These points which I refer to in this post are not so much a philosophical or theological critique of Christianity, but they are more so practical, biographical, and aesthetical anecdotes which relate how he views the Christianity he was brought up in. Imagine them scattered throughout a biography, because that is precisely what they are.

I would like to get this out of the way before going into some more central philosophical and theological issues that are raised.

Christianity as The World’s Most Talkative Religion

Here Watts’ sees most of Christianity’s observances as nothing beyond chatter, telling “God what he ought and ought not to do, and inform him of things which he is already well aware, such as that they are miserable sinners, and proceed to admonish one another to feel guilt and regret about abominable behavior which they have not the least intention of changing” (p48-49).

He then proceds to claim that if God is the Christian God, “he would be beside himself with boredom listening to their whinings and flatteries, their redundant requests and admonitions, not to mention the asinine poems set to indifferent tunes which are solemnly addressed to him as hymns” (p49).

Haunted By Hymns

In the previous quote, you will notice the negative reference to the hymns. This theme comes up again a few pages later. He says that he was “haunted by hymns” (p52), and perhaps in a tounge-in-cheek way said “I have thought of composing a book entitled Hymns Haunting and Horrible, bound in dark blue cloth..containing versical and musical parodies of these preposterously infantile ecclesiastical dities…They are wretched bombastic, moralistic, and maudlin nursery rhymes”  (p52).

Church Buildings

Watts also had some strong words regarding church architecture. He refered to Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists having a “strange genius for worshipping God in buildings that looked like obscene mixtures of churches and factories–all entirely devoid of color” (p54).

Empty Sermons

Watts saw the sermons he heard as convenying “nothing beyond the emotional energy of their funny voices” (p55).

A Lack of Gaity

Watts complains about a lack of gaity in Christianity, and also in the Christian view of God. He says (p60):

“A particular lightness, joyousness, and exuberance of mind and attitude? The opposite…of that high seriousness which has so afflicted us all..and which I am simply incapable of understanding. A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar…I always laugh at the altar…because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter…

But this gaiete d’espirit was entirely lacking in the religious atmosphere of my childhood, although I found it later in the Christianity of [Chesterton, Belloc, Temple, Dix, and Graham]…Throughout my schooling the religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin…As I attained puberty I had to escape it, and therefore took refuge in Buddhism”

He brings up this theme again in a bit more of an autobiographical and word-picture fashion in the next chapter when he says (p73-74):

“As I have said, I simply couldn’t get along with the Christian God. He was a bombastic bore, and not at all the sort of fellow you would want to entertain for dinner, because you would be sitting on the edge of your chair listening to his subtle attempts to undermine your existence and to probe the unauthentic nature of your life. He was like the school chaplain who took you aside for a VERY SERIOUS TALK. He had no gaiete d’espirit, no charm, no lilt, no laughter, no sensual delight in the world of nature which he had supposedly created.

Fighting Over Definitions and Words

Watts also launches an attack on Christianity’s insistance on paying close attention to and fighting over the definition of theological terms. He said :

“I kept wondering and wondering what was the hang-up of the British and Europeans in general, about being definite and precise regarding hte nature of either the deity or the nondeity. They had fought battles over the problem of whether God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, was homoousios or homoiousios…They slaughtered women and children and laid fields waste in verbal quarrels about transubstantiationism…As an unabashed pantheist I am naturally a full-blooded transubstantiationist, knowing full well that the ground wheat of bread and the crushed grapes of wine are the body and blood of Christ, the Anointed One…But I’m not going to go to war about it, nor sizzle…those who don’t agree with me…

I regard my more remote European forefathers who engaged in these quarrels as utterly insane. They were hopelessly confused and hypnotized by their languages, by the crude linear symbolisms wherewith they sought to make “sense” of the world…

Notions of God, of the ultimate reality or the ground of being, must be necessarily vague…Verbal definitions of God in the form of creeds, dogmas, and doctrines are far more dangerous idols than statues made of wood, stone, or gold, because they have the deceptive appearance of  being more “spiritual,” and because a creedally formulated God has been reduced to words, and is no longer experienced immediately” (p74-76).

To be fair, Watts also applies this critique consistently to Bertrand Russell also and says (p76):

“such an articulate, amusing, and reasonable atheist as Bertrand Russell was also hypnotized with words–with endless talk about talk, with making, as the French say, precises about this and that–all of which is an intellectual game of chess having little to do with the realities of nature”

So here you have six critiques, based upon experience, which Watts brings forward against Christianity. For now I will leave them unanswered, perhaps touching on them a bit as I delve further in future posts and comment on his worldview.

It was in this room, with its flavor of Oriental magic, that my father in his perfectly unostentiatious King’s English accent, read to me the tales and poems of that much maligned and misunderstood author, Rudyard Kipling…Today, Kipling is largely regarded as an imperialist and jingoist whose writings represented British colonialism at its most aggressive peak. Yes and no. Kipling was one of the major channels through which the high culture of India and the Himalayas flowed back into the West, and persauded me, for example, through such books as Kim, to have more sympathy for Buddhism than Christianity. Kipling was not a Max Muller or an Arthur Waley on the level of fine Oriental scholarship, but he spoke in a subtle and roundabout way to the emotions in the solar plexus, the manipura chakra, and thus echanted a small boy with curious, exotic, and far-off marvels that were simply not to be found in the muscular Christianity of the (Low Church) Church of England or the boild-beef-and-carrots English middle-class way of life.

(In My Own Way: An Autobiography, Alan Watts, 1972, p25)

Non-Christian thinkers have also recognized the importance of the Garden of Eden. Individually, they have assessed it in different ways, some ridiculing it and others outlining its importance and yet reinterpreting it allegorically. In effect both of these poles entail rejecting its meaning as defined by Christianity.  But one way or the other, these thinkers have rightly understood how crucial the Garden and The Fall are in the Christian understanding of history.

First, I wish to refer to what Arthur Schopenhauer has to say about it. He simultaneously gives it credit as being a uniquely important part of the Old Testament, and yet  simultaneously frames it allegorically:

Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me to the Old Testament is the story of the Fall. In my eyes, it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence than that it is the result of some false step, some sin of which we are paying the penalty.

(The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism, )

Next, I will refer to Alan Watts (for an explanation as to why I am venturing into studying some of his thought, please read this post), who is far more overtly flippant and careless with interpreting the story.

This is, of course, what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and perhaps it was an unripe apple that made Eve ill. It is not usually understood that she was a little girl and Adam a little boy, because they are always portrayed as mature adults, but they were obviously a couple of kids scrounging around Big Daddy’s garden. Having thoroughly satisfied themselves on gooseberries, raw peas, and green apples, they hid between the tomato parts and began to examine each other’s private parts. But just then Big Daddy came along and said, “God damn it, get the hell out of here, you little bastards!”

(In My Own Way: An Autobiography, Alan Watts, 1972, p22)

As you can see, Schopenhauer’s approach avoids the vulgarity and flippancy of that of Watts. And Watts makes a number of inferences that are pretty far out there, probably mainly tounge-in-cheek..I don’t think he’s that ignorant of the details of the Garden Narrative.

However, when it comes down to it, the truth is that both are playing fast and loose with God’s revelation, and ultimately picking out parts that they want.  Just because Schopenhauer frames his terms in a less confrontational manner, does he mean he is ultimately treating God’s revelation with any more reverence than Watts.  In fact, while Watts may seem rather sacriligous, it appears that if anything, Watts for all his unbelief better understood the theological impact of the garden narrative than Schopenhauer.  He understood it could not be simply explained away by making it allegorical.

Schopenhauer thought he could affirm The Fall’s importance (while relegating the rest of Old Testament revelation to uselessness) by relegating it to the allegorical. Alan Watts seemed to better understand the interconnectedness, and rather takes a skewed interpretation of the narrative, which is ultimately wrong but retains the seriousness of it. In a footnote, Watts also explains his vulgar language in describing the narrative with the following statement:

The vulgar language is, as always, soundly grounded in theology. In the Catholic and Christian scheme of things we are sons of God by adoption and grace, not by nature, since God has only one Son, rendering the rest of us bastards essentially damned and in hell.

(In My Own Way: An Autobiography, Alan Watts, 1972, p22)

So, while both Schopenhauer and Watts present The Fall framed in a context of unbelief, the “less overt” unbelief (of Schopenhauer)  is in some limited ways less insidious than the “more overt” unbelief (Watts).  Schopenhauer couches his unbelief in feigned respect for the narrative and appeals to allegory, while Watts is more direct and clear in his unbelief.  And it appears to me that this signals that Watts is actually the one who better understands (but of course, rejects) the real meaning of The Fall. I would say that the unbelief of Schopenhauer has done more damage, simply because it is couched in language that by nature appeals more to the Christian church and people with Christian language.  In Alan Watts’ assesment, there is a stark contrast between belief unbelief, but in Schopenhauer there is a dangerous ambivalence which mirrors the way the modernists of “liberal Christianity” have similarily done much damage by making their unbelief “more palpable”.

I’ve previously posted some references to the writings of Alan Watts, a now deceased scholar/lecturer famed for really being the one who more than anyone else spoke Eastern religious/philosophical principles successfully to a Western audience. One thing that really struck me in his “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” was how deeply he understood the way the “gaze” of the Christian God deeply disturbs people. He really provided a window into his perspective on the Christian view of God–which reflects how non-Christians view God in general.  You can read some excerpts and my reflections in an older blog post from my previous blog. Reading what Watts wrote really struck me deeply, just to see how deeply he understood the crux of the issue and yet walked away from it rejecting the Christian conception of God.

Watts was born in England, became an Anglican Bishop and eventually left that, and made it to California.  His alcoholism later in life probably shortened his life quite a bit.

Watts was a patient, thoughtful lecturer who gave his pupils a lot of respect and really clearly communicated what he believed. He was witty, engaging, and an appealing figurehead.  He was humorous, but not excessively. He was forceful, but not abrasive.  In many ways he was a sort of “Francis Schaeffer” for Eastern Religion. Generally appealing to the counterculture, very apt to listen and answer questions, understanding, willing to communicate in new ways that challenge the status quo, etc. In a number of different ways His religious/philosophical views were eclectic, but probably most closely identified with Zen Buddhism.

My main motive in reading this book and also posting quotes is to really understand Eastern Religion better on an apologetical level, and also help other Christians towards the same. Its very easy for us to misunderstand Eastern Religion, and I think Watts provides a good starting point for getting a better and more effective understanding.  Also, secondarily Watts is simply an engaging and entertaining writer. Some of the things he wrote are quite quoteable and worth thinking about.  Sometimes I will merely quote him. Other times I will quote him and pose questions or respond with thoughts or critiques. I trust that readers will both get a better picture of the thought patterns of an Eastern Religionist/Philosopher, and also perhaps in some minor ways be better equipped to engage these ideas apologetically from a Christian standpoint,