musey, lately?
This is part of an article about celebrating Christmas as an atheist:
"Having no religious faith myself, the faith of others moves me all the same. Without sharing their beliefs, I share their religiosity-the deep desire to commit ourselves to some higher purpose, to care for our families and for humanity just as they care for us, to care for the earth and to convince ourselves that somehow it cares for us as well. It is these deep feelings that give meaning to our lives, and make us human. So, from the depths of my unbelief, let me wish a sincere "Merry Christmas" to all!"
Here's what it made me think:
The faith of others moves me too. And that makes me uncomfortable, much the way that this little passage here does too. What's I dislike about this passage is that it underscores so very subtly as to be almost invisible an often ignored topic: just how deeply rooted in our evolutionary heritage it is, and just how universal the desire is, to devote ourselves to "something higher". This kind of devotion is relevant to so much of history and modern society. Look at sports teams, politicians, religious leaders, any similar sort of grouping where a person or small group of people garner the unreflected but freely and enthusiastically given support of the general population, and it's probably going to be hierarchical in an astonishingly uniform way: One man stands at the top, and this man leads warriors who are the cream of the crop after whatever fashion, and above this man, that which he appeals to for his own justification as leader, is something that is at once everything and nothing at all: an idea, specifically one of how things should be. These ideas are rules of games, constitutional laws, and God. I find it fascinating that we appeal to non-living things to justify ourselves. I think what makes these rules at once everything and nothing is that they both define virtually everything about the ideological system, and none of them can be asked to speak for themselves, to give answers to our questions about suffering and justice and why Im sitting up at 2 am typing this ridiculous babble when I have an exam at 8 and I haven't slept in three days. Where is your god now? I'd like to think he's in my bed.
This kind of devotion is a relative of any sort of fanaticism, but one need not be a fanatic to enter this agentic state. Chris Browning wrote a book in the 90s about this called "Ordinary Men". What's scary about this is that as an atheist, I am not only without god, but trying to be free of ideology in general, yet I feel the tugging in my heart when I go to church, or I hear certain music, and tears well up in my eyes. It's scary because the truly dangerous people come in two varieties: the ideologues, and those that cannot refrain from giving their support to the ideologues. That's why there's the "Communism killed more people than Christianity" arguments come from. People don't seem to get that you don't have to have a discreetly religious context to have a functional religion. All you need are ideologues and supporters. And here I am, crying because their propaganda is working on me, someone who knows to otherwise generally stay away.
"Having no religious faith myself, the faith of others moves me all the same. Without sharing their beliefs, I share their religiosity-the deep desire to commit ourselves to some higher purpose, to care for our families and for humanity just as they care for us, to care for the earth and to convince ourselves that somehow it cares for us as well. It is these deep feelings that give meaning to our lives, and make us human. So, from the depths of my unbelief, let me wish a sincere "Merry Christmas" to all!"
Here's what it made me think:
The faith of others moves me too. And that makes me uncomfortable, much the way that this little passage here does too. What's I dislike about this passage is that it underscores so very subtly as to be almost invisible an often ignored topic: just how deeply rooted in our evolutionary heritage it is, and just how universal the desire is, to devote ourselves to "something higher". This kind of devotion is relevant to so much of history and modern society. Look at sports teams, politicians, religious leaders, any similar sort of grouping where a person or small group of people garner the unreflected but freely and enthusiastically given support of the general population, and it's probably going to be hierarchical in an astonishingly uniform way: One man stands at the top, and this man leads warriors who are the cream of the crop after whatever fashion, and above this man, that which he appeals to for his own justification as leader, is something that is at once everything and nothing at all: an idea, specifically one of how things should be. These ideas are rules of games, constitutional laws, and God. I find it fascinating that we appeal to non-living things to justify ourselves. I think what makes these rules at once everything and nothing is that they both define virtually everything about the ideological system, and none of them can be asked to speak for themselves, to give answers to our questions about suffering and justice and why Im sitting up at 2 am typing this ridiculous babble when I have an exam at 8 and I haven't slept in three days. Where is your god now? I'd like to think he's in my bed.
This kind of devotion is a relative of any sort of fanaticism, but one need not be a fanatic to enter this agentic state. Chris Browning wrote a book in the 90s about this called "Ordinary Men". What's scary about this is that as an atheist, I am not only without god, but trying to be free of ideology in general, yet I feel the tugging in my heart when I go to church, or I hear certain music, and tears well up in my eyes. It's scary because the truly dangerous people come in two varieties: the ideologues, and those that cannot refrain from giving their support to the ideologues. That's why there's the "Communism killed more people than Christianity" arguments come from. People don't seem to get that you don't have to have a discreetly religious context to have a functional religion. All you need are ideologues and supporters. And here I am, crying because their propaganda is working on me, someone who knows to otherwise generally stay away.