The house stands. Green food is here. I give, you give, all must give.
— from a Kepele spell
Many years ago, I was fortunate to discover Pascal’s Wager, and applied it to my own life. Now, in its original form, the bet is tainted by Monsieur Pascal’s own belief that God — the Creative Force — set things up so that humans who do not believe are tormented for eternity in a place called hell. A booby trap. Suffice it to say that I never was one to paint God in vengeful dictator colors.
But I was intrigued by the logic. What if, I thought, I make the bet my own? If I believe, and I am wrong, nothing happens after death, no gain. If, on the other hand, I believe, and this turning changes my life for the better, and possibly enables me to make connections to unseen forces and mysteries of the universe, I come out ahead.
Correspondingly, if I remain an unbeliever, and God does not exist, no loss in the next world. But, on the other hand, I miss out on a life that turns me away from the path of arid materialism and, possibly, cynical “nothing matters in the long run” orientation. This was a time when the strictly scientific, rationalist vision of the universe began to grate on my nerves, and I discovered I much prefer my world enchanted. Pascal helped me see that when it comes to beliefs which, at present, have no way of being proven one way or another, my intuitive preference could be a starting point for turning my life around. Decades later, I can confirm that the wager has more than paid off, though of course that rational escape hatch inspired by Pascal was only one element of my younger self’s transformation.
Nevertheless, it was with great amazement I came recently to understand that such a bet was commonly taken by our tribal forebears, who understood our needs and our psychology far better than the modernists who have been predicting the demise of religion for more than a hundred years now. My new insight was triggered by two books: Shamans, sorcerers and saints: a prehistory of religion, and Historical vines: Enga networks of exchange, ritual, and warfare in Papua New Guinea. Though the tomes are dense and slow reading, they are well worth the effort as they trace the deep history of religious/spiritual currents and practices. I will be referring to them in the future; they illuminate the problem of power and the paths away from Babylon.
Tribal people did not have ‘religion’ as we commonly understand it; they had cults. I searched for a better name since the word ‘cult’ has unpleasant connotations, but there are no other options. Perhaps it’s time to rescue it. The dictionary tells me that a cult is “a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols,” or “a system of religious veneration and devotion.” And that is exactly what tribes had. Their cults were always evolving and responding to the social needs of the present; they could do so because the cult’s direction and adaptation was fully in the hands of the local “users.” Indeed, it’s been said that cults were for them a powerful social technology that addressed ecological and other problems the tribe was facing in its cultural evolution. For example, in Papua New Guinea they used egalitarian, altruistic, unifying cults to balance the tribe’s induction into the increasingly inequitable and competitive “cult of MORE” which originated long before the coming of the whites.
Cults were concerned not with the afterlife but rather with effectiveness in this life. First, they were utilized to help assure the thriving of family, clan and tribe by “doing right” by the unseen forces and tribal ideals. Second, they provided a tool for dealing with problems in the here and now. In effect, the power these ceremonies unleashed enabled people to embody certain values and behaviors that were helpful in alleviating a crisis. For example, when a smouldering feud burst into flame and angry, vindictive feelings ran high, a Kepele cult ceremony might be organized that entailed building a ritual house by common effort, storytelling (related to cosmology, tribal origins, and legends), specific rituals, a feast, dancing, and a boys’ initiation ceremony. These shared, hallowed activities defused the tension and helped turn the tide of violence. Cross-clan and cross-tribe cults like the Kepele opened up local clans to innovation from abroad and fostered amiable relations with distant neighbors while creating possibilities of new alliances for marriage and trade. And lifting people’s spirits and resetting their orientation in the world was a big part of the magic.
If I needed more persuasion to consider seriously the value of spiritual practices at this point, Brian Hayden’s argument from our biological heritage would be the next best thing. I quote at length below. But I confess that for the very first time, I appreciate fully the power of shared ritual, and mourn the magnitude of what we lost when religion was either hijacked by power brokers, or abandoned altogether.
We can look at our ancient human biological heritage in a new way — the aspects of our human emotional makeup that instinctively resonate within us. These include our natural reactions to rhythm, dance, song, drama, ritual, and all the myriad factors that tend to produce altered states of consciousness in us. These are not simply behaviors that we have learned because cultural traditions have taught us to enact them, with our minds serving as a blank canvas. I contend that these are all evolutionarily structured basic behavioral penchants, similar to the proclivity that human infants exhibit for learning and structuring language. All these factors — language, play, family closeness, kinship, ritual, rhythm, dance — probably played important adaptive roles in the early evolution of the human race. Cultural traditions may model the styles and the details, but the basic penchants undoubtedly stem from ecological adaptations. Not everyone may feel the pull of each factor equally strongly. Some people seem more sensitive to music, others to ritual, others to masks and drama. However, there are probably very few people who do not naturally feel some reaction to at least one of these factors. Recognizing these aspects of our human nature and our human heritage and valorizing them as the essence of what it means to be human is an important step in coming to terms with our contemporary religious experience.
Politicians, philosophers, scholars, scientists, and others have often expressed dismay that in this age of science and enlightenment, such large proportions of even the most modern populations continue to hold irrational, unverified superstitions or beliefs about the existence of a supernatural world, gods, ghosts, or spirits. For such people, science and modern social or political life should have eliminated the need for supernatural beliefs and ritual practices. But they have missed the point. Religion satisfies an inner craving for meaning, a feeling of wholeness or union with greater forces, and an inner satisfaction that comes only from ritual life, just as music and rhythms satisfy an inner emotional craving deep within our souls and minds for the trances, the ecstasies, and the profound experiences only they can produce. These are fundamental adaptations of our biological heritage. To argue that advances in science or politics have eliminated the need for religion is tantamount to arguing that science and politics have eliminated the need for music….
Rational thought on its own becomes pathologically self-serving and destructive of life. Einstein purportedly expressed a similar sentiment when he said that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant; we have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
April 9, 2015 at 12:16 pm
You (and Pascal and others) characterize belief vs. lack of belief (not unbelief, disbelief, or denial) as a choice. Perhaps that is true for some people. Similarly, you characterize lack of belief as cynical, where in the long run nothing matters. That is undoubtedly also true of some people. However, these are not the only options.
Without entering into a long philosophical debate (which I eschewed in the last comments thread), from my perspective or orientation, the gamesmanship of Pascal’s Wager is the truly cynical approach. If belief were only a series of choices for me, I’d prefer to go for the most happy-making delusions available, and indeed, many have done so. (I assert that they’re not really happy, but that’s another matter.) That option isn’t available to me because my orientation requires fidelity to truth and reality best as I can ascertain. I admit human perception and understanding is fundamentally lacking, but we work with what we’ve got.
If I understand correctly, the approach Camus took upon recognizing the absurdity of these questions and of life itself was to fly in the the face of the absurd and establish meaning in this life — the only life we will ever know (risk of even greater absurdist solipsism here) — on its own terms and for its own sake. A wide range of responses can be had from that orientation, including pathological evil. I’m uncertain what keeps people on the straight an narrow, but fear of an afterlife of torments does not seem to be high on the list.
April 9, 2015 at 12:25 pm
Brutus: “fear of an afterlife of torments does not seem to be high on the list.”
Did I suggest it was? Did I really “characterize lack of belief as cynical,” or do I simply state my concern of that time that it might lead me there? — Please do show me where the path I have taken lacks “fidelity to truth and reality best as I can ascertain.” I would love to hear cogent criticism of my approach, if you have it.
April 9, 2015 at 12:31 pm
The suggestion is the lower right box in the graphic at the beginning of the post. As to your other objections, I’m not putting words in your mouth but merely observing that these questions have been out there in the world for a long time and different people have resolved them different ways. The options you laid out don’t apply to me very well; I cannot judge how well they work for others except to say that, for some, they work just fine.
April 9, 2015 at 12:52 pm
Strange. I pointed out the the wager as originally stated was a booby trap. Fraid your objection does not stand, unless you want to take it up with Pascal himself (or his faithful followers).
But letting that go, you did suggest, isn’t it so, that my solution lacks “fidelity to truth and reality”? Them’s fighting words, Brutus. Do you have it in you to substantiate your words?
April 9, 2015 at 1:56 pm
Okay, I’m jumping in, cause I’m with Brutus. I understand Pascal’s wager as saying, “Okay, do I believe in God or not? According to the mythology of my time and place, this is a big moral issue, and if I choose not to believe then I risk Hell,” etc. What I understand Brutus to be saying, which applies to me as well, is that, first of all, what I believe is not really a choice–even if I decide to believe in the Great Pumpkin, I won’t really. Secondly, I did make a choice, when I was fifteen, that i would rather approach the world from as rational and objective a viewpoint as possible even if some other framework might make me happier. For example, some people, when life shits on them, find some way to spin the situation so that “it was all for the best in the long run.” This is probably cheerier than “I was unlucky in this situation”…but truth matters more to me than finding a rosy worldview. I take your solution to mean “I found a way to look at the world and the possibility of Deeper Meaning, which you can call God, included, and I like it better that way.” For me, this would be dishonest, and I think, for Brutus. Maybe this isn’t exactly what you meant, or maybe you figure everyone needs to construct some sort of explanation for the world and the universe and existence that hangs together, and you can build one with god included or not…and what you mean by God is individual to each person anyway…so you chose to have a God in your worldview. I chose not to, because I’ve never seen evidence of a God like the one popular around here, or any other gods I’ve heard of, for that matter. I do see the Earth as our Mother, the Sun as Father, and the other animals and plants as our siblings or cousins…but this is metaphorical.
But music, dance, ritual, stories–bring ’em on!
April 9, 2015 at 8:18 pm
So Mary, do you actually disagree with the quote i posted?, that says: “Rational thought on its own becomes pathologically self-serving and destructive of life.”
I also don’t understand what you mean that beliefs are not by choice. Millions of people in this country choose to believe the MSM (with dire results, I might add). And some of us choose not to believe, and look for more congenial sources of information. (Now, once you’ve decided to believe the MSM, then other beliefs follow choiceless, automatically… like believing that the Malaysian plane was shot down by the Russian rebels.) You don’t believe in the Great Pumpkin because you have no reason to choose such a belief. But I am betting you choose to believe or disbelieve tons of stuff every day. Why would religion/spirituality be any different?
April 9, 2015 at 10:53 pm
I am almost 67 and became a confirmed atheist in about the 3rd grade. Pascal’s wager is meaningless to me because I could not possibly believe in God. I have no more choice about that than the ‘belief’ that I could fly, or that gravity might disappear tomorrow. I am stuck, like Brutus, with believing that only rational thought can reveal truths about the universe.
But rational thought cannot provide meaning, only information. It may not be “pathologically self-serving and destructive of life”, but it would certainly be boring without the irrational. We must rely on irrational aesthetics for determining what we want to live for and to determine our ethical sensibilities, something that reason can never do.
Now the rational me knows that aesthetics is entirely subjective, that one person’s beauty and grace may be another’s grotesqueness. This means that ethics is also entirely subjective, but that’s all we’ve got. There’s a very fine line between psychopathy and enlightenment.
The rational me also knows that subjectivity gives me great freedom. I can go with the norms of the culture I was raised in, or reject them at will. I know that if I rely on my sense of what is beautiful, I can’t be wrong, but I also rationally know that since there great physical risk to my existence in creating a radically deviant ethics, it would be ugly to do so. Dead bodies are rarely pretty, especially one’s own.
That supports the point of your quote from Brian Hayden; irrational behaviors can have survival value and certain irrational traits have evolved to be part of our biological structure. The rational me knows that they have no universal importance, but the rational me knows that they need not be rejected either. I can live with that.
April 10, 2015 at 11:37 am
Welcome, Joe! 🙂
I seem to have run into a wall here. People take my words to mean that anybody can “believe” any absurdity just because “they choose so.” That’s not true in my world, and I have never claimed it. All I am saying that in areas where clear corroboration is missing, we are (rationally!) free to follow our intuition, our feelings, our hunches, our ethical and esthetic sensings, etc, — all the other tools in our “knowing the world” tool kit besides reason. Otherwise we are like a person who can only use a screwdriver and hammer and nothing else.
“only rational thought can reveal truths about the universe”
Really? I bet a whole book could be assembled out of the many cases where scientists used their dreams for insights about their day work, or actually saw a solution to a problem they were working on in a dream. How do you account for that?
On a counter-point, rational thought can lead astray and be used against us — unless we train ourselves to not only avoid its pitfalls, but to cross-check our findings via other, non-rational methods. Paul Feyerabend wrote some interesting stuff about this, and the idolization of scientific method, many years ago.
Yes, I can go with your last para. Why do you figure both Mary and Brutus think I am making a dishonest argument? I can’t figure it out.
April 10, 2015 at 2:00 pm
Leavergirl,
Deciding what position one will take in evaluating the facts of a subject is a process of comparing the pros and cons of various positions on the facts and making a choice about what to ‘believe’. Some subjects have multiple sets of conflicting facts with a variety of argumentative strengths behind them. In that case, decisions about what to believe can be very tentative and subject to change as time progresses and more and more evidence comes to light.
What if the subject is not subject to evidentiary revision? If no set of rationally discovered evidence can be applied to the subject, then the subject is irrational. Belief becomes purely a matter of faith in one’s own judgement.
So the first step in making a decision about anything is deciding whether the subject matter is rational or irrational, whether our appraisal can be affected by facts. Consider the effect of art or music on a person. If I like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and you don’t, are there facts that can be brought to bear on our disagreement that could settle the matter of whether the painting is truly likable? Of course not. Aesthetic appreciation is irrational. My belief that Starry Night is beautiful is purely a matter of faith in my emotional response to seeing the painting.
The same test applies to religion. One must first make a decision whether religion fits into the category of rational subject matter or irrational subject matter. If I decide that it is irrational, no further appraisal of facts is necessary. I accept or reject religion purely as a matter of faith.
This is why it is virtually impossible to change one’s faith. No facts can apply, so there is no motivation to reappraise the ‘evidence’ as time goes by. To change one’s mind about whether a subject matter is rational or irrational would be to reject the whole constellation of personal experience and personality traits that were brought to bear on the question the first time the subject was appraised in earnest. It would mean literally becoming another person, with a different personality. I think this is why we are saying that there are some beliefs about which we have no choice. Once a person puts a subject in the irrational category, there is no taking it out again.
April 10, 2015 at 3:03 pm
Joe, what I am about to say, implies no disrespect for you or your position. If I say something that treads on your toes, please let me know and I will endeavor to correct it forthwith. Ok, here comes:
Based on my experience, this is a rationalist fantasy. People do not make up their mind that way regarding what they believe. Sometimes people use this method, in select circumstances, usually the people in question are intellectuals, I am guessing. But even then, they resort to other tools in their toolbox. The more contentious area, the more tools used. Getting a sense of the situation from many points of view, and through many “intelligences” gifted to me in my human repertoire, is how I choose among alternatives. I find that this way of filtering reality gives the best results, at least in my own life. Perhaps Brutus would call my way delusional, I don’t know. I consider myself a pretty sober person. 😉
There are areas, I agree with you, that are strictly matters of personal taste. But there are others, where subjectivity and objectivity overlap, as in ethics. You’ve opened up a huge topic!
I have rarely divided matters into “rational” and irrational.” This division has been fraught with insults and dismissals in the annals of science. There are matters that can be corroborated by tests and direct evidence, and there are others that must be weighed otherwise. I tried to show with my brief exposition on tribal cults that the use of these cults is highly practical, and that the tribes were very flexible in altering them when they saw more effective elements elsewhere. They were an effective mix that draws humans in (as whole persons and not just rational beings) and aids in our own personal and group adaptation. Does any of this make sense to you? I would hate to be talking at cross-purposes.
April 10, 2015 at 5:13 pm
Leavergirl, you’ve gotten plenty of pushback but thus far have yielded very little. Your repeated goading of me to defend my statements borders on irritation, and I have no desire to duke it out just so I can be proven right (or wrong). You’re welcome to your beliefs, while I remain unconvinced. However, in light of the direction the discussion has taken, I’ll add a couple more thoughts for completeness.
Rational/irrational and subjective/objective dualisms are false, though widely accepted. One might describe them instead as continua, but that’s only more subtly false. Based on what I’ve read and understood about cognition and epistemology, humans adopt a pose of rationalism and objectivity to better manipulate ideas in the abstract, which has proven to be pretty effective in many domains; but when it comes to belief, we filter everything through our limited perception and emotion, both of with are prone to influence from social forces. Thus, appeals to logic and intellect (purity, abstraction) or to faith and emotion (purity, inner truth) get at issues that are mixed together and inseparable. Clearly, some issues of fact are beyond belief: the sun is bright, air is needed to breathe, 2 + 2 = 4, etc. Few argue those points. Ignorance trumps other issues of fact and relegates them to belief: heliocentrism, evolution, climate change, etc. Many argue those points. Spiritual belief is more nearly conditional, about which everyone argues, often talking past each other because of their adherence to binary thinking.
I made my argument based on perception, which is processed both ways but ultimately boils down to emotion (i.e., memory is encoded as emotion). It would be foolhardy to argue that merely because one can’t perceive something it doesn’t exist. Infrared light comes to mind, though secondary evidence of its actuality is available. Faith and spiritualism also have lots of secondary evidence in human culture and history, with some (few?) folks utterly convinced of god’s existence, others more inclined to accept cultural norms even in the absence of inner knowledge. Pascal’s wager is something else yet: a strategy based on the logic of game theory, a “what if” insurance policy just in case. To my way of thinking, that’s what makes electing belief more cynical than lack of belief.
But that’s just my approach, and I am completely happy to acknowledge others address the issue very differently. There is nothing further for me to say on the subject.
April 10, 2015 at 5:24 pm
Leavergirl,
Let me just concentrate on one sentence of yours that summarizes the main point of your post. I’ll start with the first half…”I tried to show with my brief exposition on tribal cults that the use of these cults is highly practical”.
I don’t disagree at all. That a belief is irrational does not mean it may not be very useful in an evolutionary sense. It may very well have the benefits that Hayden points out, “Religion satisfies an inner craving for meaning, a feeling of wholeness or union with greater forces, and an inner satisfaction that comes only from ritual life”. These benefits can easily promote solidarity with other believers, reduce stress from anomie and provide a great deal of motivation to work with other believers on common goals. All these benefits have tremendous survival value. Their adaptive power is why they are “built in” to brain function. We are prone to collaborative irrationality.
Now let’s look at the second part of your sentence…”the tribes were very flexible in altering them when they saw more effective elements elsewhere”. This is the crux of our disagreement. I do not think that tribal religion (cult) was a matter of great flexibility. Believers do not think that their beliefs are irrational, they think they are facts. They aren’t abandoned willy-nilly just because the neighboring tribe got a better sweet potato harvest one year.
People hold on to their religious beliefs even when faced with horrific coercive threats; they don’t abandon them “when they see more effective elements elsewhere”. Even when forced to abandon all overt expression of their faith and publicly participate in another, they will often secretly renounce what they do.
It is true that it is possible for people to change their religion, but it is usually when there is a common heritage between the old and the new. And one can find examples where a non-religious person adopted a faith or vice versa, but the rarity of such examples proves how inflexible we are when it comes to matters of faith.
Now it may be true that the “cult practices” you discuss were not so strongly held as more conventional religious beliefs, but I doubt that they were freely adopted and abandoned during collaborative interactions between neighboring tribes. I know you disagree on this point, but tribes often had little interaction other than raiding each other. That’s why hundreds of completely separate languages could develop in just the highlands of New Guinea.
April 10, 2015 at 7:43 pm
Just a housekeeping note. I have clicked on the RSS Posts link several times over the last few weeks. It doesn’t work. All I get is HTML code. I would like to be notified when you have new posts.
April 10, 2015 at 10:50 pm
I saved the RSS widget again, would you tell me if it works? If not, I’ll rebuild it.
April 10, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Thank you, Brutus, to adding further thoughts. You will find no further irritating goadings from me. I had mistakenly thought you were into interactive, back and forth conversations that further illuminate the path ahead, and I would have thought you know me enough by now to understand that I am not in this for some game of one upmanship.
Joe, “We are prone to collaborative irrationality.” I guess I am not happy with the terminology. It’s been used to disparage the other side. But I agree with the gist of what you are saying.
As to what you say about religious people holds for some, but it sure does not hold for the Enga. They actually went out of their way to buy! cults from one another. It was done by inviting the pertinent ritual experts in, and letting them stage the ceremony, and teach the locals all the aspects so they could then do it themselves. Pretty remarkable. And yes, an awesome sweet potato harvest would in fact, be some of the things they would be looking for, in terms of a cult’s success. Or extra healthy extra fertile pigs. 🙂
The Enga consist of more than the 110 tribes researched for the book, and they are all tied in together by a system of clans (mostly male descent, in one place) and far flung affinal links through one’s wives. It is these affinal links that provide the basis for their intensively maintained trading routes. (Which is not to say they don’t fight; they do. But at least some of the time those are ceremonial wars, with only an occasional casualty. Again designed to grow many more distant links of relatives and affiliates, and the exchange made possible by them. Quite remarkable. I recommend the book.)
April 10, 2015 at 11:21 pm
Vera, first of all thanks for revealing these influences on your life, and linking them to “our tribal forebears.” It’s good food for thought, to me at least. I think that what might be happening with these comments is that when such personal sharing results in disagreement, it can easily be taken personally (on any/all sides of the discussion). Defending one’s written words can then become a stand-in for defending one’s beliefs or life decisions — where it would be painful to realize that one has been “wrong.”
However, as I recall the philosopher Carl Hempel (author of Philosophy of Natural Science) would emphasize that beliefs cannot be proved nor disproved, which I think is a useful distinction. Deciding which source of news to “believe” (based on fact-checking and any evidence of bias), or deciding whether climate change has compelling factual evidence, is thus far removed from one’s beliefs about the afterlife, for example.
So I can appreciate the sharing and exploring of different beliefs, but I think that arguments about such beliefs are generally a waste of time, and find it somewhat ironic whenever “rationality” is used in attempts to support these beliefs.
April 10, 2015 at 11:30 pm
Welcome, SteveL, and I appreciate your take on the situation here. I completely agree that arguing about beliefs does not really further us. In fact, I think I wrote something ages ago to the effect that it’s behaviors, not beliefs, that matter.
Mostly, I am pretty amazed by what I am learning about what Joe above calls “collaborative irrationality” and wonder how it can be utilized in helping one another change behaviors that threaten us all. Obviously, exhortations and doom-mongering are not getting the job done, eh? 🙂
April 11, 2015 at 12:14 am
Mary, to clarify. You say “I take your solution to mean “I found a way to look at the world and the possibility of Deeper Meaning, which you can call God, included, and I like it better that way.” — I meant to say, yes, I found a way to look at the possibility of Deeper Meaning, and I it has made my life better. This better cannot be reduced to “oh what a cute comforting fairy tale!” — it is a multifaceted better, which I tried to tie in to the multifaceted “better” the Enga seemed to derive from their cults in their heyday. (Now they are mostly Christian.) And for me, it’s not metaphorical. At the same time, I am not saying I am right… I don’t really believe in certainty.
I must say, it’s devilish hard talking across these boundaries….
April 13, 2015 at 10:30 pm
I just tried the RSS link again. I get this message “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below”, then all the HTML for the entire page below the message.
April 14, 2015 at 11:23 am
I rebuilt it and added a “search this blog” widget. Please try and let me know.
April 15, 2015 at 8:23 pm
I looked up ‘cult’ and ‘culture’ to see if they have the same root word, and yes, Latin ‘colere’, ‘to cultivate’ related also to Sanskrit word for ‘wheel’. I guess the Romans used a wheel-shaped field cultivator?
Anyway, if cult and culture are semantically tied to: A) cultivation of a piece of land, and B) a circular object, that suggests a cellular model of social infrastructure to me. In an animal body, some cells move around (blood circulation) and some stay put, working in place. As a living thing, the body seeks to maintain homeostasis. Fever fights germs; sweat glands and integument of skin help to cool down overheated internal organs and muscles.
Societies heat up or cool down too. War fever to repel foreign invaders; sweat equity in a long hut, cathedral, or Grail Quest to cool down the friction heat of internal aggression. Ego-dissolving drugs and/or feasts, shared rites for grief, mutual fasting, or other mind-altering and society-unifying devices. Cell borders, nu? Party cities where Aphrodite is worshipped in an eminently practical and down-to-earth manner. Greek festival of the first tasting of the new wine, with masks and sexual license as the order of the day. Winter’s hardships counteracted by ceremonials of Light. Societal lassitude, culture-shock and culture-loss, oppression of slavery counteracted by the invention of the Blues and ecstatic worship ceremonials with full-on audience participation. Cell plasma, nutrient-carrier and ‘gel’.
Reason is a whore. That’s not my metaphor, it’s Martin Luther’s. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has a page or so where two perfectly logical trains of reasoning ‘prove’ two completely different conclusions. Who ya gonna believe? Kant and Luther or Dawkins and Co.,Ltd? No Holy-Ghostbusters around to help out with anti-ectoplasm guns. In the movie Contact, a preacher asks the scientist protagonist if she loved her (now dead) father; she says yes, very much. he says, “Prove it.”
Belief is also a cellular structure. Compounded of sense experience, emo conditioning and cultural education, among other elements. Can be tough as old leather, a protective skin or chafing rawhide tie. Can be peanut-brittle candy-like, based on sugary hopes, caramelized fantasy and a handful of nutty ideas.(Capital thinking!) Can be the bones and flesh of a get-out-there-and-DO-something doer or the fizzy sparking brain cells of a dreamer. Doesn’t matter if God, Cod, or Arthropod (Old Spider Woman) is your preferred Source Document: All Cod’s chillun gots belief. It’s a localized phenomenon, and it’s about to get a lot more local. Even a one-celled animule can have a profound effect on a society and culture. Take smallpox, and measles in pre-Columbian America for example. Every one of us has our own personal Ghost Dance to perform. What’s it gonna be for? Or against? or none of the above, below or beside? Still looking for my tribe: may not find them.
April 20, 2015 at 9:33 am
Just leaving someone in the rough wilderness to survive on ther own…would quicky it sould wipe out “rational philosophies” from their mind.
Rational mind is inferior–it is a trap that had lead humankind into false existance, where they extended own lifespan only to get high rate of depression and suicide, and got boring slave-like life overall. I come from computer science/mathematics background and all these arrogant athetist science-worhsipping professors proclaiming all-powerful human being on top of everything, etc. They can’t even count hair on own head and can’t solve their own personal life problems. They don’t even know the day they’re going to die and no science will ever help them with that. Spending some time alone with a grizzly in the wilderness would fix this quick. (a lengthy lecture given to the bear wont help).
Anyway, some religions say god will forgive anything, at any point…so living as non-believer and quickly becoming one at the end might be a “winning strategy”. However, there’re many different religions that apparently hate each other….how do you win Pascal’s wager? You’d have to expand the table by a few rows/coumns 🙂
I’m an atheist, but being near wild nature feel that there’s “something else” there, much bigger than human, which human can’t even begin to understand. This force doesn’t appear to have any “morality”, “kindness” or “love” in it. Ancient gods weren’t kind, by the way; they demanded sacrifices.
April 21, 2015 at 12:01 pm
That’s so beautiful it should be a post of its own, Kay. 🙂 Yes, sigh, yes. All Cod’s chillun gots belief. May your day be lovely, and thank you for this gift.
Oh, and tribes? Yeah, me too. It occurred to me the other day that there ought to be a game called Tribe. Playing it gets you there.
April 21, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Some religions do say that. Mine is not one of them. 😉 Some even have the gall to canonize a psychopath like Constantine for doing just that. (By their fruits ye shall know them!)
Wasn’t it power-mad humans who demanded the sacrifices? Why blame the gods? 🙂
I like to say we are made of love and stardust. How can you say that the Creative Force has no kindness or love in it, that has brought the universe from howling hot then cold emptiness to… this? These beautiful mountains, these delightful critters our sojourners, these kind human beings? The universe does not lack love or kindness, my friend, it’s merely unfinished.
April 21, 2015 at 2:19 pm
I don’t think the Universe has any more kindness than destruction and wrath. Living around wilderness is a good illustration of this. These power-mad humans are just a creation of force that is half-evil, half-kind–in reality, this force is beyond concepts such “kindness”, “love”, or “evil”. Everything beautiful you see in Nature–it can kill you. Everything that is good comes to destruction and often horrible end. Loving gods are a tale, a wishful thinking. It’s for a reason ancient people feared their merciless gods and spirits.
April 21, 2015 at 2:33 pm
Well, I think the Universe has much more love and kindness in it than, say, at the time of the Big Bang. Wouldn’t you agree? And how do you explain it?
Nature will kill me. So what? In death, we serve life. And that’s good in my book.
Animism did not have merciless gods and spirits to my knowledge. That came later… along with worshiping ancestors, and power-madness. Will have much to say about that soon, right here on this blog.
April 21, 2015 at 3:04 pm
At the time of the Big Bang (if it iexisted), there was a lot of “kindness”, why….so much matter was being created out of state of non-existence, light out of darkness. But in reality, nobody knows what was the previous state, before existence, and if Big Bang had ever occurred.
As to death…not sure if you’ve seen a few people die–I did, and there’s nothing that “serves life” in it. A nasty, horrifying process, true manifestation of evil.
I maintain that existence consists of mostly the darkness and pain. And this came true: “Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life….Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you”
April 21, 2015 at 4:28 pm
I used to think that Nature was “out there”, separate from me. Now I think (or believe?) otherwise. This change didn’t seem to be a choice (in the context of a decision made), more like a realization (or perhaps it could somehow qualify as a delusion?)
What else can kill us if it’s not Nature? If it’s Nature that kills me, I’d say it’s because I was condemned to death since the day I was born. Kind or unkind? Creation and destruction — two sides of the same coin?
Regardless of the overall balance or imbalance of the universe, I tend to gravitate toward “beauty”, “kindness”, and “love”.
Perhaps there is no point or purpose in existence, other than to continue existing, in which case death is a defeat to be avoided and feared. I believe otherwise.
April 21, 2015 at 6:10 pm
Vera’s theme has some parallels with the novel “The Life of Pi” by Yann Martel, who said the book can be summarized in three lines:
1. Life is a story
2. You can choose your story.
3. A story with God is the better story.
Source:
http://textualities.net/jennie-renton/yann-martel-interview
April 21, 2015 at 9:29 pm
Ohwell: So first you say no love or kindness, now you say there was lots of kindness even at the very beginning. So which is it? 🙂
As for death, there are all sorts of ways to go, and some are pretty unpleasant. But all death serves life. I am surprised you don’t see it. Without death, we’d be knee deep in chiggers and mosquitoes, for one. Without death, no room for new life, in other words. And in death, we feed others whom we give the gift of life, as now, some others give the gift of life to us, by feeding us, every day.
April 21, 2015 at 9:36 pm
That’s it, SteveL! Maybe I should read it.
April 24, 2015 at 12:18 pm
Here is a whimsical look at what might happen after death.
Clever.