No one has ever seen God | Gabriella Caramore | TEDxLakeComo

Gabriella Caramore teaches "Religion and communication" at Università La Sapienza di Roma, and curates several documentaries and radio shows, including one on religious culture called "Uomini e profeti" [Men and Prophets],
From TEDxLakeComo stage, Gabriella makes a case that "we shoud not get rid of religions. We should get rid of a bad reading of religions".

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I deal with religions

despite not having had a confessional

or even a religious upbringing

but, in fact, I mainly deal with them
out of a personal interest,

and above all

because I have long been investigating
the topic on a radio broadcast.

Of course it is always
somewhat embarrassing -

and I have noticed it
even these days, even last night

and then again this morning

to talk about religions
to a vast and composite audience,

because among you there are for sure
those whose faith is unquestioning

and whom I certainly
do not wish to offend,

and also those who - with good cause -

believe that religions
are a remnant of the past,

and I have no desire to contradict them,

and there are those who believe
that religions are but useless foppery

and there is no point
in taking an interest in them

as they are only capable
of leading to violence and destruction,

and this too makes sense.

Then talking about religions

is complicated because in this category

we channel an endless series
of stories and experiences.

There are religions
that have gods and godless religions,

polytheistic religions
and monotheistic religions,

there are religions
which have disappeared and new faiths,

religions viewed
as an entirely private matter

and religions as aspects
of one’s identity.

Besides, every religion is organized
into an infinite space of schools,

sects, churches, derivations, etc. etc.

and then again,
what do we mean by religions?

Do we mean the leaders,
as they say, of the major religions,

or are we speaking of,

I don't know, of a street priest,

of a monk seeking refuge in his hermitage,

of a curia cardinal
or a fanatical fundamentalist?

In short, there are many things
that can be said.

So, for this reason I would like
to suggest two paths tonight,

because you could lose yourself,

just like in front
of any other human experience,

think of scientific experience,
literature, society, history.

But, exactly, religious matters
belong to the time of man and,

as a result, we can find
some trace, at least,

of ancient wisdom,

which may have a meaning,
perhaps, for humanity as a whole.

The first step of this journey
consists of the Veda,

a very ancient body of texts

of the Aryan peoples
from the north of India,

written between 1500

and 1000 years the common era,

which gather, in fact,
various forms of knowledge.

Look, I just want to read out a fragment,

‘"In the beginning there was neither
non-existence nor existence.

There was no air then,
nor yet the sky beyond.

What enveloped it? Where?

Who was it protecting?

Was there water, unfathomable and deep?

At that time there was neither
death nor immortality,

there was no sign of night or day.

From where did this creation arise?

Whether he fashioned it or not,

he who watches over it in the highest
of heavens, he alone knows,

or perhaps he does not know.’

Here, then, you see,
this is how the thinking of man begins,

with questioning,

with a sense of wonder, a desire to know,

but also the awareness of not knowing.

I think that there is something impressive

in this questioning and in this doubting.

What moved and gave rise
to the great religious traditions

is what moved and gave rise
to all human knowledge,

up to space research or the web,
the wireless and so on,

be it science, writing
artistic representation,

or the measuring of the human being
within the universe.

I therefore believe
that we should treasure

the questions of ancient wisdom,

because they are the same ones
that infuse every kind of research

the human being embarks on,
even in our time.

We should treasure their appearance
on the world scene with,

you heard, a sense of wonder
at being alive,

at being something in this life.

These questions must then be treasured,

but not fossilized as they have often been
by religious institutions,

not codified, but forced wide open,

allowing for a multiplicity
of answers from which to choose,

as each of us will choose a path
because we cannot take them all,

but knowing that instead
there are many others.

Only by doing so will
we allow air, wind, and breath

to flow through those questions,

without suffocating them

in the asphyxiating
enclosure of sacristies,

sects, extremisms,

with intelligence, with a critical stance,

always refuting ideas
which are too complete in themselves,

opening up new horizons and new freedoms.

Think of how humiliating it would be,
as it is sometimes is humiliating,

in the history of human beings,

to reduce one's freedom,

to reduce even the free use of thought,

in the name of a creed,
of a belief, of a principle.

This has happened very often
in the history of religions,

but the foundation of faiths
lies in something else,

it lies in openness.

The other path that I want to suggest
moves instead from a different input,

from a different impulse
that has contributed to creating,

forging, shaping,
giving birth to religions,

that is the impulse to alleviate
the suffering of human beings,

to give meaning to pain,

to extinguish it wherever possible,

to contain the destructive
forces inhabiting it,

to try to create a community,

to build cities, to create society,
to build coexistence.

It is true that in history
religious traditions have caused wars,

sustained violence, encouraged abuses,
instigated destruction,

but this has happened and always happens,

it continues to happen,
when we stop questioning,

when we believe we own the truth
and stop looking for it,

when instead of an ungraspable,
an unknowable God,

we build, with our own hands,
an endless series of idols,

an endless series of golden calves.

And we would be well-advised to remember

that it is not only idolaters
who construct a false image of God,

but that our lives are peopled with idols:

suffice it to think of the idol
of money, of possessions,

of the idol that each of us is to himself.

"Lord, deliver me from myself,"
runs a poem by Fernando Pessoa.

So, how can we avoid turning
God into an idol?

‘The face of God cannot be seen,’
is written in the books of the Torah

and therefore it cannot be seen it means
that we are not allowed to imagine God,

we are not allowed to make fetishes
or figurines depicting Him,

to presume we know Him, to delude
ourselves that He is on our side.

Mind you, this is a commandment,

it is the second of the commandments,

after "I am the Lord thy God",

which means that there is a God -
provided He exists naturally -

and a God alone for all of mankind.

Then there is the third commandment,

‘You shall not take the name
of the Lord your God in vain,’

and so, strictly speaking,

since man nothing true can know about God,

better never to pronounce His name

and in fact the name of God is unknowable,

it is contained in four
unpronounceable letters

and think that even in the Islamic
tradition there are 99 names of God,

but they are not nouns,
they are adjectives, that is attributes;

then there is a hundredth name
that nobody knows,

because only God knows it.

Let us consider what this means:

a God whose face cannot be seen,

whose name cannot be pronounced

is a God whose borders are open wide,

he is a God who lives
in the depths of human hearts,

but also in the abyss of the universes.

However, of that God or of that something

to which we have given
and we give the name of God,

there is a trace
in the quests of human beings,

there is a written trace in human history,

in the strategies
used to build a city of men,

where conflicts
can be mediated, elaborated,

where the freedoms of the ones
interlaces with the freedoms of others,

where a life of humanity
and not of bestiality is possible.

Another text,

another statement,
‘No one has ever seen God’.

This is written in the Prologue
to the Gospel of John

and yet another letter from John reads,

‘No one has ever seen God’
and continues immediately afterwards,

"If we love one another,

God abides in us, and His love
has been perfected in us...".

So let's try to understand
this implication here too.

No one has ever seen God.

Full stop.

If we love one another,

God remains in us
and his love is perfected in us.

So what matters is not
imagining God, what God is,

but that word which is defined as "love",

the love we know how to exchange,

the love we know how to build,
the love we are capable of feeling.

But, let’s be honest,
what an embarrassing word,

what an abused and debased word.

Sometimes, personally,
just hearing the word makes me sick:

it is an abstract word,
uttered rather than put into practice.

And let’s have no illusions
about the human creature.

We know what we are made of,

we know that we are a mixture
of tensions, love and hatred.

I like to recall the words of Pascal.

“What a chimera then is man.

What a novelty,
what a monster, what a chaos,

what a contradiction, what a prodigy!

Judge of all things, an imbecile worm;

depository of truth
and sewer of error and doubt;

the glory and the scum of the Universe".

But the human being
is also capable of that love,

of that attention
to the other, of that care,

of that responsibility for the other

that makes him human
and that is what counts.

This is what also counts
for the God of the Bible,

who says, through the mouths
of his prophets,

"I hate, I despise
your religious festivals;

your assemblies are a stench to me.

Even though you bring me
burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship
offerings, I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs!

I will not listen
to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a stream
that never fails!”.

Honesty, justice, non-harming,
the building of good things,

are part of the human life
described in the Scriptures.

For this reason, I believe,

they should be read, studied, understood,

interpreted in a comment that never ends,

because it grows with us,

with each human being who approaches them,

just as we grow

with the frequentation
of those words

and that continuous interpretation.

We will realize, then,

how there is a thread that unites
the Scriptures and the traditions

of all times and all places and it is,

precisely, the attention
to the human being.

You can see it in the Synoptic Gospels,

when someone asks Jesus
what the greatest commandment is,

he puts together, in the story,

two propositions from the Old Testament,

"Love the one God" and "You shall love
your neighbour as yourself".

He says this is a single commandment.

Which means that if one loves God,
if someone says he loves God,

it is not true if he does not
also love his neighbour

and if he loves his neighbour
this is enough to love God too.

If we widen our gaze beyond
the Jewish and Christian scriptures,

we see that in all, but really in all -

in all wisdom, not only the Scriptures -
we find similar statements,

for example in the great Indian poems
and in the discourses of the Buddha,

in the thoughts of Confucius,
in the maxims of the Tao, in Jainism,

in Zoroastrianism, in the sayings
of the Prophet Muhammad,

in Latin wisdom,

up to the Declaration of Human Rights,

“All men endowed with reason
and with conscience

shall assume responsibilities
in a spirit of solidarity

towards each other and all, families,
communities, nations and religions.

What you do not want done to yourself,
do not do to others.”

This is, ultimately,
the program of any religion

and it does not seem
to be a trifling program,

it does not seem to be negligible.

This is why I believe
that it is worth, today,

to still question
the traces of the faiths,

I do not believe that we should
get rid of religions;

I believe we should get rid
of any dumb reading of religions,

of any opaque listening,
with an ear obstructed by nettle,

as poetess Nelly Sachs says.

In other words, I believe
that everyone should feel responsible

for the heritage of tradition
he has inherited;

indeed, each of us
should become that tradition

and take the risk
of interpreting ancient texts

that is up to our present,

with respect but without subjection;

with awareness but also with audacity.

Regenerate, revive ancient words,
reread them in the light of the present.

I want to close by reading to you
a verse from Deuteronomy which says,

"This command I give you today
is not too high for you,

nor beyond your reach;

it is not in the sky,
so you can say how can I reach it;

nor is it beyond the sea,

so that you can say
but whoever can ever bring it to me;

indeed, this word is very close to you,

it is in your mouth and in your heart
that you may put it into practice.

See, today I place
life and good before you,

death and evil, blessing and curse:

therefore choose life, so that you
and your descendants may live.”

So it is, I think, also up to us to choose
a life or at least to try.

I hope I have moved your beliefs
at least marginally. Thank you.

(Applause)