Seven Valleys

   《七谷經》堪稱巴哈歐拉在神秘主義創作方面的最高成就。這部意蘊深邃的傑作是為回答哈奈根的法官謝赫·穆哈伊丁·伊本的提問而寫的。哈奈根是伊拉克鄰近波斯的一市鎮，位於巴格達的東北面。該法官顯然是一位蘇非主義哲學家的學生。蘇非主義是伊斯蘭教多種神秘思潮的泛稱，盛行於一時，且影響至今。蘇非的宗旨在於，通過默思、祈禱、冥想和達到心醉神迷的狀態等方式覲見上帝。它發展出一套專門的用語來解釋靈性進步的各個階段。一些蘇非相信，他們能夠直接親近上帝，無需穆罕默德或其他先知的幫助。如此觀點在邏輯上自然會推導出這樣的信條：蘇非不受宗教律法的約束，對他們——即便不是很多——而言，個人內心的良知才是穩妥的嚮導。波斯最偉大的神秘主義者哲拉魯丁·魯米與安薩里對此持有爭議，他們斷言，唯有通過服從上帝使者所啟示的律法，才能達到上帝臨在的境界。

謝赫·穆哈伊丁·伊本本人無疑熟知十二世紀波斯蘇非派人物法里德丁·阿塔爾。阿塔爾最受推崇的著作是《百鳥朝鳳》。在該書中，靈魂進步之旅分為“七谷”：探尋，愛，知識，超脫，合一，迷惘，消亡。而在波斯文啟示的《七谷經》裡，巴哈歐拉使用了類似而非完全相同的方式描述了靈魂朝向其存在的目標前進的七個階段。巴哈歐拉是在離開隱居的蘇萊曼尼亞山區返回巴格達後啟示這部著作的。它的主旨基本上無涉時間和空間，揭示了宗教的內在真義。靈性的實質在各大宗教裡都是相同的，它們共同構成了信仰的根基。巴哈歐拉對其信仰作有如此闡明：“此乃上帝不變之信仰，永恆於過往，永生於未來。”

《四谷經》晚於《七谷經》，同樣啟示於巴哈歐拉流放巴格達時期。它是寫給伊拉克庫爾德斯坦地區基爾庫克的博學之士謝赫·阿卜杜勒-拉赫曼的。 《四谷經》闡述了發現那不可見者的四種方法，人心的四個層級，以及尋求所傾慕者——那配受讚美者、吸引者、受愛戴者——的四種神秘行者。該經所描述的四種神聖狀態源於《古蘭經》（第五十七章第3節）：“祂是首與末，是顯者與隱者；祂知曉萬物。”

小羅伯特·L.久利克

一九七五年二月一日

七谷經

奉寬宏、仁慈上帝之名！

讚美歸於上帝！祂令實有自虛無中呈現；將先存隱秘銘刻於人之碑碣；教諭他未曾知曉的神聖宣說之奧妙；令他成為已信者及臣服者的明晰之書；使他在此黑暗與衰敗時代見證萬物之創造， 並在非凡聖殿裡自永生之巔以奇妙之音道出——最終，人人皆能以其主之顯示者的身份獨自親身見證：誠然，除祂之外，別無上帝；人人皆因此而能奮力攀登那實在之巔，直到目空一切，惟見上帝。

[...見證萬物之           Kullu Shay’（庫勒謝）。]

[並在非凡聖殿        喻指 顯聖或顯聖者（the Manifestation）。]  

我亦讚美和頌揚從那神聖本質之洋分出的首片大海，自那一體之境閃耀的初道曙光，在那永恆之天升起的首輪太陽，被那獨一燈塔的先存之燈點燃的頭道火焰：祂乃尊貴者王國之艾哈邁德，親近者眾靈之穆罕默德，誠摯者領地之馬哈茂德。在知祂者的心中，“祂享有至偉之諸名號……無論你們以何種名號祈求祂。”願祂的眷屬及同伴享得充分、長久和永恆的安寧！

[  ...哈邁德        Aḥmad，同艾哈默德，穆罕默德在《古蘭經》裡的名稱。 ——譯註 ]

[  ...哈茂德        Maḥmúd，公元971-1030在世，伽色尼王朝素丹（蘇丹），著名軍事家，一譯“馬默德”。穆罕默德、艾哈邁德和馬哈茂德均為先知的名字和稱號，派生自動詞“讚美”和“頌揚”。 ——譯註]

再者，我已聽聞知識夜鶯在你生命之樹的枝頭上鳴唱，獲知確信之鴿在你心田之蔭的枝杈上高歌。誠然，我確已吸納你愛之衣飾的純淨芳香，並經由詳閱惠函而達至與你確然心照神會。你提及自己捨身於上帝並藉祂獲得新生，說起自己對上帝所鍾愛者、祂的諸名號之各個顯示及祂的諸屬性呈現之處的愛，我對此已加留意，故而，我自榮光聖界向你顯露神聖而輝煌之標誌，召喚你進入那神聖、親近和華美之天庭，引領你到達如此境界：視大千世界為空，惟見自己所愛戴之尊榮者的聖容；當受造萬生為無，一如其前世之莫名。

對此，那一體之夜鶯已於高西耶園唱出。他說：“你的心碑上將出現如此玄妙之神秘文字——‘敬畏真主吧，祂會授你知識。'你的靈魂之鳥亦將回憶起先世之聖殿，以渴望之翼翱翔於'走你的主走過的路'之天宇，在'而後以各類果實為食'之諸花園裡採擷共享之果。”

[  高西耶園       the garden of Ghawthíyyih，出自阿里的佈道。]

朋友啊，我憑生命起誓！這些果實產自知識領地的這些花樹之青園，你若借助名號與屬性諸鏡裡炫目的神聖本質之光將之品嚐，思慕之情便會從你手中奪去耐心與忍隱之韁繩，使你的靈魂隨那閃耀之光顫栗，將你從塵世家園領到實質中心裡的第一神聖居所，且將你提升至如此境界：翱翔天際，如行大地；健步水上，如履平川。倘若如此，我、你、凡登臨知識天堂者乃至其生命之園受到來自萬恩者示巴的確信之風吹拂而心靈復甦者，必為之歡喜。

[自萬恩者示巴              Sheba, 舊譯賽百或賽伯，猶太教和伊斯蘭教傳說中的王國，象徵安居之地或家園，位於阿拉伯半島西南。據《聖經·舊約》記載，所羅門王在位期間，示巴女王曾親率駝隊前去拜見他。 《古蘭經》亦有她會見所羅門王情形的描述。而據北非另一種傳說，示巴嫁給所羅門王，其子曼涅里克一世創建了所羅門王朝。 ——譯註]

循正道者，必得安寧！

此外，行者由凡塵居所達至天上家園之旅程，有“七階段”一說，亦有謂“七谷”或“七城”者。他們說，若非棄絕自我，歷經這些階段，行者便絕無可能抵達那親近和團聚之洋，亦無法暢飲那絕世佳釀。首階段乃是...

探寻之谷

本谷所需之坐騎乃是毅力；若無毅力，本旅程之行者便無處可至，無的可達。他決不可心灰氣餒；縱然經年累月艱苦跋涉，仍未一瞻那聖友之美，亦絕不該躊躇畏縮。因為，凡尋求“為我們”之“克爾白”者，皆因此佳音而欣喜：“我會在我的道上引導他們。”在探尋過程中，他們決然奉獻，厲兵秣馬，時刻嘗試由疏失之境進入生命之域。無束縛可阻礙他們，無勸言可製止他們。

[凡尋求“為我們”之“克爾白”者       [Ka’bih，位於麥加的聖所，這裡意指“目標”。]]

[“我會在我的道上引導他們。”  [《古蘭經》：“無論誰為我作出努力，我都會在我的道上引導他們。”]]

這些僕人義當清除心中的一切痕跡，因為心靈乃是神聖財富之源；義當杜絕模仿，即重蹈先祖前輩遺轍，對天下眾生閉合友好與敵意之門。

在本旅程中，尋者會抵達如此階段：他看見所有受造物都在四處遊蕩、意亂情迷之中尋找那聖友。他會看到：奮力追逐其約瑟之雅各何其之多！他將目睹：急切找尋所愛戴者之愛人何其之眾！他將見證：苦苦尋覓其屬意者之慕求者何其之盛！每一刻，他都有一重大發現；每一時，他都知悉一隱藏奧秘；因為他的心已離開兩個世界，向所愛戴者之克爾白進發。每一步，他都將得到來自無形聖域的扶助，他的求索熱度亦隨之彌增。

[奋力追逐其约瑟之雅各…    Jacob，又名以色列，希伯來人的祖先，以色列人傳統以他為本民族的祖先。 《聖經·舊約》稱他是以東人的祖先以掃的孿生弟弟。在前往亞蘭人部落途經伯特利時得到上帝的特別啟示，後來返回巴勒斯坦並再次得到上帝的啟示。約瑟（Joseph）為其子。晚年期間，雅各率眾子逃荒至埃及，投奔已在那裡的約瑟。後死在埃及，葬在巴勒斯坦，在《古蘭經》中，雅各被稱作葉爾孤白，據麥加古本載，葉爾孤白是易卜拉欣（亞伯拉罕）的兒子；是易司哈各（以撒）的哥哥而非其子。 ——譯註]

尋者須以愛之馬季農的標準來衡量其探尋。據說，有一日，他們看見馬季農一邊篩土，一邊落淚。他們問：“你在做什麼？”他回答說：“我在找蕾莉。”他們驚叫道：“哎呀，蕾莉可是純潔之靈啊，你竟然在塵土裡尋找她！”他說： “我無處不尋，只要能找到她，哪怕走遍海角天涯。”

[尋者須以愛之馬季農....  Majnún，字面意思為“瘋狂”。原為古波斯和古阿拉伯一著名情聖的稱謂， 其所愛者名叫蕾莉（Laylí），是一位阿拉伯王子的女兒。他們相愛的故事象徵著近乎神聖的人間真愛，成為很多波斯浪漫詩篇的主題，尤以尼扎米寫於公元1180-1189年的最為著名。]

誠然，智者不屑於在塵土裡尋找萬主之主，但馬季農的話語卻表明其探尋熱忱的熾烈程度。 “凡懷熱情尋覓者，必得所願。”     [阿拉伯諺語。]

真尋者唯其探尋目標是求，別無他顧；愛者只渴求與所愛戴者團聚，別無他意。若非捨棄一切，尋者無可如願。亦即，他須無視自己所見、所聞、所悟之一切，方能進入靈界，即上帝之城。我們若欲尋求祂，便需勞力；我們若欲暢飲與祂重聚之蜜，便需熱情；我們若嚐過此杯，便會拋棄塵世。

在本旅程中，行者居無定所，隨處棲身。為尋覓聖友之美，他察看每一張面容；為找到所愛戴者，他走遍每一個國度。他逢人交誼，廣結善緣，以期能從某些心智中發現那聖友的隱秘，或從某些面容中看到所愛者的圣美。

在本旅程中，倘若 他在上帝扶助下發現那無踪蹟之聖友的一絲跡象，自上天使者那裡嗅出失踪已久之約瑟的芳香，便能立即進入

 [自上天使者    [參見《古蘭經》和《聖經·舊約》有關約瑟的故事。]]

愛之谷     

並熔化於愛火之中。在本城，極樂之天冉冉升起，普照世界的渴望之陽熠熠生輝，愛的火焰熊熊燃燒；而愛火一旦燃燒起來，必將理智之果焚為灰燼。

此時此刻，行者已無察自身及周遭之一切。他不分無知和有知、懷疑和確信；他不辨引導之晨與謬誤之夜。他迴避不信和忠信，鴆毒於他不啻藥膏。對此，阿塔爾寫道：

[全名法里德丁·阿塔爾（Farídu’d-Dín ‘Aṭṭár），公元1150-1230年，波斯偉大的蘇非派詩人。]

為不信者準備的，乃是謬誤——為忠信者準備的，乃是信仰；

為阿塔爾之心準備的，乃是你的一絲痛苦。

本谷所需之坐騎乃是痛苦;若無痛苦，

本段旅程便永無終止。

在本站，

除了所愛戴者，

愛者別無所思;

除了聖友，

愛者不尋他庇。

每過一刻，

他在所愛者之道上奉獻百條生命;

每邁一步，

他在所愛者之足下拋舍千顆頭顱。

我的兄弟啊！

若未進入愛的埃及，

你絕不會見到約瑟那聖友之美;

若非如雅各那般放棄自己的外在之眼，

你絕不會睜開自己的內在生命之眼;

若未受到愛火的煎熬，

你絕不會與那渴慕之愛者神交。

愛者無所畏懼，且刀槍不入：

你見他在火中寒顫，在海裡乾涸。

愛者乃是地獄之火中的寒顫之人;

知者乃是浩瀚之海裡的乾涸之士。

[波斯神秘诗。]

愛，無欲求存，不冀求生：

愛者，死中覓生，辱中求榮。

欲達狂愛之境地，便須心智健全;

欲得聖友之交誼，便須靈性充盈。

在愛祂之路上，被祂套索之頸必得福佑，

落地之首必享快樂。

故此，朋友啊，摒棄自我，

你便能發現那蓋世無雙者;

超脫此必朽塵寰，你便能在天堂之巢覓得歸宿。

若欲點燃生命之火，暢行於聖愛之道，

你當淨空自身。

愛不攫取生靈，

鷹不掠食亡鼠。

[波斯神秘詩。可比較阿拉伯文“隱言經”第七首。]

愛，將世界各處點燃;

愛者，使其揚旗之地荒廢。

他的國度已無生命存在;

他的領地已無智者發令。

愛之利維坦吞噬理智之主， 

[利維坦，“聖經”裡講述的一種海中怪獸， 多見於“舊約”的“約伯書”.--譯註]

毀滅知識之君。

他暢飲七海，仍未解心中乾渴，他問：

“還有嗎？”   [“古蘭經”第五十章第29節。]

他自我閉絕，遠離世間一切。

愛絕緣於塵世，也絕緣於天堂。

他一身集七十二種癲狂。

[出自魯米（Jalálu'd-DIN魯米，公元1207至73年年）的詩集“瑪斯納維”（該Mathnaví，意為“心靈對句” - 譯註）。魯米又稱毛拉納（毛拉納，意為“我們的主人。” - 譯註），為最偉大的波斯蘇非派詩人，亦為毛拉維教團（亦稱“旋轉的德爾維希”）的創始人]

無數犧牲者被其鐐銬束縛，

無數睿智者被其利箭傷害。

須知，世界的每片鮮紅皆出自他的憤怒，

世人面頰上的每片蒼白皆緣於他的鴆毒。

他帶來死亡，而非救治;他行走陰谷，別無他途

然而，於愛者之唇，

他的毒液甜過蜜糖，於尋者之眼，

他的毀滅好過千萬條生命。

故而，須以愛火燒毀邪惡自我之面紗，

以使心靈純潔和淨化，

進而能夠認明大千世界之主的地位。

點燃愛火，焚毀一切，

繼而步入愛者之界。

[引自巴哈歐拉的一首頌詩。]

倘若愛者逃離愛之鷹的利爪，且得造物主確認，

他便會進入

Why is there no Social Democratic party in Taiwan Politics?

On Monday the 8th of December in our English social work class at Tzu Chi University, we discussed the absence of a leftist party in Taiwan politics, and we especially discussed an article by 吳媛媛.  Taiwan has two coalitions, a "pan-blue" coalition led by the KMT and a "pan-green" coalition led by the DPP, but both of these parties seem to primarily serve the interests of Taiwan businesses and the military and civil servants. The DPP presents itself as more "progressive" than the KMT, and to a limited extent this claim is well-deserved, certainly in terms of social legislation, but neither party has so far shown an interest in making any radical changes to change Taiwan into a society with higher taxes and more government involvement in wealth redistribution.

So, for example, a couple weeks ago in Chiayi City, my wife and I met an 84-year-old woman sitting on the side of the street selling a few fruits and vegetable. My wife recognized her, and the elderly woman soon recognized my wife, whom she had known as a girl. This elderly woman was an acquaintance of my mother-in-law, and had worked in the local park as a groundskeeper at some point in her life, but was now, at her advanced age, sitting by the side of a busy road trying to earn some money selling produce. Then this past weekend I volunteered with some friends from a hiking club with a social agency serving the elderly in Taipei, and we helped clean an apartment in which an 82-year-old man with no family to support him was living.  He had retired at about age 61, and used his retirement money to purchase a car, and had lived out of that car, without a fixed home, for 20 years, until last year when the agency found a small room for him to have a home.  I could go on and list other examples of elderly persons, in their eighties, working hard to make ends meet. The old-age pension in Taiwan is quite small, and not everyone qualifies for it.

So, why isn't there any major political party that represents the interests of the poor and working classes in Taiwan?  Who represents the interests of the many people working in the little shops all along the streets?  Why are both of the major parties in agreement on most policy issues?  As 

吳媛媛 writes, “除了中國議題以外，我感覺不到任何決定性的區別” [Aside from issues concerning China, I can't discern any difference to distinguish the parties].

Taiwan’s “economic miracle” from 1950 to 2000 (but especially from 1970-2000) was based on exports, first agricultural, then industrial, then high tech.  Trade and free trade has formerly been the tool for economic growth, so it would make sense for neoliberal pro-trade ideologies to dominate in Taiwanese politics. And trade has done a fair job of raising the standard of living in Taiwan.  The Taiwanese enjoy about half the per-capita income as Americans, about the same as a poorer European country such as Portugal or Greece. However, since 2000, the vast majority in Taiwan have experienced no increase in their income (just like the lower 80% of the American income distribution, see article by Heidi Shierholz and Lawrence Mishel  or the Frontline article about Two American Families), so perhaps people in Taiwan will question neoliberal assumptions about the value of free trade. The Frozen Garlic blog suggests this may already be happening.

America, like Taiwan, doesn’t really have a left party, as the Democratic Party in the USA is centrist coalition party, although social democrats and socialists in America often support and vote for Democrats since voting for leftist third party candidates splits the vote and makes reactionary Republican victories more likely. Taiwan, likewise, has authentic socialist and social democratic voices, including a genuine Green Party (which won a couple local elections in the recent voting), but these are fringe organizations, and their hostility toward the so-called “communist” regime in Beijing deprives them of support from potential “leftist” sources.

There are many cultural parallels between the USA and Taiwan. It’s worth considering these.

Neither society has a strong leftist political party (although the USA has a strong leftist tradition, and I recommend John Nichol’s flawed by interesting book, “The S Word” for a highly accessible description of Socialism in American history).  Explanations of why a strong labor party never gained power in the USA often observe some of the following: 

In America, everyone wants to be rich, hopes they may become rich, and identifies with the wealthy elites (whom everyone expects someday to join), so a pro-worker party that would constrain capitalists has never been able to emerge as a dominate national political force; 

America has a special history that, until about thirty or forty years ago, made a true leftist party “unnecessary” since the centrist and right-wing parties needed to do relatively little redistribution to keep the electorate happy, as economic growth, special circumstances of being a nation that had experienced ten generations of cheap or free land on a frontier, and other unusual geographical situations distinguished America from Europe. 

American politics have been more dominated by concerns about immigration, religion, American identity, race relations, and foreign policy, and these matters have captured the attention of the electorate, distracting them from issues of economic justice and unfairness in capitalism or income inequality.

American anti-socialist hysteria from the 1920s on through the Cold War made the growth of a true leftist party difficult. The fact that some American leftists were sympathetic to the totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and elsewhere further alienated potential American leftists.

Parallels to Taiwan could include the following:

Taiwan, like the United States, is a society of strivers, where most people hope to be successful in business or in climbing to higher levels social and economic status. As in the United States, Taiwan people may especially admire businessmen, capitalists, and other economic elites, and identify with those persons, either hoping someone in their family will eventually join in such a high level of economic success, or else perhaps in some sort of feeling of deference and obligation to paternalistic bosses who have created wealth for their workers and Taiwan society.

Taiwan was, like the United States, a society without a distant gap between elites and common people.  During the Qing Dynasty, a few wealthy land-owning families may have dominated the society, but for most immigrants from Fujian or elsewhere on the mainland, the society was a relatively egalitarian frontier society.  As with the United States, a certain degree of opportunity existed for people to make a living on land taken from oppressed indigenous persons. Then, when Taiwan became Japanese, all Taiwanese were equally put lower on a hierarchy with the Japanese on top. When Chinese refugees replaced the Japanese as a ruling class of Taiwan, they were hardly a typical ruling class, as many were peasant solders in KMT, with educational and class backgrounds similar to those of the Taiwanese. Additionally, the KMT (with pressure from military and political sponsors in the USA) redistributed land in Taiwan, greatly equalizing opportunities in the agricultural society. These are all unique geographic and historical circumstances that made  the emergence of class consciousness and a leftist party difficult in Taiwan. 

Just as in the United States, where concerns about immigration, race, or military strength distracted people from concerns about issues of wealth redistribution and economic justice, the people of Taiwan also are constantly distracted from meaningful policy issues by the ongoing political controversies concerning superficial matters such as national identity. 吳媛媛 mentions this.  And, while American children probably have better civics education than their Taiwan counterparts, and American schools and universities seemingly put a greater emphasis on public sphere engagement than in test-obsessed Taiwan, both American and Taiwanese education systems do far less than European schools to teach young people about political ideologies, philosophies, or the history of political ideas or class struggles. 

The United States had anti-socialist hysteria in the 1920s and 1950s, and engaged in a cold war against the Soviet Union, but this sort of anti-communism pales in comparison to what Taiwan experienced with the White Terror (the KMT killed off or imprisoned many of the Japanese-educated Taiwanese intelligentsia, as well as anyone suspected of leftist sympathies) and the very real existential threat from so-called “Communist” military forces across the Straits of Formosa. In both the USA and Taiwan, talk of wealth redistribution could be associated with the rhetoric of a potential military enemy that had weapons targeting citizens.

The KMT was initially a broad coalition of military and political leaders, and for a while it included Communist Party members and sympathizers.  The 1927 massacres of leftists and communists initiated by the right-wing of the KMT purged the National Party of leftist elements.  The non-communist leftist faction led by persons such as 馮玉祥, 汪精衛, and 閻錫山 was further discredited when 汪精衛 collaborated with the invading Japanese. Thus, there are specific unique reasons related to interpersonal relationships among KMT leadership, the decisions of Chiang Kai-shek, and the behavior of individuals identified with the leftist wing of the KMT, that made the development of a leftist party in KMT-controlled areas difficult.

吳媛媛 is, I agree, quite right to observe that Taiwanese people are poorly-served by their media.  During the demonstrations around the Legislative Assembly in March and April of this year, I regularly visited the site, and engaged in hours of conversations with demonstrators and visitors to the festive street scene. Over and over again, people repeated this complaint, that they did not understand the policies, and they did not trust the media to give fair explanations of the policies, nor did they trust the government to honestly explain their policies. The sort of people attracted to the demonstration were naturally more skeptical, perhaps even cynical, about government leaders, but still, the protestors all seemed to desire a society where at least some media outlets would offer honest, fair, and critical analysis of policies and proposals, trying to educate the electorate about likely benefits and costs, both the certain and uncertain consequences of legislation or treaties. Everyone I spoke with lacked trust in the KMT or the DPP to give people honest analysis of legislation or treaties.  In particular, I heard from many of the people  a vague sort of class consciousness, as people kept saying they favored trade and development, but they wanted the sort of policies that would offer benefits to most Taiwanese and allow the Taiwanese to preserve their society or culture, and they thought that both parties, but especially the KMT, would be more likely to create legislation and policies that would direct all benefits to those who were already wealthy and powerful, or those who were well-connected to the politicians. 

By the way, 吳媛媛 describes the difference between modern welfare states where the government sector makes up a third to half of the economy and Taiwan, where taxes are very low and government services are minimal. For the percent of the economy under public supervision (Government spending as percent of GDP) there are several sources of data, including the IMF, the OECD, the Economic Freedom Index, the European Union, the United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance, and so forth.  The numbers don’t always agree, and sometimes they fluctuate more than one could imagine possible, so I wonder if one reason the data conflict is that these analyses use different methods for estimating local or provincial/state spending in excess of national government spending. It’s extremely difficult to calculate provincial/state and local spending without double-counting since most national governments allocate money to states and local/tribal governments, and provinces/states also “spend” money by giving it to localities to “spend” again. There are problems with all these data sources.  Anyway, here are two examples, and they are slightly different than the numbers cited by 吳媛媛.

The International Monetary Fund (October of 2012) at The Guardian.

which shows…

France 55%

Sweden 49% 

the UK 45%

USA and Japan 40%

Australia 35%

Taiwan 22%

South Korea 21%

Singapore 18%.

The 2014 Index of Economic Freedom (created by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, two actors highly biased against government spending) is easily available, and suggests these percentages of the economy under public supervision:

France 56%

Sweden 51% 

the UK 49%

USA and Japan, both around 42%

Australia 35%

Taiwan 23%

South Korea 30%

Singapore 17%.

吳媛媛 was reporting a government sector in Taiwan of about 12.4% of GDP, based on the 2012 Heritage Foundation index of Economic Freedom, but the number of 23% comes from the 2014 report, and there is no way government spending nearly doubled in the past two years!

For critiques of measuring Government percentages of GDP, I recommend 

Dean Baker’s opinion at CEPR (Dean Baker is one of my favorite economists),

which critically discusses Lew Daly’s July 2014 essay in the New York Times, which also critiqued how GDP and government spending are considered. 

Ten "Non-Commandments" for atheists and humanists: I reject eight of them.

Lex Bayer and John Figdor have a new book out: “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century,” and I've just read a review of it.

I'm glad to see such a book.  I do hope non-religious persons and materialists and atheists and so forth will devote time and effort to defining their ethics and trying to live according to their ethics.  I think non-religious ethics are not likely to give us a sustainable world or a particularly good society.  But at least the attempt is important, and I wish them well. By the way, I consider myself most definitely a humanist. I'm a religious humanist, and there is no contradiction in that.

The review I read included the ten "non-commandments" for atheists and humanists, and I find I personally could only give full agreement or commitment to two of the ten.  

The Ten Non-Commandments:

I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.

The world has an objective reality.  In that sense, it is real.  This world may be a contingent world, and its reality may depend upon a deeper reality.  In that sense, this world is less real than the deeper reality upon which it depends. For example, if this world is a projection, or analogous to a computer program running, then the source of the projection, or the source of the computer program, would exist in some “more real” reality than this world.  

Our desire to understand the world does not inform our understanding of the degree to which our sensory perceptions of “the world” are accurate and reveal to us “reality”.  The basis for our belief that the world is real is that other minds agree with us about what we perceive. Because I seem to see and experience the same things as others around me do, I believe what I perceive and experience is real. Shared perceptions are a basis for belief.

II. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.

I doubt that we are limited to the use of our human senses.  Empirically, I believe there are cases in which people have perceived the world while in comas, or while asleep, while dreaming, while unconscious, or even while in a state of temporary death.  The statement that “we only perceive through our senses” can be correct if we define “our senses” to include some of these seemingly non-physical abilities to perceive the world.  But people usually mean by “human senses” our ability to witness with eyes, ears, touch, and so forth, or our ability to witness the output from the machines we use to enhance our perceptions.  

I also believe our imagination, our creativity, and our intuition can perceive the world, and the perception of these non-sensory approaches, while less reliable than the perception of our physical senses, is also a valid and potentially accurate way to perceive the world. To rule out intuition, creativity, and imagination as methods for perception is to needlessly limit our understanding of human perception.

Someone might say that "human senses" take information from outside and imagination, creativity, and intuition are based on the generation of information from inside, not taking from the outside, but I think that we can access "outside" influences through intuition, creativity, and imagination. 

III. We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.

Yes, I agree that we use rational thought and language, and ought to use these, while recognizing that there are probably limits to what can be understood about the world through thought, through rational thought, and through language. The nature of these limitations may be such that we cannot understand or accurately measure these limitations using thought, rational thought, and language. We don't know what we are missing, we can't perceive the limits.  So, in our attempts to understand the world, we may sometimes use things other than rational thought and language, such as trust in experts, intuitive insight, traditional wisdom, and other sources of understanding, as imperfect supplements to what we gain through rational thought and language.  Language, for example, could be defined broadly to include music, visual arts, movement, and so forth. Sometimes we understand the world through music, visual images, and other sources of communication and knowledge exchange that are not especially rational. 

IV. All truth is proportional to the evidence.

The sort of “truth” that we can agree upon amongst ourselves is proportional to the evidence.  There may be better, more accurate truths that lack evidence (the sort of evidence we find through our senses and rational thought).  There may be truths that exist in a way that defies our ability to accumulate evidence to support those truths. For such truths that lack the evidence we are capable of gathering, the truth is “weaker” only in the sense that we are less likely to reach agreement amongst ourselves about those truths. We ought to have lower expectations that people will reach a consensus about such truths.  Those truths about which we can reach consensus will be the truths that have evidence that is most widely available and acceptable. 

V. There is no God.

The term people use for “God” is a term used by human minds to refer to something beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp.  If you can narrow “God” by applying definitions and conditions to what God is, than that “God” you have imagined is, by definition, a thing that you have “created” through your thought (your definitions, conditions, your imagination, your language), and may or may not correspond to whatever “God” actually is.  When a person says, “there is no God” they mean: 

I do not accept or believe in any of the evidence that God (any "god" I can imagine) exists, and I cannot conceive of the possibility that I could be open to a hypothesis that God exists, and I hold that my attitude toward belief in God is correct, accurate, and closer to truth than the attitudes of those who believe through faith or trust in authorities who reveal truths rather than reaching truths through sensory evidence and rational thought. 

I am not such a person.  I believe that there certainly is an Unknowable Source of reality beyond our abilities to comprehend and understand. I am willing to take, (with some slight reservations), testimony of persons who claim to have direct intuitive understanding of the reality of a “God” as equally valid or even superior to the lack of evidence in what my physical senses and rational thought can give me.  So, I simply don’t agree with this commandment.  And, I do not see why it is necessary.  Certainly agnosticism is the more rational and logical approach to God, rather than disbelief.

At any rate, this all boils down to Occam's Razor and whether that particularly useful tool of logic and rational thought ought to become an object of worship to replace God.  I'm generally in favor of logic and Occam's Razor, but I don't feel obliged to deify it.

VI. We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us happy and avoid things that do not.

But the sort of happiness that is associated with good moods and emotional well-being is not the only thing we pursue.  We also pursue value, connection, achievement, engagement, accomplishment, growth, right action, good reputations, perfection, beauty, intimacy, and knowledge, and we may sacrifice happiness to achieve these things.  Happiness may be the central and core thing we pursue, but it is not the only thing, and value, connection, achievement, engagement, accomplishment, growth, correctness, reputation, perfection, beauty, intimacy, and knowledge may in many cases be more important than happiness, and we may trade happiness (accept a degree of unhappiness) in order to achieve these other things.

VII. There is no universal moral truth. Our experiences and preferences shape our sense of how to behave.

There probably are universal moral truths.  Even an atheist might be able to accept them as emergent properties of the universe that, when recognized and followed by intelligent beings, increase long-term chances for survival, while maximizing happiness, growth, development, intimacy, beauty, connection, etc.  Aside from these moral maxims that probably hold true as principles that might be discovered from experiment and evolution and computer simulation or game theory, I personally believe that there are probably universal moral truths embedded in this reality by our Creator. Most of human “morality” is relative, and our experiences and preferences do shape our unconscious ideas about ethics and morality, and most of our logical argument about what is moral is an after-the-fact attempt to justify our intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. That intuitive sense of justice or morality is unconscious, and is also likely to be biased in our personal favor.  But, despite the fact that moral truth is relative, at least in general, I still think there are probably deeper moral truths in this universe that are universal, and simply emerge in slightly different forms according to different situations. 

VIII. We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy.

We are more likely to act morally when our own happiness is enhanced by the happiness of others. However, we may also act morally when the growth, wisdom, knowledge, achievement, accomplishment, engagement, connection, intimacy, etc. of others increases our own happiness.  Sometimes other people need something other than happiness. 

IX. We benefit from living in, and supporting, an ethical society.

Yes.  We do.  I totally agree with this point.

X. All our beliefs are subject to change in the face of new evidence, including these.

Yes.  I agree.  This is the second point I agree with.

I've read the generalization that all religions can be misused to support violence, and the sweeping accusation that all religions have in fact been used to support atrocities and violence.  I think, however, that this is not technically correct.  My understanding is that there are several religions for which nonviolence and anti-warfare principles are central to the core belief system, and I am unaware that these religions or sects have perpetuated any atrocities, violent persecutions, wars, or generally supported aggressive warfare or communal violence.  I would include in this list:

Jains
Baha'is.
Quakers
Shakers
Amish
Jehovah's Witnesses

I think it's also important to recognize that when religions have become militant, or supported nationalistic or imperialistic wars, there have been heroic persons who stood up for a vision of peace and humanistic spirituality that rejected warfare and nationalism.

Let's start with Buddhism, which has recently been in the news because of Buddhist anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence in Myanmar and Thailand (plus anti-Hindu violence in Sri Lanka). When anti-religious zealots claim all religious are violent, people sometimes suggest that Buddhism isn't so violent, and the example to contradict this claim is the fact that Japanese Buddhist leaders generally supported the nationalist militaristic agenda of Imperial Japan during World War II. However, a few Buddhists disagreed with the nationalism and militarism, and suffered for their thought crimes; people should know about figures such as Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944) and Toda Josei (1900-58), or other Japanese who opposed militarism and nationalism.  Within Buddhism, there have been peace-oriented benevolent societies trying to improve people's lives (e.g., Soka Gakkai International; Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation), although like any large human institutions, these groups are plagued by internal politics and intrigues, the corrupting influence of power, authoritarianism, and the inevitable problem of human personalities importing their own mental and cultural issues into their religious organizations.  This is not a problem unique to religious groups or religion: it is a problem of human nature and any large organization using hierarchical structures and bureaucratic control systems (which seem necessary in all large human institutions).  Some Buddhist activists for peace include members of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Thích Nhất Hạnh, (of Vietnam, now in France) and Daewon Ki (of Korea, now in Hawaii).

Lately, some people have claimed that Islam is especially violent. In the Islamic world, there have been a number of famous champions of peace, including Shaykh Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (1853–1927) in Senegal, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) in British India, and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) also in British India (although Ahmad's movement in Islam, the Ahmadiyya Community, may or may not be an independent non-Islamic religion, depending upon your premises of how religions and religious movements should be defined and distinguished). Currently there are many significant Muslims working for peace and non-violence, including such distinguished persons as the scholars Farid Esack (South Africa) and Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah (originally from Mauritania), as well as the Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad; and there are many non-violent movements in the Muslim world, including supporters of the Green Movement in Iran, The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers,  La'Onf in Iraq, and so forth.

There are groups like the World Council of Religions for Peace as well.

The Christian tradition of non-violence is probably well-known (Martin Luther King, Jr., Leo Tolstoy, etc.), as is the Hindu tradition (Mahatma Gandhi).

People who have supported violence, warfare, and oppression of other human beings have often justified their murderous aggression and heartless cruelty by appealing to religious traditions or values, but there are some religious that have not been used for violence, because their core teachings are for peace and against war. Likewise, religious have inspired leaders who worked for peace and human dignity.  Secularists and atheists have also worked for peace, and have also used non-religious secular ideologies to justify cruelty, violence, and warfare. I'm very skeptical of arguments that religions are especially bad ideologies, or that secular non-religious values are inherently superior or less likely to be used to justify oppression, cruelty, and warfare.  It seems to me that religions offer an important alternative view to whatever ideology or value system is supported by the state, the ruling elites, or political leaderships.

Thoughts on UFOs and aliens.

What are UFOs?  I don’t know what they are, but people continue to see objects in the sky (and rarely, on the ground, or on water, or under water) that they can’t identify.  The objects are usually stars, planets, planes, human satellites, balloons, experimental aircraft, drones, meteors, bolids, strange weather phenomena, hallucinations, or other things that have no supernatural or extraterrestrial origins.  There are also many reports that are hoaxes, or honest witnesses who have been deceived by hoaxes. But, I’m convinced there is a residue of sightings that are still unexplainable, and even among the hallucinations, I think there are cases that defy logical explanations (as some hallucinations may not conform to typical patterns of hallucinations, or multiple persons share a nearly identical subjective experience of the hallucination).   

I have always been intrigued by the similarities between alien and UFO encounters and folklore concerning faeries and supernatural creatures.  There also seem to be parallels between the entities encountered by persons who go into dissociative trances brought on through rituals or use of hallucinogens and the UFO experiences and encounters with faeries or elves in folklore.  I’ve often wondered if there might be some connection, where some sort of an objective experience of a different sort of reality is distorted through subjectivity and the psychological states of witnesses during their encounters.  

There are also photographs and films of some UFOs, and while most of these are hoaxes (especially now that people know how to create computer graphics and merge these into film using Adobe products) or simply prosaic objects (e.g., insects flying across the field of vision), some of the images may be authentic and may show objects that fall into the unexplainable category. And, if so, this further suggests an objective reality basis for the subjective “UFO encounter” experiences. 

There are some emotional reasons pulling me toward openness to the idea that at least some of the UFOs represent technologies of advanced non-human civilisations.  In the first place, the Fermi’s Paradox problem of why we have not detected intelligent alien life yet suggests a few frightening possibilities: 1) we are the first species to evolve to our level of civilisation in this region of the galaxy; 2) we are the only species or the first species to evolve to a stage of technological civilisation; 3) there is some sort of a barrier that makes it impossible or nearly impossible for a species at our level of civilisation to advance to becoming an interstellar colonial civilisation (perhaps civilisations such as ours always destroy themselves, or always fail to establish enduring interstellar civilisations, or always are destroyed by something before they can establish interstellar colonies).  The idea that some UFOs represent alien civilisations helps us get rid of the problem of Fermi’s paradox, and reassures us that we are not alone in this part of the universe. Otherwise, we may face a frightening destiny almost certain to wipe out our species or limit our ability to get off this planet and out of this solar system. Another emotional reason for believing that some UFOs represent advanced non-human civilisations is that it increases our sense of possibilities and unexpected knowledge. If some UFOs are from advanced non-human civilisations, their behaviours and technologies are quite different from what we expect. And, if there is a connection between entities encountered while in altered states of consciousness and folklore entities and UFO aliens, it seems reality is quite different from what we so far have understood through our use of the scientific method. That seems like an exciting possibility to me, so I’m emotionally attracted to that possibility.

Another reason to think that non-human civilisations are responsible for some of the UFO phenomena is that this helps resolve unexplained mysteries.  Many people are uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.  Currently, if you share my opinion that some small fraction (representing hundreds of cases around the planet each year) of UFO events defy explanation, you are left with perplexing mysteries.  I have no answer or explanation that satisfies. Simply leaving the matter at that becomes deeply dissatisfying, so introducing the hypothesis, and then the belief, that some of these encounters represent contact with non-human civilisations offers a resolution and some sort of answer to the problem.  It is far more satisfying (for most people, I suppose) to “know” that UFOs represent aliens or else always represent hoaxes, natural phenomena, hallucinations, and so forth.  Allowing that some cases may not fit into either category, or may possibly represent non-human civilisations, creates a tension of having no answer to a question.  That tension is too uncomfortable for many people.

There are good reasons for thinking UFOs are not evidence of alien non-human technologies.  It currently seems that the resources necessary for interstellar travel would be immense. For a civilisation to send a craft across dozens of light years, or hundreds of light years, and then have that craft controlled by a biological entity rather than advanced computers and artificial intelligence, and then have that biological entity behave as most unexplained UFOs are reported to behave, defies all common sense. But then, if any of these things are representatives of non-human civilisations and technologies, that is perhaps exactly what we should expect: they are not human, and human common sense may be utterly unable to grasp their non-human motives.

So, here is where I stand on the UFO phenomena: I think some of the unexplainable encounters with UFOs may represent non-human technology.  I have no idea what sort of non-human civilisation might be behind the UFOs: are they time-travellers from this planet, or visitors from other dimensions, or visitors from other solar systems light years away from ours?  I suspect there is a connection between encounters with UFOs, deities (such as bodhisattvas, Mary, various other saints, local or traditional gods), and folkloric magical humanoid entities (elves and faeries).  I would not be surprised if encounters with ghosts are also somehow connected. For the present, the connection I make is that it seems to me that the unconscious mind of the persons who encounters these things is playing a large role in shaping the experience, and the collective ideas of the culture (archetypes) also seem to shape the experience and its interpretation. 

I think some aspects of consciousness and memory exist outside the brain.  That is, I believe consciousness plays a role in shaping brains and physical reality as we experience it, and I believe that brains “receive” the mind as well as generate mental phenomena.  I believe this because I think there have been sufficient cases of out-of-body perceptual experiences, near-death experiences, reincarnation phenomena, and some forms of telepathy to give me a reasonable empirical grounding for suspecting that consciousness is not entirely depending on brain functioning.  The fact that I am a religious believer and my religion also teaches me that reality includes things that are not usually available for scientific testing and that some aspect of personal identity survives death also informs my opinion that consciousness is not entirely dependent on the brain (although manifestation of consciousness in the material world does seem to generally require brain activity). Because I believe consciousness exists in some form outside the material processes of the brain, I’m open to the possibility that UFO and alien encounters represent interesting “consciousness” phenomena or technology, rather than advanced spaceship technologies.

Since I already believe in consciousness existing outside the brain, I’m open to the possibility that UFO and alien encounters have more to do with human consciousness than interstellar travel. I recognise that some of the unexplained UFO phenomena involve physical objects, or at least physical evidence that multiple witnesses see or things that can be captured with photographs and movies. That suggests interstellar travel rather than some sort of supernatural paranormal encounter involving altered states of human consciousness, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that technologies involving consciousness might be able to create physical phenomena such as “spacecraft” or whatever. If there are non-human alien civilisations, they may have had hundreds of thousands, or tens of millions, or even billions of years to develop their science and technology so that what they do appears indistinguishable from magic to us.

At a personal level, saying I wouldn’t be surprised if some UFOs represent non-human alien technology is quite different from making a scientific claim that this is indeed true. I am not convinced at a level where I would “reject the null hypothesis” and claim I have high confidence that aliens are visiting humans. That is, I’m guessing there is a greater than 5% chance that all UFO phenomena have accurate explanations involving no alien non-human technology or entities. But, I guess there is a 85% or 90% possibility that some UFO phenomena do represent alien entities or technologies, which means I generally think non-human entities are sometimes observed or experienced by humans. Unlike many true believers in UFO phenomena, I don’t think encounters with aliens are extremely important. I’m unimpressed by the claims of people who say aliens are giving them guidance or using them as mouthpieces to send messages to humanity; these people always seem to be self-deluded or actively lying. If aliens are contacting some humans or allowing humans to observe them, but they are not landing craft at the UN headquarters, I assume they prefer to remain observers and unobtrusive and not influential.  I also assume if aliens visit Earth they represent civilisations that are tens of thousands of years older than ours, or perhaps millions of years more advanced than ours, and so I assume they are wiser and more far-sighted than we are. If they want to remain a mystery, and do not seek to reveal themselves in some unambiguous way, I trust they have their reasons. 

I am comfortable with ambiguity, unanswered questions, and lack of definite final resolution of mysteries. So, I like the mystery of UFO phenomena. I like the way UFO and paranormal fields create a sort of counter-culture that questions the dominant mainstream, because I am generally suspicious of dominant mainstream hegemonic discourse and world views. The UFO and paranormal scenes are too full of crackpots and charlatans to attract much of my time or attention, but I admire people who try to do quality investigative work and theorising related to these mysteries. I respect people who are more certain than I am in their conclusions about non-human civilisations visiting Earth. And, I admire some of the skeptics that help expose the hoaxes and charlatans and crackpots. 

We have lasted some 400 years.

I've been thinking of how spectacle distracts and numbs people so they won't take time to live authentic lives and make meaningful connections with others and that sort of thing.  Today I happened to see a headline that distracted me: "Dem Congresswoman Says the Constitution is 400 Years Old" and I wondered if an elected representative had actually been so ignorant, but when I read what the woman (Sheila Jackson Lee) had said, I realized the article and headline were very, very misleading.  She had not claimed the Constitution was 400 years old, she had said, with reasonable accuracy, but rather awkward phrasing:

. . . Frankly, maybe I should offer a good thanks to the distinguished members of the majority, the Republicans, my chairman, and others for giving us an opportunity to have a deliberative constitutional discussion that reinforces the sanctity of this nation and how well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a Constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not. . . 

She simply left out (but implied) the phrase "more recently" or "since 1787" or "later" or something like that.  The "nation" (as opposed to the state or the country) can reasonably be said to begin around the time Europeans started establishing permanent colonies and settlements in North America, which would indeed be about 400 years ago, when initial Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonial settlements began in New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Maine.

 Sheila Jackson Lee could have meant ". . . sanctity of this nation and well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating since 1787 under our Constitution. . ."  and anyway, I think it was understood by the Continental Congress that as Englishmen they were protected by the [unwritten] Constitution of England, or at least that would have been the common understanding, and it was the failure of Parliament and the British Monarch to abide by the American [correct] understanding of the unwritten English Constitution and the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation that led to our constitution.

The more egregious and disturbing error in Sheila Jackson Lee's poorly phrased statement is the silly claim that the Constitution "clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not."   That is her serious mistake, and the headline should read, "Dem Congresswoman Says the Constitution Clearly Defines What is Constitutional, Implies No Need for Supreme Court to Interpret Its Meaning."

Meaningless news anyway, the inarticulate ramblings of persons in the House of Representatives don't really matter.  Bills that are introduced and have some chance of passing (or should have some chance of passing) are newsworthy, and I wish media outlets would give more information about those.

Recently discovered a wonderful Pro Publica investigative piece on what images have been censored from Sina Weibo, and I highly recommend taking a look.  By the way, Blogger sites, including this one, are also blocked (censored) in China.

Musings on why I believe in life after death.

Last night I was having a conversation with some friends, and one of them asked me whether I believed in life after death.  I hesitated, and then answered, "yes" because I do.  I had hesitated because I suspect the existence we experience after death is so different from what we imagine, and our "identity" or "self" is so different in that existence, that it might not really be accurate to consider it the same life we have here continued into another place.  That is, I don't expect to find us in a heaven such as is conventionally imagined or reported in some of the near-death-experiences. 

The person I was speaking with asked me why I believed in life after death.  I guess there are five reasons.

First is that I take some truths on authority, and the Authority I happen to trust is Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri Baha'u'llah (1817-1892).  Whatever signal is available to humanity from the Creator is usually somewhat garbled with noise, and so while I think some mystics and holy persons and spiritually enlightened figures have got the big picture right, I think they have lots of the details wrong. As a Baha'i, it seems to me that there was something extremely special about Baha'u'llah's perceptions and the Revelation that He gave humanity. His narrative (it's for the most part a standard Islamic narrative) about God communicating to people through a few special Messengers of God who receive Revelations makes sense to me, and He Himself (Baha'u'llah) fits into this narrative as a Messenger of God (whatever that means). I think the ratio of signal to noise in what Baha'u'llah gave us was very, very high.

 Baha'u'llah did assure humanity that there was some sort of eternal nature in our individual human existence that would continue after death, although you have to look pretty hard through the English translations to find anything specific or anything that would justify a conventional belief in the sort of heaven that most folk religions promise their believers. As I understand the Baha'i Revelation, the emphasis stays on creating a heaven on earth in the present through practice of spiritual discipline (prayer, service, meditation, selflessness, kindness, love, etc.)  I've considered the possibility that Baha'u'llah (and God) were essentially misleading us with a half-truth (the truth might be something like: God is all-knowing, so God knows all your thoughts, experiences, memories, feelings, and social connections, and since those things are essentially you, you are eternal in God's memory, and God is the only pure reality anyway, as what we experience is dependent upon God; however, your consciousness as an individual will cease at your death and your independent identity as a soul merges into a spiritual reality much as your body's atoms dissipate into the physical reality), but I now tend to discount that.  It would be utilitarian gesture to spare us the misery and terror of death by letting is go on believing in a comforting afterlife or the eventual justice of the universe in post-death judgment, and as I look at this universe, I get the distinct impression God's morality is not utilitarian, and our comfort is not God's objective in this universe.

That said, religion as a human institution seems essential to keeping society in good order and helping us stay cohesive.  Belief in a supernatural observer who can punish or reward us in this life and afterwards seems to do a lot of good in terms of helping convince people they shouldn't "cheat" and engage in unfair exchanges or take more than they give. I am sort of excited about the hypothesis that much of our recent evolutionary brain development was encouraged by cultural environments in which human groups that were able to engage in story-telling and organized religion were able to gain many advantages in fitness through enhanced cohesion and trust among their in-group.  Organized religion requires an understanding of five levels of intentionality to get transmitted, and that requires significant brain work: I want (1) you to believe (2) in a supernatural being who hears our prayers and understands our desires (3) and therefore wants (4) to help us so long as we understand and obey (5) this supernatural being. The story-telling that goes along with religion also requires significant brain size. Our huge heads and large brains demand significant nutrition and complicate our pregnancies and births, so the pay-off must be pretty extreme.

Anyway, that's the first reason I believe in life-after-death.  Baha'u'llah says such a thing is so.

The second reason I believe in life after death is reincarnation phenomena.  I don't think we come back again as different people as standard reincarnation belief holds.  Maybe that does happen, sometimes, or always, but I don't think so.  It doesn't make sense to me.  But, I have read Ian Stevenson's 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and I'm aware of some more recent cases that are even more convincing than anything in those 20 case studies.  I don't know what is going on with memories of dead people getting transferred to children, but whatever it is, it seems to indicate to me that some forms of consciousness (such as memory) survive death, although I have no theory as to how some of these memories get "caught" by other people, or why there is a fairly low signal-to-noise ratio in the memories (children with the memories of other people who have died tend to remember many things with spectacular accuracy, even trivial details, but they also have lots of significant things they get wrong, or miss; the ratio of hits to misses is high enough to come out way ahead of any probability, but the misses are significant. I am actually open to the possibility that some forms of memory and consciousness exist independently of observable physical matter as we know it (not in our brains), as these would help explain shared hallucinations, telepathic entity encounters (seeing your friend in your room and then later learning the friend had been killed moments before you hallucinated seeing them). Reincarnation phenomena don't prove life after death, but they are a source of empirical evidence that some sort of continuation after death (at least of some of our memories and some of our feelings for other people) may be able to continue outside our bodies after death, at least for a while, and that is certainly suggestive.

The third reason I believe in life after death is the phenomena of living people having communication with dead people, most often through hallucinations (ghost encounters or spirit encounters). It's not just having hallucinations that suggest to me that there is some communication between living and the dead, it's the fact that in some exceptional cases this communication seems to offer information that doesn't seem to be available by any normal method to the person having the hallucination. This is probably only evidence for some sort of telepathy where information is transferred by means we don't understand and senses we don't know about, and then the recipient's brain invents the hallucination of the dead person as a bringer of this information in order to make sense of it. Yet, it might also be evidence for the survival of a will or conscious individuality of a person after death.  Medium encounters with the dead also go in this category, although the ratio of signal to noise with mediums is very, very low (usually), and in fact most mediums are frauds. Yet, I think there have been some people who on some occasions seem to have received information in a supernatural way, and they claim it comes through the intercession of dead people.  I'm also including encounters with saints, angels, and Mary the Mother of Jesus in this category of encounters with the dead.  I understand that in some cultures the living and dead have regular communications, and it's hardly considered supernatural.  Rather, it's considered normal.  If we apply Occam's Razor I know this should all be taken as telepathy and positive hallucinations created by the unconscious, but I still take it as suggestive of life after death.

The fourth reason I believe in life after death is the phenomena of near-death-experiences. Yes, I know some people have been able to reproduce near-death-experiences in laboratories using drugs and electro-magnetic waves, and the correspondence of the experience to processes of death in the brain is also something I understand (e.g., life review as a result of the brain's ability to keep memories from flooding the consciousness being removed).  Yet I don't ever see that finding physical correlates to spiritual or supernatural activities is an explanation for those spiritual or supernatural experiences, especially when the supernatural or spiritual experiences involve sensory perceptions and experiences that can be remembered later for which there is no explanation given our present understanding of physical reality. If something spiritual or supernatural happens to us, and we experience it physically (as we must), then there will be physical correlates of that experience.  For example, if in meditation we "merge with the universe" I will of course expect the brain to show some sort of corresponding manifestation of shut-down in areas related to the sense of our body's position in space or the sense of self.

This raises the question of whether all "supernatural" experiences ought to have physical manifestations that can be studied scientifically. My expectation is that this universe is complete, and eventually after millions of years, or even billions of years, of science, there will be no "gaps" to fill with supernatural explanations. But I'm open to the possibility that some things in our reality are not ever going to be available for satisfactory study by the scientific method.  I'm also open to the possibility that our ability to reason and use logic and math is also limited, or perhaps logic and math are themselves too limited, and so humans as we exist now are inherently incapable of understanding some aspects of the universe, just as an early hominid with a much smaller brain than ours might have been unable to understand third-order-intentionality (I know that you know that I know) or story-telling.

The fifth reason I believe in life after death relates to my intuition.  I suspect we continue to exist because this answer feels right to me.  I seem to perceive in some intuitive way that existence does not conclude at death.  It seems likely to me that we do eventually cease to exist as individuals, and I suppose we may eventually merge into something better and transcendent to a point where our individuality is entirely lost, but I don't think that happens at death in the very literal way that our atoms disperse and go back into the earth and air, eventually to be consumed by the sun and then sent out into the vastness of space so that we physically merge with the universe.

One thing I dislike is when people who have no belief in life-after-death say that there is "no evidence" for it.  I also dislike it when people who have religious beliefs say "it's something we take on faith" as if that was all there was to it.  I think all human decision-making and belief comes to us through a mix of intuition and rational thought based on empirical observation.  Of my five reasons for believing in life after death, three are empirical (reincarnation phenomena, communication with the dead / encounters with entities purporting to be the dead phenomena, and near-death-experience phenomena).  My trusting in an authoritative source (my religious beliefs in Baha'u'llah and what He tells us) is not entirely based on faith; there is considerable empirical information about Baha'u'llah, and my understanding of this information informs my faith in Him and His message.

Everyone who believes with faith has at least some historical account of events that are supposedly actual events on which they base their faith.  That is what makes a difference between belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster from belief in God (at least the believe in God most modern education religious believers now have). Modern religious people understand very well that previous generations had different understandings of God, and yes, people "make" the Deity into forms they can relate to in their communal myth-making about God. The pre-modern tribal gods and the God of the Hebrew People of 2500 years ago is in some ways quite different from the God of Martin Buber or Hans Kung or Werner Heizenberg or Robert Bellah or Reinhold Neibuhr. I do not perceive that people keep worshiping different gods and inventing different gods. I think, rather, that Divinity has been understood or approached in different ways, according to the cultures and places and times. Human sophistication of understanding Divinity has been enhanced over time, especially recently, but the basic essentials of ethical and moral principles have always been a core of religion.

   The best empirical evidence for atheism is the lack of scientific evidence for God, not the lack of empirical evidence for God. Empirical evidence (physical reality, history, personal experiences, the reports of others' experiences) informs our willingness to believe or disbelieve anything.  Modern educated people face atheism and consider it.  Certainly every modern educated person must know the basics of Ludwig Feuerbach's argument, or must consider, understand, and then reject the atheism of David Hume,  Friedrich Nietzche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Peter Singer and so forth.  The obnoxious and pugnacious internet trolls advocating atheism and the proselytizers for the alternative religion of empirical materialism and Scientism also present challenges to believers. Many educated people who retain their faith do so not simply because they have faith, but also because the evidence and argument presented by such atheists remains for them unconvincing. Among the most brilliant people with the most training and the strongest minds, a great many continue to believe in God and life after death.

This probably presents me with a sixth reason for believing in life-after-death, and that is the power of the desire to conform and meet social expectations.  Yet in my circle of friends there are very many non-religious persons and even several atheists, and among the believers there are very few who share my Baha'i Faith. One thing I like about the Baha'i Faith community (and also Unitarians, New Age believers, and that sort of thing) is the seemingly high rate of eccentric people. Eccentric people tend to be less susceptible to conformity bias, and I like to think that people believe in a religion because they really believe it, and not because social pressures to conform have subtly shaped their thinking so they came to believe in order to go along with what others were doing.