#130 Philip Goff - Why I'm a Heretical Christian

29:59Philip Goff:the traditional theistic view than this view that God is the universe and has a really large amount of power, but for some reason is limited in very specific kinds of ways in terms of how electricity sort of manifests and interacts with other electrical sources and the strength of magnets and gravity. It just seems so specific and ordered and systematized that it seems weird to think of it in the same way that the traditional theist thinks of like, oh well, God just can't do a contradiction. You know what I mean? Yeah, but don't we have the same thing with God's existence? Like, why does God have to exist?

30:39It seems conceivable that God doesn't exist. So that also seems like a brute fact. God just has to exist. And so I think what I'm positing is in the same ballpark. Why does God have these limitations we just have to accept that as a brute fact so it's it's a slight cost of the theory as i say i don't i think the theist is doing something similar but i'm doing it a little bit more right but look okay you have to it's a trade-off but look compared to explaining suffering i think i've just got a much better explanation of suffering i mean i look i i root my version of the problem of evil, what I call the cosmic sin intuition.

31:27I just think it would be immoral for an all-powerful being to create a universe like this. And theists say, you know, I had a debate with Richard Swinburne, you know, they say there's certain goods that you couldn't get without what uses free will and you need natural evil for certain goods, certain serious moral choice and stuff. I'm happy to say, okay, yeah, maybe that's all true. Maybe there are goods that we need suffering for. Still, I think it's immoral for a creator to kill and maim in order to bring about those goods. I think it's like the classic utilitarian, the challenge to utilitarianism where, you know, suppose there's a doctor who has five ill patients, you know, one's missing a heart, one's missing kidneys and so on.

32:17The doctor could kidnap one healthy patient, harvest their organs and save five lives. Okay, it's a better world. We've saved five lives at the cost of one. But most of us say, no, no, no, that's immoral. That's taking that person's right to life. Likewise, I think if a God creates hurricanes and cancer that kill people in order to get these goods, that's wrong. So that to me, avoiding that is much more significant than adding a little bit of complexity to our fundamental theory.

32:50Philip Goff:Yeah. It also just feels a bit too easy, I think. In the abstract, for me, the problem of suffering isn't so much the existence of any form of suffering, but the extent and depth and arbitrariness of it all in that it's very easy to say, well, without fear, you couldn't have bravery. Without suffering, you couldn't have good things. But for a start, I agree with you. It's a little bit like being grateful for the existence of cancer, because now we have the good of chemotherapy, which you wouldn't be able to have if you didn't have cancer. It's like, I think I'd rather have neither. We couldn't have Martin Luther King if we didn't have racism.

33:28I know it sounds really kind of weird on the surface level to say, I'd rather Martin Luther King didn't exist, but I'd rather have neither than both of them you know what i mean and there's also like i mean i just had a back and forth with um we're on this diary of a ceo podcast with i've forgotten his name the the stand to reason uh

33:47Philip Goff:christian guy who was across from me um i it's the first time i've met him and at one point stephen bartlett the host we're talking about meaning and there's dr k as well who's who's next to me and he sort of says but what if you know young stephen had gotten cancer like what's the what's the meaning and purpose of that and i i watched him i think his name's greg i watched him say well we live in a fallen world and adam and eve sinned and and i kind of had to stop and like wait for my turn to speak again and be like can we just go back a second like i really want to drill this down do you mean and it transpires that he believes in a literal sort of first human of some kind not quite sure when but that they literally committed some kind of transgression that i'm like so so you think that children get cancer because maybe two million years ago or so somebody literally like ate a fruit it just once you actually start cashing out how this works in practice it just seems so deeply unsatisfying so i agree with you that this is a huge motivation and i suppose you've got this idea that well there's a god but this god is limited in power and you said it would be immoral if there were a sort of all-powerful being to bring about suffering.

35:03But the question that jumps out to me is like, why limit the power? Why not just limit the goodness? You know, why not say, well, God is all-powerful, but not all good? Because that seems to be a more popular response from people who aren't convinced of a traditional God because of suffering. They say, okay, God exists, but, you know, he's either amoral or immoral. But you don't do that. You seem committed to the view that God is good. Well, I think we should consider all these possibilities And in the why book, I, you know, I consider various options. I'm not a dogmatic person, as you might have noticed.

35:35But I think, well, suppose you have a bad God who's all powerful. I think the problem with that, as Stephen Law and others have explored, is it creates the kind of mirror image of the problem of evil, the problem of the good. But if there's a really bad God, why create the lovely things, you know, flowers and... Yeah. Why can't I think of lovely things? The smile of a baby. Yeah.

36:04Philip Goff:And the laughter of a podcast host. I could easily give examples of pain and suffering and then... What does that say? This is turning into a therapy session. Yeah, so... But yeah, so that's one problem. Yeah, you get the mirror image, so that's no good. But then it's like you could say, okay, the problem of evil makes us think there can't be a perfectly good, all-powerful God. The problem of good makes us think there can't be a perfectly evil, all-powerful God. So what about an all-powerful God who's just amoral? I mean, the universe is conscious, but it sort of doesn't have moral preferences.

36:41It's just a bunch of atoms want to do this, and a bunch of molecules want to do that, and it all just kind of happens. And so it's conscious and it's all the result of agency. Maybe molecules hold together because subatomic particles sort of want to be, you know, connected in a particular way. But there's no good or bad.

36:58Philip Goff:So you don't have a problem of explaining if a bad God, why this? If a good God, why? Because it's neither of those things. It's just amoral. Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of the philosopher Tim Mulgan has a book, Purpose in the Universe, where he argues for what he calls ananthropic purposivism, which is that there is a God, there is a purpose to the universe, but it's nothing to do with us. Sort of accidental byproducts. This is what I love. You just get stuck in the dichotomy. I love exploring these possibilities. But yeah, okay. So why don't I go for that or the view you described? Yeah.

37:37I think, look, why do we think the fine-tuning needs explaining? Why do we think there's something striking here? I think it's because of all the values the constants could have had. They fall in the narrow range that are compatible with things of great value. Life, intelligent life, people falling in love and writing poetry. There you go, I came up with some good things. You know, most of the other universes you get from different values is kind of just hydrogen, or it all collapses in a split second, or it shoots apart so quickly that no two particles ever met. There's little or no value in these universes.

38:23I think what strikes us is that the constants are compatible with value. Okay, so I think that needs explaining. So there's some, you know, there's something, some push towards value. But then there's the suffering. Yeah, because there's also you kind of need the fine tuning to get suffering.

38:44Philip Goff:You know what I mean? Like you don't get like conscious organisms who suffer from evolution by natural selection without the fine tuning too. So it kind of feels to me that those almost cancel each other out in a way that you're left with this amoral, you know, universe. I don't think I don't see how they'd cancel out. I just think you need to explain both. I mean, maybe, you know, you could have a sort of hypothesis where you've got a God that's a bit good and a bit bad. I don't know, you know, I'm watching The Vikings on Netflix. This is kind of the Viking gods are a bit, you know, maybe they get a bit moody, but they're good in some ways.

39:20But you'd have to somehow describe the hypothesis of this God's moral, mixed moral character such that you get the mix of good and bad we actually find. such that you get, okay, the constants are just right for life, but then you get cancer and stuff. And I just don't see how you get, it's going to be like some very complicated psychology. Whereas what's great about my hypothesis, if I may say, it's very simple. God's just perfectly good, but has got these very precise limitations that you can specify in a way that's simpler than physics. So that's why at the moment I'm thinking that's the best option, but you know I'm open-minded yeah I mean it does seem a little bit weird that there would be any kind of

40:06Philip Goff:of like human value on the level of you know pain and pleasure and stuff like that if the universe were completely amoral because you might imagine that it's conscious so it's got some kind of desire to limit in various ways to have tables and chairs and clouds and planets and stuff but to have to bring about like pleasure and pain seems like there's this element of desire because pleasure and pain are necessarily tied to desire right like to be in pain is to not want an experience while you're having it and to be in pleasure to experience pleasure is to want an experience while you're experiencing it i think those are good definitions of of pleasure and pain and so you do seem to bring in this element of desire and if there is some kind of desire traditionally good and bad are thought to just be sort of expressions of the desire of God.

40:58You know, something is good because that flows from God's nature. And if these concepts of desire and pleasure and pain just flow from the nature of the universe, maybe we can just say that that's what morality is. It's the good and bad that we feel.

41:11Philip Goff:We feel it because we are expressions of the universe. And so like our sort of concepts of good and bad are expressions of the universe's conception of good and bad. Maybe I get it gets a little bit murky. But if I were to say to you, for example, you know, Philip, I'm totally convinced, fine tuning, there's got to be an explanation. And I think that there's a God. And you said to me, but then you've got to explain suffering. And I just said to you, okay, God is amoral. Would you say, well, I disagree with you. I think you're wrong. Or would you say, yeah, maybe fair enough, but I've just got this other view.

41:49Philip Goff:Like how, how committed are you to the view that in order to solve this problem, we limit God's power instead of limiting his goodness. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.

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42:52Maybe you have a more hedonistic metaethics than me. I suppose, look, I mean, I think you could have, as a panpsychist, I think you could have pleasure and pain maybe in a universe where there's just hydrogen. Maybe there's ecstasy in, I think, Galen Strawson, my PhD supervisor, who I studied with him because he was basically the only panpsychist in the world. yeah when i studied with him i talk about this better get my book galileo's era um he thinks you know there's bliss before evolution it's evolution brings in suffering because that kind of motivates you to survive so the rest of the universe is blissful okay so but what you get with the right constants is complex organisms that can ultimately become rational and reflect on their own existence and make moral choices and have understanding.

43:48So I suppose I think there's a very great value in poetry and philosophy and understanding reality or trying to understand reality. There's a great value there that you wouldn't just get in a universe of blissful hydrogen. So I want an explanation of how come at the start of the universe you get the right numbers for those kind of great values they don't make them inevitable but that are compatible with them in a small range that are compatible with them so i don't see how you're a moral god would explain that i think you've got to say whether in some way the the creator which could be just the universe aimed at something of value now they might have aimed at something of value to destroy it or but then okay well tell me more about the store there's this psychology and it gets complicated so that's that's how i'm thinking of it just thinking there the way you said like this creator but maybe the creator just is the universe our language is a bit tricky here because when you say well the creator is just the universe

44:55Philip Goff:i'm kind of picturing the universe is this big orb that is then creating stuff like within itself and it kind of gets a bit difficult to conceptualize. How interested are you in non-Western philosophical traditions? The reason I ask is because if you were to ask someone from the Vedic tradition, if you were to ask a Hindu, they would probably say that the closest approximation to God is Brahman, which is sort of the unknowable knower, the unmoved mover. It always has to be described in these quite mystical terms and they say it's not quite like this being who creates the world it's rather kind of just everything that is just is brahman and it seems to be like maybe because it's always a little bit vague because it has to be it seems a little bit easier to get across this idea that you're not talking about some creative dude who comes along and goes zap there's a universe but you're also not talking about this super naturalistic view where a universe earth just starts going zap, zap, zap and bringing things into existence.

46:00There's just this sort of one creative force that we're all a part of. I wonder, are you attracted to that? Because it seems to me from what you're saying, if we hadn't used the word Christianity yet or whatever, and you said, you know, these are some of the thoughts I'm having, I would say, you know, Philip, you're starting to sound a bit like a Hindu sooner than I would say, you know, heretical Christianity. Yeah. So as I said earlier, I was an atheist for 30 years, but in that time i was sort of spiritual but not religious kind of person i've always been um taken mystical experiences very seriously and i think being a panpsychist you're better able to do that maybe we could talk about that um and i guess i i always thought like many spiritual but not religious people um you know buddhism is deep advaita vedanta is has spiritual depths.

46:52But Christianity is all about doing what the old guy in the sky wants so you get to heaven. And part of what has brought me back to Christianity, though, is discovering the mystical traditions of Christianity that have always been there since the start, and particularly the Eastern Church and how they think about the core of Christianity. So I think when I was growing up, this is what I thought was the core of Christianity. We're all sinners. We deserve to burn in hell forever. Fortunately, Jesus is up for taking the rap for us. So if we accept that kind gift, we'll go to heaven. And this sort of makes no intellectual sense to me in sorts of ways, like why does it fulfill justice to punish an innocent person.

47:43And also, it doesn't make sense to me on a spiritual level. You know, my sensus divinitatus just kind of says, nah. But then, you know, what I've discovered embarrassingly fairly recently is, you know, that version of Christianity, which we call penal substitution, was invented basically by the Protestant reformers 500 years ago. It has not been a form of Christianity back to the start. This is one of the things I say on X that seems to most annoy people. I've seen, I've seen a bit of... Because I think, yeah, I think a lot of Americans think that is Christianity and you're a heretic if you don't.

48:21No, this was, you know, invented by Calvin and Luther, basically.

48:25Philip Goff:So what's the idea before that in terms of Jesus' sacrifice, if not a penal substitution? You know, so there was big decisions and councils about the Trinity and, you know, the divinity of Christ and so on. But there was never any official decision on how to understand how Jesus brought salvation, the mechanism there. And in fact, well, what I've become fascinated with is how the Eastern Church thinks about this. Right. So it has absolutely nothing to do with sin and punishment. it's all to do with god and humanity and the entire universe becoming one so god's not interested in finding someone to punish for our sins god's fundamental desire is to become one with the entire universe um and so this is what they think the jesus stuff was all about it was all about uh it was it was a crucial part of this ongoing process of God and the universe becoming one.

49:29God became more like us so that we can become more like God. So when I learned about this fairly recently, it's a form of Christianity that deeply resonates me on a spiritual level. I think it fits with panpsychism. I think it makes sense of mystical experiences that I take very seriously. And while at the same time this was happening, I think so as I said I think there's head and heart things going on here so I at the same time I become convinced intellectually by the fine-tuning that there's a purpose to the universe and then I learn about this how the Eastern Orthodox Church think about the Chorchristianity and then I think this seems to me like a a plausible view of what the purpose of the universe might be yeah and so so the head and heart kind of came together at that point yeah I mean that's an interesting account and i appreciate you're sort of telling me how it happened in fact um but i'm kind of interested in a few questions here one of which is like this this figure of jesus because the thing that really distinguishes christianity is the jesus character right there's this particular

50:38Philip Goff:human being who is also god who you know does something through his crucifixion and resurrection that brings us into unity with God. Traditionally, in terms of forgiveness from sin, because we can't be unified to God if we're in a state of sin, and so he does that for us. But even if not, there's still a sense in which he dies for us. While we're still sinners, Christ died for us. And if the job of Jesus was just to become more like us so we can become more like God, it seems like a an unnecessary extravagance that he gets crucified by the romans right he could have just come to earth lived a life ascended into heaven bob's your uncle as they say um the other question that springs out to me about christianity on your view is that if the universe is just god for want of a better word then like as far as we are all manifestations of consciousness that are within the universe, we're all expressions of God.

51:39We all have the divine within us. We've all sort of come from the same place. In what special sense can Jesus be God in a way that you and I are not on this view? Because for the traditional Christian, it's like, well, there's a kind of dualism, there's this world, and then there's heaven and there's God. And Jesus is God or Jesus is special because that external realm has sort of entered into our world. The word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Whereas on your view, everything does that. Everything springs out of this divinity of the universe. So what's so special about Jesus? Yeah, so I think you asked me earlier, is my view a form of pantheism or panentheism?

52:22So pantheism being the view that God just is the universe. They're just one and the same thing. Whereas panentheism being the universe is within God. So God is more expansive than the universe, but the universe is sort of embedded within God. Or like a part of God. Yeah. And I think if I was just going off the fine tuning and the panpsychism, I'd be a pantheist. Insofar as I've embraced Christianity, and I think that's a matter of faith rather than certainty, I suppose I'd be more inclined to a panentheist view. So there's more to God than the universe. The universe is within God, as St. Paul said, in God we live and move and have our being, but there's more to God than the universe.

53:08So I suppose the core of the Eastern view, which they call deification, right? The idea is that they say we will become gods. So the way the Eastern church thinks about it, right, the idea is for these two things to become tightly unified. this is this is what they see in in jesus beautiful metaphor about the vine and the branches he says i'm the vine you are the branches think of that intimate organic connection between a vine and its branches um but the thought is there's a problem that we're really different to god or we're really different to that bit of god that's outside of the universe uh philosopher robin collins has a nice analogy is that it would be like trying to graft a branch onto a horse trying to bring us together with god trying to unify god and us would be like trying to graft a branch onto a horse they sort of just don't fit together so to solve that problem to close the gap god had to share in our form of existence in life in suffering in death fully share in human existence in order to allow us to ultimately fully share in God's form of existence.

54:22And that's what they, so these syntax, they're happy to say, we will become gods. We won't become identical with God, but we will fully share in God's form of existence. What it's like to be God will ultimately be what it's like to be us. It almost sounds heretical in itself, but that is just, I think to American Protestant Christians, that's heresy, but that is the standard view in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Okay, so panentheism as opposed to pantheism means there's something outside of the universe, which is God.

54:55Philip Goff:And so does that mean that the thing that's special about Jesus is that whilst you and I are expressions of the universe, Jesus is somehow an expression of the whole thing? because Jesus is also just an expression of the universe but is it like there's something about this outside the universe God sort of thing that enters into you I'm still a little bit confused about what it is that's special about Jesus and also it starts to sound a bit similar to just traditional Christianity like yeah the universe is kind of if you want to call it a part of God fine but the main thing is that there's that God is bigger than the universe God is outside of the universe and that the universe kind of exists through him and Jesus enters into that, it starts to sound almost a bit orthodox.

55:48Yeah. So the Eastern church distinguishes between two aspects of God, the essence of God and what they call God's energies. So the essence is the fundamental identity of God, which they take to be completely unknowable, completely transcendent, completely beyond human understanding. Whereas God's energies are God's form of existence, God's manifestation, God as a living force that is imminent and that we ultimately participate in. So I suppose that the specialness of Jesus, I suppose, would be Jesus understood as part of God's essence, that we will never be. So we will. So this is it's different to Advaita Vedanta because on Advaita Vedanta, we are Brahman because there's nothing more than Brahman.

56:49Tell us what that means. Advaita Vedanta is a form of Hindu mysticism, literally means non-dual, the non-dual form of Vedanta. Where all there is is Brahman, ultimate reality, ultimate divine reality, if you like. And the word Atman, which is the word for the fundamental self or soul. and the core of Advaita Vedanta is that Atman is Brahman. I, what I refer to with the I pronoun, my deepest self is Brahman. And it does nothing more than Brahman. So the Eastern Church doesn't go that far. In terms of God's essence, that will always be distinct from us. But in terms of God's form of existence, God's manifestation, what it's like to be God, we will fully share in that.

57:46I like to sort of speculate whether mystics in these two traditions were having the same experiences, but interpreting them in different ways, having this sense of oneness with the divine. So in the Eastern church as well, there is a deep oneness with the divine. It's not quite as radical as Advaita Vedanta, but there's still that oneness, whether they're just interpreting the same experiences in different ways. But you said, oh, this is sounding orthodox. In terms of my core spiritual understanding of Christianity, it is just the non-heretical view of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I call myself a heretic.

58:28I'm supposed to flag up the non-standard in certain respects. I've got a non-standard view of the resurrection. For example i don't think the resurrection experiences were a matter of seeing and touching a body i think they were a matter of visionary experiences i'm very influenced by dale allison which is not

58:48Philip Goff:to say false it's not to say that they're not like real or true i think i think there was a radical transformation in reality god and the universe coming closer together the possibility of deification. And I think what happened on Easter Sunday morning is people starting with Mary Magdalene and then Peter were getting thrown to the ground experiencing deification for the first time in human history. And that was the radical experience that kicked off Christianity. So I think there was something real going on here. It wasn't just our, you know, feeling good about things, but I don't think it was seeing and touching a body.

59:28Philip Goff:Can I ask why you don't go that far? You said just before that the Eastern Orthodox Church which you're not a member of by the way you've spoken about the Eastern tradition which you're attracted to but people might get the impression you are an Eastern Orthodox Christian now but that's not what you're saying. No, no. So whilst I accept the core understanding of Christianity from the Eastern Church I think there's other things I disagree with. They think God's all powerful. They believe in bodily resurrection. And also, they don't have women priests. They think gay sex is sinful. And I think these are manifestly false and harmful.

1:00:09So actually, where I found my spiritual home is in the combination of the mysticism of the Eastern Church and the liberal flexibility of the Anglican Church. So we're practicing. I mean, if you just had the liberal flexibility of the Anglican Church, you say it's a bit wet, it's a bit empty. It's mostly based around drinking tea, as the comedian Dylan Moran said. But it's the combination of the two, sort of the spiritual depths of the Eastern Church, which is the core of my spiritual life, but also the flexibility of the Anglican Church, that you have women priests, that you have a more flexibility in how you approach it.

1:00:49Archbishop of Canterbury, indeed. Exactly, yeah. But so, okay, so you're not Eastern Orthodox, but you said a moment ago, like they don't go as far as to call everything, you know, Brahman is to say that I, in my deepest self, am the same thing as Brahman. Why don't you go that far? I mean, it seems like quite an attractive view. I just wonder if there's something in this Vedic Brahmanic philosophy that makes you go, I'm not so on board with that. I'm more on team Jesus.

1:01:18Philip Goff:because like i said earlier without hearing much more detail than what you've said today i would say that you sound sort of quite compatible with a vedic view of the world and it feels a bit trickier to to explain the uniqueness of jesus and certainly the crucifixion and resurrection stuff like this added material just seems like the you know we are all just manifestations of brahman and it's all sort of one big thing called the universe and that's what consciousness is. And consciousness, the self, is the same thing as the universe, Brahman, Atman is Brahman. It just seems to sort of go together quite well.

1:01:56You know what I mean? And I wonder if there's something that puts you off that. So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent. Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card.

1:02:33Say more. More exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands. So, order more pizza. The math demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA. I suppose I do struggle with where the bad stuff comes from for Advaita, for Danter. Which is the problem in all the religions. If there's just Brahman, why is there suffering? Now, of course, Christianity has this problem as well.

1:03:19I've got a slightly heretical answer to that, that God is limited. But God is trying to create something new and something good, which is creation, which is partly separate from God. and then ultimately a unity between God and creation. And that's what Jesus does. And that's the core movement in this. So yeah, so my interpretation of Christianity, God's on the way to making a perfect universe, but unfortunately can only do that in two stages. God can't just create it like that. God can only do it in two stages. Firstly, creating a kind of okay universe with the right numbers to create life, a life to evolve.

1:04:08Philip Goff:And then when it's evolved enough, starting to unify with it. So it's going to be really good in the end. I think it doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it? Like in, you know, in Genesis. And he looked upon what he had made and he saw that it was okay. Yeah, it's all right. It'll do for now. It's going to be really good in the end though. But God's like, oh, I'm sorry. It's going to be messy. You know, evolution and cancer and all that. But it's this or nothing. Whereas, yeah. I mean, yeah, I had a recent discussion with a Advaita Vedanta mystic and expert. And where does the bad stuff come from?

1:04:41And then they could say to me, well, it's an illusion. There isn't really bad stuff. And then I'm like, okay, this is mysticism too far. There is bad stuff. And I want to know where it comes from. So in my slightly heretical version of Eastern Orthodox, we've got an answer. Yeah. We're building something good, a unity between God and creation, and it's just messy along the way, but God's limited and so that's the only way you can do it. That's not unheard of in the Christian tradition too. This idea of bad is just a privation of good. It doesn't really exist. What you said earlier resonates with me that a lot of the time I don't want to do the sort of hippy-dippy, everyone saying the same thing, man.

1:05:21There are clearly doctrinal distinctions between religious groups. but when it comes to the mystical tradition when it comes to the experiential stuff there does seem to be a lot of getting at the same thing in different words i mean i could read

1:05:33Philip Goff:a passage from john 17 i talk about this a lot and it would sound like i'm reading a piece of hindu scripture it sounds like i'm reading you know i don't know i don't know what what text i'd be reading something from the vedas or the bag of agita or something where jesus is saying like, you know, praying for his disciples and saying, just as we are one father, may they be one with each other and one with me and me and you and them and me so that we all may be created, brought into perfect unity. So we may all ultimately be one together. Now, Christians, of course, slot that into their theology, which, you know, they can do.

1:06:11But on the surface, at least, it's like that sounds a little bit weird. when Jesus has said, I and the Father are one. And in explaining what he means, he means I'm in the Father and the Father's in me. And then goes on to say, well, I want all of the disciples and then all Christian believers to be in me just as I'm in you. You get this, again, this deification, this idea that however Jesus was one with the Father, he's kind of like the prototype for all of humankind. Now, for me, this is really interesting. I'm like, cool, so there's this guy called Jesus and he was some kind of divine figure and awesome.

1:06:44And I'm totally on board. Like that makes perfect sense. but then he gets crucified. And then you get these sort of post-resurrection appearances and stuff. And it just seems to me that if that's all Jesus was trying to do, and there was no punishment for sin, and it was just a case of coming down to provide the way for deification, where does the crucifixion slot into this? Yeah. So there were two things there. Well, yeah, maybe this would be a good moment to slip in that I've just finished a new book called Heresy. It's probably about a year before it comes out. But part of that is diving into the mystical traditions we get in all the faiths.

1:07:26And I'm talking more about the Abrahamic faiths because I think people think, oh, they're not very spiritual. You know, it's Buddhism spiritual. But yeah, you've got Kabbalah in Judaism, you've got Sufism in Islam, and you've got the mystical traditions of Christianity. I'm looking at Ibn Arabi, the Sufi mystic who thought that God is completely beyond understanding. Even Allah is not God. That sounds heretical for a Muslim, but when you think of ultimate reality as Allah, you're qualifying it, you're relating to it, whereas ultimate reality is beyond qualification. What you were pointing to there, I think, was the last supper narrative in John's Gospel.

1:08:14where it's very, you know, Jesus gives this kind of after dinner speech, as it were, and the disciples are saying, oh my God, you're finally telling us how it is. You're finally giving it us straight. Now, what does he say? He doesn't say, right, you've all been bad people. Someone has to pay the price. Someone's going to be punished. I'm going to take the rap. No, he talks about oneness repeatedly. It's like, as you say, I'm the father and one, and you are in me and I am in you. It's like this intimate connection where both things are inside each other, paradoxically. And it's like this deep unity between Jesus and the being he called Father being taken out to the rest of humanity and creation.

1:08:58So yeah, so I see deification. I think that's what he's talking about. I think he's saying this is what it's all about. Okay, but you're pushing me. I'm being a politician dodging the question here. on the crucifixion. So why was this horrific, painful death? So I would say it's partly about deification, sharing fully in our miserable existence, the more gruesome aspects. I like to think also it's partly cosmic solidarity or part of the revelation of God that we're supposed to get through Jesus. St. Paul says Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Why is Jesus in Luke's gospel born in poverty, you know, put where the animals eat, greeted by shepherds rather than kings?

1:09:51I think this is expressing that God identifies with the poor, the weak, the excluded. So what a wonderful sign of that than seeing God as this naked, executed, humiliated peasant suffering the cruelest form of punishment that was reserved for the lowest of the low. I think it's a sign that God is on the side of immigrants in cages, is on the side of the weak and the powerless and something which some Christians have forgotten. But yeah, so that's how I think of it anyway.

1:10:28Philip Goff:So it's kind of like a display of solidarity. This is who I am and this is what I'm for. I mean, I guess that is probably the ultimate way of doing that. And Christians speak in those terms. Even if you took away their reflections on the nature of Jesus' sacrifice, they still say, but the reason why it was crucifixion. because if jesus just has to die for your sins you know he could have just sort of been euthanized and in his sleep you know they say no no the reason that he did it with crucifixion is to demonstrate that this sort of uh this concern with the poor and the downtrodden identification with the weakest of society and in the same way that you can separate out those questions you can probably also then separate out those concepts and you can say even if you don't need the punishment for sin stuff for jesus to be special you still have this very good reason for him to to ultimately demonstrate his identification he's already shown us that he's identified with the highest of the high because he's like you know got god inside of him so if he can show us that he's also identified with the lowest of the low but that that sort of raised a question for a lot of people as to like for example why wasn't jesus a woman you know like women are more downtrodden in society than men are so if jesus had been a woman and crucified as a woman good point but then you know i've heard people respond to that by saying that you know the humiliation of women is so kind of normalized in various contexts that there's almost something more humiliating about being up on the cross as a man and depending on who says that that's either a very feminist or a very anti-feminist perspective because you've got the you've got the anti-feminist who says well it's more humiliating for a man because you know it's just worse for a man to do and then And you've got the feminist saying like, because we're so used to seeing women humiliated.

1:12:16And Tom Holland in his book Dominion has expressed how powerful that idea was. You know, that God is not the king in the castle, but as this executed, it was weird and it sort of gets normalized.

1:12:31Philip Goff:But I also kind of want to then ask, like, you know, it gets to the point of parody, But if we think the universe is consciousness and, you know, there's nothing necessarily that's super special about human beings exactly. Like, why isn't Jesus a, you know, a rodent or something like, like surely the way to really demonstrate his sort of identification with the lowest of the lowest to be like an animal who's sort of, you know, literally fit for slaughter. Maybe there's just a communication issue there, you know, but you sort of got to draw a line somewhere. I suppose. Look, I mean, what I'm very happy to embrace is there's a lot of uncertainty.

1:13:13Yeah, sure. So, and you know, I mean, I can go further than that. You know, I'm very uncertain as to whether any of this is true. I don't think faith is about certainty. I think it's about hope and trust and commitment. It's about living something out. I think often people think about, am I going to join a religion? They have to think, is it definitely true? Oh no, there's some objection. But you know, these things are always going to be incredibly uncertain. I think what you should think, if you're thinking of joining a religion, I think you should think, am I going to get something out of it?

1:13:51And is it a credible possibility? So I think evidence and arguments are, is it a credible possibility? It's always going to be very uncertain. So I suppose I've got to the point where I think this slightly heretical, Eastern Orthodox-inspired, Anglican version of Christianity is a credible possibility. But that leaves open that other religions, like maybe Advaita Vedanta, are also credible possibilities, leaves open a kind of pluralism that doesn't just say, oh, they're all saying the same thing, but says, if it's all about certainty, then only one can be the one where we can be certain it's true.

1:14:27But if we're open to like 30%, then there can be multiple religions where it's credible enough to be possible. So I feel confident enough to commit. And that's brought me great joy. It's brought me community. It's brought me structure. It's brought me spiritual practice. It's brought many life benefits. So that's what I'm trying to do in this in this new book heresy actually is just aiming kind of at the spiritual but not religious this huge ever-growing group and not saying look there's the here's the one true faith you've got to believe it or you're going to hell just saying look there's things you can get out of religion tradition structure community and there's ways of engaging it that might avoid some of the worries you have you know you can be very uncertain you can be a bit heretical you can take it all as a big metaphor if you want there's a physics professor in my church who is a very spiritual person there every week he thinks he says to me what's all this mumbo jumbo you believe i'm too orthodox so you know he doesn't believe any of the specifics of christianity now of course some churches will kick you out but i don't know a lot of anglican churches or quakers you know no one's gonna interrogate you and so yeah that's my message really yeah and you land on saying

1:15:48Philip Goff:you are a Christian? Would you describe that? I mean, I understand you qualify it because we're having a conversation about your beliefs, but in your day-to-day, would you just say to people who ask you on the street, like, I'm Christian? Is that your view now? Yeah, I suppose the only reason I qualify it is because so many identify Christianity with a very particular form, maybe sort of US evangelical Christianity. And I'm not saying evangelical christians are horrible people a lot of my very good friends but that's not the kind of christianity i find plausible and spiritually resonates with me so i suppose i might qualify it just because people may get an idea that's different from the truth but yeah i'm a christian sure it's an important part of my life and it's it's made me quite happy i don't know if it's true but yeah quite happy so well that's maybe that's maybe that's all that matters i mean at least it does for the individual like you know who cares doctrinally when it comes to experience of the divine i mean i talk all the time about how people who report having intense religious experiences they just sort of give up on the intellectualizing and realize that that's kind of not what it's about and so you know it's interesting to talk about but i would be interested in seeing this fleshed out in an intellectual fashion which it sounds like you've kind of done in this book which i'm excited to read you know you should send me a proof copy i'd love to love to have a flip through sure i'd love to that would be really really cool to see and i think people are interested in you know i don't want to say your journey because we were talking before we started recording about how people often do that they do that to you and they do it to me as well like as soon as you say anything friendly to christianity it's like awesome look you know this person's on board and And then when you say, yeah, but I'm not sure God is all powerful.

1:17:39Philip Goff:Yeah, but I'm not sure Jesus claimed to be God. Then it's like, he's on a journey. He'll get there eventually. He'll get there eventually. And like you said before we started recording, maybe you're already there. Maybe this is just the place to end up. Yeah, next time I talk to an evangelical Christian, I'm going to say, oh, you're on a journey towards the limited power. God, you'll get there eventually. I mean, insofar as I'm embracing the core of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, that's much older than the Protestant idea of penal substitution that was like 500 years ago. You often get the sense that there can't be innovation.

1:18:15Right? But religions have always reimagined themselves. Aquinas was radically new philosophy at the time. The Protestant reformers had a radically new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian.

1:18:32so what's wrong with this maybe thinking maybe god's not all powerful in the way we've previously thought and maybe maybe maybe this is just part of our moral understanding i find like the problem of evil i think you might agree with this alex becomes more pressing as we've advanced morally and understood the importance of animal suffering for example so maybe this is part of progress and progressing in our understanding of God. That now God's not going to be cruel enough to create a world like this if she could help it. There's another thing that winds up. Because I have questions too. You're doing that on purpose.

1:19:14Yeah, with Craig, he said, when he was talking about my book and he said, and she, he uses the word she. I don't know. I remember that. There's bloody snowflakes, these traditionalists. Just, you know, stop being so triggered, man. Yeah. I think, you know, God's obviously non-binary. So they is a good pronoun, the Trinity as well. Yeah, I think it sounds controversial to say, but it's because God is like not any of these things. It's like, you know, God is not conceptualizable into like, you know, categories and our categories of spatial extension and thought. And you're like, oh, so God's non-binary.

1:19:53Then it's like, no, no, you're liberal. you but yeah i i know i know what you mean but look i think look i i i don't hate conservatives but you know i think actually they're in most of society there can be a natural balance between progressives and conservatives you know progressives who are saying that we need to update in certain ways and conservatives saying hold on hold on let's be careful let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater and there can be a nice balance i think recently with religion it's more dominated by conservatives uh especially in the u.s so i guess part of what i'm trying to this book is to try and help liberals make intellectual sense of religion not so we can kick out the conservatives but so we can maybe get back to that natural balance that exists in

1:20:43Philip Goff:a lot of society well we will wait in anticipation until it arrives the books that are already out are in the description if people want to to buy them and read them and whenever this new one's out we'll try to remember to put a link there too so if you're watching a few years in the future it should be down there too and if it's not leave us a comment send us an email and we'll get that fixed immediately philip goff thanks for your time thank you very much alex a pleasure uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees higher stay cool and save up to 45 off custom window treatments during the fourth of july vip access sale at blinds.com from outdoor shades to room darkening blinds finding the perfect fit is easy get free samples expert design help and professional measure and install services, or DIY it with confidence and support every step of the way.

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