of those experiences and phenomena, the default explanatory fallback is that god is responsible. Whether the issue is the origin of life, what happened "before the big bang", the question of life after death, or how consciousness arises, when mankind has not discovered answers, the answers must be obtained from a higher power, or a more traditional, personal and anthropomorphic god. The god of the gaps argument is known as an "argument from ignorance" ("because we don't know, then we do know"). Or as Stephen Colbert reported about Bill O'Reilly on his TV show, "Like all great theologies, Bill's can be boiled down to one sentence: There must be a god, ... because I don't know how things work".

Trying to explain the unknown in terms of the incomprehensible can never increase our understanding. As Plato realized, to say that god did it is not to explain anything, but simply to offer an excuse for not having an explanation. (Plato, Cratylus, 426a). In a similar vein, the Norm Levan Panel on Intelligent Design concluded:

Invoking the supernatural is dead-end to further inquiry. Science cannot test supernatural explanations, since they are unfalsifiable, unverifiable, and can be altered to fit any situation post-hoc.

It is a common trap that is very easy to fall into. For many people it is uncomfortable to be faced with a situation for which there is no answer - a more psychologically satisfying position is to believe that there is an answer, but that answer is known only to god. For everything that we did not understand there was always a supernatural and often sentient explanation. Unfortunately for god, the number of things that he is responsible for has been shrinking for centuries, and the pace really began to pick up after the Copernican revolution, the Scientfic Revolution, the Enlightenment (thanks to thinkers such as Galileo, Locke, Newton, Hume, Spinoza, and many others). He is now seriously underemployed. The gaps of our knowledge were once very great, but many of these gaps have been closed. God no longer causes lightening to strike, stars to remain fixed in the sky, planets to move through the sky, earthquakes (or lack thereof), volcanic eruptions, good and/or bad weather, health and disease, sunrise/sunset, rainbows, tides, the change of seasons, plagues or cures for plagues, victory and defeat in battle, or the evolution of living creatures into separate species.

Science has done an incredible job explaining the previously unexplainable through impersonal, observable, and predictable forces. Evolutionary biology and anthropology indicate that morality, altruism, heroism, and other noble and subtle human virtues, as well as the less noble ones, probably have primitive correlates in other species. Behind everything we have so far observed in the external world, natural explanations have succeeded in demonstrating that previously deemed supernatural phenomena are actually the result of causes that can be reduced to space, time, material, and physical laws. The success of methodological naturalism in eliminating gaps and explaining what previously lied within them has shown beyond most doubt that Metaphysical Naturalism is almost certainly true. Humans have found naturalistic explanations for these formerly mysterious processes that used to be attributable to god. Yes, there are things that are not yet explainable.

Given the remarkable and uninterrupted success of naturalistic explanations and the miserable failure of theistic explanations, it is very likely that these remaining mysteries (dark matter, the origin of the universe, how life was created, consciousness, spontaneous order and emergent behaviors) will be be shown to be the result of natural causes, not supernatural. The trend towards taking god out of the causal chain continues with no sign of abatement. For the last few centuries those who relied on god as the explanation for physical phenomena have experienced a long and steady string of disappointments. Unfortunately for them, this is likely to continue.

God of the Gaps is a mistake that even the best of us can inadvertently fall into. Even Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds in the last millenium did. He discovered the laws of orbital dynamics, which explained mathematically what Copernicus and Kepler first pioneered. But he just couldn't bring himself to believe that planets could go into motion by themselves - someone had to have placed them there:

"The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. […] But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. […] This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

He also thought that god's hand must occasionally readjust the orbits to get them back on track when they interfered with each other. In both of these examples — one related to the origin of the motions and the other related to the ongoing motion of the planets — Newton is employing textbook God of the gaps reasoning. Scientific theories are proposed to explain as much as possible, and then God is brought in to cover any remaining unexplained gaps in the explanation. We now know that purely naturalistic explanations can account for everything to do with orbits of planets. We must always be vigilant about making the same mistake.

God is Love, God is Good

Carl Sagan addressed this very clearly in his book, Varieties of Scientific Experience, a compendium of his 1985 Gifford lectures. When challenged by a questioner with the assertion, "in reality He is there. God is love", Sagan replied "Well, if we say that the definition of God is reality, or the definition of God is love, I have no quarrel with the existence of reality or the existence of love. In fact, I’m in favor of both of them. However, it does not follow that God defined in that way has anything to do with the creation of the world or of any events in human history. It does not follow that there’s anything that is omnipotent or omniscient and so on about God defined in such a manner. So all I’m saying is, we must look at the logical consistency of the various definitions. If you say God is love, clearly love exists in the world. But love is not the only thing that exists in the world. The idea that love dominates everything else, I deeply hope is true, but there are arguments that can very well be proposed, from a mere glance at the daily newspapers, to suggest that love is not in the ascendant in contemporary political affairs. And I don’t see that it helps to say, forgive me, that God is love, because there are all those other definitions of God, that mean quite different things. If we muddle up all the definitions of God, then it’s very confusing what’s being talked about. There is a great opportunity for error in that case. So my proposal is that we call reality “reality,” that we call love “love,” and not call either of them God, which has, while an enormous number of other meanings, not exactly those meanings."

So, to assert that "god is love" is rather arbitrary. Why not say "god is beauty" or "god is hate" or "god is pizza". There is no particular reason to equate the term "god" and "love" above any other associations.When Christians say "God is love" I know what they mean - I have read their explanation. They are saying that god's essence is synonoymous with "good". God could not issue immoral commands. His essential goodness and loving character] would keep him from issuing any unsuitable commands. This is just begging the question again - assuming that there is a good and a bad prior to god, and that god would not do bad things.

But further, "good" is an adjective. "Goodness" and "Badness" are nouns, but not physical objects, not like a ball or a cloud. They are human-generated categories, abstractions into which we place behaviors, thoughts, actions, intents. We measure things by our conceptions of good and bad, and assign those attributes to the things we judge. To say god is good, in the sense of actually equating those two concepts, is just incoherent wordplay - stringing subject and predicate together with the word "is" in between, and hoping that some kind of meaning will emerge. Lexically, "god is good" parses fine. It just doesn't happen to mean anything.

Last - it is obvious that we have our own conception of good and bad prior to anything having to do with god or the bible. When we read the numerous atrocities in the bible, we are appalled. Our innate sense of good and bad causes Christians to (1) deny that those things actually happened, or (2) claim that it is just a misreading of the bible, or (3) argue that god had a good reason for doing horrible things that we just don't understand, or (4) say that with the New Testament, all that torture and murder in the Old Testament doesn't matter anymore. None of those arguments can deal with the simple fact of recognition - that we, as humans using our innate sense of "reflective equilibrium" can tell right from wrong. We know that there is no way to justify the genocide of entire races of people, as god commands more than once. We already know that is wrong - it is bad. Anything god has to say about it in the bible is just an afterthought.

Spiritual but not religious

Even less god-focused than the "higher power" mindset I covered in the previous section is a new set of "spiritual but not religious" belief systems. These are just as generic and non-specific, but differ in that they don't have a god-centered basis. As such, they don't even qualify as "conceptions of god", which is what this blog is about. They can range from vaguely deistic to completely atheistic. They carry the belief that something divine or sacred is out there, some universal organizing force, but it's difficult to say exactly what that is.

This "un-doctrine" may be gaining popularity as an anti-clerical response to the unsavory reputations that many Christian religious denominations have earned in recent years resulting from sex scandals, child molestation, rape of nuns, general disrespect for women, financial fraud, blatant pandering, crazy rituals, laughable televised faith healing, crooked or perverted pastors, revelations of shocking inner circle practices, transparent scams, unbelievable claims, conspiracy, and outright crimes. A large number in this growing "un-churched" demographic are former members of traditional Christian denominations (Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Evangelicals, generic Christians, etc) who no longer identify themselves as belonging to those denominations, but still want to retain a sense of the mystical and basic spirituality without the burden of heavy tradition, out-of-fashion concepts, antiquated gender mores, and hidebound orthodoxy.

Polls in the US during the last few decades show a growing number of people in the "no religion" camp who still are uncomfortable adopting atheism. They have an aversion to the religious establishment and "organized religion". The "spiritual but not religious" individual wants to have contact with the mystical and spiritual, but without committing to any specific beliefs or actual doctrines. "Spiritual but not religious" is a philosophical destination for some, and for others it is a mid-way point on the transition from the religiousness of their youth to agnosticism or unabashed atheism. This type of belief breaks downs along several lines:

Mystical variety

The mystical version is frequently associated with reports of out of body and near death experiences, visitation by angels, ghost encounters, ESP, precognition, astral projection, non-traditional healing modalities, homeopathy, synchronicity, UFOs, vague notions of karma and reincarnation, and ancient but forgotten wisdom. People who are part of this group have substituted one kind of unsupportable faith (traditional religion) with another (new age fads). In decades past the types of beliefs that were popular for these people were mediums who could communicate with the dead (as with Madame Blavatsky), seances, fairies, trolls, mind reading, levitation, and more.

Naturalistic variety

The naturalistic type of spirituality is very much like "Einstein's God", described earlier. People who adopt this world view substitute awe and wonder for religiosity. They value individual human encounters with the world, and the experiences and emotions those can inspire. All humans share the capacity to experience awe, wonder, inspiration, reverence, and a deeply moving sense of the "transcendent". This kind of spirituality requires no belief in a specific divinity figure or doctrine. What is valued here is the personal experience of a subjective emotion elicited by interactions with nature, contemplation of the wonders of life, personal relationships, and the magnificence of the universe. Einstein described himself as "a deeply religious nonbeliever". This may capture this kind of secular spirituality. Unfortunately, the word, "spiritual" carries such weighty baggage that it has practically been ruined for describing this phenomena - maybe a better way to describe it is a feeling of awe or wonder at the wonderful scheme that is manifested in unfolding of the physical universe. The modern usage of "spiritual" may be gradually transforming into a less religious form, a form that involves no deities or supernatural entities, but instead emphasizes the personal, possibly mystical, experience. Those who have these experiences (and there is no doubt that many do) are, of course, free to interpret them however they want. Some people will respond to these experiences with a strengthened belief in a deity, and others will see them as natural, wonderful, emergent artifacts of our human cognitive apparatus. Nature, science, loving relationships, images of deep space, meditative contemplation, what might be called "deep environmentalism", or even mind altering drugs can call up the more profound aspects of human experience, which in this context we would call "spiritual".

Pantheistic variety

Pantheism is a relatively modern concept. Although for millenia, people have ascribed divinity and spirituality to many aspects of nature, the modern Pantheist philosophy is only a few centuries old. The word literally means "all god", or "everything is god". Pantheists see all of nature and reality as a manifestation of god, or even as the embodiment of god, or that god and the universe are identical. As with other god-philosophies, there is no single, well defined type of pantheist. Many people who might be regarded as having pantheist views would not see each other as sharing a single worldview. It is really a very fuzzy concept, and has no specific doctrine. Although some religions have strong elements of pantheism (Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, Kabbalistic Judaism, ancient Celtic spirituality, Sufi mysticism), none of them encompass all of the others. Probably most people are not even aware of what pantheism is, unless they have actually researched it. Because pantheism is really just a very weak form of religion, I am classifying it in this "spiritual but not religious" camp.

Personal Power variety

This branch focuses on accessing personal power and untapped inner resources. It utilizes Westernized versions of meditation and a Buddhist-like reduction in focus on desire, on the self, and on "ego" (as Eckhart Tolle conceives it). It distills some elements of Hinduism, Zen, Taoism, and Buddhism into a form palatable to Western tastes by, among other things, jettisoning the mind-numbing pantheons of unpronounceable Asian deities, avatars, gurus, and other characters. With a steady avoidance of issues surrounding god and ethereal concepts, it emphasizes personal growth and achievement of inner peace by helping people attend to elements of life that are less superficial and more meaningful.

It sort of makes sense...

Every generation does creative myth interpretation, and redefines those myths in the context of current personal and cultural experiences. As a modern 21st century society, we are trying to find an appropriate language to speak to the new meanings that we find in our experiences. We are trying to recover and build a new language for the evolving understanding that is generated through advances in science and technology of the last century. The unarguable diminution of god as the author of nature (he no longer "makes the sun to rise and ascend in the skies") has left a spiritual void that needs to be filled. The new sense of "spiritual" in this language is not necessarily supernatural, but instead connotes the immaterial, indefinable, non-rational aspect of being human. Instead of referring to immaterial spirits or souls, it refers instead to the ineffable, more fundamental aspects of human experience. In our new society it is losing its overt religious meaning and is becoming secularized.

Traditional religion is declining, while "spirituality" is on the rise in the millennial culture of young people in the 21st century. Since the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, we were being told by intellects like Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau, Ingersoll and others that we were moving towards a new secular society. But instead what has happened is an increase in both secularism and fundamentalism both in the US and abroad. A middle ground has emerged, which is a deity-free spirituality that will probably be end up being more effective than either in dealing with the new set of environmental, ecological, and social challenges we are facing in our high-tech society. It has the logical power of secularism, and the motivational, emotional force of belief.

Except for the generous helpings of psycho-babble, pseudo-science, unfounded conclusions, flawed logic, unsupportable factual claims, appeals to alternative medicine, broken history, and false analogies there is actually some useful stuff here. Especially in the West, I think most of us can admit to being too wrapped up in the temporal, acquisitive, and neurotic obsessions inherent in living in a fast paced materialistic, high-tech, post-industrial world. A way of being that helps you break free from surface perceptions and what used to be called the rat-race, to take time to smell the roses, without resorting to navel-gazing has got to be an overall positive thing.

A "Higher Power"

Many Americans have a fuzzy, ill-defined concept of god as a "higher power". It is "higher" in the sense of existing outside and above the scope of the causal agents that we normally see operating in the physical world, and a "power" in that it is able to effect change in our world, typically in ways that mortal agents would be unable to. This vague entity is commonly pictured as an ever-present, intentional agency, though not necessarily anthropomorphic or even conscious (in the sense that we are). It is responsible for the some or all of the workings of fate, destiny, good and bad luck, and the major events of our lives. It may respond to prayers and intervene in major life events.

This belief provides comfort and refuge when life brings the pain of disappointment, misfortune, suffering, loss, unfairness, fear, broken relationships, failure, or death of loved ones. It sustains hope for an afterlife, helps establish a connection to the mystical and mysterious, between like-minded believers, and to the sense of wonder and awe that comes with being human. Those who would say, "I couldn't live in a world without god", "life would be pointless without god", "there would be no right and wrong without god", "what goes around comes around", or "everything happens for a reason" might think of god in these indistinct terms. For them, life would be far too uncomfortable and psychologically painful without this faith. This "appeal to consequences" argument convinces them that, therefore, he or it must exist - if it were untrue then what would be the point of going on? Life would just be too awful otherwise.

There is evidence from the fields of Cognitive Science and Neuroscience that humans have hard-wired "agency detection" centers in the brain that ascribe intention and "agency" to events in the world. The natural human tendency to believe that a higher power somehow directs otherwise random-seeming events may be facilitated by this hard-wiring.

There are "cognitive biases" that may predispose one to come into this belief. "Confirmation bias" is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. This cognitive mistake can cause one to filter negative, disconfirming evidence while over-emphasizing positive, corroborating evidence. For example, one may clearly recall times when prayers were answered, accidents narrowly avoided, or good luck encountered and use these occasions as evidence for god's intervention. However, the opposite (and potentially far more numerous) experiences of unanswered prayers, accidents that were experienced, and bad fortune are explained away by other means.

Another cognitive bias or error in thinking is Apophenia, also called "patternicity" (a term coined by the skeptic, Michael Shermer). Shermer defined it as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise". In his book, The Believing Brain he describes how humans impute agency and meaning into otherwise random events. This trait can cause people to see meaning and intent behind events that are actually happening for impersonal and random reasons.

Belief in "higher power" can satisfy the natural religious sense without the encumbrance of complex and possibly irrelevant formal religious doctrine, the need to attend church, to tithe, or engage in other inconvenient activities. It can be a source of great comfort and peace, which alone may justify adopting the belief if having those feelings outweighs the need for a theology that has strong backing evidence and makes clear logical sense. For those who simply don't want to bother coming up with a well-formed theology, study the scripture of their childhood faith, or learn about attractive competing faiths, this is a convenient and practical (although somewhat lazy) way to delegate all things spiritual to the higher power and call the job done.

Oprah's God

When I happened to catch a sound byte of the Dr Oz show where he was interviewing Oprah Winfrey, I just had to include this astute theologian's thoughts into my collection of god-conceptions. Here is a frequently repeated report of the interview:

In his introduction of Winfrey, Oz told excited audience members: “Oprah has transformed the lives of millions, and now faces a transformation of her own. Today she says that you have the power to transform your life…she says the answers are all inside of you.”

Asked by Oz, during the Dec. 7 airing of “The Dr. Oz Show,” what her “big plan” was and how she remains inspired throughout her career, Winfrey responded:

“For me at this particular time in my life I recognize that everything is about moving closer to that which is God. And without a full, spiritual center — and I’m not talking about religion — I’m talking about without understanding the fullness from which you’ve come, you can’t really fulfill your supreme moment of destiny. And I think everybody has a supreme moment of destiny.”

“I think being connected to that which is greater than yourself, for me, at this particular time in my life, is the most important thing,” she added.

I hope this clears up any confusion you might have previously had about just what god is :)

Atheist, Agnostic, Ignostic, and "None"

There is no commonly agreed upon definition of atheist. Just as there are thousands of definitions of "god", there are many (probably not thousands, though) types of atheists. The word, literally means "non-theist" or "anti-theist". Depending on the context, it can range from an active and vocal denial of god and rejection of religions to a simple disinterest in the whole topic. It can imply an active disbelief in deities or simple lack of a belief in them due to their improbability and lack of evidence. Atheists claim there are two main reasons for their denial of the existence of gods and/or disbelief in gods: "Strong Atheists" claim that there is positive evidence that gods do not exist (also called "positive atheism"), while "Weak Atheists" claim that theists bear the burden of proof to show that god(s) exist, that they have failed to do so, and that belief is therefore unwarranted.

Some atheists are casually non-theistic about the dominant god or gods of their culture in the same sense as we all are about Thor, Mithra, Zeus, Marduk, or Isis. They are just apathetic about gods, without distinction. Others (the "new atheists") take an activist stance against religion, asserting they have proof that god doesn't exist.

The word, "atheist" has strong negative connotations. Many atheists are not comfortable identifying publicly as atheists because of that stigma. As a sub-group, polls show that they are one of the most despised. In America, self-proclaimed atheists have practically no chance of election to high public office (there is one recent exception to this in the US Congress). Because of this, and because "atheism" is a negative descriptor (it defines what they are not, but says nothing about what they are) many atheists may prefer being called secular humanists, philosophical naturalists, philosophical materialists, non-religious, or skeptics.

Atheism can be the endpoint of a long transition from religious to deist to "spiritual but not religious", maybe a quick stop at pantheism, to agnostic, and finally to atheist. Many on the de-conversion journey are not comfortable making the leap in one fell swoop, but take time to transition. It can take a while to unlearn what accrued over a lifetime.

Up until about the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, a label of atheism didn't necessarily indicate lack of belief, but more a lack of willingness to accept God's rule. Descartes, who is famous for basing his philosophy on a proof of God's existence and benevolence, was accused of being an atheist by some of his contemporaries, mostly because he didn't believe in god the way you were supposed to. It was not until relatively modern times that Westerners actually started to commonly think about rejecting the actual existence of a god or gods. Prior to this, Protestants called Catholics atheists, and vice versa, and both called the Hindus, Moslems, and other "heathens" atheists. Theists considered deists to be atheists. It was thrown about much as the epithet, "communist", was used as a general purpose ad-hominem attack during the second half of the 20th century, and how "bigot" and "racist" is frequently used in the 21st century. It used to have more of a connotation of "incorrect belief" rather than "no belief", as it does now. There were early schools of atheist philosophy in ancient Hindu and Greek teachings, but only in the last couple of centuries has the movement gained momentum.

With the coming of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, began an era in Western civilization which emphasized logic, reason, and empiricism as the primary sources of legitimate knowledge. The enlightenment was a movement toward science, knowledge, and reason, and away from religion, ignorance, superstition, and dogmatic acceptance of "established" philosophical "facts" from the Greek philosophers (particularly Aristotle). The Enlightenment embodied a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality and evidence rather than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition. The Scientific Revolution, which roughly coincided in time with the Enlightenment, amplified this trend.

Related to atheism is non-theism, which is the belief that the universe can be explained without any reference to the supernatural, or to a supernatural being. This is similar to metaphysical naturalism. Some non-theists avoid the concept of God, while accepting that it is significant to many; other non-theists understand God as a symbol of human values and aspirations. Many schools of Buddhism may be considered non-theistic.

Some atheists contend that there is no compelling evidence for god, and insufficient reason to believe. On top of that, there is insufficient "prior probability" to continue to suspend judgment on the issue (as agnostics do) due to its inherent implausibility. Their reasoning goes something like this: For all past generations no clear evidence has been presented (short of personal testimony, questionable documentation, and muddled reports of miracles). We have no reason to anticipate any new compelling evidence is forthcoming anytime soon. Therefore, we are justified in inferring that god probably doesn't exist. This line of thought brings in the concept of reliable knowledge vs. certain knowledge. Although we don't have absolute and certain knowledge that a god doesn't exist, we have reliable knowledge that this is the case. In other words, we can be as certain of this as we can of most things we encounter in life. Just as we cannot say with 100% certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow or that a real world exists outside our front doors, we can (with a high degree of confidence) make these assertions. The same can be said of a confident lack of belief in the existence of a god. To paraphrase from Stephen Jay Gould's description of scientific facts, atheists can't have "absolute certainty" of god's non-existence. They can only say that it is "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."

So, does "absence of evidence mean evidence of absence"? It can, if the evidence was strenuously and diligently sought after, but was not found. However, an omnipotent god is outside the bounds of experiment. He can always befuddle, outsmart, and outmaneuver any experiment designed to detect his presence. This type of "special pleading" (god is there, but you just can't see him) is very convenient for god's defenders, and is used in other contexts to support belief in ghosts, ESP, UFOs, hollow earth, and other fringe entities and belief systems.

Agnostics haven't gone as far as atheists in their declaration of the non-existence of gods. They claim that there is not enough evidence either way to make a decision. Agnostics are frequently criticized for being wishy-washy for refusing to take a stand. Some agnostics are really atheists who are not ready to "come out" in public. Some honestly think that there is not enough evidence to reach a conclusion one way or the other.

Ignostics (a lesser known term, synonymous with Theological Noncognitivism) object to the vocabulary, terminology, questions, and concepts used in religious discussions. They claim that there really is no coherent definition of God, and that there are too many contradictory and irreconcilable definitions to make sense of. They assert that, without a clear definition of what is meant by "god" in "does god exist?", we are putting the cart ahead of the horse and probably asking the wrong questions. Without knowing what we are asking, we will end up almost certainly just confusing ourselves with misleading terminology that seems to make sense, but really doesn't. As Wittgenstein recommended, they prefer to "pass over in silence" this topic because it really can't be discussed reasonably, and the propositions that are made about it one way or the other have no "truth value", neither being capable of proof nor disproof. In other words, it is a useless exercise to speculate on the ontological status of a "god". In this they echo Buddha when he outlined his "unanswerable questions" - a set of questions that can't be answered, may not even make sense to ask, that waste our effort, and whose pursuit misdirects our energy and focus from more important things.

None is a relatively new term that belongs in this chapter. It has been described, tongue-in-cheek, as the fastest growing "religion" in the West. It mostly shows up in younger people living in First World countries in the West. It describes people who, when answering a questionnaire on religious belief fill in the box marked "None" or "No religion" instead of Christian / Hindu / Moslem / Buddhist / etc. They don't identify with any of these groups, and would not affiliate themselves with these or any other groups that might show up on such a list (including Atheist and Agnostic). They resist being categorized and labelled in this manner, and see no reason to submit to the process. Because of this, it is difficult to make general statements about what they are "like" or what the believe or disbelieve. I think it is fair to say that they don't really want to participate in a discussion or debate about the topic of spirituality, salvation, praying, or any other religious topics. They don't want to be thought of in religious terms, and they don't use religion as a framework for how they approach life. They don't attend church very much, if at all. Thoughts about god just don't play a significant role in how they move through their lives. Many do confess to believing that a god or "higher power" may exist, and may even technically belong to a church (that is, they never officially separated from whatever church they were brought up in). Some admit that they occasionally pray. But for the "Nones" god and religion play only a small role. It it indicative of the lessening relevance of religion among many younger Europeans and Americans. Looking forward, the "Nones" are unlikely to join churches, buy bibles, give money to churches, have their children attend church, get their children baptized, or raise them in a particular religion.

Theism and Deism

Theists believe in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers (and even appears to crave them), forgives or punishes sins, intervenes in the world by performing miracles, concerns himself about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them, or even when we think of doing them. He is fully informed at all times.

Deism also involves belief in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place and got the ball rolling. The deist god never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no particular interest in human affairs. Deist differ from theist in that their god does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles.