Philosophy: believing in the city’s gods

Do you believe in Magic?

Do you believe in the guiding hand?

Every culture has some abstract notion of the divine. It comes about because the cosmos is too large to cram between our ears. We must necessarily have some things that we do not know, and they might be small things such as the colour of rocks on a distant planet orbiting a star on the other side of the galaxy or they might be big things like why if there is an absolute zero in temperature, is there an absolute highest heat or is it infinite?

But we like to have an idea of what we don’t know, so we create an abstract notion. Maybe it’s equations jumping between the stars, maybe it’s turtles all the way down, maybe it’s some guy in the sky pulling cosmic levers. Whatever.

One of the easiest myths to sell for a holy man is that if you do the right thing like wot I got written down in this ‘ere book, you’ll get rewarded in the next life. Big reward, doesn’t have to be funded by the guy selling it, quite the opposite: please hand over a tenth of your income, a free house, a barrowload of respect, and a comely virgin.

This necessitates a notion of what is good and gets rewarded and what isn’t — and the universe isn’t actually set up that way; if the mountain tips over and lands on your village it’s because there was an earthquake, not because someone stole the priest’s porn stash — and it all gets dreadfully complicated because if you have an infallible god then it wasn’t a mistake and you’ve got to find an explanation where there isn’t one.

Christianity is full of rubbish and nonsense and fantasy stories but ironically if you look at the words of Christ they are a pretty good recipe for life. Be kind to others, don’t fuss over money, enjoy the moment, let the children enjoy themselves and so on.

And if the mountain falls on your village, hey maybe instead of praying harder when the ground started rumbling a week ago you might have moved away to a place where the ground wasn’t acting like it was about to blow up, hmmmm?

Actually every religion is full of tall stories mixed in with the solid advice. Often the nonsensical stories carry the cargo of wisdom. The world was created by magic in six days, yeah? Who knows, but it was created because here it is, might as well enjoy it and not worry about the details. There probably wasn’t a Samaritan, a Pharisee and so on walking along the road and only the Samaritan helped the stranger but that doesn’t matter, the message is the thing, and it’s something worth more than all the gold in the bank.

Saint Eknath found a better use for his bucket of holy water than tipping it into the sea at a sacred spot; he gave it to a thirsty donkey. He found beauty in the white teeth of a dead dog. Maybe those things didn’t happen, but we can likewise find love and beauty everywhere; we just have to open our eyes.

Make up stories if you will; what really matters is not whether the world was created in six days or shat out by a giant turtle, it’s how you act towards others and whether you have a calm and contented life and how you help out those who don’t.

Right now we have a holy war in Afghanistan as the extremists slaughter the unbelievers. That’s not a good thing, regardless of what side you are on. Not unless you haven’t got the message about living a life full of love and happiness.

Britni