Early in the a.m., the

Peripatetic Philosopher’s Conversation with Himself

FIRST DIALECTIC - RELIGION

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© October 17, 2015

Peripatetic Philosopher (PP), “You’ve always threatened to publish a conversation with yourself, am I correct?”

Himself (HS), “True.”

(PP) “Why haven’t you?”

(HS) “No one wants to know what I think, but what they think that I know.”

(PP) “Isn’t that being a bit cynical?”

(HS) “I wish it were.  People are afraid to be cynical, especially Americans.  Optimism floats our boat.  Everything is milk and honey.  Were we to get a dose of reality we’d go back into our cave.  It’s the American way.”

(PP) “Pardon me for correcting you, but you don’t mean cave, you mean cage, right?”

(HS) “Cave, cage, what does it matter, you get the point.”

(PP) “That is one of your critic’s criticisms.  You dance around ideas as if walking on hot coals, can’t wait to get off, and leave nothing behind.”

(HS) “If you say so.”

(PP) “It is not me that is saying so but…”

(HS) “Yes, I hear you; I leave people dangling, I get the point, can we move on?

(PP) “If you insist.  Given your eclectic approach, and since I have no specific order to these questions, I’ll just continue as the mood strikes me, is that okay?”

(HS) “Fine.”

(PP) “Let’s discuss your take on religion.  I can’t decide if you’re for or against religion.  You must admit more than a little ambivalence towards the subject, do you feel that is fair?”

(HS) “Tell me, how could religion be viewed otherwise than ambivalent?”

(PP) “Now don’t get angry.  No one is going to see this.  I just want some honesty for once.”

(HS) “Now who is exercised?  I see religion as necessary because man is an intruder, interloper, alien, have it what you will.  He doesn’t belong here.  He’s never understood that he doesn’t fit into the scheme of things.  

"When it comes to the planet, man’s not that important.  It’s not entirely his fault.  Imagine one day he wakes up and discovers he has a conscious mind.  Imagine the terror.  One day he wakes up and he’s aware of himself and everything around him.  

"Can you imagine the shock, the fear?  Suddenly, he is aware of this hostile planet he finds himself, knowing if he doesn’t get his stuff together, it is curtains, if he doesn’t find the wits and will to survive. 

“Accidentally, with the ricocheting neurons in his three pound instrument between his ears, he discovers fire and finds fire terrifies the beast about him, and that awareness gives him one of his first tools of protection.  Next, he develops rudimentary tools to deal with these beasts, and to kill them for food, clothing, and shelter. 

“The more clever among men, and there are always those a bit more clever than others, who have the same fears and experience the same terrors, but find a way to embrace that trauma, make it work for them. 

“Lightening, and thunder, torrential rains, floods and mudslides, earthquakes and hurricanes, all manifestation of Nature without a conscience, Nature that rules with a cruelty that knows no guilt or remorse, is quickly used by the clever men to make Nature the first god.

“Those who describe that god become the first priests, and in that way these clever men discover power and control and dominance over other men, and so it has been since the beginning of man.

“Only one-tenth of one percent of men in the long history of man have ever had the gumption to use that natural fear and terror exclusively to their advantage while the other 99.99 percent coward in the grips of that fear and terror.”

(PP) “So are you saying that religion was the first medium of the dominance of the few over the many, therefore all religions are either bogus or corrupt.  I’m not sure I’m hearing what you are saying.”

(HS) “No, I am not saying that at all.  

"I’m just pointing out how it has always been.  My assessment is simply meant to put religion in its proper context.  

"Religion was the first ideology to capture man’s attention when he had no interest in reality.  That has never changed. 

“Once man discovered consciousness with all its terror, someone had to step outside this terror, while still in its grips, and that first man was the priest.  

"Man’s terrors have changed with his circumstances.  New surrogates of a priestly bent have surfaced with the shifting consciousness of reality.  So, it has been down to our present day.  

“We wail about the one-tenth of one percent who control the economy, but no one does anything about that reality.  That is why the phenomenon has always been with us.

“Once sin and guilt controlled our consciousness, now it is safety and security.  

"The god has not changed, only the consciousness of that god has changed.  It is the same old fear and terror wrapped in a new suit of clothes.  Man’s needs a new rationale to justify his existence whenever the aspects of his circumstances change.  Consequently, only the costume changes, man doesn't.” 

(PP) “There you go again, you’re not answering my question.  No wonder your readers get so annoyed with you.  I will ask again, do you think religion is bogus?”

(HS) “You like metaphor, so I’ll answer that question in metaphor. 

“Imagine religion is an automobile, and it seems to fill every fissure of our consciousness, that is, to be everywhere in existence, not one religion, but hundreds even thousands of religions. 

“Now imagine you lift up the hood of that automobile to see what kind of magical system that is hidden under that hood.  

"You envision mystical components beyond human comprehension, only to discover all you see is ‘smoke and mirrors.’  

"These obscuring embellishments purporting to hold the key to the truth of our human existence are instead the repository of irrelevant information.  There is nothing preternatural to this discovery at all.”

(PP) “Did I hear you correctly, ‘smoke and mirrors’?”

(HS) “Precisely, speaking in metaphor, ‘smoke and mirrors’ is used to explain the hold of the irrational on our reptilian brains.  We have not departed too far from that primitive man terrified by the lightning and thunder.  We still live in terror.  Yet, thanks to ‘smoke and mirrors,’ we have been propelled forward in ways that nothing else could.

"What the irrational can achieve, the rational cannot comprehend much less achieve.  We like to think our cognitive biases are the key when it is our emotions that drive us to overcome all matter of challenges." 

(PP) “But that’s madness.”

(HS) “If you like, but man has always been a little mad since his beginning. 

"It is this madness, after all, this ‘smoke and mirrors,’ that has propelled him to survive on this hostile planet, which is not actually his home because he refuses to treat it with the majesty and care of a home as the other plants and animals of Nature do without the authority of man's consciousness.  

"Plants and animals survive on instinct and the evolutionary forces of Nature.  Man is not so wise, so lucky.”

(PP) “So you are saying that this ‘smoke and mirrors,’ this religion is bad, bogus?”

(HS) “On the contrary, I see religion as quite necessary, even essential, that man cannot live without the allusion of connection to something beyond his conscious mind.  It is the reason the story man invented about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden has relevance.  That story has never been understood, not even by those who wrote it, for its true significance.”

(PP) “But, of course, you do!”

(HS) “It is quite obvious that once you look at the importance of fear and terror in man’s consciousness, and his sudden awareness that he is here on this hostile planet, but doesn’t sense that he belongs, that out of necessity, he had to invent a reason for finding himself here.  

"The Adam and Even story explains it all perfectly.  

"Man was driven out of the Garden of Paradise for eating the forbidden fruit, and for that act of disobedience, he must suffer deprivation, sin and guilt as his punishment.  

"Now, the ‘forbidden fruit’ was simply his sudden consciousness; his sudden awareness that he was in Nature, and misguidedly believed himself to be separate from Nature, which was a fatal error from the beginning.

"A mythology, again of necessity, had to be created for man to cope with this newly discovered reality.  I have no trouble with the story, only with its general interpretation and therefore its presumed meaning and relevance.

“Man has never been comfortable as man, not with himself, not with his nature, which is part of Nature, not with this earthly dwelling.  

"Religion as ‘smoke and mirrors’ came to the rescue and gave man some sense of liberation from his doubt.  In a way, it saved him from himself and his free floating anxiety.  

"Man came to believe he was above Nature, outside of Nature, and that it was his lot to control Nature to his will; to be Nature’s master, to dominate and submit Nature to man's needs, to his purposes, even if this meant the destruction of Nature, which we know has come to past.  

"Thus ‘smoke and mirrors’ has saved man in one sense while destroying his home and himself in another sense.”

(PP) “Hold on, you’re doing it again.  You’re making a quantum leap and leaving me still thinking about what you said previously about ‘smoke and mirrors’ and ‘religion,’ implying the Sacred Text of the Old and New Testament of the Bible are inventions of man.  Now you’re sounding like an atheist.  Are you?”

(HS) “Now it is you who is making the quantum leap.  

"No, I’m not saying that at all.  I am a man like every other man, subject to this ‘smoke and mirrors’ the same as everyone else, a person who lives with the same terror, and realizes how hard religions, all religions work in an attempt to reassure us when, if they could get beyond the ‘smoke and mirrors,’ they would realize that every religion, barring none, is a total invention of man, but a necessary one.  And therefore, all religions are the same.   

"As for agnostics and atheists, they are looking for something else under that hood.  Not finding it, they are very upset.  I’m talking again about only seeing ‘smoke and mirrors.’  

"Atheists and agnostics have concluded that 'smoke and mirrors' has no legitimacy as it has no verifiable components.  The irony is that people of this persuasion are more primitive than religious believers as they want religion to be what it cannot be, and in their disappointment, have created a religion of disappointment which is atheism.”

(PP) “So are you saying one religion has no more legitimacy over another religion?”

(HS) “It is not a question of legitimacy, it is a question of necessity.  

"I am saying that the ‘smoke and mirrors’ under the hood has kept man’s madness in check, to a point.  

"When this had unprecedented legitimacy, its arbitrary standards as desultory as they might be under close inspection, kept man reasonably civilized.  

"You might even say reasonably sane.  But man has found science, and science has become his new god.  It is the same god, not a different god, and like those first priests that could make up any kind of story they could think of about thunder and lightning, and man acquiesced to that authority, science does the same by revealing secrets of Nature for others to exploit.  

"Now, the authority is not ‘smoke and mirrors,’ per se, but ‘facts’ supported by hypotheses, theories and proofs of Nature supposedly to man’s benefit, but more likely to his ultimate demise.”

(PP) “Wait!  Wait!  You’re doing it again, you’re leaping to another subject. Now, science is bad, and religion is good?  You cannot have it both ways.”

(HS) “When I say to 'man's ultimate demise,' I am simply referring to man's history.  He seldom if ever thinks of unintended consequences to his discoveries.  We see this with nuclear fission.

"Alas, I wish I was a better communicator.  Science and religion are aspects of man, not mutually exclusive to each other.  

"They are manifestations of man’s rambling roaming nomadic homeless mind nervously replacing one anchor with another anchor, and always becoming obsessed with whatever anchor is his current preference.  

"Man's conscious mind is aware that he has turned the earth into a dying planet, and that eventually he will have to move on or perish with the likes of the dinosaurs.  That is the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of science.  It is irrefutable that man is leaving the earth a wasteland.  

"So, scientists are hell bent on finding another planet beyond our galaxy that can become man’s home that they can dominate and one day destroy with equal unanimity.  

"Man with his conscious mind cannot save himself from himself.  That is why we frantically search the universe for a planet that will sustain life, sustain us.  Science knows this planet is wearing out.”

(PP) “That is the most cynical thing you’ve said thus far.  I didn’t think you could top your cynicism of religion, but this tops that.”

(HS) “You find me cynical?  I don’t think so.  I don’t feel cynical.  I wish I were.  I wish others were.” 

(PP) “Then are you trying to make like Charles Darwin or Henry David Thoreau?”

(HS) “Neither.  Alexander von Humboldt comes more quickly to mind, the Prussian naturalist.  

"Humboldt died in 1859 at nearly 90 and seemingly saw this small planet in about every conceivable way.  He concluded from his extensive work about the world that the earth was a single unified organism.  Imagine that saying that nearly 200 years ago.  

"He said, ‘Everything is interaction and reciprocal.’  Everything!  

"Today ecologists talk about ‘the web of life,’ but the invention is Humboldt’s.  How many people know about this man?  

"He said quite correctly, with regard to Nature, ‘man is nothing in the larger scheme of things,’ and he isn’t, when it comes to Nature.  

"I experienced colonialism in South Africa during apartheid, which exploited a black majority race, whereas Humboldt saw colonialism exploiting the natural resources of a region without regard to the indigenous people.  

"In the late 18th century, he was writing of climatic excesses, such as industrialization, dam building, deforestation, and the like.  He could see that this would inevitably lead to extinction of the human species on this planet.  The only hope he could see in his day was for man to see the wilderness as a spiritual and meditative refuge from the hustle and bustle of modern life, and that …. What?”

(PP) “I not laughing at you.  I’m laughing with you.  You cannot help it, can you?  You have to get up on your soap box and start preaching.  Once you get a head of steam under you, your penultimate caveats start cascading out of your head.  Alas, it is one stroke before midnight for man, so what?”

(HS) “So you think I’m inhaling some of that ‘smoke’ from ‘smoke and mirrors’?”

(PP) “How would you describe it otherwise?  You read, you ponder, you write.  Do you know why?  Do you have any real purpose?  Or are you just ventilating for the hell of it?”

(HS) “If you think I’m going to get defensive, I’m not.  I write because I am.”

(PP) “No explanation beyond that?”

(HS) “None!”

(PP) “Well, then, don’t you think you ought to go to bed?”

(HS) “That’s the first intelligent question you’ve asked.  Good night.”

(PP) “Goodnight.  But before I go, I would like to discuss other topics with you in the future in this format.  Is that possible?

(HS) “We’ll see.”

(PP) “Couldn’t have it any other way.”