Bb: Its not another religion, its a way for religions to talk to one another

I was just listening to another fascinating podcast of CBC's Tapestry. Mary Hines was talking to a fellow by the name of Michael Dowd who has his own personal religious philosophy that has grown out of christianity and uses creative evolution as a central metaphor. He has some very interesting ideas, not particularly novel ones but positive. His ideas come quite close to my own personal philosophy, although he gives a lot of focus to evolution as a central metaphor whereas I tend towards chaos theory and quantum physics.

I was thinking about how to write about this idea of his here, what would the Bayesian Believer say about Creative Evolution? Then I realised that a Bb would have nothing to say about the details of Mr. Dowd's philosophy at all. They would merely notice that he has an evolving view of his own religious philosophy, based in his upbringing but informed by the evidence he saw all around him in the world. The Bb would applaud this perspective and encourage others to follow his example. But his philosophy and his mission is to get people to buy into his particular metaphor for spiritual belief. He is, in essense, peddling a new religion that depends on science and acknowledges reality but has its own way of viewing the universe.

This is different from what I am doing with Bayesian belief. Bayesian belief is not a new religious concept, it will not have adherents or followers. Bayesian belief is a framework for understanding religion, it is a label that carries meaning, like "fundamentalist", "lapsed-X", "liberal" and "traditional". Bayesian belief has no particular tenets of belief in subjective concepts that must be adhered to by any Bayesian believer. It specifically does not require a belief in evolution as put forward by scientists, or a belief that the universe is 14 billion years old or that salvation comes from someone names Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha or indeed anyone at all. Bayesian belief is a framework for classifying  believers into two groups. Those from any background that are open to reason, experience and human fallibility and those that have closed their minds to any debate.

Now I would argue that Mr. Dowdsatisfies all these criteria with his personal philosophy, so he is a Bayesian something. But we will not end the religious wars that have plagued our world since the dawn of history by coming up with a new religion that integrates science and spirituality in just the right way. I used to think I could do this too. I used to say to myself that  "if people could just understand evolution and math and science the way I do they'd see how there is no need to fight over which god is God." But I see now that this has been tried and tried for centuries or even millennia.

What we actually need is a new atmosphere of acceptance. An acceptance by all reasonable people, be they religious or not, of other people as valid in themselves. That includes their lives and their beliefs. I could propose a criteria for a caring, loving, positive religion but that cannot help but be biased by my own Christian belief patterns. Instead, I propose a criteria for reasonable religious people. I call them Bayesian believers, if they adhere to the following:

1. Accept the universe as it is and be willing to engage in true scientific debate about the nature of the universe.
2. Accept that religious scriptures are all written by human beings whether divinely inspired or not.
3. Accept that God/Enlightenment/Cosmic Truth is undoubtedly greater than can be described by any human being.
   
4. Accept that anything written by human beings is necessarily a product of their times and society and human fallibility. No observation, document or belief by any human being has been or ever can be infallible. This goes for scientific beliefs as well as religious ones.
5. Actively engage your religious beliefs and assumptions. Confront them with the evidence you see in the world around. Strive to improve your understanding of the Truth of the Cosmos by seeing how others live and how the world actually works rather than referring to ancient writings subject to the previous rules.

These seem to be the basic requirements necessary for healthy religious discussion that does not devolve into illogical arguments and mere citing of opposing scriptures.

In future articles I will try to deal with each of these principles in turn and argue for why they are essential.

Bb