Rational Religion


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Well, What’s the Matter with Metaphysics...

 

…since I have specified that we can’t avoid it?

 

It comes in two main flavors; the daily, constant effort to make sense of the Universe with a complex but far from competent central nervous system; and the abject surrender of any attempt to make sense of the Universe in favor of accepting some fanciful dogma which in some way flatters us, or reassures us that the whole thing does make sense.

 

This latter approach is Conventional Metaphysics, and Conventional Metaphysics comes in many flavors, from plausible, to irrational, to militant manufactured nonsense. .

 

The plausible varieties are liable to require some sophistication. The practitioners are inclined to be intelligent, educated and aware of the tenuous nature of their convictions.  They may be neither alarmed by the revelations of science nor particularly swayed by them, aware as they are that this generation's great discovery may prove to be next century's spectacular blind alley.

 

But it is a most curious paradox that the more successfully science chips rationally away at the facade of the Infinite Unknown the more frantically irrational becomes popular metaphysics.

 

It is a paradox, but it is a predictable one.  The more of the objective universe we reveal, the less significant we are revealed to be.  Since it is an inherited part of our survival skill that we regard ourselves as worthwhile, anything which erodes that conviction threatens our survival. 

 

It takes a good deal of education, or uncommon understanding, to see a mortal human race, stranded on a lonely rock in the boondocks of the universe, as worthy of respect.

 

But we are; because we are.  It is as simple as that. 

 

As far as we know, our modest little Earth is the center of the Universe; because, as far as we know, it is the only place in the Universe which houses beings capable of such a concept, or of questioning it..

 

The only viewpoint with currency is the human viewpoint.  Any other viewpoint is at best imaginary, at worst, impossible.

 

It is simple, indeed, but it is a place from whence we can start.

 

And we can endure; until we prove ourselves incapable.  In which case, everything will be moot; and the moot does not merit our attention.

 

George Burns, in his '90's, is reputed to have said, " If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

 

Live every day as though you may live forever; with the consequences.