PSI Annual Journal 1999

I have defined religion as an ideology which seems to explain the fundamental causes of everything in the Universe. I define an ideology as an interdependent set of ideological beliefs. I define an ideological belief as a belief in a cause-and-effect relationship for which there is no scientific evidence. All religions are ideologies. Not all ideologies are religious. Examples of non-religious ideologies are Astrology, Psychoanalysis, and Democratic Government. Communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, is a religion, albeit an atheistic religion. There are other atheistic religions.

Almost twenty years ago, I wrote a book in which I said that religion was the most evil form of ideology. I define evil as any action or thing which decreases anyone' s creativity. I define creativity as any action which increases truth for at least one person without decreasing truth for any person. In the last twenty years, I have become more sympathetic to religion, although I still regard it as the most evil form of ideology. However, I also believe that religion may have a positive role to play in world peace.

What makes religion evil is not that it is unscientific, but that because it is unscientific and because many humans have fragile egos that are shattered by the admission that their most cherished beliefs may be wrong, almost all religions become closed and dogmatic, and refuse to recognize even the possibility that any of their beliefs may be wrong, and will go so far as to kill anyone who questions those beliefs – let alone ridicules them as did Salman Rushdie in our day, or Leon Trotsky and George Orwell a few generations ago, or Voltaire 250 years ago.

Therefore, the basic flaw is not so much in our religions as in ourselves. Most human beings seem incapable of even contemplating that their paradigms might be wrong. The founding prophets of religions usually seem to have been open-minded, creative persons. The followers, and above all, the administrators of religions seem to be insecure, uncreative persons who cannot question the paradigms in which they are immersed.

A paradigm is a comprehensive model of reality which gives us a feeling of identity in what we perceive to be "the real world". Until about 300 years ago, practically the whole world was governed by religious paradigms – Protestantism in most of Northern Europe, Roman Catholicism in most of Southern and Central Europe, plus most of the Americas, Orthodox Catholicism in Eastern Europe, and Islam in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and larger parts of Asia. At that time there appeared in Europe a new paradigm which had grown out of an ancient, almost forgotten Greek paradigm by Thales Democritus, and other Greek philosophers called the "Presocratics". This new paradigm, which today is called "Science" is based on the following eight basic definitions and axioms:

1. Information is the symbolic representation of events and their relationships.
2. Truth is information which increases our ability to predict and control in the objective world when we believe it.
3. Falsehood is information which decreases our ability to predict and control in the objective world when we believe it.
4. The objective world is the commonly observable and measurable environment – physical, biological, and psychosocial.
5. To predict is to imagine an event correctly before it is objectively perceived.
6. To control is to deliberately cause a predicted event how and when we imagine it.
7. In order for any statement to be scientific, it has to be falsifiable, i.e., it must be objectively testable, although tests do not have to occur immediately.
8. Finally, Science recognizes its own incompleteness in that no scientific statement is assumed absolutely true under all possible circumstances, but it is assumed that any scientific statement is always part of a greater truth that will eventually be discovered. "Truer" means that it makes more, more accurate predictions.

The preceding eight points constitute the Scientific Paradigm.

Many persons claim to accept only the scientific paradigm and totally deny all religious paradigms. Science has been fine for getting practical results in the objective world, but it is poor at satisfying our needs in the subjective world, which is also a part of anyone' s reality. This is particularly true of our ethical-spiritual needs which appear to come from our innate sense of right and wrong, plus our need for holistic truth which applies to all aspects of reality. In spite of the obvious success of science, persons still cling to religious paradigms. Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest of 20th century philosophers, said that science, reason, and logic may tell us how best to reach a certain goal, but they will not tell us what our goals should be. In other words, science tells us what is, and what can be, but not what ought to be. The latter – according to Wittgenstein – can only be inferred through mysticism. I do not entirely agree with Wittgenstein, but let us assume that he is right for the time being.

Mysticism means many things to different people. If we distill the essence out of the mystical teachings of all the great mystics from Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammed, Spinoza, and Baha' Allah, to Einstein, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Pauli, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and Mother Theresa, we reach the following common denominator, which all great mystics seem to share. I call this "the Mystical Paradigm".

1. There is a Moral Order to the Universe
2. There is a greater source of knowledge than humanity in the Universe, which is at least in part responsible for the Moral Order.
3. It is possible for humanity to communicate with this source of higher knowledge and moral order.
4. Behaving ethically facilitates this communication, and may be essential to it.

The preceding four statements constitute the Mystical Paradigm.

All religious persons believe the mystical paradigm, including communists. Except that communists call the source of Moral Order and higher knowledge "History". Marx, Lenin, and to a lesser extent Hegel, are the prophets of History. More conventional religionists call this source "God". Problems arise only when prophets and their followers claim that their formula for communicating (praying) with History, God, or whatever they choose to call the source, is absolutely true without any errors, and any conflicts between their religious beliefs and any of the beliefs of other' s, including scientific beliefs (e.g., evolution today, or the heliocentric theory in Galileo' s day) is proof that the others are wrong.

From the age of eight until five years ago, I accepted only the scientific paradigm, and regarded all religious persons as intellectual degenerates. I would demand that any religious person, who wanted me to accept his beliefs, demonstrate to me that I could predict and control something in the objective world by believing a religious paradigm that I could not predict and control without it. No one ever gave me any proof at all that any religious belief could increase objective truth, while all around me I saw evidence of religious belief decreasing truth from the persecution of Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and other Christian heretics, to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, Creationism in the United States, and the persecutions and murders going on at this minute in Iran under Shiite Moslems, and under Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. However, five years ago, I noticed two things:

1. The most creative scientists in the world, from Einstein, Schroedinger, Pauli, and Heisenberg, to Spinoza, Teilhard de Chardin, and Sir John Eccles, all seemed to believe the Mystical Paradigm. Newton himself had been a thorough mystic.
2. The most recent discoveries in Quantum Mechanics supported the Mystical Paradigm, and indicated scientifically that there was a source of infinite truth outside our time and space, and that we could communicate with it simply by behaving ethically.

Therefore, I had the answer to the question which I had been asking all my life. Belief in the Mystical Paradigm or in God or even in an impersonal Historical Process greater than humanity can increase creativity. Increasing creativity is the Foundation of Ethics.

Like mysticism, ethics means lots of different things to different people. Baruch de Spinoza developed an ethical-metaphysical system based entirely on mathematical reason. Although science uses mathematical reasoning, the foundation of science is experimental verification, not reason alone. I tried to incorporate and expand both the ideas of Spinoza and Teilhard de Chardin in my first book, The Moral Society, and bring about a purely scientific ethics in contradiction to Wittgenstein. Although my book was addressed primarily to believers in the Scientific Paradigm, the only persons who seemed to read it and understand it were believers in the Mystical Paradigm. This embarrassed me, and I tried to surmount this embarrassment by writing an anti-mystical tract called Psychofraud and Ethical Therapy. I had intended The Moral Society to replace the Bible, the Koran and Das Kapital as ethical guides to humanity. It did not even serve as a supplement for most persons, and Psychofraud was even less effective. I then used the scientific method to see where I had gone wrong. It took me almost 15 years to discover my original errors.

The Mystical Paradigm is part of reality. If we ignore or deny it, we will be totally ineffective and uncreative. It is easier, in fact, to ignore the Scientific Paradigm and at least communicate well with large numbers of persons through the Mystical Paradigm or through art. However, what maximizes Truth and Creativity, what is most ethical, is to combine the two paradigms into what I call "the Holistic Paradigm" or "Scientific Mysticism", which is not an oxymoron. Not only is there no conflict between science and ethical mysticism, deliberately and systematically combining the two is synergistic and maximizes creativity. The process for combining science and mysticism so as to maximize creativity I call "Creative Transformation".

The source of all truth and creativity is not science, but mysticism. Science is a technique we use to separate truth from self-delusion. Mysticism is a source for truth; it is also a source for self-delusion.

Mysticism is a source for new ideas, both true and false. It leads to true, new ideas when we are driven by ethics and love, and it leads to false ideas when we are driven by hatred and fear. We have mentioned some of the great mystical teachers. We should not forget that Torquemada, of the Spanish Inquisition, Calvin, who burned John Servetus at the stake as a heretic, Rasputin, who dominated the last Imperial Court in Russia, and Adolph Hitler were all mystics. In order for mysticism to lead to truth and creativity, it must be fully integrated with science and our actions must be ethically driven solely by the desire for truth and the desire to enhance the creativity of all persons, including our enemies. A mystical interpretation of ethics is the desire to know and act according to the will of God. A scientific interpretation of ethics is to seek to maximize creativity in the objective world. We integrate science and mysticism into the Holistic Paradigm by recognizing that the only common denominator in the evolutionary process is ever-increasing intelligence, and that creativity is the highest form of intelligence; God is creation and the will of God is that the Universe evolve forever in creativity. This is at the core of all mystical ethical systems, and is the only basis for scientific ethics. This is the Evolutionary Ethic.

Insofar as religions recognize that their central truth is the Mystical Paradigm and the Evolutionary Ethic, and that everything else is commentary, as Rabbi Akiba might say, then they can help bring about world peace by giving this deeper meaning to their teachings. This is why we are all equal before God as Children of God in a created but still evolving Universe. Insofar as religions fail to recognize the central truth taught by their own prophets and insist that their ritual and their bureaucracy are their central teachings, then religions will continue to divide the world and impede world peace. Teilhard de Chardin, a great scientist, mystic, and a Jesuit priest, once said that the worship of a modern person is through research and development. Another way of saying the same thing is that if religions wish to bring about world peace, they should recognize that their own religion and almost all other religions reach a single moral force that brings the entire Universe toward ever greater creativity. Whether we call that force God, History, or Evolution – whether we personalize the force or not – we harmonize with, and enhance (worship) the force when we do our best to maximize creativity for ourselves and others. This is the Evolutionary Ethic. To teach this ethic is the imperative of all religions. If they follow this imperative instead of ritual and bureaucratic rules, they will bring about world peace.

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 1999