Wednesday 6 December 2006

Pic of the day: This is more like it.

An atheist fallacy

Mind you, I am not saying that atheism in itself is a fallacy, though others will argue forcefully for that. Perhaps I shall, one day, but that is not my topic for today. On the contrary, I hope to give my atheist reader an opportunity to understand religion better so they stop splashing water on waterfowl with a naturally water-repellent feather coating, as the proverb goes. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. If you reject it and continue the futile splashing, that's fine with me. In fact, it is probably for the best, since it encourages religious people to stay that way and so live reasonably happy ever after, where serious thinking could cause them much angst.

When atheists argue about religion, they start from a faulty premise. They assume that religion originated with two purposes: To answer the big questions which primitive people just could not know, and to counter the fear of death... or more charitably, the inability to imagine non- existence. It is more or less a textbook classic that these are the twin purposes of religion. Unfortunately it is, as my native English speaking friends would say, "a crock of bull".

Religion is not invented, but encountered.

***

It is true that every religion I can think of, except perhaps Theravada Buddhism in its purest form, has some kind of creation myth or origin myth. The western ones also have some Final Reckoning, while the eastern religions take a much longer perspective. They all have some kind of punishment for the evil and reward for the good, though some barbaric faiths have weird ideas about what is good. And the clergy of any religion will indeed try to console the dying and the grieving with hope of a better life next time, and conversely warn people that bad things may happen after they die if they break the religion's rules.

But this, which seems to you the whole Christmas tree, is actually just the decorations. The organic part is invisible to most atheists, and indeed to many theists as well. And yet this is the core of religion, because it is how it came into the world. Religion is not invented, assembled or constructed by the conscious mind. It breaks into ordinary reality from somewhere else, and it does so with great force. The religious person will say that it descends from on high (but will generally only say it about their own religion, of course) while psychologists will say that it breaks in from the subconscious.

A religion is usually created or renewed by one single person. In the past I have referred to them as mystics, which is usually true enough. But they don't necessarily have to be pious people from their childhood. It doesn't hurt, and it may be that the greatest "avatars" fall into this category, that they have never known another life. It is hard to say unless you are there when it happens... tradition tend to become filled with holy fantasies pretty quickly. But in the cases of reformers or founders of splinter religions in recent times, it seems to be perfectly OK if the person has lived a more or less ordinary life. They usually don't do anything remarkable until they are well and truly grown- up anyway. And then Something Happens.

What it actually is, varies. Sometimes it seems to come out of the blue, other times there is a period of deep nameless longing for something that doesn't seem to exist. And then the Divine breaks through the weak spot between it and the world, and seeks out this one person. And everything that he used to be, drops away. Everything that seemed important becomes incidental or worse than nothing. The way the entire society is organized become meaningless to him, and the existing religion a blasphemy. And the new life that burns in him, burns so strongly that those who meet him wake up. Some hate it, some love it, but it is hard to ignore it. Around this person now swirls a storm that seems to sweep up all in it. Some get a glimpse of the same mystic reality: It is as if the heavens have opened and ordinary people are allowed to peek in for a short time. And they are caught up in the same fire. Even the secular society is changed as the new wind blows over it.

But humans die. Especially when killed, which is not uncommon for prophets. Their martyrdom, if any, may actually help the new faith. It is something else with time. After a couple generations the immediate experience of the divine is gone. Instead, traditions have taken over. Now is the time for the theologians and the mass market clergy to decorate the Christmas tree with more or less unrelated myths, rituals and detailed beliefs in an afterlife which the founder barely mentioned in passing if at all.

When you have met God, you don't need to know about the afterlife. Your eternity has already begun.

***

I mean "met God" in a very literal sense. In contemporary Christianity, it is a kind of synonym for a much smaller experience of conversion, for most people. People can be converted and then later convert to some other faith again, although like football fans they are reluctant to change unless seriously offended by someone they looked up to. But when you have seen the glory, you know that there is nothing more than this in the world. You know it with the same certainty that you know you are alive. There is no need for reasoning, nor does it depend on feeling. It is an experience which in every aspect is as real as your own body. Most commonly it is compared to waking up: When you dream, you may assume that you are awake. When you wake up, you KNOW, and you know that you have been dreaming until now.

Again, these are not constructs. These are not theories. These are not explanations. Comfort in the face of death is irrelevant. To those who meet the Divine where it breaks through the "fourth wall" and touches the mundane world, there is no choice about it. They see what they see. They are not there to seek answers, they are not there to seek comfort. They just happen to be there when the skies open and everything changes. And how they react, with love or hate or fear or denial, depends on who they already were when they came there. But that is not why they came. Only later, when all that is left is an echo, do people seek it out. This is when the flood has receded, and people once again dig wells and haul water up through ritual and the intercession of the clergy, where it once flowed freely.

What you atheists see as religion is real enough. It is the real myths, the real rituals, the real traditions and institutions and organizations. But it is not the real religion. And whether or not you somehow manage to do away with these things, the power from Above will descend again, somewhere, sometime, when it is needed. When the cry of the enslaved people reaches Heaven, as God told Moses had happened in his lifetime. Or to quote Krishna speaking to Arjuna: "Whenever true religion fades from the world and faithlessness gains the upper hand, I descend; to save the innocent, destroy the wicked, and restore true religion, I appear in age after age." (Krishna here speaks on behalf of God. The devoted Hindu will likely say that Krishna actually is God, while everyone else is likely to deny it. The repeated incursions of the divine, however, is not a Hindu thing.)

The further you go in destroying religion (or conversely, the further the religious go in ossifying it and fossilizing it), the stronger the "voltage" between the horizontal world and the Above. And there is nothing you can do to stop the lightning when it decides to strike. All it needs is one soul that can notice it drawing near. And then all the old forms melt and burn, and new forms arise in their place. This can not be stopped, though I suppose you could try.

Again, there is certainly not any scientific consensus that there exists a spiritual reality from which these invasions of spirituality take place. That is purely a matter of belief. But that these events happen is certain, and so you can with all confidence expect it to happen again in the future, as long as the human psyche stays in its current form.