I’ve been thinking about Atheism a lot lately. Not agnosticism, which I understand, but Atheism, which I do not understand. It’s just far outside of my realm of experience, and I would like to know more about how those who identify as Athiests see the world.
It goes back to a conversation I had with some of my friends about science v religion. There was a Lawyer/Computer scientist, a PhD chemist, a Microbiologist, an Environmental Engineer…. and me, the lone crazy wolf. I felt like the token crazy person on a sitcom.
We had just visited the Museum of Jurrasic Technology, which we all found amazing but in different ways. They appreciated the weirdness of it, and the logical puzzle the place presents, in trying to figure out what is going on. I appreciated the common tie between each exhibit in the museum about personal transcendence. The way in which each personal story presented represented a way in which that individual was atttempting to transmute mundane existence into a higher level of experience. For it’s part, the museum itself does the same to these oddball stories that are so obscure in their own right that they would just dissipate into the cob-webby corners of history without it.
I was fascinated by the stories of transcendence, and saw a common thread throughout the facility. There were the obvious exhibits about religion and trying to reach god in various ways. But there were the other stories, like the man who collected the decaying dice, and the theory of the planes of existence based on the bisection of a pyramid. There are of course also the secret knots and the hunt for god through the study of magnetism.
Each one of the stories began with a mundane concept, like dice or a bridge, and tells the story about how the obsessive study of such a mundane thing, lead someone along to a kind of spiritual transendence. Perhaps that’s not the intent of the museum, but that is what I took from it.
Later that night we had a discussion about transendence. I thought for sure that this group would appreciate my take on it, since I am not opposed to science by any stretch of the imagination. I actually am a firm believer that the two do in fact exist in the same space despite their polarities.
I explained my theory that everyone regardless of their level of religious or spiritual beliefs experience, at some point in time, a moment of transendence. A scientist watching a cell divide, an artist creating something they never thought possible, a lawyer having an “A Ha!” moment. Falling in Love. Babies and puppies and the first snowfall. All those little magical tidbits that make life so wonderful I see as tiny pockets of transcendence in an otherwide grey and cold world.
I thought that this was a theory that most people would agree with, but was surprised when they explained that they didnt’ see any of these things as transcendental. Snow is cold water falling from the sky, cells divide because that’s just what they do, we fall in love because of hormones and neurons firing off in our brains. It’s not that they don’t find pleasure in these things, but that they attribute that pleasure to scientific principles.
I found this view of the world totally pessimistic. But they aren’t unhappy people. I’m trying to figure out what gives here. Is there some sort of magic that they are missing in their lives? Perhaps it is a rhetorical issue, perhaps they have a problem labeling these moments with a word that they see as so far divorced from logic.
I don’t understand why these things can’t exist at the same time. I know that snow is just cold water. I know that I fall in love because my brain is firing off electric impulses. I’m not deluded, but I see these as evidence of something larger, and I suppose the difference between them and myself is that they just don’t.
My issue with athiesm isn’t the same issue that the hard-core religious might have. My issue is one of smaller degrees. The importance of religion in culture, the way that entire communities self-identify with religion. I feel that the loudest athiest voices attribute all the problems in the world to religion, and refuse to see the positive place that religions around the world play to various cultures, and societies. Religion is the glue that hold people together for good and for bad. It gives people hope, and encourages them to push through tough times. It’s true that it seems like religion more often than not is used as a tool for extremists, as a scapegoat for the media, but I feel like the positive role of religion and spirituality in marginalized groups all over the world has been completely discounted.
As a spiritual person of an admittedly extremely amorphous belief system, I seem to often be at the negative end of this debate. My scientist friends all think I’m delusional to various degrees, and I have rarely spoken openly to them about my frame of mind, because I know that there is nothing I will be able to say to convince them that I am not delusional. For a while I tried to argue until I realized the futility of it. It’s like arguing with a born-again christian about Christianity. There is no point in laboring over an argument that will never enlighten either side.
I feel that science is easy because of it’s quantifiable, observable, and predictible nature. Spirit is hard, and complicated, and is so entwined in what it means to be human that in my view… it’s not going anywhere. I think that the scientific community needs to concede that there will always be faith despite science, and to be respectful of spirituality. I think that the religious communities of the world need to be more open in embracing the discoveries of science. Spirituality should move like a river through time, and not grow stagnant.
Finding the edges where science and spirituality mingle together is truly transcendent.
the Good Heretic 