Quakers and belief

What does it mean to believe?

I believe the Earth goes round the Sun. I believe in Milanković cycles, regular changes in the Earth’s orbit which affect its climate. Such rational, scientific belief involves trust in my community, in scientists who calculate such things in ways I do not know. It can be wrong, as Newton was wrong about gravity. Trying to distort religious belief to be like scientific belief leads people astray: the Flood did not cause the Grand Canyon.

I do not believe in Astrology, but observe that a magazine astrology column can give a little pleasure or something to think about. An empathetic practitioner, with a vast range of ideas related to planets, signs and sesquiquadrates, could see what spoke to their client and possibly give insight into character.

I believe in Hamlet, though the play is not historical: it portrays lifelike humans.

I have moral beliefs, which I have learned through instruction, example, experience, study and discussion. This year I intend to keep my promises better, having disliked breaking an undertaking. I also intend to promise, or not, more thoughtfully.

What does it mean to learn, and what do I need to know? As a member of a social species I need to know how to interact with other people, and how to be a member of the society that meets my needs. Much of that knowledge may be innate: babies recognise the patterns of a face. I understand others because we have things in common: I feel joy in service, and observe others do so too.

I learn through art. I contemplate images, my feelings resonating with them, so come to understand situations I have not experienced.

I learn the tradition of Christianity by reading and listening, then hone my understanding by talking about it. There is a rigid creed with nothing between Jesus’ birth and his passion, and gospels giving differing accounts of his life and afterlife. Jesus tells fictional parables, some disturbingly amoral, such as the Unjust Steward. I contemplate the mad Gadarene (or Gerasene), clothed and in his right mind after an encounter with Jesus, which may also be fictional. I find value in the Bible, Christian tradition and Christian writings, for learning how to live.

Then I learn spirituality by sitting in Quaker stillness for an hour most weeks over twenty years. I encounter unconscious processes and unravel the inner conflicts created by old trauma. I experience being given spoken ministry, and also speaking when I might have been wiser to stay seated. I know love for these people, sitting with me. I believe that meeting for worship and the business method have value. Quakers report doing different things during meeting: behind the still faces, a person might be praying, or counting breaths, or hearing God within them speak.

It is not true to say that you can believe anything and be a Quaker, even a Quaker in Britain Yearly Meeting. I believe meeting for worship has value, and that there is a wide range of appropriate things to do in the hour. Others have narrower understandings- “Thee should not have been thinking”.

Then Quakers have different metaphysical understandings of what underpins our experiences, In the Letter to the Governor of Barbados George Fox describes fairly conventional Protestant beliefs, including that Christ’s death was the propitiation for the sins of the world. We are rooted in Christianity, and many British Quakers have a radical Christian understanding of “that of God” in us. It is the Holy Spirit, which other Christians believe comes into us in Baptism and Confirmation, and we believe needs no ritual, because it is in everyone.

I might try to put into words my spiritual experience, for example, all my senses come alive, I see “Heaven in a wild flower”, usually there is a feeling of Joy with this experience, I am in the present moment not ruminating of past or future. That comes from my own experience. It feels distinct, now, from how I am at different times. My experience is evidence for my account of it, but not evidence for the metaphysical belief in God or Spirit. To say that Spirit causes such experiences goes beyond the experience itself. The experience feels like a blessing, but I could not say that Something blessed me.

I don’t believe in an Eternal Creator. I believe I am an evolved animal in a material universe, and there is no separate spiritual reality beyond baryonic matter. But the word “God” signifying particular experiences which I see in others or I share has value and meaning to me.

I would hope Quaker metaphysical beliefs would enhance our community and our practice of worship. We have a shared practice and way of life, not a shared belief system. Possibly the only belief required of someone joining us for the first time is that our practice may benefit them. Rather than asking what they believe, I would ask whether they are oriented towards growing in love in the community.

Might we have to expel someone for their belief? Only if we discerned that the belief was harming the community unbearably, perhaps because it was dogmatically held, and the person thought others should agree. We do not expel a Friend lightly.

My commitment to the community and the worship ranks, for me, above my atheist materialist beliefs. Therefore I hope that even if the Christian revelation of the Eternal Creator is true, I will not harm the worshipping community with my beliefs.

If Quakers honestly attempt to conform their beliefs to their experience, and are open to changing them, I hope those attracted to our spiritual practices will not believe anything that the community would discern to be harmful. Spiritual experience is beyond words, so I cannot produce a description in words precisely fitting my own experiences, though it is worthwhile trying to. When I do, I find similarities to others’ experiences.

We have some shared moral beliefs. We are pacifist. But we have a variety of understandings of that, and some Quakers joined the armed forces in the second world war. We have not yet reached agreement on assisted dying, and perhaps do not need to. Our moral beliefs change: when some Quakers owned and traded slaves, others began to say this was wrong.

In Meeting, I was contemplating Thomas Cranmer’s “Prayer of Humble Access”, which I said routinely as a child. It gained new meaning for me. “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table” alludes to Matthew 15:21-28. Then we ask to eat Christ’s flesh so that it will make us clean, “and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us”. That mix of unworthiness and access, humility and gratitude for the blessing I find in Meeting spoke to me. I grow in understanding, whatever I believe, or however I put it in words.

Maya Forstater, and the beliefs of anti-trans campaigners

Is it odd that a trans woman would welcome the Forstater decision? Now transphobic opinions are protected in law, is that not a threat to trans women? No. The decision was only about whether people should be allowed in law to believe stupid, erroneous or offensive things, and what offensive beliefs should actually be unlawful- as “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”. I want people free to believe what seems right to them. I agree law should restrict acceptable beliefs only in extreme cases.

What beliefs might be unlawful? The judge gives some examples.

Beliefs and Behaviour

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is arguing that transphobic beliefs should be protected, and no-one should be sacked for transphobia. I hope the Centre for Global Development (CGD) win in the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Why should they? What “beliefs” should be protected from discrimination, and when do they become behaviour for which it is reasonable to dismiss someone?

The sacked transphobe claims she was sacked for believing “Sex is real”, but that is ridiculous. There must be something more. If she simply believed that sex is real, like almost all the population including most trans people, she would not have been sacked.

It’s not just a belief that sex is real, it is a belief that this affects trans women and the way she sees us and interacts with us in a particular way. I believe sex is real, and I believe that trans women are women. But it’s not just that she believes trans women are men, it is that she believes this matters. She would hardly have got to the stage of losing her job if she did not. She believes that access to women’s spaces should be for women as she defines the word, so that trans women should not be admitted. She believes that she is entitled to misgender people. She used male pronouns to refer to a nonbinary person.

There has to be some behaviour for others to realise she holds a belief. For example, she wrote, “Trans women are men, and should be respected and protected as men”. She means, we should be excluded from all women’s spaces, and that some other way of accommodating us should be found. On 2 September 2018 she tweeted, “women and girls lose out on privacy, safety and fairness if males are allowed into changing rooms”. So when buying a skirt I would have to go to the men’s department to try it on.

In October 2018 some staff at the CGD complained that her tweets were transphobic. The employer investigated the complaints. She claimed she would respect “anyone’s definition of their gender identity”. Would she object if she saw a trans woman enter a women’s loo?

After she parted ways with the CGD, the transphobe entered a “very bitter” dispute with Gregor Murray, after misgendering them. This indicates how her beliefs affect her actions. She campaigns for a radical change in trans rights, so that trans women are excluded from the women’s spaces we have been in informally for decades and under the Equality Act since 2010.

Protection from discrimination on the grounds of belief does not mean that an employer has to tolerate any action by the employee. You can’t be sacked for being Christian, but if a Christian baker refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple their employer would be entitled to sack them.

The transphobe wanted the CGD to publish her screeds claiming trans women are men, or should be excluded from women’s spaces. The 2 September 2018 tweet argues for stripping away my rights. The transphobe’s contract involved writing essays for the CGD, some of which still appear on its website, above her own name.

Even if her belief is protected, that tweet is behaviour which could have brought the CGD into disrepute with some of its clients, which entitled it to sever links with her. For example, Kristie Higgs was sacked, reasonably and without unlawful discrimination, for facebook posts.

However, that does not address the question of whether the belief should be protected, if it is not expressed in a public, objectionable way.

To be protected, a belief “must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others”. If the transphobe’s “belief” is protected, that is a limit on my rights.

I have a right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex. The European Court of Justice in 1996, and the US Supreme Court in 2020, held that discrimination on the grounds of transgender is discrimination on the grounds of sex.

I have a right to transition and thereafter to be treated as being of the sex to which I have transitioned. That was the result of Christine Goodwin’s case.

The Employment Judge wrote that the belief “involves” violating trans people’s dignity. The transphobe claims that it did not, that she was quite capable of treating a trans woman with courtesy, which would involve not misgendering them. However she believes that I cannot honestly describe myself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect. It violates my dignity.

If the transphobe wins her case, it may be a distinction without a difference. Transphobes can still be dismissed if the employer considers their campaigning brings the employer into disrepute or offends the employer’s customers. The transphobe would not have had her contract terminated merely for a belief: it was terminated because of her obnoxious tweeting. Some employers would find that tweeting offensive, and end her contract. Some employers would not.

Quakers and God

Do British Quakers believe in God? What might that mean?

Ours is an experiential faith. We have spiritual experiences which we share. They start as peak experiences, a moment of wonder, and become integrated into our daily lives. We develop language to communicate them to each other, and it appears they are similar for each person. They include a sense of presence in the moment when all the senses are heightened; a sense of the unity of all that is, and of being my own part of it; and a sense of being suffused by love, which some might call the love of God.

Then there are the spiritual experiences we have together. We know of the gathered meeting, where we are together in our spiritual experience, and of unity, where we come together to know what is right, what some call God’s loving purposes. Our worship is not meditation, but a common endeavour. It’s not like sitting in a waiting room. We know we may sometimes feel “angry, depressed, tired or spiritually cold”, but the effort of- whatever it is that we do, in worship- is worthwhile.

If you attend Quaker Quest meetings, you will have heard the phrase “for me”, for Quakers have all sorts of opinions, and a wide range of disagreement, and I have the temerity here to speak “for us”. We share practices with quite complex rules, and experiences. Then we ask what is behind them, and disagree wildly.

Some of us believe in God almost as in the creed, or in the Christian concept of the trinity, or different ideas of God. Some of us, like me, are materialists. I believe I am an evolved creature in a random universe. I don’t know how life could come to be through non-living chemical processes but I believe that is in principle knowable. I don’t think consciousness is in itself spiritual, but a manifestation of the mammalian brain.

Our understandings of God are not hypotheses in the scientific sense, capable of making predictions or being proved wrong by evidence, but stories. They are stories created by some of the finest human minds, addressing common spiritual experiences, progressing from a God who demanded Abraham’s son as a sacrifice to a God who offered God’s own son to die for us.

It is my perception that British Quakers squabble less than we did over these beliefs. Some of us argued it was ridiculous for someone who did not believe in God to belong to a Religious Society. My Friend answered that: “The question is not why we join a religious society, but why we stay”. Now we find language to share the spiritual experiences, and I feel the explanations behind them- God, psychology, or Don’t Know, seem less important.

I was baptised Anglican, grew up reciting the creed without a qualm, and around 2009 slowly realised I no longer believed in that way. It felt like a great loss, and I was in slowly reducing denial for months. Just after I admitted to myself I do not believe in God I was broken open by a residential personal growth course. I went into a church as a tourist, to see the art, and a sense of its holiness brought me to my knees.

This was a difficult experience to fit into my understanding. I say: “I am inconsistent. I could only be consistent if I were inerrant”. I say, “I am rationally atheist and emotionally theist. I have a strong emotional relationship with the God I do not believe in.” I read philosophical ideas of how well humans might see the world as it really is- not well, it seems.

I know that unconscious processes in me can form poetry, so that it seems to come to me by inspiration. My being, this process taking in food, water, oxygen and ideas, is capable of more than I consciously understand, and it is tempting to call all that is greater than my own consciousness God. Quakers have talked of “that of God” in each person since the 1650s. Or I should abandon the word, because it means such different things to different people. Or I could use the word “God” honestly to talk with someone who believes in the Trinity, because we both mean things we cannot know.

In Quaker worship you may see the Living God. Insofar as those words can have meaning, I know they are true.

Cognitive dissonance and trans

The theory of cognitive dissonance holds that people wish their understanding of the world to be consistent, and when they become aware of contradiction they feel discomfort, or dissonance, which leads them to alter their understanding. Very powerful people may change the world instead. Or, in an absurd situation people will rationalise to produce a comforting illusion. It depends how committed you are to your fantasy- when the world did not end, fringe members of a cult accepted they had been misled, but the most committed members formed the view that the world was saved by the faith of the cult.

To reduce dissonance, one could change a belief or behaviour, but this can be difficult. You accept that smoking is harmful, but still are addicted. So, you could discount the information and decide to believe that the scientific link was uncertain. It would be healthier to believe the truth of its harmfulness, and recognise that smoking is a hard habit to break, but that is a belief in ones own impotence, which can be painful.

Or you can reduce the importance of your belief, saying that smoking is pleasurable, and therefore worth the risk. Against that, campaigners say the smell is unpleasant, and it makes you breathless now. It reduces the elasticity of your skin, so produces wrinkles now.

People go to great lengths to avoid cognitive dissonance. If you are forced to do something, you may persuade yourself that you did it freely, that it was a good thing for you to do it. When you choose between two alternatives, both of which have good and bad points, you are stuck with the unpleasantness of what you have chosen, and cannot have the good side of what you rejected. So, you minimise that good side- I would not have liked it anyway. You emphasise the good side of what you have chosen.

Or, you could accept that you had made the wrong decision. I did the best I could. I am not perfect, and do not have perfect knowledge. There is rarely one perfect choice among many bad alternatives- my choice was good enough, and it is better not to spend too much effort deciding.

People value the goals which have taken the greatest effort to achieve. Otherwise, they will believe their decision to take that effort was wrong. Anxious people are particularly likely to avoid dissonance, but some people can cope with a great deal.

Most of this comes from this article.

How does this work with me having transitioned, yet now not being gender essentialist? There is no essential “femininity” in women or “masculinity” in men, and the way we express them are social constructs, culturally conditioned. I am not a real woman.

I am intelligent, so have a complex, nuanced understanding of the matter, but I have dealt with the dissonance using self-hatred and a belief in the world as particularly threatening. I was wrong to transition but it was the best decision I could make at the time. It was the only way I could see to express my true nature. Transition is not really accepted in society, but being visibly queer we are tolerated: if at first I appeared to be normal but showed confusing signs I was not, that would be more unpleasant for others who would make things unpleasant for me.

I remain imprisoned in the need to have a consistent belief.

One alternative is to see the world and myself as inexplicable. That I have made bad decisions in the past does not mean it will always be thus. I am still alive. I am learning, so likely to make better decisions. Getting things wrong is rarely a complete disaster. Belief in possibilities- whatever happened before- might be more useful.

The need to believe in something gets in the way of seeing things as they really are.

Recent art work by Alice Pike Barney, her varying degrees of female fear and uncertainty. This woman looks nervous, but given the title- Hollywood– she may be the most confident of the lot! The next one seems under threat, but not surrendering, though resistance must be covert. I like her resistance, and found the title a shock.

It is “Head of a boy”.

Desire and action

Why does anyone do anything? They think it will advance their goals. It relieves an immediate discomfort- I feel a headache, so take a painkiller. I believe it will relieve discomfort in the future- in case I get other headaches, I buy painkillers. Or, they think it will give them pleasure. Positive feelings arise from experience, all slightly different- satisfaction, contentment, happiness, excitement.

Often, a person’s problems seem too great for them. This may be because they do not trust or know themselves sufficiently, and have too great fear of things which might not happen. So they seek an escape. A video game takes you into the now, in a way which is the Opposite of meditation: walled off from the world, concentrating on something brightly coloured in constant motion but unreal, with an endless stream of false feelings of achievement. I became addicted to Tetris, and weaned myself, then became addicted to Candy Crush, clockwatching until I could get more “lives” without paying for them. I don’t go near the things. I do like a glass of wine, though, and hang around my blog stats more than just to see what is being read.

Some level of escape is OK, some gets in the way of actually facing problems. In a vicious spiral, problems appear greater so you spend less time facing them. It is not always clear where the boundaries lie.

We are taught what will advance goals. I associate taking a pill with relief of an ache because someone told me it would work, I tried it, it worked. I clean my teeth because I learn to associate discomfort with not doing so, relief from discomfort with doing so.

It can be worth effort and concentration in pursuit of pleasure. Listening to Bach partitas at first I was bored and perplexed. I just wanted them to end. Now I find them beautiful. I have had epiphanies with art works, suddenly seeing them in a new way, appreciating after a long time looking, even years of familiarity.

I have false beliefs in what I might enjoy. This is what we as a family do for pleasure. So I go along with it. Later I still do it, expecting enjoyment where there is none. Seeing the false beliefs, seeing how empty some of my actions are, I lose trust in what I have learned and seek to learn what actually motivates me. I thought when starting my first job after University, I cannot endure this job. I must enjoy it. Yet I found myself enduring, then not enduring it.

Black and white thinking gets in my way. Cycling is effort with moments of delight. I want to notice and savour each delight without denying the effort. In work there was tedium and triumph: the achievement needs to motivate me, so I must see and prize it all, to its full value. Overwhelmed by everything, yet wanting more so much- acceptance of what is is the thing. Seeing what is possible. An endless puzzle, never worked out, the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings…

I lose motivation. I could do that if I wanted. I just don’t want to at the moment, I think- then tell myself that as fear and disbelief grow. And, I grow to like and value myself. I am worth looking after.

Ingrained belief

I can never get what I want.

This is not true. I write it because it has been a belief ingrained in me, and even now I detect traces of it. It goes along with “There is only one way of getting what I want” and even “I do not deserve what I want”- I hope I have digested and passed out that last one, but it ate me for some time.

“You are so covered in scars!” said a counsellor once- but that was many years ago.

I still detect traces of it in my distress and disappointment.

One value of Affirmation is inculcating behovely beliefs. I needed “I am worthy of life” in November, I do not need it now. Delete. Substitute “I am a powerful woman”. Someone with integrity and discernment told me that, after all. Take it into my heart.

I am a powerful woman.

I went for my usual walk- across the fields, along the river, round the lakes- in wellies, as much of it is squishy mud now. I have blisters on the soles of my feet. I wondered if I was enjoying it, put the question to my emotional being, and decided I was. The sunshine was glorious. I love the green, and the birds; this is a primordial response in me, australopithecine or earlier. Even the hard work had benefits. Doing this walk for the first time in my new hair, I notice that just the slightest breath of wind comes from behind and the curtains close over my face. I look ridiculous! And- my heart is open. I am a powerful woman. I play with these thoughts as I pass people enjoying the sunshine. Once, I notice my cringe. I do not like my old cringe.

When someone asks God
"What does 'feminine' mean?"
God points at me.

I like that line. Conceivably, I am a bit high; I can see that just a bit higher for just a bit longer might frighten someone and their relatives, so that the Doctors come and make it go away with drugs. Then it becomes the shadow, the thing to avoid, and the slightest sign of it terrifies the Sufferer and the Carers, and is yet more proof of Sickness. Now, though, I am simply being creative. Delete “I am soft, gentle, peaceful” and replace with “I am Feminine“. Soft, gentle, peaceful is part of it; that word is mine, for me to colour in.

Comforting thoughts

Witches are extremely dangerous. Fortunately, one may protect oneself:

For mony a beast to deid she shot
and perished mony a bonny boat
and shook both meikle corn and bear
and kept the countryside in fear…

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg
And reach the keystane of the brig
There at them thou thy tail may toss
A runnin stream they darena cross

Witches have the power to blight a farming community completely, destroying crops and animals, but as they cannot cross a river, we can get away. If only that superstition had been used, two centuries before Burns, as proof of innocence! But the witchfinders only sought proof of guilt.

It is striking how much effort I put into retaining beliefs about myself which are not true, or not obviously true. I could, of course, prove them, or decide to prove them- at some unspecified point in the future, which never comes. Procrastination is only a particular type of this thought.

I have false negative beliefs too: at least, I hope they are false. Two Upworthy videos depress me. The dancers in the Amsterdam prostitutes’ windows- I cited it before– shows how awful the World can be; the junkyard orchestra, which should be uplifting, I find a judgment on me: they can overcome their appalling difficulties, why can’t I? Whereas if I use it as a spur to think of the Possible, are my dreams just dreams?

Justifications

Justifications are unnecessary.
I express myself female because I am transsexual.
I want to practise Reiki because I can channel healing energy, or Qi.

Well. I want to practise Reiki because it is a wonderful placebo, and I have the showmanship to carry it off. If you can fake sincerity, you have got it made. I express myself female because I am a transvestite pervert who has lost all sense of proportion. Or something.

I am fairly sure that the theory of autogynephilia is trivial. Yes, we get turned on by the thought of us female. No, this does not cause us to transition: if it did, “gender dysphoria” could have no meaning.

Some think there is that causal link, though I think the cause is likely to be the other way round. What do I do with contrary evidence?
-Blot it out of consciousness, ignore it, deny it, pretend it is not there, collapse weeping thinking of it occasionally-

Acknowledge it. It exists. It will not make me change my actions. It does not affect my situation: few cissexual folk care. What matters is my reaction to it. Is it a threat? Only if I find it so.

I have felt my hands grow warm, and I have felt warmth seemingly communicated from another’s hands, without touching. Others have valued my attention. And I want that to be the reason why I perform healing: I want it to connect to the reality of the other person.

I spoke to a man who has given several types of Healing over thirty years, and said it seems it’s just placebo. He said, “Yes, that’s about the size of it”. That shocked me. I should have asked straight out, “How do you let yourself do it, if that is all it is?” He told me of spending time with Shiatsu practitioners, and how lovely that was.

What I want is a reason for doing this. My inner rationalist should sense my hands growing warm, sense heat or coolness as I pass my right hand over someone, and use inductive reasoning to connect that to a measurable positive result for the other. It does not work that way.

Relax. It is alright. What I have instead is that I want to do this, that I like to do it, and that other people seem to like it too. It is not this amazing mystic calling, which I cannot follow without perfect certainty that it is right; it is a thing I can do if I want to. And- placebo is a powerful effect.

The God Complex, part 2

How can I have faith in God, and be an adult?

The first reason is, this is my experience. Synchronicities throughout my life, moving me towards growth and healing. Every hair on my head numbered? It feels that way.

Second, it is the experience of others. Forgive me, but all that New Age stuff- the Golden Light project which I am now following and which blesses me, the Law of Attraction, a Reality Computer programmed by our thoughts, is moving towards a reality which was long before found by Quakers, Sufis, Baha’is, Franciscans.

Third, I have taken to heart a paradox. There is no God. God exists. As my psychiatrist friend said, he could help most people except the ones who vomited their problems onto his consulting room floor and said “You deal with it”. My idea of God fits my idea of Reality, my adult responsibility and all, and all my life I have received unlooked-for and unimaginable Gifts (often quite painful at the time) and Blessings.

What God is- Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, whatever- I accept as myth. I do not need to make a decision as to whether I believe in the Resurrection, for example; I am aware of the image, and I treat it with respect. It does not matter whether it happened, it only matters whether it is true.

I have faith in so many things I cannot understand, from the strange propensity of other drivers to drive on the left too, so we can all rush along at 70mph, or the amazing medical solutions to problems people I know have, the diversity of Earth and Universe, the force of Love and Life and Reality, and so I am happily Panentheist.

Oh, and I had a cliffhanger. How Doctor Who is that?