When the machine breaks down – the greatest invention of all, a bubbling, crashing, whirling creation of a Man-God, whose legs are ancient dusty pages and colored cathedral windows for eyes – when the gears become rusty and the giant idol crashes with an ancient groan, worn-out piles of busted stuff scatter, left to their former caretakers – monks and nuns, picking up pieces in funeral garb with everlasting pride in their former creation… but the rest of the builders are left with nothing to do.

Build a new machine? The only thing left to do is to stare ahead into a universe of parts; bolts and nuts, questioning even their own eyes. Wandering away from the pile of busted bolts and trashed tinkering, they feel the a sense of quietude at the senseless cosmos peeking over the treeline at night. The sound of the flies gets louder.

When the machine of God is gone, when all our tinkering around idols stops, steps might lead back into the jungle and the drum-beat of ancestors, which (for no reason) now sounds dangerous and wrong.

The builders cry for more music of the gears, a performance of the big finale – a sweet serenade about the meaning of life, a concert and comedy to light up our simian minds with certainty. Hands moving in remembrance of complicated motions to build up a new machine. Without the grinding of gears, the rancid whisper of steam, frightened by the void of space, the trap of biology, the lovely recurring nightmare of Spring and Winter. Reality hits, like a train. Everything is algorithmic, chaotic, pointless – suffering is everywhere, competition, survival, pedicured sun-basted modern masked animals who deign themselves meta-Gods, feasting on the bones of dead beasts, hidden under clothes and makeup to disguise the despicable truth, lost in the rotting skeleton of God, a concrete maze.

But what should they do? Abandon hope, smelt the gears into bullets, stare up at the sky with nausea? Step backward into the jungle or try to fix the machine – put the gears back in order, shine the cathedral windows, rewrite the books?

When the machine of religion has died, morality, meaning, purpose – it disappears underfoot. No longer can anyone build false purposes and bring them flowers of worship. All paths open. The builders are the machine. When all idols are broken, what remains but empty midnight?

“One hand on this wily comet. Take a drink just to give me some weight. Some Uberman I’d make; I’m barely a vapour.” – James Mercer

Some things that are useful aren’t necessarily true. A good religious friend implied that insistence on a world of hard facts and knowledge shows that I am really just afraid of feeling the truth of those things which reside outside the realm of rationality, such as the existence of God. Maybe secular humanists, atheists and free-thinkers are just scared to admit that some feelings are beyond reason, telling us eternal truths about life.

The implication here is that my feelings will lead me to God; that I’m only blocking Him out using mortal tactics of scientific submersion and avoidance, through a pithy world of shaky human constructs. A very touching argument – but far too cute to survive in the real world. There’s more to it than that.

Yes – there is an important axis of human life which extends far beyond the scientific or rational, into a world of the mythical, creative and experiential; and we all salve or feed this daimon of feeling, sometimes with help from native stories, myths and fables, other times with art, music and sex. Regardless, it’s part of being human.

Maybe this part of life could be called the spiritual, the emotional, the artistic or the Dionysian: no matter how we cut it, there is a vista which appears to transcend all rationality with brute natural force.

But how is it, as we begin to muddle the lines between truth and feeling, that this necessary condition of humanity must lead always to faith and religion? This is, after all, what they’re saying.

There are at least eight giant religions that rule the world. The title of religious studies professor Stephen Prothero’s book makes it clear: God Is Not One. This collection of clear, fair and academic religious studies information shows us that the world’s religions are not spiritually compatible, as many assume. He shakes off the wave of 1970′s universalism ideas (“All roads lead to the same God”), calling them religiously-illiterate “Godtalk”.

All roads don’t lead to the same God. These are very different religions, and very different gods. So if irrational feelings can tell us truth, such as “My God is the true God and So-and-So is his only Prophet,” we are in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Can we not, instead, say that the myths behind the transcendent are merely signposts to realistic things? God is a word for guidance, Jesus is a word for compassion, Buddha for perception. Now they are useful ideas; we can humanize the myths of religions to learn to focus our spirit. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we know anything about anything, as religions and theists would have it; that there really is a God lurking in omnipotence, or that Jesus returned to life, or that Buddha was born from a lotus flower. (More on this later with Jefferson and the Bible).

Without going into it much further, I’m going to coin the term Mythodipsia to describe it. Thirst for myths. We all have that parched throat for the mysterious, the transcendent – the explanatory; the guidance, the compassion. Everyone needs a story. What would human life be like without it?  But mythic usefulness does not need to transcend naturalism. We can humanize myths without de-humanizing reality. We can quench our creative thirst with wine – without believing a man magicked it from water.

A recent billboard in Pennsylvania put up by a group of atheists would have made anyone driving by slow down and do a double-take, if it hadn’t been anonymously torn down in less than a day. As I try to unstick my forehead from my desk after seeing it, I tell myself: when advertising to strangers that non-believers may be an alluring group with a good message, think before plastering stuff on America’s highways.

Okay! – is the first thought inside my simple, middle-class, white, non-religious brain. Jesus condoned and justified slavery and racism for thousands of years of Western history! Therefore the state legislation naively supports a year of barbed-collar whippings and lines of rock-chipping chain-gangs by ‘christening’ 2012 as the Year of the Bible. Wow! Points taken, American Atheists! Congratulations on your successful advertising! – (sincerely, other white disbeliever).

Okay. So I’m with you so far, AA, I really am. There’s some kind of cognitive dissonance happening with a Year of the Bible. It’s no book of bedtime stories, to be used in courtrooms as some kind of moral weight, nor declared a righteous piece of glowing compassion, flown on public wings by a draft of praise, above sparkling smiles and parades, etc. etc. Yes, there are issues here that should be openly spoken about; namely, Christ, slavery and the worldviews of the Western world.

(Now, someone looking deeply enough, with a good enough microscope, might be able to discern what I think AA was trying to say, or at least should have been saying. It is in there somewhere, squeaking weakly between the lines: the implication that such a holiday tramples constitutional American freedom of religion. I doubt many people saw it, but that’s okay, because these atheists accomplished the main goal: changing people’s deepest integral philosophical and Western religious world-views – with under 20 words!)

But, on a billboard? The bigger issue is good advertising. Here’s the kick to the face…

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“Only connect! And the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” E.M. Forster

The logic of our ideas is not as crucial as the quality of our conversation. After hearing  talk about the club (and about non-theists in general) I felt I need to clear some things up for the sake of our dialogue with religious friends and neighbors. Who are we, what are we doing and why do we do it?

The premise that brings secularists, humanists, atheists and free-thinkers together is the lack of religion. This is at once a hallowed freedom – but it can also be a cursed negativity, giving everyone the wrong impression.

You just don’t believe in God and have nothing positive to say.

We’re not about the hatred or absence of religion. Rather, we have a positive goal: to give USU students an open playing ground to discuss matters of spirituality, faith, science and reason beyond religion.

Imagine the beauty that our pumping hearts and thinking minds are literally made out of the dust of ancient stars. Comprehend the stark magnificence and special humility of the human condition, if we are the result of billions of years of free-form natural phenomena rather than some mere god’s design. Ponder the trillions of planets and the probability of distant life-forms: are we doomed to loneliness in the galaxies? Is this special species only a branch on a tree of life, a wisp and a tiny blotch in a sea of vast dark? What’s the mystery behind all this?

Now we’re talking, right? Beyond religion, the view is spectacular, and there’s work to be done.

You hate religious people.

No, we don’t. How else can I say it? Religion is a great force in the world, a powerful weight on the shoulders of believers and disbelievers alike. This blog may be infuriatingly skeptical, focusing our powers on poking and prodding religion, but it hardly qualifies as hatred to do so – it’s actually something more akin to bravery, to stand up for such a hated minority viewpoint.

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Mormons are often wonderful people, just like atheists, humanists and free-thinkers. But occasionally we hear this comment:

“If you pray, you will know that this book is true.”

This is a really important statement, and it calls for another perspective – we have to be a bit skeptical and look into it a little deeper. Finding the truth of things is important to everyone. In life, it doesn’t matter who you are – Buddhist, Mormon, Atheist, Hindu – we all share the common goal of seeking after what is right and what is true. But how do we go about getting good answers? The meaning of the word ‘know’ versus the word ‘feel‘ is crucial in the context of gaining true knowledge and developing right spirituality.

So, when we talk about feelings, we talk like this: “I feel happy,” or, “I feel that hamburger coming back up.” Feelings describe bodily sensations and emotional phenomena. Nobody gets to argue with what you feel. Take this conversation:

“I feel like getting some food.”

“No, you don’t!”

This doesn’t make any sense, because feelings are totally subjective to each of us. 

Knowing things, however, is much different. Knowledge comes from many different people, all discovering the same facts about the environment we all share – the Universe.

‘Knowledge’ describes natural things in a way we can all agree on, and we can all discover for ourselves in the Universe we all share. You can go out and do experiments, getting the same results as anybody else. This is real human knowledge, which is constantly updating.

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SHAFT/REASON cordially invites you to Celebrate Your Mind.

Saturday, March 24, 2012.

TSC 2nd-Floor Center Colony.

6:30-9:00PM.

Food will be served and club members will give fascinating 5-10 minute projector lectures/presentations about their research on science, history, and anything else which shows appreciation for the wonder of nature, and human ingenuity, creativity, speculation and accomplishment.

Also, we will be creating a large colorful mural to be presented on campus somewhere. Everyone will have free reign to write the things that make non-theists awesome, good-hearted people too.

Here is a preliminary lineup of subjects. Thanks so much to all the volunteers! If you would like to present something relating to the natural world or human accomplishment, please sign up now by contacting us!

-History of the Universe
-Planetary Science (Origins of Solar System to Now)
-Hypothesis for Origins of Life
-Evolution of Life from Origins
-Fossils through Time
-Evolutionary Psychology
-Game Theory
-History of Math
-History of Economics
-History of Secularism
-History of Humanism

Remember!

• Celebrate Your Mind! March 24, 2012. TSC, 2nd Floor Center Colony. 6:30-9:00pm.

Note: SHAFT has voted to update our club name to USU-REASON. Officers are working through this process as we speak. Thanks for your patience and support!

(SHAFT recently presented Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, now a film on HBO. Movie nights are usually Thursdays at 6:30PM in Old Main 006. Join our Facebook page for event info!)

“Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?” Plato, Phaedo

One night, in the dark of the tunnels, a learned old Professor leaps in front of a speeding train. The Sunset Limited is right on time. Before the train sends him to his sweet oblivion, a protective and good-hearted Christian man grabs him – saves him, and takes him under his wing, back to his clean, well-lighted place for coffee and discussion, in an act of mercy.

The Sunset Limited is a deep and mesmerizing work of literature that delivers a final harrowing thrust to the heart of the religious debate, spilling its bleeding guts, revealing its shady inner diamond eye that stares back at us out of the Abyss of death. Cormac McCarthy uses these characters with erudite metaphor and symbolism to send light into some terrifying black corners of philosophy, like the morning sunrise that spills into the Christian’s home.

I imagine Camus’ ghost was hovering above McCarthy while he wrote the Sunset Limited, whispering:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” – Albert Camus

It’s true. Whether we like it or not, you and I are helplessly entangled in this conversation about Salvation and Death, about religion and non-religion, about God and nothing. Whether we have time to spare from carving our tunnels in the human anthill or not, whether we care to worry about it, we must choose if we prefer the Afterlife or the Abyss, the Eagle or the Serpent. They will enlist and enthrall us in their battle eventually.

“A blast of muttering thunder, burst in far peals along the waveless deep… Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed, Incessantly—sometimes on high concealing Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed, Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed, And casting back its eager head, with beak And talon unremittingly assailed, The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam

The sound of the battle between abyss and afterlife crashes against the bricked church-house with its high cross. Religion’s so-called sweet purpose is to provide shelter from the black lightning of the Void. But McCarthy is prodding us toward a strange question: Is shelter what we really want?

Those who do not believe in immortality must stand outside, and face the troubles that come with a true death. Is there any reason to live? Is there such a thing as goodness? Is life any more than a biological prison? The biggest question, above all the flutter of angels and flapping of jaws, resonates and rumbles our bones. What are we going to do with DEATH?

To answer this question, we have to consult the ancients. Once upon a time, thousands of years before McCarthy wrote the Sunset Limited, a learned man without wife or child struggled against wretched kidney stones until he finally passed away. He collapsed in the shady green of his well-kept garden. The pain of this disease, we are told, is one of the most excruciating things a man can experience, especially before modern medicine He was a man who held no belief in an afterlife, but you won’t believe what happened…

(continued..)

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