Ramana Maharshi and the Rabbi

I am writing this on the sixty-fifth death anniversary (maha samadhi) of Sri Ramana Maharshi, 1879-1950, perhaps the greatest Hindu sage of the past century.  It is my hope that his wisdom will infuse this essay and inspire me to convey a very important message.  Ramana Maharshi, in my opinion, settled the question about the existence of God and hence about the meaning of life once and for all.  He answers the unanswered question without recourse to magical thinking, which is especially good news for those rationalists who, sensing that a large piece of the puzzle of life is missing in their lives, refuse to fill it with cardboard quotes from fairy tales masquerading as facts.  It is a truism that there is nothing new under the sun; the wisdom that Sri Ramana espoused is indeed the perennial wisdom that has been formulated in various ways throughout the centuries.  The mud of ignorance, however, has buried it and thus prevented it from being widely acknowledged. This is more true today than ever, hence the reason for this essay.

I want to state from the outset that the legitimacy of scientific assertions that continue to be overwhelmingly supported by data--such as those regarding evolution and the expansion of space--is incontrovertible.    If you think the stories of your particular religious tradition are factual as well, this essay is not for you.  It is written for those who have a desire--nearly everyone has it--to transcend thought, yet refuse to flout rationality in order to satisfy that desire.  My only request is that you read this article with an open mind.

The discussion is divided into four parts: 1. Is Belief Jewish?; 2. Ramana Maharshi's formulation of a great truth; 3. Consciousness, Self and God, and 4: Conclusion: three problems solved.

1. Is Belief Jewish?

On March 30, 2014, there appeared in the New York Times an article with that title.  It consisted of an interview of Howard Wettstein, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, conducted by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the university of Notre Dame.  (Wettstein is Jewish, but not a rabbi; the rabbi in the title of this article refers to Rabbi Hillel, whose principle teaching we will discuss later.)

It is rare these days that a practicing member of one of the three Abrahamic faiths has a non-dogmatic approach to religion to the degree professed by Professor Wettstein.  The majority of those who have abandoned religious dogmas have also abandoned God; Wettstein, however, remains a fervent believer. As we shall see, he comes very close to the truth, at least in my opinion

At the beginning of the New York Times article, the interviewer is flummoxed by the professor's assertions:

You say you're a naturalist and deny that there are any supernatural beings, yet you're a practicing Jew and deny that you're an atheist. What's going on here?

Everything!  Wettstein makes a clear distinction between rationality and inner experience.  He is perhaps an "outer" atheist, but very definitely not an inner one.  He would surely deny the Catholic assertion that reason can access a natural philosophy that points in the direction of God.  He does not seek to prove God's existence, yet he experiences what can be called God in prayer, in contemplation, in community and in action.  (The combination of disbelief and devotion, a stance that has no conflict at all with science, seems to be an oxymoron.  In this article, we hope to satisfactorily demonstrate that this is not the case.)

Wettstein was friends with a late rabbi named Mickey Rosen, who once told him, "Belief is not a Jewish notion."  Although Judaism is arguably the least dogmatic of the three Abrahamic faiths, Rosen is perhaps guilty of some hyperbole here. I do assert, however, that for a contemporary mind familiar with science and the scientific method, dogmatic belief no longer can be a valid religious notion at all.  (I once wryly wrote that any literal statement about God should be classified as S.C.F.A.--that is, Santy Claus for Adults.) Rosen's "Bible School" was very unorthodox; he apparently believed that it was more important for his congregation to sing with him,  rather than to engage in biblical exegesis, song being  "somewhat closer to the soul than assent"--a very wise perspective.

Since traditional Judaism asserts that God intervenes in history, a devout Jew who is an outer atheist would seem to have a lot of explaining to do.  Wettstein, however, doesn't explain; he experiences.

Out of respect for tradition, he doesn't baldly state that the Torah is mostly historical fiction, but he implies it.  It is the transcendence behind the Torah, the wordless Story behind the stories, that has become "the pillar of his existence."  It is this experience which has transformed his life.  Although Wettstein isn't explicit regarding his view regarding God and history, he indicates--correctly, I believe--that while God might not intervene from without, he does indeed intervene from within.

It is inner experience that counts.  Science can describe what, say, ice cream is made of, but the experience of tasting it is another "matter"--it is inexplicable.  Bits don't have tongues!

Professor Wettstein is not threatened by God's apparent non-existence. He seems to concur with the view that God is absent in the outer world, yet he continues to be an observant Jew.  Yes, all the talk talk talk about God is nonsense; yet, as Ramana Maharshi once said, "Silence is also conversation."  Conversation with whom? Where is God? We will now answer that question.  In summary, Professor Weinstein's experiential stance comes very close to the truth. It is time to arrive.

2. Ramana Maharshi's Answer

 There are two, and only two, interrelated aspects of life that really matter: love and wisdom.  Wisdom is the knowledge that everything is connected in a basic unity; love is wisdom in action, working to assure that everyone attains the peace and joy that accompany wisdom as surely as spring follows winter.  You don't have to write volumes about these two aspects, they can be summed up very tersely.  Before we get to Ramana Maharshi's perspective, I would like now to present a brilliant formulation of the essence of love, which is very well known, followed by Sri Ramana's equally brilliant formulation of the essence of wisdom, which is almost entirely unknown.  Let us start with the first.

Hillel the Elder was the most outstanding representative of pre-Rabbinical Judaism  He was roughly a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was teaching in Jerusalem when approached by a Gentile who asked him to define the essence of the Torah.  At that time, Roman paganism was in decline among many seekers--it was quite often debased to the level of emperor worship.  Judaism was known to be an ancient tradition and was much respected.  The idea of one God was attractive.  However, many Gentiles were troubled by all the rules, (mitzvot), some of which seemed to have little to do with wisdom.  (As one can imagine, the idea of adult circumcision, a necessity if one wished to convert, was not very popular.)  We can assume that the Gentile who approached Hillel viewed Judaism as containing diamonds buried under tons of coal.  He wanted to get to the diamonds, to the very essence of Judaism.  So he set a condition: Hillel was to tell him the essence of Judaism while standing on one foot--in other words, Hillel was asked to sum up Judaism in one sentence.  Hillel replied:

"That which is hateful to you, do not do it to anyone else.  That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn."

This is, of course, a variation of Leviticus 19:18: love your neighbor as yourself.  It is a form of what is known as the Golden Rule.  In one sentence, we have a wonderful summing up of the moral imperative, a goal that defines a good life to the degree that it is approached.

That is the well know statement regarding love.  What about wisdom, the seeking and  discovery of God?

The answer is found in the  teachings of Ramana Maharshi.  It is located  within a large collection of responses of Sri Ramana to questions posed by various visitors to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai, where the sage remained from the age of sixteen until his death.  (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, V.S Ramanam, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 2000). In Talk number 244,  a woman with a troubled mind asks the following question: "How is God to be seen?"

Sri Ramana's response: "Within.  If the mind is turned inward, God manifests as inner consciousness."

Just as Hillel's assertion is the whole truth regarding ethical behavior, this one is the whole truth of the sages regarding God; all the rest is commentary.  Ramana Maharshi goes on to say, "He (that is, God) cannot be found outside.  He should be felt within," and, "Self and God are only mental conceptions."

In contrast to Western religion, revelation according to Eastern tradition does not come from an external source, but from an internal one.  Science has rightly challenged the literal belief in external revelation; it is likely that inner revelation will remain forever beyond the scope of science.

What more does one need to know about the eternal question? God manifests as inner consciousness, yet God is merely a mental conception.  What does that mean?  It means that the experience of inner consciousness is ineffable, beyond all forms of conceptualization; when the mind attempts to describe it, the mind often uses the highest term it has: God.  That is, however, merely a word.  If one feels that that term has been so debased that it ceases to have meaning, one can use other terms, such as The Inner Voice, Truth or The Diamond Inside, etc.--or remain silent, and let one's actions do the "talking".   (In my opinion, although the term has indeed been abused, there is no other word that comes closer to  the ineffability of inner experience.  Once it has been understood in Ramana Maharshi's sense of that word, all confusion regarding God is transcended.)

Now we have a clear understanding of what Professor Wettstein implied: the experience of the "God" present in inner consciousness is what is essential.  It cannot be put into words.  For many, God is a useful word to indicate this experience, provided that one acknowledges that there is no evidence that the supreme being has any reality beyond consciousness.

In conclusion: As Ramana Maharshi would say, there are not two things but only one.  Hillel's view and Sri Ramana's view are two ways of looking at the same phenomenon.  The God of wisdom inside is also the God of love to be made manifest outside.

3. Consciousness, God and Self

A: I anticipate the following criticism: "Belief in a God that only exists within consciousness is merely "poetic" atheism. The soul finds cold comfort in solipsism.  If there is no God beyond us  to help and direct us, there is no God at all."  Such  objections stem from an unawareness of the majesty of consciousness.   Consciousness is an integral participant in the creation and maintenance of the universe.  The knowledge that observation somehow determines whether a photon behaves as a particle or a wave is now common knowledge.  Seminal theoretical physicists such as Wheeler wonder whether consciousness creates everything or whether the so-called objective world arises as a confrontation of the mind with things independent of it, the latter being Kant's unknowable "things in themselves."  Many physicists assert that the famous dead/alive cat paradox is resolved by the theory that both events occur as observation causes the universe to split in two, one universe containing a dead cat and one containing a live one.  (If you are unfamiliar with Schrödinger's dead/live cat paradox, please look it up online.) The power of conscious observation is,  in my opinion, weirder and much stranger than any religious myth--and, in contrast, true!  I will now briefly discuss one of the strangest and most amazing theories, the so-called Top Down Approach theory of Hawking.  He asserts that before the big bang everything existed simultaneously in a quantum state of possibilities.  It is consciousness that chose the universe we live in--in other words, it is the consciousness of humankind that created humankind's past!  Religious fundamentalists falsely assert that dinosaurs and humans at one time cohabited the planet.  Hawking's theory, and it is viewed by some experts as plausible, goes further and states that it is our consciousness that has created the dinosaurs!  (The temporal order of the epochs is, of course, inviolate, since the effect of consciousness on the universe has nothing to do with will. The color yellow exists only in consciousness, but the sensation of yellow is not chosen by the will.)

Ramana Maharshi asserts that consciousness does indeed create everything, a view that the wisdom school of Hindus has taught for centuries. But even if we take Wheeler's view--there is likely no other valid one--that consciousness is either everything or just about everything--the assertion that God exists "only" in consciousness takes on a whole new dimension. If the Hindus are right, and more than a few physicists agree, consciousness, the creator of everything, is also the creator of "what's out there."  It follows, therefore, that if creation is like a MÖbius strip, there is also here and, therefore, God exists everywhere.  The difference between this and religious fundamentalism is essential: the former has nothing to do with wishful thinking.  To sum up: the belief that God "only" exists inside is not in any way merely a "poetic" consolation for those seekers who do not permit atavistic beliefs to trump science.

B: How does the individual self fit into this?  In one word: essentially.  I will explain.

I have listened on YouTube, from time to time, to a group called the New Atheists--Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens and others--debate with believers, usually fundamentalists of one sort or another, about whether God exists or not.  It is shocking to listen to--so many deny the truth of evolution--and boring.   Boring because people who do not appreciate science and have made a decision with their entire being that belief in God and dogma go together are not going to be influenced by facts.  I doubt if anyone changed her opinion about evolution during these debates.  Their logic is deficient; however, I find the arguments of the New Atheists to be deficient as well.

The latter assert that God doesn't exist.  We have asserted that as well; we also deny the existence of supernatural beings.  They don't go farther, as we do, however, and ask, "Who am I?" or "What is the nature of the self?" The nature of subjective truth is much more important than debates about external fictions.

We will now address this issue with an example from the evolutionary past. In the Carboniferous Period, over 300 million years ago, some animals for the first time in evolutionary history began to exit the sea, becoming amphibians, some of which eventually became exclusively land dwellers, some of which eventually became us.  Where was the problem of God during the Carboniferous Period?  We would all agree that it didn't exist at that time.  But we rarely assert what is just as obvious, the answer to the question, "Where was the self, that is, the sense of individuality, during that epoch?"  It, too, of course, didn't exist.  As deniers of all forms of supernatural intervention, we reject that the "soul" or self was injected into matter at some time by an immaterial source.  This is indeed nonsense.  If we assert that life arose from matter, and that there is no life-force apart from matter, what is the self but matter?  When neural systems become complex enough so as to imagine the body to be separate from nature, a sense of individuality arises.  This conferred a great biological advantage when it first happened; our unconscious genes "realized" that a sense of individuality helped bodies to be more fit, and thus better able to adapt to the environment and survive.  This sense of self permits humans to manipulate and change the environment.  Look around you; the change in the world since humans arrived on the scene is truly astounding.  Without this sense of self, as I have written many times, Mozart and Shakespeare and Plato, etc, etc, would have been impossible, and, alas! Hitler and Stalin, etc, etc, would not have been possible either.  Dawkins has a wonderful term for human creations, examples of which he calls the "extended phenotype"--an apt phrase which indicates that all things, even skyscrapers, are natural phenomena.  Self, the subjective sense of separation, is according to science an illusion, yet no one can deny the "reality" of the self and remain human. We might be composed of matter only, but a father who treats a daughter like a piece of meat is obviously a monster.  This duality remains in our daily lives and is only resolved--without words, of course--in silent contemplation.

My point is this: both the belief in God and in the self arise simultaneously.  They are illusions, albeit essential ones.  As a human being becomes enlightened, that is, when one's sense of individuality is subsumed into the unity of all things, belief in self and  belief in God decline.  Very few have transcended duality completely, but some are closer to this truth than others.  Until one achieves full wisdom, however, the duality of self and God will remain.  Until a then which may well never occur, it is important, if we are to live well, to have the highest possible concepts regarding the self and God. Thus I reply to Professor Dawkins.  "God doesn't exist?  Neither do you! So Who cares?" Since God and the self are illusions that arise simultaneously, the New Atheists would do a much better job in their search for truth if they argued against the existence of the self as vociferously as they do against the existence of God.  Their basic assumption that science is primary is also false.  Science is contained within consciousness, which is what is truly primary.  A group of four stones have no idea that they add up to the number four!  There is no science without consciousness; it never can replace the ineffable inner experience that can be called God. 

4. Conclusion: Three fundamental problems solved

The ability of what we might call "the inner solution" to provide answers and guidance to the perplexed is obviously the subject of a book-length manuscript.  I will therefore limit my final comments  to a brief discussion of how the inner solution answers three fundamental questions that have been thought by many to be insoluble.

A: The Conflict Between Religion and Science

It is obvious that the view described in this article is not in any way in conflict with science.  The inner solution denies any form of supernatural intervention.  It asserts that there is absolutely no evidence for a God completely external to consciousness.  It also has no purchase for "Fundamentalism Lite," as it were, that is, the assertion that creationism is a valid alternative to the theory of evolution.  

There is not the slightest conflict between religion and science according to the Hillel/Maharshi view of reality.

B: Are passion for science and passion for religion mutually exclusive or mutually compatible?

Scientists and rationalists make the mistake of letting fundamentalists define religion.  The former come to the mistaken conclusion that religion is a deleterious atavism.  This article has undermined that notion.  Music is undoubtedly one of the greatest aesthetic experiences consciousness affords.  Ptolemy was wrong; there is no evidence that music exists outside consciousness--at best, only vibrations that the brain interprets as music exist.  Can one sensibly assert that one cannot be simultaneously passionate about music and science?  Similarly, can one claim that a passion for the ineffability of inner experience is incompatible with a passion for science?   Of course not! Humankind will only prosper if there is a passion for both.

C: The Holocaust Problem

In physics, there was something that was called "the horizon problem."  It was resolved by the theory that the universe expanded at an incredibly fast rate shortly after the big bang, smoothing things out and resolving the horizon problem, that is, the hitherto unanswered question as to how the  universe came to be uniform in all directions at an early stage, when there wasn't enough time to accomplish this uniformity.  (No information can travel faster than the speed of light.)  By analogy, I call the problem of suffering and the existence of God, which has vexed human beings from time immemorial, the Holocaust problem.  How can a loving God permit suffering?  The inner solution also solves this problem with the assertion that there is no external God who intervenes in history.  However, the inner God can indeed intervene, if we listen to  and obey our inner voice.  Evil happens when power and madness combine.  We are responsible for listening to the inner voice in ourselves and to act in ways that help assure that society obeys the voice of "God" within, common to all.   If we abrogate our responsibilities, horrible things will continue to happen.  If we listen to the Self within ourselves, peace and joy will increase.  It's that simple, it's that complex.

What more does one need to know?

In summary: Wisdom asserts, as another rabbi of the past famously stated,  "The Kingdom of God is within you."  Ethics asserts that this wisdom must be made manifest in society through acts of love.  The combination of these two notions compose the truth; all the rest is, indeed, commentary.

IS ATHEISM IRRATIONAL?

This is the title of a New York Times interview of an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, which appeared in the February 9th 2014 edition of  that newspaper.  His name is Alvin Plantinga; he was also a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and of the American Philosophical Association.  He is also the author of several books, most recently, of "Where the Conflict Really Lies; Science, Religion, and Naturalism."  The interview was conducted by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

The subject of the interview, the first of a series, is religion. Mr. Plantinga is a theist and a scholar.  I was quite curious to learn what he has to say about what is for me an important subject.  (Why do I have such an interest, when so many educated people I know do not?  I readily confess that a sense of transcendence is very much  part of my experience; I have difficulty, however, giving it content, specifically theistic content.  I welcomed the article; perhaps this learned man would give me some new insights. I am sorry to say that, for the most part, he didn't.)

This article discusses Mr. Plantinga's arguments for theism, or at least against atheism, and contains my responses to each one of them.

He presents four reasons why a theistic view might be more valid than an atheistic one: 1) The fine-tuning of the universe; 2) the problem of suffering and evil as a possible argument for theism, specifically the Christian version of it; 3) the intuition of peoples of all cultures that some form of theism is valid, and finally, 4) his assertion that materialism and evolution are incompatible.  Let us discuss each point in turn.

Theistic Argument 1: The fine-tuning of the universe.  Mr. Plantinga states, quite correctly, that our universe is extraordinarily fine-tuned, without which life would not be possible.  If several elemental  properties of the universe--such as the strength of gravity--were slightly different, life would not have evolved on our planet.  He states, "If the force of the Big Bang had been different by one part in 10 to the 60th, life of our sort would not have been possible."  This does seem to indicate that such precision could not have occurred by chance.  His conclusion: "This fine-tuning is vastly more likely given theism than given atheism."

Commentary: Not so fast!
Let us discuss the fine-tuning first, then indicate possible natural causes that gave rise to it.  Mr. Plantinga is not entirely correct when he refers to the "force of the Big Bang"--he is referring to the force of inflation, the vacuum energy, which caused an incredibly rapid expansion of the universe very, very shortly after the universe came into existence.  (This is the inflation model developed by Alan Guth in the 1960s; it is widely accepted today.)  The energy of the early universe existed in what is called a false vacuum, which is exceedingly unstable, resulting in a rapid expansion of the universe before the vacuum entered its stable, resting state.  During the exceedingly short period of 10 to the minus 35 seconds--that is, almost a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, the universe doubled 100 times.  (When I was a child, I used to imagine how incredibly rich I would be at the end of a month, if I received a penny on day one, and subsequently received a doubling of the amount on each consecutive day.  There would, of course, not be enough money in the world to continue this doubling for a hundred days.)  The inflationary period caused the universe to expand from a speck  to the astounding size of 10 to the 400th light years!  The reason that our observable universe has a diameter of "only" twenty-seven billion light years is due to the fact that  light from the vast hidden areas of the universe has not had enough time to reach us.)  The cause of the inflation is the cosmological constant, the same force behind the expansion of the universe observed today.  (This "dark energy" no longer exists in the false vacuum state; after the inflationary period, the big bang expansion, as is the case ever since, no longer has an exponential quality.) Mr. Plantinga is wrong, however, about the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant to "one part in 10 to the 60th."  Here is what a contemporary physicist has to say about the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant: (Carlos I. Calle, in his book, The Universe, page 156):

The experimental discovery of the speeding up of the expansion of the universe 9 billion years after the big bang requires that all the vacuum energy contributions cancel out to 120 decimal places.  Cancellation to that accuracy is impossible to comprehend..What if we take the total number of atoms in the world or, better yet, the total number of elementary particles and performed a similar cancellation?  That would be 51 decimal places.  Even if we consider the estimated total number of elementary particles in the observable universe, we would get only 80 decimal places.  (My note: The total number of elementary particles in the entire universe would bring us to a cancellation well beyond 120 decimal places!) A cancellation to 120 decimal paces requires extremely delicate fine-tuning!

The universe is even more, incredibly more, fine-tuned than the 60 decimal places of cancellation that Mr. Plantinga cited!

His conclusion, however, that this  provides strong evidence for theism does not follow.  He quotes a recent development in physics and leaps to the belief that it is an indication of God's existence, a belief which he, being a Catholic philosopher,  presumably already had.  What do physicists have to say?  After all, this is their realm of expertise.  I have read many books on cosmology and have yet to discover a physicist who entertains the belief that the fine-tuning of the universe indicates a creator. Most of the books have chapters that assert that the universe has not been consciously designed by an external source.  There are many scientific theories that explain the fine-tuning of the universe. (Most entail a multiplicity of universes referred to as the multiverse.)  For instance, if string theory, which entails the existence of hidden, extra dimensions, proves to be correct, the many Calabri-Yau configurations of these dimensions would produce an astounding 10 to the 500th power number of universes!  If such a large number of universes exist, it is not surprising that some of them are extraordinarily fine-tuned.  It is  also not surprising that we live in one of them, since if our universe had been incompatible for the development of life,we wouldn't be here to observe it.  (This is called the anthropic principle.)  If another theory, the eternal inflation model, is correct, universes are constantly being created, without beginning, without end.  This would lead to a virtually infinite number of universes.  In a multiverse with an infinite number of universes, there would also exist an infinite subset of universes that possess  extraordinary fine-tuning.  Another promising theory is the cyclic model, an eternal cycle of creation and destruction, which would also solve the problem. Perhaps the most extraordinary theory has been recently advanced by Stephen Hawking, one of the foremost physicists of today.  According to him, the beginning of the universe was a quantum event; there was no single outcome, but a quantum superposition of possible outcomes.  Our observations today determine which of the many possible outcome occurred in the past.  This need not be the most likely outcome, but merely a possible outcome.  If this proves to be true, the problem of fine-tuning is solved!

Granted, none of these theories have been proven, but they are quite elegant and provide natural explanations of the fine-tuning.  Scientists are overwhelmingly convinced that there is a natural explanation for the extraordinary value of the cosmological constant and other examples of fine-tuning in the universe.

You might  have recognized Plantinga's argument: it is a variation of the assertion that since a watch correctly indicates its origin at the hands of a watchmaker,  a frog, something much more complex than a watch, similarly indicates its origin at the hands of a creator.  This was used as proof that Darwin's theory of evolution is invalid. Darwin's theories, however, are now overwhelmingly supported by evidence; the impersonal source of creation, using Dawkins's apt phrase,  is a blind watchmaker; natural laws and fossil discoveries  provide thoroughly convincing evidence that evolution, without the intervention of a god, has occurred.

Mr. Plantinga appears to be an adherent of the Catholic notion of natural philosophy, that is, observation of natural phenomena logically leads to a belief in God.  This is an example of  medieval philosophy, unsupported by evidence.   Very few modern scientists would agree with him.

Theistic Argument 2: Suffering and the problem of evil as indications for theism. To be fair, Mr. Plantinga asserts at the beginning that the problem of evil--how can an all-powerful and all-loving God allow suffering-does "have some strength" and provides "presumably" the greatest challenge to theism.  But he also asserts there are many plausible counter-arguments.  He gives the one he presumably believes to be most cogent:

Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures.  These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil.  Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might--e.g,. having them boiled in oil--God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God.  God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified.  And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures.

I'd say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world.  It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better.  But then the best worlds (would) contain sin and suffering.

Commentary: These arguments can be very easily dismissed.  First of all, we assume that we have free will, but the actuality of it is very ambiguous.  Our conscious mind (our awareness) is only a fraction of our entire mind, the unconscious portion of which is largely responsible for many of our actions.  (It is the mass of the iceberg underneath the surface that is moved by currents, not the relatively small portion above the surface.)  Since actions result from an inscrutable relationship between how an individual brain is wired and its environment, it is, in my opinion, very problematic to judge the person who performs a bad deed.  (It is much easier, of course, to judge the deed.)  So how free are humans really?  Possibly an unanswerable question, it is that complex.  Perhaps a more realistic assessment would be, "Tout savoir, c'est tout pardonner"--to understand everything is to forgive everything.  In addition, if God gave us free will and we mess things up, certainly he could prevent the worst aberrations of that free will, such as the Holocaust.  A little fine-tuning of God's design would have been most welcome here!  It is, moreover, incorrect to reduce the entire gamut of evil and suffering to free will.  What about babies born with horrible congenital defects?  I remember a case during my training at the children's ward of a cancer hospital.  One little boy, aged about eight, had been born with slowly growing tumors throughout his body, so many that surgical intervention was at best only palliative. By the time I saw him he was nothing more than a little bag of pain waiting for death.  Did free will cause that evil?  What about appendicitis?  The appendix is a vestigial structure that was important in our distant ancestors for the digestion of cellulose.  It serves no function in human beings.  But it can get infected, burst, and cause death.  I ask again, did free will cause that evil?  Is God responsible or can such evils be attributed to the indifference of nature?  The answer, to me at least, is obvious.

His assertion that the Christian story redeems suffering, literally redeems suffering, is also untenable.  He obviously believes that Jesus of Nazareth is "the only-begotten Son of God," as traditionalist Christians assert.  There is not a shred of evidence for this.  It may indeed have great symbolic meaning, and may indeed be an excellent myth to help Christians lead better lives, but as a literal account of God's intervention into history, it is no more plausible, say, than the lovely Greek myth of Philemon and Baucis.  Just because, in Mr. Plantinga's mind, the Gospels reveal the best of all possible worlds, doesn't mean that they are true.  The assertion that Christian beliefs are based on facts is very problematic.  If they are facts, Jews, for instance, are in need of getting their facts straight.  I find this view to be highly offensive.  Judaism, in my opinion, is an equally valid faith; its mythology might be different, but all mythologies, I believe, point in the same direction.  What is essential is how close one comes to living according to the Golden Rule, a form of which is the essence of all religion. (Most atheists accept some form of the Golden Rule as well.)

Mr. Platinga's arguments here are medieval and parochial.  I don't see how an objective, twenty-first century mind could ever come to such conclusions.

3. Theistic Argument 3:  Mr. Plantinga asserts that the intuition that God exists, evident in all cultures since time immemorial and still very much present today, is a good indication that God is real.

Commentary:  He states, "Many people of very many different cultures have thought themselves in experiential touch with a being worthy of worship."  For this he uses Calvin's winsome phrase, sensus divinitatis, an intimation present in us all.  This is undoubtedly true.  I really think what he is referring to here is a sense of transcendence.  This sense, however, doesn't inevitably lead to theism.  Buddhists deny that there is a supreme being, but  are certainly filled with a sense of transcendence that gives their lives meaning.  If Plantinga's view here is slightly modified to refer to a sense of transcendence rather than to theistic beliefs, I do believe he is on to something here.  Simone Weil once said that it is easy to be an atheist except for two things; the existence of beauty and the existence of suffering.  I understand this very well.  When I play Bach on the piano, even as imperfectly as I am able to,  I am overwhelmed with the sense that there is more than meets the eye and that it, whatever it is, is meeting my ear as I play.  There must be something that transcends our everyday lives, I tell myself, for I have experienced it.  Similarly, suffering takes us beyond complacence also, albeit in a much less pleasant way. That human beings, the highest form of creation known, can suffer so abjectly, is difficult to accept.  This is too horrible, there must be something else, we tell ourselves when we become acutely aware of intolerable suffering in others.

The experience of transcendence, however, does not prove that it refers to something beyond us.   (I would have a difficult time, however, convincing myself that Bach's music is merely a bunch of notes.)   Unlike Mr. Platinga, I believe that transcendence exits in the human mind and does not come from "out there" even though things "out there," such as the glories of physics, can trigger it.  Ir is also possible that a sense of transcendent  is a "trick' of our genes, causing us to become better adapted to our environment; if this is the case, it would have become a trait favored by natural selection.  I am not convinced that this is entirely explanatory, however; the sense of transcendence remains, for me at least, a profound mystery.  I have no doubt, however, that such experiences don't automatically lead to theistic beliefs.

Theistic Argument 4: Materialism and evolution are incompatible.

Commentary: I really don't follow his arcane reasoning here; the assertion that materialism and evolution are incompatible is not, to put it mildly, universally accepted.  Here is a summary of his argument: say you have a belief that there is a beer in the fridge.  He states "It's the virtue of...electrical signals sent via efferent nerves to the relevant muscles, that the belief about the beer in the fridge causes me to go to the fridge.  It is not by virtue of the content, since if I went to the fridge without believing a beer was in it would have the identical neurophysiolgic properties."  This means, according to him, that the content of a belief causing an action doesn't matter.    This is a highly dubious proposition.  Brain cells reveal a very complex pattern of interconnection.  Various desires can elicit the same physiologic response--in this case walking to the fridge.  A belief does not consist from the outset of a path from the brain to the muscles--it must trigger a neurophysiolgic response.  It doesn't follow from the fact that different thoughts can trigger the same neuromuscular response that the belief has an immaterial origin

Although I think his reasoning is wrong, I do believe he is on to something here: the mystery of mysteries of the universe, consciousness.  Scientists are finding more and more correlations between areas of the brain and specific thoughts; an explanation of consciousness, however, remains elusive.  How those tiny Betz cells are able to convince us that we are individuals, that is, more than tiny Betz cells, is for me the true mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  Many scientists believe that the problem of consciousness will one day be solved; others, like Niels Bohr, have asserted that we never will understand it.  (The  complexity of quantum physics, he believed, is child's play compared to the complexity of consciousness.  It is a little like water trying to explain water; we are consciousness and cannot separate ourselves from it in order to give it a complete explanation.)

Consciousness is so basic, that we tend to take it for granted, which is true even among scientists.  Where would science be without consciousness, which makes science possible?  Some scientists, some philosophers, some religious leaders--notably of the Hindu kind--believe that consciousness is everything, and nothing really exists beyond it.  I don't really fully comprehend their arguments, but I do believe they are at least partially correct.  If they right, the fine-tuning of the universe would be intrinsic to consciousness, and would no longer be a problem. (See Hawking's argument, discussed above in the commentary section of the first theistic argument.)

Consciousness is the mystery, Mr. Plantinga, not whether God exists or not.  I hold that a belief in a deity external to our minds is no longer tenable for an objective person living in the twenty-first century.   I read somewhere that an important physicist--I forget which one--believes that philosophy is no longer "where it's at" and cannot compete with physics, the theories of which fascinate and the discoveries of which continue to transform our lives and ways of thinking.  If Mr. Plantinga is typical of philosophers today, I would definitely be on the side of that physicist. (I am convinced that if Augustine were alive today, he would be a scientist and not a theologian.)

Mr. Platinga has gone to bat four times in the interview.  The first two times were strikes.  The second two were fouls.  Perhaps Mr. Platinga, an eminent representative of Catholic philosophy, will hit a home run yet.  As preparation for the possibility of  hitting the ball out of the park, however, I would recommend that he take a sabbatical and bone up on physics and cosmology.