Elephants and Zruwoks - God, god and gods

There is a much repeated story about blind men and an elephant credited to Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis and (for all I know) a host of other traditions. The essence of the story is this: a group of blind men (assumed to be unfamiliar with elephants) are put in a room with an elephant and asked to say what the huge thing in the room is. Of course some feel the tail, some the trunk, some the ears, some the legs and some the belly. They then set about vigourously disagreeing with each other about the nature of what they have found, and rather than sharing their knowledge to come to an overall picture they argue and disagree from their partial experiences of the huge beast.

There is a lot of this goes on.

At least all the blind men were in the room with same elephant and all used broadly the same methods to come to their partial insight into the nature of the strange object. Imagine if you had a group of blind people who did even share a method or a vocabulary. Imagine if those same blind men had all been told secretly and separately that a great reward came to them for getting the right answer. Imagine if each of those same blind men had a great host of followers or dependents, also blind, who looked to their blind leader to give them trustworthy guidance. The original arguments among the blind men and the elephant would be completely overshadowed by the utter absurdity of the disputes between the blind men tempted by rewards, relied on by followers and separated by lack of a common language.

So when you have arguments between those who claim to 'know God' and those who claim 'there is no God', you have to wonder if they are really talking the same language. 'God' (as a word, as a concept) is not like an elephant. It is hard enough (nearly impossible) for a person to know themself in a reliable and meaningful way, so much harder to really know another person they share language and culture with, and harder again to know a person from a different language and culture. By 'know' I don't just mean 'acquainted with'. 'Know' here means know like you know your own mind on the clearest, most insightful day of your life - really know.

Suppose you ask 'Do Zruwoks exist?'. I'd guess that most people would reply something along the lines of 'no idea', 'never heard of them', or 'what are they'. The problem with using a familiar word that refers to an intangible (and, some would say, abstract) entity is the difficulty of knowing that you are all talking about the same 'thing'. We have the basic problem of not knowing if the blind men are all in the same room - are some in different rooms, some with elephants, some with bears and some with yaks. It's fairly absurd to be Azruwokist, and vehemently deny the existence of Zruwok(s) if it turns out that this refers to Higgs bosons, or dark matter. It is so tempting to deny the existence of a mysterious intangible when so many of the people insisting on the existence do so in such patently unsupportable ways.

The existence or not of a phenomenon does not support the truth or falsehood of the interpretation of that phenomenon. Clearly if a phenomenon does not actually exist then argument over interpretation is absurd - how can you place interpretation on a nothing? However you have to be very careful to separate phenomenon from interpretation. Is a ghost a phenomenon? No - it is interpretation. Noises with no discernable source is a phenomenon, images appearing to pass through walls is a phenomenon - but attaching the word 'ghost' is interpretation.

Denying the interpretation does not necessarily deny the phenomenon. Healing, prayer and miracles might all be accepted without having to accept the baggage of speculative interpretation that often goes with them. (The leap from phenomenon to religious interpretation is often so vast as to stretch credibility, except for the already true believer).

Tragically, the bulk of religion is mired in the psychological support of people prefering hope to understanding. The myth making of their world view gives hope, regardless of evidence and reason, and justifies its existence simply by doing that. It makes the world bearable. I say 'tragically' because world views don't really live comfortably side by side. They are images, not concepts. They are not (on the whole) capable of compromise - you can't negotiate a compromise without breaking both. A world view has the emotional wrapper 'it is so' - it gives certainty, it gives the foundation to the thought structures on which the rest of life is built. Messing with the foundations is dangerous.

Although it seems like the basic question should be 'does X exist', really you have to address 'what is X' before you can test existence. Suppose it turned out that there is a single mighty, sentient existence that can make and destroy worlds in the blink of an eye with all the moral rectitude of Robert Mugabe - would you praise such an entity as a god? It might be politic to do so - the earth-bound opposition of an earthly dictator will tell you of the dangers of opposing such power. But would you really feel good about yourself, pandering to a supreme dictator just because of the power held unchecked by such a being. Would you feel good about yourself giving limitless obedience and love to such a being?

Existence is no guarantee of goodness.