May 6, 2023 03:27 PM
(This post was last modified: May 6, 2023 07:41 PM by C C.)
https://aeon.co/essays/why-we-need-a-new...n-theology
EXCERPT: . . . When it comes to metaphysics, I share with [Bertrand] Russell and [Walt] Whitman a material sense of the Universe’s composition, a belief in the immensity of this reality, a sublime and terrifying reality of our relative insignificance. In terms of what I do with that knowledge, I attempt as much as I can to embrace the present hopefulness of Whitman more than the understandable despair of Russell. It’s easy to fall into Russell’s misery: there is a fundamental bluntness to his contention that is estimably respectable, for he doesn’t obscure the particulars of the situation.
And yet I think that the melancholy engendered by the mercurial flux of our world is a particularly post-Christian anxiety, where, though he was an atheist (perhaps especially because he was one), Russell’s despair was born out of the flouted promises of Christian resurrection and eternity. To take atheism seriously is to admit that the abolishment of a belief in objective meaning must alter how we approach the Universe.
There is no going back after the death of God, but that death is always experienced through a particular type of absence – the absence of religious belief. Nihilism is always a particular species of frustrated Christianity. Whitman and I don’t labour under those same suppositions because, more than a post-Christian (and I assume that I’m that), I find that the problem of meaning in this void is often best addressed by a type of pantheism, an embrace of that change. More than a former Christian, what I think of myself on some days as is an aspiring pagan.
There is something romantic in the idea of paganism, of embracing the ocean and atmosphere, the day and the night, the Sun and the Moon. An acknowledgement not of abstractions, but of that which one is capable of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting.
Regardless of our own supposed dominion over the environment, we’re ultimately still very small when compared with the grandeur of nature. Because of that clear fact – which is neither doctrine nor axiom but simply observable reality – nature deserves some portion of our pious supplications.
There is a spiritual perennialism of genuflecting before something in the Universe so much bigger than yourself, of offering your prayers towards something so tangibly visible. Because of that, even if I’m not a pagan, often I think that I’d like to be. I’d like to consider which spiritual values are conveyed across centuries of time, and what might be enduring about something like paganism.
First, this requires us to define what exactly the word ‘paganism’ means – no easy matter... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . When it comes to metaphysics, I share with [Bertrand] Russell and [Walt] Whitman a material sense of the Universe’s composition, a belief in the immensity of this reality, a sublime and terrifying reality of our relative insignificance. In terms of what I do with that knowledge, I attempt as much as I can to embrace the present hopefulness of Whitman more than the understandable despair of Russell. It’s easy to fall into Russell’s misery: there is a fundamental bluntness to his contention that is estimably respectable, for he doesn’t obscure the particulars of the situation.
And yet I think that the melancholy engendered by the mercurial flux of our world is a particularly post-Christian anxiety, where, though he was an atheist (perhaps especially because he was one), Russell’s despair was born out of the flouted promises of Christian resurrection and eternity. To take atheism seriously is to admit that the abolishment of a belief in objective meaning must alter how we approach the Universe.
There is no going back after the death of God, but that death is always experienced through a particular type of absence – the absence of religious belief. Nihilism is always a particular species of frustrated Christianity. Whitman and I don’t labour under those same suppositions because, more than a post-Christian (and I assume that I’m that), I find that the problem of meaning in this void is often best addressed by a type of pantheism, an embrace of that change. More than a former Christian, what I think of myself on some days as is an aspiring pagan.
There is something romantic in the idea of paganism, of embracing the ocean and atmosphere, the day and the night, the Sun and the Moon. An acknowledgement not of abstractions, but of that which one is capable of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting.
Regardless of our own supposed dominion over the environment, we’re ultimately still very small when compared with the grandeur of nature. Because of that clear fact – which is neither doctrine nor axiom but simply observable reality – nature deserves some portion of our pious supplications.
There is a spiritual perennialism of genuflecting before something in the Universe so much bigger than yourself, of offering your prayers towards something so tangibly visible. Because of that, even if I’m not a pagan, often I think that I’d like to be. I’d like to consider which spiritual values are conveyed across centuries of time, and what might be enduring about something like paganism.
First, this requires us to define what exactly the word ‘paganism’ means – no easy matter... (MORE - details)
