Ross Douthat goes after what he calls "Hollywood's religion of choice" in the Times today: "Avatar is [James] Cameron's long apologia for pantheism-a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world." Describing pantheism as "a form of religion that even atheists can support," he argues that it doesn't offer humans the "escape upward" into immortality that he believes is the reason religion exists.
He writes:
"The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its 'circle of life' is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren't the shining Edens of James Cameron's fond imaginings. They're places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short."
I think he's right. But I also think that Douthat, whose religious views have flummoxed his arguments before, has actually written a nice apologia for atheism. The same societies that hew closest to the natural order-less scientifically, technologically and medically developed societies-tend to be far more religious than the more "modern" ones where God was so famously declared "dead" in the 20th century. The less prominent religion is in society, the less nasty, brutish and short is human life.
"Except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back," says Douthat. Yes! Ross! Let's not go back! Let's accept the reality of mortality. Let's ditch backwards thinking-of the kind that has you opposing gay marriage even when you clearly know better. Here's to more pleasant, civilized and longer life.
Mr. Douthat's little secret is that he's actually a Swedish alien from space (http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/2009/12/yuletide-grooves-5-swedish-xmas.html - last picture) and thus our "Earth logic" doesn't apply.
And here I thought Scientology was Hollywood's religion of choice! Learn something new every day.
I thought James Cameron was God.
God doesn't work with such a big budget.
Let's accept the reality of mortality.
Are you admitting that liberals are pro-death panel?
How sweet, a devotional service at the Awl. This could make a nice regular video feature. Choire and Balk holding hands and singing Imagine. An atheist sermonette by any of various lay members of the team. And then a little quiet time to reflect on the moral and cultural superiority of atheism, and the gratitude atheists owe to nobody at all. Edifying!
See to me the whole beauty of atheism is that there are no overserious services, no obligatory singing, no need to sit still while other people tell you your dogma. And I can reflect on the superiority of my belief system from anywhere (I'm doing it right now!).
I was about to say it might be nicer with some music. But actually I can sort of imagine how an iPod would be adequate to what you describe.
What you've described is Sunday morning at your nearest Unitarian church.
Sorry about the sermonette vibes. And in no way was anything devotional intended. But I do feel gratitude. To other people. Specifically, today, to Awl readers who think about things. Thanks, sincerely.
In some respects his argument only works if you accept that suffering and death are equal in the first place. I'm not aware of any religion that thinks death per se is a bad thing, at least for the person dying.
<- was going to say the same thing.
I can think of a couple ...
Really? I'm pretty sure that Christianity claims that the defeat of death was the whole purpose of the Incarnation. "Death, where is thy sting?" etc.
Isn't the term 'pantheism' kind of homophobic?
Ihave no doubt that God is in Choire's cat.
Jeez, and she's not even in heat.
19th century! Although we did not smell the divine decomposition until Sondheim wrote "Send in the Clowns."
Also: please tell me that is actually Ricky Gervais and this is performance art.
Right?! That's exactly what I thought when I saw this publicity photo. He's got that sincere / needy / damp-eyed befuddled look that, pre-Ricky-Gervais, was most recognizable as "that 2x4 is heading at my face again, isn't it?"
Good thing I have time to return that copy of Spinoza's Ethics I bought Douthat for Christmas.
I liked "asshat," but I'm willing to switch to "douthat," if that's what's cool now.
I generally advise against mocking surnames on account of you don't get to pick them.
Go eat a pile of Santorum.
By the way, nice name.
Really nice post. Send him a copy of Escape from Evil, that would be good.
Your formula (hewers to natural order=more religious) may be true today (still doing the regressions in my head), but I doubt it holds true, in fact the opposite is probably true, through the long arc of history (just felt like using that phrase for no good reason). What this means, if it is fact true, is anyone's guess.
"Well, this suggestion is a little "out there," but if you shave all the way down to the jaw line and just kinda leave a little growth underneath it will give your face some definition so that it doesn't look... doughy."
"A beard is no substitute for a jawline, no matter how you trim it."
It's kinda funny to read this article next to Sunday's NYTimes Magazine article on Robert George, wherein "the country's most influential conservative Christian thinker" stakes out his position that religion has nothing to offer on moral issues beyond hating gays (and women, obviously). So transcendent!
I don't think it's entirely fair to say he posits the escape into immortality as the reason for religion. Immortality gets a mention, but it's part of a larger package:
"We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality. This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward â€" or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it â€" a deeply tragic one. Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago."
The mention of immortality - our longing to keep living despite being mortal - is just one of the curious conditions humanity finds itself in that lead us to step outside the "natural world's" ordinary way of operating.
Agreed. I clipped him a little bit. (That is not a goatee joke!) But not in a way - i hope, i think - that misrepresents him. I really like the way he writes about this stuff, actually.
And as long as I'm up on this soapbox: one of the arguments for religion's continued existence, even in places where life is more pleasant, civilized, and longer, is that even when things are good in this way, we are still very often miserable.
Sure, but whether religion contributes a net positive or a net negative to the misery index is, at best, open for discussion.
It's definitely negative. It's merely tribalism writ large.
Mindpowered, I'd disagree. Modern Christianity may have its own tribal characteristics, but at the outset, it was a definite break from tribalism - a group of Jews telling Gentiles that their God was opening His exclusive covenant with Israel to the whole world.
Hey, smart politics, that, letting your religion go viral. Still, believe in my god and you get eternal fun time, don't believe and you go to hell is still bit tribal in nature.
Not really, Christianity at first glance may seem anti-tribal (what with the kingdom of heaven, and the city of god and such), but has been almost super-tribal with it's exclusionist and conversionistic tendencies. It's a precursor to modern states( EU, Russia, US, Brazil, South Africa) which fuse multiple ethnicities into a kind of mega-tribe around a set of state coherent beliefs (usually involving an outgroup-godless communists, and an ingroup-European Values). The great insight of monotheism was to realize that you could take a diverse group of ethnicities and create a mega-tribe out of them by imbuing them with religous furor.
Of course that only lasts so long and then you get Coptic, Orthodox, Catholic, Arianist, Protestant, Esssene, Pharisee, Sunni, Shia, Calvinist, Wahhabist, which are ethnic/cultural devolutions of the main religious thread. And it's these tribal splinters which actually drive the religion, while paying lip service to the internationalist aspects.
It was Paul who opened it up, seeking donations from wealthy Gentiles. The core of the church back in Jerusalem would send him letters saying, Get back here, we hear you're doing nasty things like saying people don't have to follow the Law. And he would go back to Jerusalem and bring along money from the rich gentiles and the starving core of the church would happily take the money and forget why it was they summoned him back.
Yes, Christianity has an Other, the nonbeliever, but it also has commandments that the Other be ministered to, and even loved - the Good Samaritan story is a direct attack on tribalism, it seems to me. There is no mention in the story of anyone being brought into any fold.
Yes, there is a commandment to go out and spread the Gospel. But not by conquest. By love and the presentation of the message of hope. (And no small amount of total self-sacrifice.) There is of course a great tendency for tribalism to creep in and even take over - Christians are still humans - but that particular conversionistic tendency doesn't strike me as tribal.
Oh, look at me, yammering on after I said I'd shut up. For shame. Stopping now. Really.
The Good Samaritan is one of those lip service ideals as opposed to the Calvinist society of elect which has had deep influence on European culture for hundreds of years.
If we take Northern Ireland we have two groups of very similar people divided primarily by religion into two deeply antithetical communities.
Oh, I dunno as it was terribly smart politics. Their own people decried them as blasphemers, and I'm pretty sure that every one of the apostles got killed for his efforts to proclaim the Good News. I'm happy to grant that the threat of hell for nonbelievers has a tribal edge to it, but Paul's letters (which predate the Gospels, I believe) take a different tack: "Hey, people, suffering and death suck. I've had a vision of a guy who defeated death, and who gives positive meaning to suffering. Further, he proposed a social order based on love as opposed to self-interest, one that looks first to the weakest and most needy. Interested?"
I'll stop now.
Great idea, horrible execution.
That's what I think. I lean towards net negative. (Without whole disregard for the good religion does, the comfort it brings people, etc.) And hold hope that we can use the other parts of the stuff that make us half-out of the natural world, the self-consciousness, the ethics, to lessen, as best we can, the miserableness. As much as "hope" seems like a strong word sometimes these days.
Oh, I know you lean towards net negative. I actually quoted your "Dear God" apology in a piece I wrote for a still-kicking weekly newspaper. It'll run in a few days; if you like, I can send you a link. Editorial hacked off a fair chunk of my commentary (surprise, surprise) but you still show up.
Thanks, Libmas. Yes, I'd love to read. notes@theawl.com
Our track record for that isn't so good. If it were better, you would expect more people to be reading say, Zhuangzi or Plato than the Bible or Koran. Lotsa luck with that.
I am picturing a world of the enlightened toting their beat-up copies of Lucretius and chanting, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, to their happy little gods tucked away from cares up in their interstitial heaven. ("I hope some day-ay-ay-ay you'll join us ...")
Didn't Lucretius go crazy in the end or meet some other undignified fate? Or is the story a Christian libel? I vaguely remember the source for it was a Christian writer.
I made a student film once about Lucretius. It wasn't very good.
Stock ancient anecdotage. That shyte is always just made up. (I think; but what do you think?) Drank a love potion and went crazy and killed himself, not of course before he had written "a certain number of books in the periods between the madness."
I seem to remember those modern societies who declared god dead in the twentieth century did some other things in that century which could be considered nasty and brutish. Two in particular.
You mean Gallagher and acid-washed jeans, right?
No. Surely, the things I think you're talking about stand as arguments against the full embracing of civilization, progress, technology, etc. The fact that we so often use our new stuff to kill each other better is certainly a problem.
Which two are you thinking of? Stalin and Mao?
I was thinking Scum was thinking of the holocaust and Hiroshima.