So the fact that I have offered definitions of “God” and “Theism” which diverges from popular usage is not surprising. What people need to do is set aside the churchiness of Mormonism — the fact that they have big temples, missionaries, sacred writings, and a world famous tabernacle choir — after all atheistic Buddhists have all these things save the choir.

Now consider the scenario of alien contact that I described briefly in my last post. If you need a concrete image, think of Elie Arroway making contact with aliens at the end of the film “Contact”. Those aliens are super-intelligent with a technology the sophistication of which we cannot fathom. Should Arroway call these aliens “God” and call herself a theist? Clearly not. They evolved within a set of natural laws just like Arroway. They are just further along in their evolutionary history than she is.

This is precisely what Mormons believe about the object of their devotion. God was once a human being and evolved to become what he is today. But then if we wouldn’t call Arroway a theist for recognizing the existence of these highly evolved aliens why would we call Mormons theists for recognizing the existence of a highly evolved “Heavenly Father”?

If Arroway joined a community of like-minded alien worshippers who had their own temples, missionaries, sacred writings, and a world famous tabernacle choir it might make it seem more plausible to call her a theist. But it would be just as wrong to do so. She may in fact be a deeply religious person in virtue of her commitment to this doxastic community, but her religion would involve pious devotion toward super-evolved alien creatures, not God. And thus, if those creatures are the highest powers she believed in, then she’d still be an atheist, no matter how well her tabernacle choir could sing.

“where do the various flavors of polytheism, including Mormonism, fall into your definition? The Mormon Elohim is not the ultimate agent cause of everything that exists, as he is both contingent on a higher entity (the creator of Kolob, I think) and was not actually responsible for the creation of the universe itself.”

To recap, these are the definitions:

Theism is minimally the position that the ultimate cause of everything that contingently exists is an agent cause. 

God is minimally the ultimate agent cause of everything that contingently exists.

It should be clear that these definitions spell trouble for Mormonism. As Lorenzo Snow, the head prophet of the LDS Church from 1898-1901 declared, “As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.” This tidy axiom summarizes the core message of Mormon theology: the Christian God was once a human who evolved to become a divine being, and we too can follow that same path.

It is important that we get our heads around the fact that this entity that is the object of Mormon pious devotion entered the scene a finite time ago and evolved into his exalted status. Moreover, an infinite number of entities had evolved into divine status before the entity of Mormon devotion appeared on the scene. All of this begs the question: where did this whole infinite regress of evolving entities come from? What holds it all in being? Mormonism provides no answer, at least none of which I am aware.

This means that Mormonism is plausibly not a form of theism at all. There is one alternative however. Mormons could go on to affirm an additional agent that exists necessarily and wills the existence of this infinite regress of finite evolving entities. But if they decide to take that route, then why are Mormons now wasting their time worshipping the finite created being they piously call “Heavenly Father”? Why don’t they direct their devotional energies toward the one real divine being that stands behind all things and upholds all things?

The answer is clear: they don’t believe any creator of the whole process exists. They only believe there is this infinite regress of finite evolving entities including their Heavenly Father.

And if that is true then according to our definitions Mormons are in fact atheists.

Does this seem counterintuitive? It shouldn’t. Imagine that super intelligent aliens came to earth who had evolved a finite time ago on another planet and now had super intelligent technology. Some people would probably start worshipping them, but it certainly wouldn’t be proper to call those people theists in virtue of their worshipping those aliens. Nor is it plausible to call Mormons theists in virtue of their worshipping their Yahweh which is a finite creature that evolved in the middle of an infinite series of finite evolving creatures.

All this has a really interesting payoff that should interest us all for its delicious irony: Americans may end up electing the first atheist president sooner than anybody thought!

This is a troubling situation. Imagine if somebody comes up to you and says “I am an a-autoist. I don’t believe cars exist.”

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“Well, I don’t believe in Ford Mustangs or Volkswagen Golfs or Mazda Miatas.”

“That’s it?”

“No, I also don’t believe in Dodge Neons or Jaguar E Types or Honda Accords.”

“Finished yet?”

“No. I also don’t believe in Chevy Corvettes or Hyundai Accents.”

“Okay, but what is the basic definition of ‘car’ you accept such that you believe none of them exist?”

Uncomfortable silence.

“I also don’t believe in Cadillac Fleetwoods and Jeep Wrangers…”

The problem of course is that the a-autoist doesn’t really know what a-autoism is because they don’t know what a car in its essence is. Perpetually listing off particular models that you don’t believe in is not the meaning of a-autoism. This is like continually repeating the sample sentence a dictionary provides while never giving the definition that goes with it.

And if you can’t define it, you probably shouldn’t ascribe the position to yourself. That which is true of a-autoism goes for atheism as well. If you can’t define what God is such that you don’t believe any God exists, then you shouldn’t claim the name atheist for yourself.

But don’t ever say I only curse the darkness. Let me light a candle by helping the confused atheists out there. Theism is minimally the position that the ultimate cause of everything that contingently exists is an agent cause. Thus, God is minimally the ultimate agent cause of everything that contingently exists.

So if you believe that God exists as defined then you are a theist. If you believe no God exists as defined then you are an atheist.

***

According to Wikipedia, “Promotion for The Grey, in part, targeted Christian groups by issuing a “film companion”, which highlighted the spiritual value of the film.” This really surprised me because the film is fundamentally anti-Christian. (I don’t mean that the way a Marilyn Manson album is anti-Christian but rather the way any work of art presenting a worldview fundamentally incompatible with the Christian worldview is anti-Christian.) Intrigued, I followed the link to the original article in “Variety”. Sure enough, the article states: “Open Road [the distributor] said it used several cross-promotional strategies to market the pic to Christian and various ethnic groups.” Go figure. To be sure, even if it is anti-Christian (or unChristian) in outlook, I do think that this film would be much more rewarding viewing for a church group than “Fireproof”. Let’s just hope that Granny has nodded off to sleep by the time that Ottway (Liam Neeson) unloads a truckload of four-letter invective at the Almighty near the end of the film.

So how is the worldview of the film “anti-Christian”?

The film, it seems to me, is a sort of allegory. It begins on an oil rig in the wilds of Northern Alaska. I take this rig to be representative of human civilization. This is not surprising since the harnessing of energy is core to the development of civilization. The harsh climate of Northern Alaska places into broad relief the precarious nature of our civilization. In that respect “The Grey” is orders more subtle and intriguing in depicting the human situation than a Hollywood mega-budget snooze-fest like “The Day After Tomorrow” with its wanna-be iconic Statue of Liberty arm jutting out of the ice.

It is easy to hold the delusion that our civilization is secure, and that is true of the oil workers as well. They are brought back to reality in a horrific moment when the plane they are riding to Anchorage takes a nose dive in the best airplane crash scene since “Castaway”. This really is a great sequence.

It is crucial to understand Ottway’s role in all this. To do so we must pay attention to a crucial moment on the airplane prior to the crash. At one point one of the characters makes a reference to Timothy Treadwell (though not by name) and the documentary about him, “Grizzly Man.” Some years ago Treadwell left southern California in search of meaning and went to Alaska to live with the Kodiak bears. He filmed them (and himself) for hours. He found meaning for his life in the bears. He thought they were his friends. He loved them. Then one of them ate him (off camera but with camera still rolling). The masterful documentarian Werner Herzog compiled some of this footage (mercifully not the horrific death, though he brilliantly incorporates it into the film just the same) into the documentary “Grizzly Man”.

Anyway, “The Grey” is presenting us with a clear contrast. Treadwell naively projected meaning onto the bears of Alaska and was destroyed by them. Ottway is not that foolish. He recognizes that the wolves he is linked with are cold predators. It is a struggle for survival, pure and simple. And yet, as the film ultimately reveals, there may not be much difference. Treadwell’s delusion leads him to be destroyed by the bears. But Ottway’s gritty realism still leads him to be killed by the wolves. Either way both end up dead.

“The Grey” depicts a ragtag group escaping the wreckage of the plane hopefully away from the lair of the wolves that are hunting them and toward civilization. In fact, the journey leads them directly into the lair of the wolves and to their inevitable destruction. One by one, the brutishness of nature and human mortality, as represented by the wolves in their tireless pursuit, takes down each of the men until only Ottway is left.

This brings us to the point where I hope Grandma is asleep. However, I suspect that the unrelenting blitzkrieg of f-bombs throughout the film would have emptied the room of the faint of heart long before that point. (How do you think oil rig workers would talk?) If Grandma is still there by that point she will see Ottway look up to the grey skies and cry out to God for help with an explosive, expletive-laced tirade. Predictably there is no answer, unless you call the revelation a shortwhile later that Ottway is about to die in a flurry of teeth and fur an answer.

In the final scene Ottway squares off against the Alpha wolf surrounded by a snarling pack of beasts. Methodically he smashes tiny liquor bottles and tapes the jagged edges to his fists. (Who needs brass knuckles when you’ve got glass knuckles?!) Ottway is the ultimate promethean figure, one who refuses to accept his inevitable fate without a fight. As the credits suddenly appear we realize that Ottway’s final demise, like that of Treadwell, was kept off camera. Perhaps looking the other way is the last dignity we can pay the man.

Regardless, as the credits began to role up the screen I couldn’t help but think of this famous passage from Bertrand Russell:

all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation be safely built.

This got me thinking: what is the likelihood of dying from the impact of a meteorite? After some research I came up with this analysis from Peter Olofsson, chair of the Mathematics Department at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX:

What is the risk from dying by being hit by a meteorite? Hard to say because it has not happened to anybody yet. A dog was killed by a meteorite in Egypt in 1911 and Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama was hit by one in 1954, but survived. These are extremely scarce data, and an actuary would have problems estimating this risk for your life insurance policy. People have died from falling objects though. In 456 B.C., an eagle flew over ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus and dropped a tortoise on his head, killing him on the spot. Don’t worry about meteorites. Statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a falling tortoise.” (Probabilities: The little numbers that rule our lives, Wiley, 2007, 82).

So there you go. If your life insurance company offers you free additional coverage for falling meteorites or falling tortoises, go with the latter. But if the policy is for your home owners insurance, go for the meteorite protection. I have logged several instances of homes being damaged by falling meteorites but none that were damaged by falling tortoises.

Mormon proxy baptism and alien spaceship impact coverage

Imagine that when you buy house insurance the insurance company offers to add “alien spaceship impact coverage” for no extra cost. After looking at the policy carefully and determining that there really are no strings attached, why wouldn’t you add the policy? You may think that aliens don’t exist, but on the one in a million (or billion) chance that they do exist and that they are visiting earth, why not have your policy include that protection?

Now shift the picture a bit. Imagine that the insurance company is owned by a fellow who happens to believe that aliens exist and who has been adding the policy for some time to all the people who buy house insurance. He views that as a benevolent action. We may view it as a wacky act based on a wacky belief, but if he’s right at least we’re all covered.

So what’s the problem exactly? Let’s take a look at three arguments that appeared in the thread to my last article.

Argument 1: Proxy baptism will make Jews Mormons in this life

James commented: “If Jews can be “converted” after they die, then who is next? Christians, or any other religious, or non-religious group.”

In fact, Mormons are proxy baptizing for everybody without distinction of race, ethnicity or creed. They are not singling out any particular group, so this comment is just confused.

James then makes a more extraordinary claim: “if you start saying that those who died in the Holocaust are not Jews, but Mormons, then it follows that it was not six million Jews who died, but a few million Mormons.” This comment actually sounds farcical to me, leading me to wonder if James is being serious. Having someone perform a proxy baptism in your name after your death doesn’t retroactively make you an adherent to that religious faith during your life. If it did we’d all be Mormons (assuming they keep up their practice and finish the job). That’s not what the practice is doing and the charge is unfounded.

Argument 2: Proxy baptism offends Jews

One of the best attempts to critique the Mormon practice of proxy baptism comes from Jag who objects on the ground that the practice offends Jewish people: “This practice has had the very real social effect of offending Jews, which means it is not the case that they are not hurting anybody.”

Interestingly, this comment strikes me as culturally and religiously insensitive, for Jag speaks as if Jewish people all share the same opinion and take offense to the same things. Does he go around saying that “The film ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ has the very real social effect of offending Christians”? Perhaps he does, I dunno. But Scorcese’s film didn’t offend “Christians”. It offended some Christians, and I’d appreciate it if people wouldn’t take the liberty of speaking for all Christians.

The fact is that Jewish people are not a monolithic group who all think alike and all have their opinions accurately represented by Elie Wiesel. Just compare a particular ultraorthodox Hasidic Jew with a progressive Reform Jew; or consider a pro-Zionist Jew with a  Jewish human rights activist working at B’Tselem. The range of opinion is huge. Sadly, it is often the “offended” voices in a particular community that are the loudest and which are erroneously taken as representative of the whole.

So why is it that some vocal Jewish leaders, people like Wiesel, have taken offense at the practice? Jag suggests it is because the practice “symbolically echoes episodes from their past wherein they were forcibly baptized by well-intentioned Christians….” This is a puzzling claim. I know what it means for x to symbolize y, but I am not clear what it means for x to echo y symbolically. Perhaps what Jag means is that the practice will simply call to mind certain regrettable practices of the past, including forced baptisms of Jews.

That’s true, it might. But the mere fact that a practice calls to mind some past trauma doesn’t mean that the practice is wrong or that the person(s) engaged in the practice should cease from doing it, particularly if they believe there are important reasons to do it which outweigh the broad associations that the traumatized individual(s) is drawing between the present practice and the past event.

I understand that for some Jewish people the practice recalls the image of past forced baptisms and other regrettable practices. But from the Mormon perspective the practice is the way of saving people’s lives in the future. So why should the Mormon cease and desist from a practice that they believe is life-saving (a proxy baptism in the name of a deceased individual) because some individuals draw an association between that and a practice that everybody agrees is wrong (i.e. a forced baptism of a living human being)?

Imagine a coastal town near a fault line. The government believes that there will be a tsunami at some point in the future so they plan to build a seawall to protect the town from the anticipated tsunami. Some of the residents are German immigrants who escaped East Berlin and still have memories of the wall and they protest that the seawall ought not be built because of its association in their mind with the wall that once divided Berlin. Based on the government’s belief that the wall is necessary to save the town in the event of an earthquake / tsunami, they would be forced to set aside these concerns and continue the construction of the wall. Similarly, given their beliefs about the afterlife the Mormons ought to set aside the concerns of some Jewish people about the association with past oppressive actions and thus continue their proxy baptisms.

Argument 3: Proxy baptism is a forcible post-humous baptism

Now we get to the final argument against proxy baptism, the claim that it is the equivalent of a forced post-humous baptism. Clamat writes:

“I’m not sure where I come down on the issue of proxy baptism.  My mother in law once actually tried to have my kids secretly baptized in the Catholic church.  The church told her “uh, we don’t think so,” of course.  I was plenty peeved at her personally for her duplicity, but was only a little miffed from a religious standpoint. ”

Presumably Clamat was “only a little miffed from a religious standpoint” because he recognizes that his mother-in-law believed that she was saving the child’s soul. (I hope his mother-in-law now knows that according to Catholic doctrine unbaptized infants go to heaven, not limbo.)

But wait a minute. Why is Clamat talking about this unfortunate episode with his mother-in-law? Isn’t it apples and oranges? The case of his mother-in-law was an actual baptism undertaken against the wishes of the child’s parents. But that is not what Mormons are doing. They are engaged in proxy baptisms. They’re not actually baptizing the dead.

Or are they?

This is where things get interesting. In his interview on MSNBC Elie Wiesel repeatedly describes the practice as if the proxy baptisms undertaken by Mormons actually have baptized his deceased relatives and made them Mormon. And that’s where things descend into rank confusion because Mormons have only succeeded in baptizing Wiesel’s deceased relatives if Mormonism is true in which case a rational person would want their relatives to be baptized post-humously.

So this third argument, clearly presented by Wiesel and hinted at by Clamat, is the most brazenly irrational for it entails that the Mormon practice is wrong precisely to the extent that the Mormons are right in doing it.

Factor one: the Arctic and sub-Arctic. I have always been fascinated with the north since I read Pierre Berton’s The Mysterious North two decades ago. After reading that book I consumed multiple volumes on the north, dazzled by the cold, the wildness, the isolation.  The stories of early explorers like Samuel Hearne left be dumbfounded (would you climb inside a steaming muskox corpse to escape a coming blizzard?!) while the fate of the Franklin expedition staggered me.

Factor two: the wolves. I was equally fascinated by wolves growing up and I continue to believe the cry of the wolf is the most hauntingly beautiful sound in all nature. So imagine my delight when, as a child I discovered that my name means “Protected by wolves”. When I was a child I read much about wolves including Farley Mowat’s classic Never Cry Wolf, an important book that changed the way Canadians view the creature. Even if Mowat’s book turned out to contain a heady dose of fiction it still had more facts about wolves than the Grimms Fairy Tales that have formed the views of most people.

Liam Neeson. Arctic. Wolves. I’m sold.

The premise of the film: Neeson plays a man named Ottway who is hired by an oil company in Alaska to kill wolves before they kill the rig workers. There is a scene near the beginning of the film where he stands with his sniper’s rifle and cooly shoots a massive wolf before it can pile into several workers.  At that point it is clear that the film is unapologetic in embracing the Grimms fantasy about wolves. I can forgive that. What you need to do is leave your PETA lifetime membership in the theatre parking lot and invoke your suspension of disbelief. Treat the story as a fantasy adventure.

The plane crashes. The macho survivors inexplicably decide to leave the crash site and wander into the wilderness while the wolves hunt them down with all the wicked determination of Sigourney Weaver’s aliens. Fine. I’m with you.

Somehow I had a harder time suspending my disbelief about the cold. It seemed like this screenplay was written by somebody who had never lived further north than Sacramento. So keep this in mind. The plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness in the middle of winter. Okay, let’s put things in perspective. The average high in Fairbanks in January is -18 C ( 0 F) and the nighttime low is -28 C (-19 F). And keep in mind that Fairbanks is 450 feet above sea level.

Next, note that in the film one of the characters suffers and dies from hypoxia (altitude sickness). You would have to be above 10,000 ‘ (3000 m) for hypoxia to be a problem. Given the altitude there are two mountainous bands they could have been stranded in, one in the north of the state and the other in the south. When you consider their flying time prior to the crash it is highly likely they were in the south band, perhaps somewhere near Mount McKinley.

If it is averaging -18 C ( 0 F) in Fairbanks in the daytime you’d be looking at -40 (C/F) at the altitude where hypoxia would be a problem. Add in the fact that the winds are often howling in the film at near hurricane force and you could have a consistent wind chill of appoximately – 60 C (-76 F). At that temperature exposed skin (of which there was a lot in the film; even exposed fingers for extended periods of time!) would freeze in a couple minutes.

In short, this is complete baloney. Everyone would be dead in less time than it takes to watch a Seinfeld rerun.

As if that were not bad enough, verisimilitude is trampled further when, after a day’s journey, the three survivors are walking beside a gently moving river that has no ice, not even on the edges. In other words, the temperature seems to have risen inexplicably by at least 40 C. Now that’s what I call a warming trend.

That’s what happens when screenwriters write adventure stories about Alaska at a Starbucks in Santa Monica. It just doesn’t work.

First some background. It all began when Piero commented in my article “Is Daniel Dennett a conspiracy wingnut?” on the lack of intellectual integrity pertaining to the discipline of theology. Why? He explains:

“As far as I know, any reputable discipline ending in -logy has as its object of study something the existence of which is not in dispute. Could theologists follow the logical path and prove the existence of at least one deity before proceeding to describe them?”

I responded:

“Piero, I take it that your real concern is not with disciples that have a suffix ending in “logy” but rather with various forms of public knowledge discourse simpliciter. So let’s take one of them with which I have some familiarity: the philosophy of mind. This is a reputable public knowledge discourse, I assure you. And this is despite the fact that some of the participants in this discourse (and some people who are not) actually doubt there is such a thing as a mind.”

Now we come to Piero’s award winning reply:

Surely there must be people who doubt there is such a thing as a “mind”. After all, we are seven billion, so within us you’ll find every imaginable nutcase.

But the analogy fails on several counts.

1. It is obvious that we have a brain. 2. It is obvious that when the brain dies our “self” dies with it (there is no evidence of a mind surviving the death of the brain). 3. It is obvious that when the brain is damaged some parts of our “selves” are damaged too (Alzheimer’s disease, for instance) 4. It is obvious that our brain can enter a state we would describe as “unconsciousness” (sleep, coma) 5. It is obvious that several chemicals can alter our perception of the world and even of our “selves” (heroin, LSD) 6. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that “mind” is simply a shortcut for “the firing of synapses within my brain”.

Besides, what philosophers call “philosophy of mind” is destined to be subsumed within neuroscience. As you should know, philosophers can only occupy the spaces that science leaves open to them. For example, there is no “natural philosophy” anymore: what we currently have is physics, chemistry and biology.

Nothing intelligible can be said about deities. Phrases such as “the ground of all being” are just syntactic constructs which ignore semantics altogether. Until theistic or deistic philosophers can agree on what they mean by God, the field of theology is barren.

This passage is a treasure trove of whoppingly bad argument. How bad? Well take the sentence “Nothing intelligible can be said about deities.” It is not every day that people commeting here produce self-refuting statements (unintentionally no less!), so I was really impressed with that one. (In case you missed it, Piero seems to assume that he made an intelligible statement about deities.) Indeed, that unintentionally self-refuting statement would probably have been sufficient for Piero to win an award.

But folks, there’s more!

Next shift your gaze up to the opening sentence: “Surely there must be people who doubt there is such a thing as a “mind”. After all, we are seven billion, so within us you’ll find every imaginable nutcase.” Apparently Piero views people who doubt that a mind exists as “nutcases”. With that statement Piero’s unintended irony comes into view. To make that clear, note that as a philosopher of mind Dennett has defended eliminative materialism, a position that denies that the mind, as such, exists. So whether or not Dennett is a conspiracy theorist, by Piero’s own admission he is a nutcase! 

In between the irony and self-refutation we have a combination of several claims, some of which are trivially true (e.g. events in our brains affect our minds) and others which are very much contended (e.g. “‘mind’ is simply a shortcut for ‘the firing of synapses within my brain’.”)

But it gets worse yet. Piero’s description of the mind as “simply a shortcut” for the popping off of neurons firing sounds a whole lot like the denial of mind that Piero attributed to nutcases. In other words, Piero appears to round things out with a form of cognitve hari-kari!

So there you have it. Self-refutation, unintentional irony, triviality, and cognitive hari-kari. If the Face-in-Palme was an awards show rather than a single honor, Piero would have swept the categories.

Congratulations Piero!

The charge, as you might have guessed, is that the when the practice is carried out in the name of deceased Jews it is anti-Semitic. Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is the latest to launch this incendiary charge against the Mormons with a cease and desist order in this Huffington Post article. But why is that anti-Semitic? Can’t Elie Wiesel tell the difference between Charlemagne forcing the baptisms of his defeated Germanic foes (a most regrettable practice indeed) and Mormons in their temple engaging in non-coercive private proxy baptisms for the dead?

Even if the Mormon practice is hokum, it could have positive psychological benefits. Perhaps engaging in proxy baptisms ends up inculcating in participants a greater concern for the well-being of others and a sense of common humanity. Thus even if we think the practice appears wacky, we should not be too dismissive of its potential positive effects.

Moreover, what about that one in a million chance (or whatever the odds may be) that the Mormons are right after all? If it turns out contrary to our expectations that Mormons do have things right (at least on this point), wouldn’t you be glad that they’d thought to baptize in your name posthumously so that you could enter paradise? But if this is the case then why would we exempt one specific ethnic or religious group? Indeed, from that perspective it is not baptizing in the name of Jewish peole that would appear anti-Semitic but rather baptizing in the name of everybody but Jewish people.

So here’s the lesson of the day: apparently the term “anti-Semitism” is so powerful that it can lead the most rational people to melt into a morass of fearful irrationality. But then many of us already knew that. Anyway, the bottom line is that there is simply nothing wrong with this practice. So I say let the Mormons perform their proxy baptisms of deceased persons if they wish. They’re not hurting anybody and the practice is nothing if not well-intentioned.

What?!!

I took Frank Beckwith’s conversion to Catholicism quite well and of course I cheered Antony Flew’s conversion to deism. (Atheism to theism. That’s the direction things are supposed to go.) But Hare Krishna?

Okay, I admit that my image of Krishna devotion was formed by the guys I used to see dancing down New Oxford Street in London in their saffron robes and blissfully chanting “”Call out gouranga! Be happy!” Yeah, they looked happy. But then I figured I’d rather have a scowl with jeans and a shirt than a smile and an orange gown.

So my initial impression wasn’t positive.

Dale Tuggy on Sudduth’s conversion

Dale’s comments are really interesting. He quotes Sudduth as claiming that his new view of a mystical identity with God provides a good balance between monistic and dualistic metaphysical schemes. Dale demurs:

“Honestly, I don’t see how this can be a “wonderful balance.” The mind has nowhere to rest; as with all negative mysterianism, a commitment has been made to simply think inconsistently, but insist that really, this is sort of just pointing at an inconceivable fact, an ungraspable one. This sort of move insulates one’s claim from refutation, but it also leaves unclear why anyone else should agree with it.”

Dale makes a number of other incisive comments as well. I recommend you check out his full comments.

Experiences of Krishna

Now we turn to the link provided by Dale to read Sudduth’s own account of his conversion. It was an interesting read, that’s for sure.

Clearly Sudduth’s experiences were key in his conversion, among them a near fatal car accident in March 2011 and an experience of Krishna early in the morning of September 16th, 2011:

Upon waking I immediately had a most profound sense of Krishna’s actual presence in my bedroom, a presence no less real than the presence of another living person in the room, though I was alone at the time. I responded to this felt presence, first through my thoughts that repeated Krishna’s name (and inquired of his presence), and then verbally out loud by uttering Krishna’s name twice: Krishna, Krishna. I was seized at this moment with a most sweet feeling of completeness and joy. I felt as if Krishna was there with me in my room and actually heard my voice, and that my response had completed a process that began with his name within my mind. I pondered this experience for several minutes, while at the same time continuing to experience a most blissful serenity and feeling of oneness with God, not unlike I had experienced on many occasions in the past in my relationship with the Lord Jesus. It was a most profound sense of both awe and intimacy with God in the form of Lord Krishna.

There is much one could say on these experiences. But from here I want to turn to the end of his account when Sudduth makes a really intriguing claim:

the basic principles of Gaudiya Vaishnavism are logically compatible with a number of fundamental Christian beliefs: the deity of Christ, virgin birth, his resurrection, and the soteriological importance (even necessity of) his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. In converting to Vaishnavism I do not relinquish these beliefs but simply situate them in a different philosophical and theological context.

Sudduth then adds that he intends to write at more length on this topic in the future. I, for one, look forward to the discussion.

But for now you might be thinking how he can seriously argue for a harmony between the two belief systems. (After reading Dale’s full critique you’ll no doubt wonder that all the more.)

In closing let me offer some comment on the direction that Sudduth might go.

Multiple Incarnations?

In the latter part of the sixteenth century the radical Domnican friar Giordano Bruno scandalized much of Europe with his radical teachings, including the claim that the universe was static and unchanging and included countless suns with countless worlds with countless peoples. Said Bruno:  ”Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds.” On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)

Bruno’s speculations didn’t win him much support as his career went down in flames (sadly, Bruno went with it). Despite this ignominious end, Bruno stands at the headwaters of a new theological discipline called exotheology, a companion discipline to exobiology. The discipline of exobiology is concerned with the possibility of life on other planets and the form that that life might take. Exotheology address the same topic from a theological perspective. If there are intelligent creatures on other planets, how does God relate to them?  

In particular, the question of salvation arises. If these aliens need salvation, do they not likewise require an incarnation? Paul Davies writes:

“The existence of extra-terrestrial intelligences would have a profound impact on religion, shattering completely the traditional perspective on God’s relationship with man. The difficulties are particularly acute for Christianity, which postulates that Jesus Christ was God incarnate whose mission was to provide salvation for man on Earth. The prospect of a host of “alien Christs” systematically visiting every inhabited planet in the physical form of the local creatures has a rather absurd aspect. Yet how otherwise are the aliens to be saved?” (God and the New Physics (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983), 71.)

Let’s grant for a moment the possiblity of multiple incarnations. (I will come back to this thesis in a subsequent article.) Once we open up the possibility that God (or God the Son) could have incarnated in other forms on other planets, we raise another possibility: could God (or God the Son) have incarnated in other forms on this planet? As John Hick puts it,

“If … we grant … the possibility of such other incarnations of the eternal Word, the natural next question is whether, from a Christian point of view, such epoch-making spiritual leaders as Moses, Gautama, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mohammed, Nanak may not in fact have been such divine incarnations. From their own point of view, of course, none of these great figures would have accepted such an identification.” The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 2nd ed. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2005), 96. 

In other words, once you admit the possibility of incarnations on other planets, why not countenance multiple incarnations on our planet? My guess is that Sudduth will probably develop his own thought in this direction. We’ll have to wait and see.

But for now we have a more immediate issue to deal with. You see, we’ve opened the pandora’s box of multiple incarnations. Are multiple incarnations on other planets possible? If so, is it possible that there be multiple incarnations on our planet? And is it possible, as Hick says, that various individuals on our planet may all be divine incarnations?

I’m not much for suspense myself so I’ll render an opinion here: on other planets I think probably not, and on our planet I think definitely not. I’ll say more about that later. If I’m successful then I’ll be closing and locking one possible door Sudduth may try to pass through to establish his surprising claim of Christ/Krishna continuity.