The two concepts, “God” and “Tao,” have much in common
and significant differences. The
concepts “Tao” and “Atheism” also have much in common and significant
differences. By examining these
commonalities and differences I hope to show that there is a fertile ground
between theism and atheism. In this
fertile ground, there are forms of spirituality of great depth that are free
from untenable, supernatural beliefs and the mindsets such beliefs engender. Here we highlight one of those forms,
philosophical Taoism, and compare and contrast it with theism and atheism.
God vs. Tao
The concepts “God” and “Tao” are both totalizing
concepts, i.e. concepts that embrace all that is. Both can be thought of as the invisible,
unknowable source of the visible, knowable world. As such, they represent that from which we
arise, which sustains us, and to which we ultimately return upon death. Both represent the ultimate principle of Nature,
and also the ultimate principle of our sense of being, our awareness and sense
of agency.
It is around the concept of agency, that the two ideas
are most divergent. The theistic concept
of “God” generally includes the idea of a being that has agency in much the
same way that we think of ourselves as having agency. If we imagine God as the creator of the
world, we imagine him (for convenience I’ll stick with the convention of using
the masculine pronoun) creating it in somewhat the same manner as a human
architect creates a building. First he has
an idea and from this idea he creates the material world. For the theist, the world is the realization
of God’s idea of the world. There is a
master plan and purportedly we humans fit into that plan in some way. Specific theist religions specify various
ways in which we fit, and how we are to behave in this life based on how we fit.
In addition to being its creator, the theist god is also
the source and sustainer of the world’s order.
As governor of the world, his agency is often portrayed as being
analogous to a great king or ruler. Something
of the theistic idea of the relationship of God and nature’s order is
exemplified in the Greek mythic figure of Helios and his son Phaethon. In the myth, Helios promises his son any wish
and the son choses to drive the chariot of the sun. Helios immediate sees his mistake, but cannot
break his promise. Phaethon is unable to
master the chariot’s steeds which causes the sun to veer wildly from its course
causing all manner of damage. Zeus has
to destroy Phaeton in order to restore the natural course of order.
We can see behind this myth the idea that a powerful
governing agent is needed to control Nature, which otherwise tends toward
chaos. Though this myth comes from
Greece, the Judeo-Christian God is conceived as having much the same
relationship. Throughout much of the
West, there is the idea that Nature tends toward chaos and it takes the active
intervention of the deity to keep Nature in order.
As it is in the great cosmos, so it is in the
microcosm. Thus a strong ruler is need
to govern the people, who otherwise tend to rebellion. Thus parents must be strict in governing the forces
of chaos in their children. And thus we
as individuals must actively wrestle with the chaos of the inner demons which
threaten to overwhelm us. The general principle is that left alone, things tend
to disorder. A teleological agent,
whether divine or human, must actively intervene to maintain order.
Taoism has a diametrically different idea of agency. The Tao is neither an agent nor a plan. Nature arises from the Tao and sustains
itself spontaneously. There is no master
plan, no governing agent. For Taoism, Nature
left to itself tends toward organization.
The celestial orbs follow their path through the sky and the seasons
follow each other in due succession. And
again, what is true for the great cosmos is true for the microcosm.
Left to themselves, the people will find a proper
organization for the conduct of their affairs and well-being; thus the ruler
should as much as possible should rule without interference. With a due amount of care, nurture and
education, a child will naturally grow to be an adult; thus parents should not
impose their idea of what the child should grow into, but allow the child to
grow to its natural strengths. Similarly
in our own person, rather than trying to become some preconceived ideal of a
human, we should seek to become the human we most authentically are. For the Taoist, this is most readily achieved
through the cultivation of inner quietness and passive achievement, rather than
the active pursuit of external goals. Contemplation is the method of this inner
quietness and passive achievement.
Taoism present no theory of how the cosmos achieves
organization. For that Taoist, that is
simply a mystery. From the viewpoint of
modern cosmology, we might point to three different aspects of this
mystery. The first is the simple mystery
of why there is something rather than nothing.
The second is the mystery of how, in a cosmos ruled by entropy, Nature in
the first place obtained such a vast concentration of energy. The third aspect is why this cosmos, starting
as it does from what appears to be a simple thermodynamic event – the Big Bang
– evolves into a world of such intricate order.
To put this another way, given the Big Bang, the overwhelming
probability is that after a billion years or so there should be nothing but the
background radiation. Yet this universe
has not only the background radiation, but an improbable collection of galaxies.
And on at least one of them beings who can observe and ponder the mystery of
being.
Taoist acceptance of the mystery of the cosmos has a
simple honesty to it. Note that in
theism, God’s agency is offered as the answer to the mystery of the cosmos; yet
if we interrogate the idea of God, we have to conclude that the presence of a God
and his agency is certainly at least as great a mystery as the appearance of an
organized cosmos. God is inexplicable.
Thus theism uses one inexplicable, God, to explain another inexplicable, the
presence of a highly organized cosmos. Why
multiply inexplicables? Why not simply
accept the primary mystery, ala the Taoist, and let it rest at that?
Taoism’s positing of a cosmos that organizes itself, as
opposed to a cosmos organized by an agent, presents a rather radical
alternative to theism and the traditions based on it. Before going further, I would like to take a
brief detour to explore some Western ideas that provide a naturalistic
justification to the idea of a “self-organizing” universe.
Spontaneous Self
Organization
The idea that good things can come about spontaneously
has much in common with a modern idea that is termed “self-organization.” To the best of my knowledge, the first
appearance of this idea in Western thought is in Adam Smith’s idea of the
invisible hand of the markets. For Smith,
markets need neither a plan nor external governance; they can arise spontaneously
and function as a well-organized system merely from the desire of humans to
maximize their own gain.
While Smith’s idea of the hidden hand of the markets marks
a kind of introduction to the idea of self-organization in the West, it is in Darwin’s
idea of evolution by natural selection that we find the idea in a more full
blown form. The Reverend Paley gave
voice to the predominant teleological idea of his (pre-Darwinian) times when he
argued that the complex structures and organizations of living things and the
remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an intelligent
designer. Darwin demonstrated that
living things could adapt and organize on their own without any central plan or
external interference. This idea, along
with Smith’s, was a truly radical innovation for the West, and has still not
really penetrated to the core of Western culture.
The basic principle of self-organization is that
organization can arise without a pre-existing plan or central agent. The cosmos self-organizes because matter is
attracted to other matter (by gravity) and both attracted and repelled by the
other forces. Living organisms
self-organize within an ecosystem, because they desire to eat and not be
eaten. Human cultures and institutions
self-organize out of the desire of humans to interact or not interact with
other humans. In all cases it is the
relationships of the various elements and the strength of the attraction and
repulsion motivating these relationship that lead to self-organization. Neutral
things to not self-organize.
That we live in a highly organized cosmos is based on the
fact that the fundamental parameters that comprise the laws of nature have the
precise values that they do. Cosmologist
have shown that of all the possible values of these fundamental parameters,
only an astronomically tiny sub-set of them can lead to any form of enduring
organization. That the parameters of
this universe do lead to an organized universe has been called the “the mystery
of the fine-tuning of the parameters.” I
do not think it a reach to state that here, when the cosmologists speak of this
“fine tuning,” they are referring of the same mystery contemplated by the
Taoist, though with much greater detail and no spiritual implications.
One last point, before ending this brief description of self-organization. If we try to present a typology of
organization, it would seem there are at least two main types: self-organization
and organization based on a central plan.
Interestingly, there is no English word to denote this second type of
organization, but I will call it “algorithmic organization,” because a central
plan can be thought of as a kind of algorithm.
Within this typology, we might note that there are at least two
different types of algorithmic organization.
I will call these the organic and synthetic. By organic I mean that the plan is immanent within
the set of elements that are being organized.
The way the structure of a living cell develops from the “plan” carried
by its genes is the good example. By
synthetic I mean that the plan is external to the elements being
organized. A building based on a blueprint
is an example. It should be noted that
all three types of organization – self organization and organic and synthetic
algorithmic organization -- can be present in a single phenomenon, such as a
natural garden.
Tao vs. Atheism
There are many forms of atheism and attempts to
generalize about atheistic belief undoubtedly will not apply to all of them.
For the purposes here I use the word “atheist” to refer not only to those who reject
all forms of the notion of God but also the efficacy and meaningfulness of any
form of religion or spirituality.
While atheism rejects the notion of a cosmic agency,
often atheists celebrates the triumphs of human agency in its effort to create
a better world. Typically for an atheist
better means a world where people are happier and have more pleasure and less
pain. Such pleasure is often associated
with a material cause; the improvement of our material conditions is seen as
the main way in which human well-being will be increased. Many atheists place great faith in technology
to produce such improvements in our material condition, and at its extreme it
generates a kind of technological utopianism.
Philosophical Taoism is similar to atheism in its
rejection of a cosmic agent that creates, governs, and cares about the
Universe. But it differs from atheism in
its attitude toward human agency and dependence on material conditions to
improve human well-being. Taoism is a
form of spirituality and all meaningful forms of spirituality are based on the
notion of cultivating our inner resources.
This cultivation of inner resources leads both to liberation from
external conditions and a sense of well-being based on that liberation. Taoism neither rejects technology nor
celebrates it – Taoism accepts the world as it is, and technology is simply
part of the world as it is.
Further, all the major forms of spirituality call for the
diminishment or turning over of the human ego, the basis of human agency, to
the “otherness” that brings us forth. In
theism, this is turning one’s life over to God. In Taoism it is bringing one’s life into
complete harmony, even absorption, with the Tao, the way of Nature. These two are different, but in relationship
to an atheism that puts its faith in human agency and technological progress,
the theist and Taoist view are relatively similar.
In regards to their view of the individual’s relationship
to this spiritual other, perhaps the difference between Taoism and atheism can
be best clarified through their potential approach to something like the twelve
step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Step
three of the twelve steps is “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God as we understood Him.” For the purposes of this step both God and
Tao can represent a “higher power” to which we can turn over our will and our
lives. This is a recognition that there
are limits to human agency and beyond the ego’s agency there are “forces”
beyond that ego that can lead to spiritual transformation. The theist sees this “force” as an at least
partially external deity. Taoism simply
accepts it as part of the mystery. The
important thing for the Taoist is the efficacy of this presence, not the how or
why of it. Many atheists, on the other
hand, express antagonism to this idea of turning one’s life over to a higher
power. Some have attempted to develop alternative forms of substance abuse
treatment that emphasis the individual’s will power as the means to a cure.
There are many other similarities and differences between
theism, Taoism and atheism, but we need not go into them here.
The Fertile Ground
In logic “A” and “not-A” contain all cases. Thus one might be inclined to think that
theism and a-theism similarly include all cases. But language tricks us here. The terms “theism” and “atheism,” both in
their denotation and connotation, do not contain all cases: between theism and
atheism there is a large and fertile ground, a ground that for lack of a better
term I’ll call “pantheism.” Taoism is
one form of pantheism, but there are many others.
Many people, when their sense of rationality and
meaningfulness cause them to reject theism, jump to its opposite, atheism. Here, in summary, I would like to simply suggest
that before making such a leap, one might profit by exploring the fertile
ground the lies between theism and atheism.
