Alan Watts - Atheism In The Name Of God

Alan Watts wrote an interesting, fallacious and very confused essay in which he proposed the idea of "atheism in the name of God" which was entitled, "The World's Most Dangerous Book." Can you guess to which book he was referring? Indeed, the Bible (which is not a book, by the way). Yet, he was kind enough to explain, "The Bible is a dangerous book, though by no means an evil one."

One is very much reminded of Sam Harris when considering Alan Watts as they are both quite taken with Eastern philosophies, partook in psychedelic drug, and expressed anti-Christian prejudice.
In the essay "The World's Most Dangerous Book" Alan Watts proposes "atheism in the name of God" which actually rejects commonly understood atheism: we will come to this below.
In the essay he continuously complains of literal interpretations of the Bible. He does not seem to consider that to take a text literally means: to take it as it is intended; historical references is taken as such, cultural references is taken as such, symbolic references is taken as such, etc. Then again, he is alternately referring to those whom he refers to as stupid, ignorant, childish, Jesus freaks, Bible bangers, ignorance, uneducated and uninformed, invincible stupidity, idiots, credulous as children, intellectually and morally irresponsible people, etc. (which appears to be all Christians).

Alan Watts' concerns about literal interpretations are exampled by his statement,

an uneducated and uninformed person who reads them today, and takes them as the literal Word of God, will become a blind and confused bigot.

What does he mean "reads them today"? He is virtually paraphrasing the Apostle Peter,

Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures (2nd Peter 3:15-16).

Of course, Alan Watts was specifically commenting on his misunderstanding of "literal." An uneducated and uninformed person who reads the Bible literally will become more educated and informed and will become a lover of her neighbors, etc.

Furthermore, note that Alan Watts argues that "the religion of the literally understood Bible is…militant…Among its most popular hymns are such battle songs as…Onward, Christian Soldiers."
Has he considered the lyrics and matched them to Christian theology?
The lyrics, and the theology, deal with battling satan and not human beings.

At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee; on then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell's foundations quiver at the shout of praise; brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise…
Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail; we have Christ's own promise, and that cannot fail.

Moreover, the lyrics refer to being united in charity.
The theology to match can be found in texts such as follows:

the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2nd Corinthians 10:4-5).
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

Now, just what does Alan Watts recommend we do to interpret "The World's Most Dangerous Book"? What emerges in the essay, as per his "atheism in the name of God," is that Alan Watts prefers to "interpret" the Bible according to his preferred Eastern philosophy views: odd concoctions of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. And he has an idealistic, romantic, utopian notion of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

For example, he writes:

Such superstition would have been relatively harmless if the religion had been something tolerant and pacific, such as Taoism or Buddhism.

I know, I know Taoism or Buddhism are hip: wear your ying-yang necklace, seek balance and such, contemplate your navel, chant, etc. Yet, Taoism and Buddhism have been influencing Chinese and Japanese culture for millennia and just as any other religion-philosophy-worldview they have produced benevolence as well as malice mostly in the form of militaristic movements premised on seeing life as illusion or an need to act out our yang, etc. (at this link are some examples and list of further resources).

But just what does Alan Watts recommend we do to interpret "The World's Most Dangerous Book"? What emerges in the essay, as per his "atheism in the name of God," is that Alan Watts prefers to "interpret" the Bible according to his preferred Eastern philosophy which leads to odd, nonsensical, fallacious and eisegetically fabricated "interpretations" such as:

Jesus, and that spirit is, again, the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal God the Son, who could just as well have been incarnate in Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tzu or Ramana Maharshi as in Jesus of Nazareth_
the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, the Logos-Sopia, refers to the basic pattern or design of the Universe, ever emerging from the inconceivable mystery or the Father as the galaxies shine out of space.

Note the qualifier "could just as well have." Apparently, according to Alan Watts' "atheism in the name of God" if he could imagine that Jesus "could just as well have" then the rest of his personal, particular and peculiar theology is vindicated.

Alan Watts further notes that the God of the Bible is a "Father-Monarch" and thus, writes:

There have been other images of God than the Father-Monarch: the Cosmic Mother; the inmost Self (disguised as all living beings), as in Hinduism; the indefinable Tao, the flowing energy of the universe, as among the Chinese; or no image at all, as with the Buddhists, who are not strictly atheists but who feel that the ultimate reality cannot be pictured in any way and, what is more, that not picturing it is a positive way of feeling it directly, beyond symbols and images. I have called this "atheism in the name of God"…

Atheism in the name of God is an abandonment of all religious beliefs, including atheism, which in practice is the stubbornly held idea that the world is a mindless mechanism. Atheism in the name of God is giving up the attempt to make sense of the world in terms of any fixed idea or intellectual system. It is becoming again as a child and laying oneself open to reality as it is actually and directly felt, experiencing it without trying to categorize, identify or name it…

all monotheistic religions have been militant. Wherever God has been idolized as the King or Boss-Principle of the world…

Keep in mind that Alan Watts is referencing the very same Taoism which for millennia has produced copious amounts of literature expressing that the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao and the very same Buddhism which for millennia has promulgated as, perhaps, its most popular scripture the idea of a revelation outside of scripture which has no need for words-his "beyond symbols and images" which he expresses by employing the symbols of language in order to paint images by means of word pictures. I Buddhist once told me that the Buddha taught rid yourself of desire and you will rid yourself of suffering. I asked what I was to do with the desire I felt to rid myself of desire. Get it? What if I feel a driving desire to rid myself of desire?
From what I can tell it is not only "all monotheistic religions" that "have been militant" but any and every religion, philosophy or worldview that gains a certain kind of power has become militant.

In this regard it is noteworthy that Alan Watts wrote,

both science and mysticism (which might be called religion as experienced rather than religion as written) are based on the experimental attitude of looking directly at what is, of attending to life itself instead of trying to glean it from a book.

Imagine that via mystical experiences you end up accepting as truth what the book states; the Bible's statements about Jesus uniqueness. Now, your subjective mysticism would be refuted by Alan Watts' subjective mystical "atheism in the name of God" since that being that you consider unique "could just as well have been incarnate in Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tzu or Ramana Maharshi."

As for the practical implications, the practice of Alan Watts' "atheism in the name of God" he states:

This can be most easily begun by listening to the world with closed eyes…in which the past and future vanish…in which there is no audible difference yourself and what you are hearing. There is simply universe, an always present happening in which there is no perceptible difference between self and other…between what you do and what happens to you.

Directly following he makes a fascinating statement, "Without losing command of civilized behavior." He appears to realize what atheism in general and "atheism in the name of God" have in common with any concept of reality as actually being some sort of maya like illusion: losing command of civilized behavior is mere the actions of a bio-organism, or an illusion of personality, or insert ethereal concept here, that are subsequently interpreted by other bio-organism-illusion of personality, etc. as being civilized or not-ultimately and/or absolutely, who is to say?

Alan Watts continues defining "atheism in the name of God" by applying his concoction of Taoism-Hinduism-Buddhism to biblical interpretation:

When you listen to the world in this way, you have begun to practice what Hindus and Buddhists call meditation a re-entry to the real world, as distinct from the abstract world of words and ideas. If you find that you can't stop naming the various sounds and thinking in words, just listen to yourself doing that as another form of noise, a meaningless murmur like the sound of traffic. I won't argue for this experiment. Just try it and see what happens, because this is the basic act of faith of being unreservedly open and vulnerable to what is true and real.

Certainly this is what Jesus himself must have had in mind in that famous passage in the Sermon on the Mount upon which one will seldom hear anything from a pulpit:

"Which of you by thinking can add a measure to his height? And why are you anxious about clothes? Look at the flowers of the field, how they grow. They neither labor nor spin; and yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his splendor was not arrayed like any one of them. So if God so clothes the wild grass which lives for today and tomorrow is burned, shall He not much more clothe you, faithless ones?...Don't be anxious for the future, for the future will take care of itself. Sufficient to the day are its troubles." [ellipses in original]

There you have it; Jesus was teaching Hindus and Buddhists meditation or was He?

Note that the verse just before Alan Watts quoted text states,

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money (Matthew 5:24).

Thus, you can serve the things of this world or God and if you serve God He will provide the necessary things of this world.
Also, note what is missing from the ellipses in the text quoted by Alan Watts points "faithless ones?...Don't be anxious":

So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 5:31-33).

Indeed, the text was not about Hindu / Buddhist re-entry to the real world, a meaningless murmur or being unreservedly open and vulnerable to what is true and real. Rather, the point is "Therefore do not be anxious" since "your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things." Thus, the point is:

1) Delineation: "No one can serve two masters"

2) Priority: "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness"

3) Because: "all these things shall be added to you"

4) Thus, and again, "do not be anxious about tomorrow" (see Matthew 6:25-34)

Moreover, in accord to the, apparently, infallible biblical interpretations of Alan Watts' "atheism in the name of God"-Taoist-Hindu-Buddhist hermeneutic we get new insight into John 10:31 as Alan Watts writes:

just after he [Jesus] has said "I and the Father are one," the crowd picks up rocks to stone him to death.
He protests:

"Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of those works do you stone me?" The Jews answered him, saying, "We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God."

And here it comes:

Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said, you are gods [quoting Psalms 82]? If He [i.e., God] called those to whom He gave His word gods and you can't contradict the Scriptures how can you say of Him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, 'You blaspheme!' because I said, 'I am a son of God" [The original Greek says "a son," not "the son."]

In other words, the Gospel, or "good news" that Jesus was trying to convey, despite the limitations of his tradition, was that we are all sons of God.

This is a confused commentary but the end result is that Alan Watts is seeking to justify his "atheism in the name of God" interpretation. Jesus is obviously meeting their argument at the arguments own level-directly to the point-and then taking them further. Jesus makes clear that they essentially want to stone Him for claiming something that ought not have astonished them since in Psalm 82 those to whom the word of God came where called gods. Part of the problem, for the undiscerning or those who lack basic knowledge of the Bible's contents and contexts, is that son of God, or sons of God can mean various things and is to be determined, as usual, via context. It may be in reference to Jesus' uniqueness, in reference to Israel as a nation, in reference to what we may become (as we shall see), etc. (the same may be said for the term son of man).

Let us take a moment to understand what is meant by the word of God coming to them and in what capacity they were gods. Psalm 82 refers to elohim and translates it both as "God" and "gods." Elohim is the plural of El so why is it translated once as singular and once as plural? Again, it is always the context that ultimately determined the definition of a word and not its rigid etymology. Thus, once the reference is to a singular personage "elohim…he" the other plural "elohim…all of you." Thus, there is an obvious differentiation which is made all the clearer due to the fact that the singular elohim is in charge of the plural ones. Let us consider the text, in part:

God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked?...

I said, You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

Thus, the singular elohim, God, judges the others and notes that they are judging unjustly: these are the judges of Israel to whom God had given instructions as pertains to passing judgment. God calls them elohim which means "mighty ones" as they had a high position and yet they are not gods in any supernatural sense not, in a certain sense of the word, mighty up above and beyond any other human since they will die just like anyone else; they certainly are not mightier than the "Most High"-Elyon. It was these gods/judges to which God referred to as all being His children-in this context. Thus, Jesus notes that the Father has sanctified Him and sent Him into the world, that He is doing the works of His Father, and that if they did not believe Him they should believe His works which they had already acknowledge.

Alan Watts concludes,

Jesus was presumably trying to say that our consciousness is the divine spirit, "the light which enlightens every one who comes into the world,"…But the Church, still bound to the image of God as the King of kings, couldn't accept this Gospel. It adopted a religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus. It kicked him upstairs and put him in the privileged and unique position of being the Boss's son, so that, having this unique advantage, his life and example became useless to everyone else.

This is a first class non sequitur even if we disregard the context of John and the Psalm. Alan Watts is defining "our consciousness" as "the divine spirit" ex nihilo. The partially quoted verse, "the light which enlightens every one who comes into the world" does not refer to Jesus in particular (John 1:1-9):

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Himnothing was made that was made. In Himwas life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. Thatwas the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Note just how singular and specific the text is yet, we must recall that according to Alan Watts' "atheism in the name of God" interpretation the divine spirit "could just as well have been incarnate in Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tzu or Ramana Maharshi" since the divine spirit is our consciousness.
Thus, it is not the case that "the Church…couldn't accept this Gospel" which is not Gospel at all but the case is that this interpretation is simply baseless.
Note that Alan Watts partially, conveniently and self-servingly quoted John 1:9; just below, at v. 12-14, it states,

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

We do not need to become something that we already are yet, in counter distinction to Alan Watts' interpretation, the text states that we may now "become children of God" and makes reference to what in John 3 will come to be referred to as being born again and then comes the anathema to "atheism in the name of God" statement, "the only begotten of the Father."

I say "anathema" due to the following statement by Alan Watts,

When I try to explain this to Jesus freaks and other Bible bangers, they invariably reveal theological ignorance by saying, "But doesn't the Bible say that Jesus was the only -begotten son of God?" It doesn't. Not, at least, according to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican interpretations. The phrase "only-begotten son refers not to Jesus the man but to the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, who is said to have become incarnate in the man Jesus. Nowhere does the Bible, or even the creeds of the Church, say that Jesus was the only incarnation of God the Son in all time and space.

Unfortunately, the open quotation at "only-begotten_ is never closed in Alan Watts' essay and he does not provide a citation so who knows to what he is referring.
In any case, note that even considering the example we just noted: Alan Watts states that the Bible does not claim that Jesus was the only-begotten son of God yet, we just read that the Word, the Light, Jesus was "the only begotten of the Father." But, "Nowhere does the Bible, or even the creeds of the Church, say that Jesus was the only incarnation of God the Son in all time and space." Apparently, "only"-single of its kind- is not specific enough because it did not say "Only one from the pale blue dot in the universe's back waters to Alpha Centauri and in every and any nook and cranny or the universe, or dark matter, or black holes, or multiverse, or dimensions, or alternate realities, etc., infinity plus one." Then again, the Bible does refer to Jesus as the "Alpha and Omega"-the beginning and the end.

Yet, does it follow that because "Nowhere does the Bible, or even the creeds of the Church, say that Jesus was the only incarnation of God the Son in all time and space" we can simply claim that God the Son incarnated in and/or as Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tzu, Ramana Maharshi, a shooting star, a rainbow, a chinchilla, a cucumber, a goiter, etc.?

Just keep in mind that "the" (singular) Word, "the" (singular) Light, became Flesh (singular) and dwelt among us.

There are very many other fallacious claims in Alan Watts' atheism in the name of God's interpretation of "The World's Most Dangerous Book."
Yet, overall it seemed relevant to note how he considers his subjective mysticism as the final court of arbitration and the infallible guide to all things biblical.