The question, Hamlet, is not "to be or
not to be" or even "to act or not to act." It is
"to believe or not to believe."
Human being calls for living
according to a set of beliefs that come from the source of being – not from the
brain, not from science, not from natural or man-made objects. Being
human stems from cognition that transcends the opinions and calculations of any
individual or group. This is something that people have always known
and leaders have forgotten.
Philosophers
and theologians who object or rationalize around this central fact of human
life ignore or make light of the fact that we do not put ourselves here and
know zilch about how, for example, water, food, and air become thoughts,
emotions, and the countless products of human life and civilization, from
safety standards to works of art. This large blind spot regarding
the reality of the world and ourselves leads to endless falsehoods that
obstruct sound judgment and action.
One great and seriously obstructing
falsehood is that science liberates us from ignorance about
ourselves. But...
If it were up to us, Scientist, we'd drop
dead, because we wouldn't know how to manage the zillion things the body must
do to keep us from visiting "the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no
traveller returns" (1).
The
belief that we are "masters of our fate" and "captains" of
our soul" (2), while not pure hubris, must be balanced with the
realization that, after all, we are not our own gods.
Because
the source of our being is obviously not science – or any other system of human
knowledge, for that matter – science is not a legitimate basis for the beliefs
that help make us human. Yet that is what it has been
(ab)used for, across the centuries, and the resulting bull [3] fed the
public. Science is a great and wonderful tool. But to
consider it a gateway to action consistent with being human is intensely wrong-minded
– unless the object be to turn people into machines of some
kind. Not laughably, this is what some futurists are
comfortable with. In that demented case, life would not be worth
living.
Cutting
whatever path through theology and philosophy, including thatconcerning
science, the final question must remain "which god to believe?"
On a
paper, dated 23 November 1654, stitched into the lining of his coat and found
after his death, Blaise Pascal wrote: "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God
of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars [my
emphasis]. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace." The
famous French philosopher and mathematician who gave us the adding machine and
developed the modern theory of probability ultimately and privately conceded
that the joy of certainty proceeds not from the mind of man, but from
God. Release from anxiety and uncertainty is not through a process
of calculation based on assumptions or derived from experience, but through
alignment with the Almighty. The brilliant Pascal realized, as we
all must, that belief in God energizes the contact between us and the source of
our being, which alone can steer us along the best track in life.
Pascal's
"maxim" echoes through the corridors of time. An echo,
still loud and clear, comes from a 19th-century statesman: "The postulates
of science do not rest upon absolute knowledge, but are derived from sources
similar to those of religious conviction. If only the data of
physical researches and sensory evidence be allowed by thinking people, then we
must labor forever in the agonies of doubt[.] ... They who begin in doubt may
end in certainty through a higher skepticism [my emphasis] ...
not the narrow destructive skepticism of the egoist, deliberately seeking
unbelief, but instead an intellectual recognition of the want of evidence.
Skepticism need not destroy belief; it may serve, on the contrary, to expose
the unjustifiable complacency of unbelievers" (4).
From
that higher perspective, it can be seen that the current sad state of human
affairs in America is the consequence of replacing God with Homo
sapiens and believing that that substitution is smart!
One
of the saddest consequences of the disconnect between human minds and their
source has been the terrible game that democracy has become in our
republic. The hidden rule of the game is that everything, sacred or
not, negotiable or not, is subject to the tyranny of a majority, whose members
believewhat they are made to believe.
In
this ruthless game, brainwashing and propaganda form the will of the majority
who then vote the will of organized rascals that have the largest bankrolls. But
what kind of men and women are they who presume to rule over you, me, and
everyone else? Is there a halo on the ones who are "holier than
thou"? How many of the wiser among them are even aware of, let
alone true to, a higher Authority than themselves? Being wise in
your own mind is not being wise, and being powerful not a reason to rule.
Many consider a view of life centered
on God retrograde and old-fashioned. This is the prevailing attitude
among those who practice the secular humanist religion. Their
leaders fail to notice that their bodies are also
old-fashioned. They are the ones who fail to notice that the brain
is designed to help keep us alive, not take over ownership of mind, body,
fellow being, community, and world. Regardless of I.Q., they are the
ones who stick themselves in boxes of their own making and know not love,
beauty, truth, and the significance of having been born. They
include the many who are too lazy to think and give their hearts to whatever
warms it. And they are the ones whose arrogance and presumption
cause the innocent of all times and places to – in Hamlet's words –
"suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
(1)
Shakespeare, Hamlet.
(2)
W.E. Henley, "Invictus."
(3)
"Cold facts" and empirical data by themselves are meaningless unless
collected into a system of thought and action believed to be
true. It is sometimes argued that, as a way to "make sense of
the world," science is in an exclusive class by itself, but as serious
belief, science is not exempt from competition with other serious beliefs.
(4)
Russell Kirk on thoughts of Arthur Balfour in The Conservative Mind,
Chapter XI.