Credo

 Credo - Dec 2024

1. What I believe has evolved over my 73 years in what I would hope is a logical and considered way. 
2. It may appear on the face of it that I have moved from orthodox Catholicism to liberal agnosticism in a gigantic reversal. But for me the two positions are not that different in essence and for me there is a consistent spiritual journey. 
3. I have moved from being serenely religious to nervously agnostic. 
4. I have moved from religion to spirituality. 
5. I believe religion is the attempt by mankind over the ages to express spirituality and to understand and respond to the internal and external world. 
6. I am well disposed to religions but I feel it is fair to observe they are mostly determined by their geography and time in history. Indeed many religions see their role as a development of prior, less developed beliefs. 
7. I think in the 21st century we have a knowledge of ourselves and the world that debunks many religious ‘facts’. 
8. Where religion still scores is on ethics. That said I feel there is no ethical position that cannot be discovered and embraced by spirituality without the support of religion. Agnostics can love their children too and mostly do. 
9. I describe myself as a cultural Christian. Embedded in its sensibilities, its traditions, art and literature. I have enjoyed the privilege of learning the life and teachings of Christ, which even allowing for exaggerations at the time and thereafter reveal a wonderful approach to life in supporting the underprivileged. He was a devout Jew and perhaps unaware that a religion would be created in his name. 
10. I do not enjoy the certainty of either the religious or the atheist. 
11. I believe that existence is best explained by a ‘spirit’ impossible to define or capture. 
12. I do not believe in a personal God, in a God that looks or sounds like humans. 
13. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ or of any human. 
14. I do believe that great and holy teachers had ‘God’ in them to a superior degree. 
15. Words fail to describe what God might be other than exclude what he cannot be, which is every form dreamt up by religion no matter how well intentioned. 
16. I do not believe in the story of Original Sin, of the redemptive crucifixion, in a glorious resurrection except perhaps as metaphors which displease both religious and anti religious alike. 
17. I am witness to the goodness of believing people who walk the walk. I cannot explain it away. But I cannot explain it either. 
18. I do not believe in intercessional prayer. I think the Buddhists have it right. To think well and warmly of another - alive or dead. To wish them well. Both of people we like and those we don’t. Every good wish has a tiny direct effect. So no ‘intercession’ needed or possible. 
19. Prayer is best wordless. No calling on deities to do this or that. Simply an affirmation of gratitude, a wonder at the universe, an act of wishing well. No prayers or hymns mean anything to me. I respect others who love them and hope they respect my wish not to engage in something I cannot and will not believe in. 
20. I do not believe in a heaven or hell but am open to the thought that rigor mortis may capture our last emotions like a fossil be it love or hate, courage or fear. Perhaps our lives build up to our last breath. In that sense life is truly a preparation for eternity. Possibly. Who knows?
21. Good is its own reward. We treat others well because of their inherent self worth, not for the promise of eternal goodies. 
22. Nature is both kind and cruel. It is completely amoral. Animals kill and maim each other from the biggest to the smallest. Cancers kill young children. Stars are consumed constantly by black holes. Life on earth continues thanks to the most amazing luck and despite enormous set backs. 
23. History is merely the diary of the survivors. As Bertrand Russell once said ‘war does not prove who is right but who is left’. 
24. There is a sense in which willing and hoping for good can sometimes produce results. Not always and never predictably but always worth the courage to hope. 
25. If and when we end human existence it will mark the end of music, dance, art and song not only in our solar system but in our galaxy from what we can discover and perhaps beyond that. Humanity is perhaps unique in its beauty and selfishness. 
26. Nothing can deny the beauty of nature, of land, sea and sky. Of sunrises and sunsets and points to a mystery we cannot understand and even less explain. 

PMM 4/12/24