Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Death.........
First of all, I apologize for my (second) long absence. In addition to finding out I had to move and then actually having to move within the course of 30 days, I had two family members die - one before and one after Christmas, so this has been a pretty hectic and emotional time for me these few months.
One of the first things I noticed (other than the fact that when you reach the age of 35 your friends and family will no longer help you move) was how death brings people from all religions together, but tends to exclude atheists. If death is the end, then what does it matter? Why even bother attending a funeral if you don't believe in God? It can be very upsetting and sometimes depressing to realize that one day it will be me that dies. It is a very hard reality to face.
But I also spent a good bit of time watching astronomy shows with my son (thank you Science Channel), who wants to be an astronomer when he grows up. (It is amazing to hear a 10-year-old boy tell me that he wants to invent a telescope that will allow humans to see ‘dark matter’). One scientist made a particularly astounding comment, and I paraphrase; ‘every molecule of matter on this planet and in our bodies was forged in the center of a star somewhere. So when we study the universe, we are actually studying ourselves.’
When I see the pictures of galaxies and quasars and huge gas clouds which they call ‘star nurseries’, I am always in awe of the splendor, the beauty, and the magnitude of this universe. But with that statement I realized it is not ‘the’ universe but ‘our’ universe, and at one point the molecules that make up my body were not even molecules but particles crushed inside some massive energy reaction billions of light-years away.
So my body, my planet and everything around me are all part of one cosmic entity. When I die the molecules of my body will break down, the energy that has been collected will dissipate, and eventually I will become part of that cosmic entity again. Thinking about life in those terms makes it seem magical, mysterious and mind-boggling.
What I am realizing is that by comparison, science is more engaging, more wonderful, more mysterious, and far more powerful than any religion ever could be. In many ways, science offers more to an individual in terms of being a part of something than any religion ever could. We are all part of the universe, we are all born of the universe, and the universe is, well, just simply amazing.
As an individual who declares himself an atheist, it is common for me to feel alone and isolated from the rest of the world. A Christian in a Muslim society, or a Jewish person in a Buddhist Society, or any person who has been outside of his or her element knows this feeling. But in attempting to understand the origins of the universe I take on a feeling of oneness with everything.
It is assumed that atheists are cold people with no spirituality. I actually think that atheists are the only people looking for true spiritual direction. Religious organizations by their very nature separate and isolate people. They actually create the boundaries that many of them claim to tear down. But the science of the universe includes everything, living or not. You don't have to join a group or contribute money, you don't have to have a certain lineage, and you don't have to believe in imaginary friends. Even the religious fundamentalists who believe science is a lie are still a part of it, no matter what they claim. This oneness with the universe is the only feeling comparable to what someone feels when they are devoutly part of a religious group.
People mostly think that science offers them nothing but facts and figures. I think that we need to address the wonder and majesty of science and present it more about discovery. People also consider death as an ending for atheists, and we all know everyone wants to live forever. If that was not true then there would be no religion. If we looked at death differently, as a scientific transition of some sort, it becomes less foreboding to people. Maybe my memories and my body in its current form will not survive forever, but I am made up of the same stuff of stars and planets and comets, and eventually I will be those things again. To me, that is a far more compelling and comforting concept than any of the religious alternatives.
For religion to work people have to put their heads down and pray. For science to work, people have to lift their heads up and wonder. I prefer wonder.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
We Are Stardust
As for looking inside ourselves when looking out into space...and throwing a kid into the mix...
Admittedly, this is for much younger children than 10 years but it is a very nice introduction to some basics and certainly has piqued the interest of my 3 y.o. (and it was great to be able to tail off into two new areas - anatomy and chemistry - after several months of astronomy). I don't know how much he actually understands but as long as he is asking me questions, I'll be happy to repeat myself as often as needed.
About the cosmic connection and recycling, I disagree that atheists are more earnest in seeking a spiritual direction and think more along the lines that we are already more spiritual than others and have accepted, and refined, the direction (inquiry, skepticism, logic, our physical universe, experimentation, the unlimited possibilities of eternities - in short, the scientific method).
I always liked the story I read long ago in undergrad about the Zoroastrians and thought, "They got it." I remembering reading that they would take their dead to what they called the Towers of Silence and place the bodies on top of these structures. There, buzzards would clean the flesh off the bones and the bones would be left to sit for a time until they were dessicated. The bones would then be taken by the family, ground into powder, and scattered into the family garden as fertilizer to be recycled into the family once again through the fruit, vegetables and flowers.
eulogy
Last summer I buried my father (my mother died in 2003). As far as I could tell, Dad didn't put a whole lot of stock in religion, but in his Lutheran family it was just something you didn't bother to discuss. People might go to church, and stay awake during the sermon, but they talked to each other afterward about Mrs. Hansen's wonderful potluck casserole, not about God or Jesus or religious stuff. But my mother was a devout Catholic, and Dad ended up hanging with a lot of devout Catholic friends in his later years.
So I could not NOT have a religious ceremony. I did let the funeral home pastor do it, since Dad never attended the local Lutheran church. I chose "mainline Christian" prayers, since Lutherans and Catholics pray a lot alike.
The pastor actually talked me into speaking. (He could probably sell shoes to snakes.) But I think I did a terrific eulogy. I chose words to celebrate my Dad's life. There was no religious content, but I heard afterwards that listeners were impressed by my speech. They may have been religious people, but that day they were there to honor my dad, not their imaginary deity.
Alas, I wish I could share with them the freedom of knowing religion is a myth. But most of them are older people, and couldn't deal with it. Sigh.
I did the same for my mother
Funerals are for the living and to celebrate lives, not commemorate deaths.
Whew. Great post!
Wonderful piece of writing, Eric.
In exactly the same way science gives more TO life, religion takes a lot FROM life. Think of all those people who live beside an ocean of knowledge for their entire lifetimes, but who will go to their graves thinking their backyard wading pool was the whole of it. Instead of starstuff, incomprehensible juju.
And, yeah, dealing with death is tremendously disturbing.
I used to wrestle with that atheist’s dilemma: What do you tell your grandmother, who has been religious all her life and is now on her deathbed?
Would you tell her there’s no god, no heaven, and cause her deep distress and fear on the edge of death?
Well, of course not.
But if you could go back in time and tell your grandmother the truth about life and death and religion, and convince her to love and enjoy her life more, would you?
I would.
But then, there are plenty of people right now who are NOT on their deathbeds. For all those not-yet-grandmothers, maybe THIS is that back-in-time moment.
This right NOW may be the perfect moment for them to hear the truth, so they can make better life choices while they still have the capacity.
Speaking only for myself, I imagine that if I was on my deathbed and realized that everyone around me was lying to me in order to protect my feelings, it would be deeply depressing. If people – your doctor, for instance – won’t tell you the truth even when you’re dying, what chance does truth have in day-to-day life?
...
Meanwhile, fellow starstuffians: Hug a puppy, have a drink, change careers, compliment a stranger, try the sushi, tell ‘em the truth, read a banned book, weigh anchor, speak up in public, wink at the old women, color outside the lines — do great works now without worrying about earning points on some distant and doubtful paradise.
This piece that I wrote seems on topic for this
Who are we?
We are Children of Mystery, for it was from mystery and into mystery that our universe was born.
We are Children of Fire, for much of our substance was forged deep in the inconceivable heat at the core of an unnamed star whose light our eyes shall never know.
We are Children of Darkness for it was into the black, frigid depths of the Void that our substance was cast when our stellar grandmother perished in an explosion of unimaginable violence.
We are Children of Light for without the warming light of the Sun no life would have stirred upon the face of the Earth.
We are Children of Earth for we partake of her substance and the essence of her stones lies within us. When we hunger it the fruits of the earth which nourish us.
We are Children of the Waters, for the line of our ancestors begins there. We carry their legacy within us, in tears and sweat, in blood and bile, we are a vessel for them. We thirst and the waters quench us. Bereft of them we are little more than a handful of dust.
We are Children of the Air for breath and life are one.
We are Children of mothers beyond counting stretching back in an unbroken chain to the first fragile cell.
We are voyagers in time. We have journeyed through the eons in the heart of suns, in the spaces between stars and lastly through the tunnel of wombs to stand for a vanishing moment in the light, to stand and look back, to stand and look forward, to stand and to wonder. This is how we have come. Whither now shall we go?
Wow, that's beautiful.
This is beautiful. The first line doesn't really resonate with me, but the rest of it--wow.
I'd like to keep a copy of this, if I may. Is "Thameron" the name you'd like to have it credited to?
Yours--Cat
Cat
Thank you for your kind words. I am glad that you enjoyed it. I personally feel that not all scientific truths need be expressed by cold numbers or obscure theories and if you want them to resonate with people in general then they definitely should not be expressed that way. Attribution to 'Thameron' would be fine. Although I, ahem, borrowed that name I don't think anyone else is presently vying for it.
If by the first line you mean 'who are we'? Then that is the title.
If you mean 'We are Children of Mystery, for it was from mystery and into mystery that our universe was born.' then that just refers to the fact that we don't know how our universe came into existence, if there is anything 'outside' of it or 'before' it or indeed if there will be anything after it. Thinking about things like 'if time began with the universe then what was before that?' threaten my tenuous grip on sanity. It really is too much for we naked chimps to deal with (this one at least). We evolved to be the smartest fruit pickers on the savannah dammit. Cosmology is definitely outside our design specs.
A time for celebration
My mother often said that, when she died, she wanted people to remember the fun, the good times, in other words to celebrate her life. That's what we did. Yes, we were sad, and we were also happy that we had known her and had time with her. My sister did want her church's minister to officiate; that suited her needs, and she kept him under tight rein. Our focus, though, was on the living person who had created her meaning through her contact with us. That's what a funeral should celebrate, and that is open to anybody, of any stripe of life understanding.
Frank Moorman, skeptic
Death
Thanks for taking the time to write about non-theist (I object to the term atheist since I can't be without something that doesn't exist but I will answer to being adogma) and death and science. It is unfortunate that we have such an ill instructed world that people don't realize that the reason we eat is to obtain energy and replace atoms. While that may reduce the dignity of humanness to some, I find it so mind warping that I haven't any place left in it for something as inconsequential as "religion."
Very well put.
Eric, I'll second Mandy's comment, and compliment you on taking the difficult emotional time of coping with death to reflect on the larger meaning we give to life.
Yes, we are star stuff - real, physical manifestation of the universe. And not only are the atoms in us born of those stellar furnaces, but they are passed around constantly, making us all part of one continuum. Just the other day I saw this item about how we all - each and every one of us - likely contains about 200 billion of Shakespeare's atoms in us. (And also similar amounts of just about everyone who has lived, though many of those would have been recycled many times.)
What a concept.
Welcome back.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
beautiful
That was nicely said. I'll be lifting my head up in wonder right next to you. I'm sorry to read of your difficult times. Keep thinking wonderful thoughts.
Mandy U
Friggin' Walt Whitman!
That's what bugs me the most about things like "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer". How can anyone imagine that someone would put in the years of study it takes to be an astronomer (not to mention facing the, shall we say, sparse, job market) if they didn't feel a joy in the whole thing. Feh on Whitman, I say!
In regards to the atheist funeral thing, I have the opposite feeling. In the last few years, I've attended four funerals. One was at a fairly fundamentalist church, and it was almost like a church service. There were speeches about the deceased, but it was too God-y to be really enjoyable.
One was at a funeral home, and the eulogy was given by a preacher who obviously knew nothing about the deceased (and was a terrible public speaker to boot). It was okay, because mostly it was rememberances by people who did know him, but again the God part was useless.
The worst of the lot was a full-blown Catholic funeral for a woman who had been a loyal church-going member of the same parish her entire adult life, was good friends with the monsignor, etc. Two hours of service, and she was mentioned once, maybe twice. And then only in context of being a good member of the church. It was like a two hour infomercial for Jeezus. I came very close to walking out in disgust.
Then there was my father-in-law. Not religious at all, nor the rest of his close family. We had a completely secular "service", modeled on a wake, emceed by my wife. People got up to talk about the fun they'd had with him, and oboy everyone had a story! It was held at his favorite restaurant in town, everyone wore Steelers clothing, drank beer, and the singers in the group sang some of his favorite songs. We all left feeling we remembered him, and knew each other, better than we had before.
Winner by a mile: the secular remembrance.
Science & Children
Great post Eric.
Just gave my grandson (8 yrs and a good reader) a book called something like: "The Book of Awesome Stuff for Kids"....it reiterated that we are made out of the same material as the stars! My grandson voiced astonishment when he read that. Good book to introduce our children to the wonder of our natural world...