I was at Sts. Clare and Francis Ecumenical Catholic Community this past saturday with my family for the second weekend in a row, and I noticed how comfortable I still felt in that environment despite not even actively participating in the service. It is comfotable for several reasons. First, it is a Catholic liturgy at its root, which is what I grew up with. Second, all the little things that bugged me about the Roman Catholic Church are put right with ECC. Third, it is part of the fundamental function of religion in our society to comfort, and it is very successful at that.
As I was standing there during the liturgy of the eucharist, I asked myself why I couldn't just go along with this and believe.
If my primary concern was finding more comfort, I would most probably be able to allow myself to blindly believe again. But I am not concerned primarily with comfort. I am concerned with agency. I am concerned with action. I am concerned with honesty.
With my broadened perspective of what constitutes the history of the human species, I can't help but see ECC and all of the modern organized religions as faulty by their extreme myopia, the same myopia that shapes (or mishapes, rather) our version of history. The shortsightedness of each religion's salvation story is insulting to the majority of humans who have lived on this earth before us and were not privy to this supposed chance at eternal life or enlightenment or something or other. Religions of this nature developed along with civilization and are a product of civilization, both responding to some of the ills that civilization created and working right along side civilization to instill the importance of progress and justify all the shit going down as being part of human destiny. Religion and the notion of a special afterlife reserved only for humans, being so far superior to the rest of the world, is the epitome of anthropocentrism. The idea that there is something more to humans, that there must be some separation between humans and other animals (not to mention the rest of the non-human world), is the most fundamental belief that friends of mine who are christian hold onto when I am talking with them about the new story that I am trying to live in. I do understand that humans have the ablility to reason and that no animal quite equals us in that capacity. Yet. I contend that we developed the ability to reason by evolution, just as with every other aspect that makes up the human person. And there is nothing to keep other species from evolving in a similar manner eventually. The ability to reason allows us the ability to ask an infinite number of questions, to contemplate our existence, and to have and express complex emotions. I don't see how any of these things that supposedly separate us from non-human species actually prove some unique quality like an eternal soul.
I've grown up believing that I am an eternal being. It is, to me, a very new idea indeed that this might not be true, so I am just trying to explore the concept and perhaps invite responses from others to see why people believe they are eternal, or why they don't. Thanks in advance for contributing to the discussion.
Dear Tom,
ReplyDeleteWhy do I believe in eternal life, eh? I guess the reason is mostly based on faith in the teaching of Jesus Christ and His Church (which I believe to be most centrally expressed in the Catholic Church), but as I want to be able to give "a reason for the things I believe," I'll try to approach it from the standpoint of both faith and reason. I guess first of all it has to do with how I experience myself and how it seems most people experience themselves. I experience myself as rational, that is, I am able to seek out information of the world and act upon it; more importantly, I am able to reflect back on what I know and figure out new things that no one ever taught me--I have what might be called creativity and self-consciousness. I think this is what is distinctly human. It is apparent that animals, at least the higher animals (vertebrates and the higher arthropods and mollusks), can to varying extents seek out information from the world and learn and even to a limited extent make choices. But there is nothing in animal behavior to suggest that they have self-consciousness in the way we do, that we can look at the world, take what we know, and create new things like art, language, new building styles. A bird can build but a bird cannot be an architect; all nests of a particular species of bird will be pretty much the same. But humans can make houses in a myriad of shapes and sizes and styles. And even more importantly, a human can think about himself; a human can have an interior life. And a human wants to be happy, first and foremost. It is here that I think we can find evidence for an eternal principle in the human person.
All humans desire to be happy, desire total fulfillment (as opposed to the limited fulfillment that animals seem to desire.) This is a desire that is innate in us--even a child desires fulfillment though it is expressed in things like desiring attention and nourishment, and as we get older we refine what we mean by happiness until it becomes that we desire to be fully ourselves.) But happiness that comes to an end or is limited is not happiness in its fullest sense since we know that such a happiness must end and that lessens our ability to be happy. But if there were a happiness that was total and that we knew would never end, then we could be happy without limit. It is here that God comes in. I think it is demonstrable that God exists and that He is our creator and that He is personal, as opposed to a mere force or pantheistic principle in the world. (I can give you my reasons if you want; St. Thomas gives pretty good reasons in the Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question Two and following). Now I think it is also demonstrable that God is Truth, and that God is the supreme Good. So if God is Good and the orderer and creator of the world, then He is the object of our desire when we say we want to be happy, since He is the one Who can most make us happy. Thus we are eternal, since true happiness is happiness without end. If we were not eternal, God would be teasing us, giving us a desire in our nature that could never be fulfilled--and then God would not be Good since this would be a supremely cruel act. Thus by God's nature and my experience of myself and the experience of others--and on the basis of faith--I conclude that I have an eternal principle. As to the eternity of animals, I do not think any individual animal will live forever because animals give no evidence of having a rational principle. However, I do not think that it would be incompatible to say that there will be animals and plants and other such things in the New Heavens and the New Earth--and many saints and philosophers have held this position as well (see such writers as St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis).
Now I went through my opinion kind of fast there, and I didn't explain all my points but I could if you want me to. But probably if you want to understand my position, you would get far more out of reading such things as Plato's Phaedo, Apology, and Republic, and any of his other dialogues, and St. Augustine's Confessions, City of God, and dialogues, and anything else by him, as well as the pertinent parts of St. Thomas' Summa Theologiae. They give far better explanations than I ever could.
I hope that was at least a little clear, and that it's some help in your personal journey. God bless.
Mark Spencer