Having been an atheist now for most of the morning, I’m a little disillusioned. I mean, I’m all for tolerance, but the big tent is a little too big. I’m apparently expected to always maintain a solid stance against anything supernatural, but believe in things that are definitely not demonstrable or natural (like various cosmology scenarios, or the existence of a standard of reason and logic). And then there’s that nasty little infighting going on between the Brights of Jewish descent, and other Brights who think that the Jews are an evolutionary throwback. And apparently there are Quakers in the bunch. Quakers! How the dickens can you be an atheistic Quaker? Was it for nothing that we effectively won the Scopes Monkey trial? Were those bookburners in Kansas just wasting valuable matches?
I may have to bail on being exclusively atheistic. I don’t like the company. And if I see Hitchens chain-smoking or Dawkins frothing at the mouth one more time… I can’t imagine what it must be like for his wife (Romana Number Two, for you Whovians out there). “There, there, Richard, settle down. Why don’t you put this scarf on and have a nice cup of tea. I’ll just make sure that there aren’t any Sontarans or Van Tillians out in the garden. No, I didn’t mean anything like that, what is it with you and scarves?”
Sorry, I digress.
I’ve also noticed that, while a lot of these people mouth platitudes about “do what thou wilt is the whole of the law” and other such Crowleyisms, they tend to frown on me when I suggest that maybe the Brights (decided not to be an Indigo — what a bunch of hippies) ought to take matters into their own hands for the good of humanity, and start actually doing things to save the government, planet, whatever. You know, like burning churches down to scare the people attending them — for their own good, of course. Sometimes you have to take the dims — sorry, non-Brights — by the hand, and sometimes you have to apply a little shoe leather in the right place. And don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Why not forcibly sterilize people with genetic tendencies we don’t think are really aiding us in the next step in evolution, after all? Somebody’s got to bring survival of the fittest back, because some of these pansies in our group are making the Tragedy of the Commons into the History of the World, Part Last. Did we learn nothing from Gene Roddenberry?
I am leaning more Eastern, though. I can pick one of several essentially atheistic religions and keep my pride. The Confucius Institute has been providing some interesting reading material, but on the other hand I have a real hankering for Tibetan Buddhism. It would certainly help my philosophical difficulties if the rebirth of the soul were a possibility (transmigration is just too hopeless, but Buddhist-style reincarnation, well, I like it). And I have recently been inspired by watching three or four movies that connected in some vague way with the Dalai Lama: 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk… oh, wait, wrong Dalai. I mean, Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet, and… and… um… wait, was His Holiness in Steel Magnolias too? Everyone else was. Or am I thinking of Olympia Dukakis?
