Living Without Religion
I Want (Not) to Believe
By: Katrina Voss
Notwithstanding the online music video “Iraq: The Musical,” we may be a very long way from “Iraq On Ice.” A very long way, considering that even theatrical endeavors like movies with the theme “Iraq: You Were Right When You Said It Was a Bad Idea” do not seem to be working. An “I told you so” war movie should, in theory, have appealed to the antiwar majority and earned fortunes at the box office. What could be better than getting one’s choir preached to via superb acting, chilling cinematography, and exquisite, matter-of-fact violence, not to mention poignant themes of the inevitability of human suffering in war?
Iraq War-themed movies have been consistently solid, inarguably well-made, and quite often exceptionally well-reviewed, even critically acclaimed. So the explanation for their near-universal public shunning must lie at some deeper level. After all, the same sophisticated audience that drooled over No Country for Old Men while wholly ignoring In the Valley of Elah could hardly complain that recent war movies are too dark. (The former grossed over $74 million in theaters, while the latter, also starring Tommy Lee Jones, earned a paltry $7 million.) Nor does it seem to be an aversion to war violence per se. (Saving Private Ryan topped $216 million, while Iraq War-themed Rendition claimed just over $9 million and Stop-Loss just over $10 million.) Indeed, even the most cultured moviegoers seem less likely to see an Iraq War movie than to clean urinals with their tongues. The “too close to home” and “too immediate” aspects may be the explanation, and I suspect that in another decade (provided we are out of Iraq by then) such films may be as successful among cinephiles as their non-Iraq War-themed but equally grown-up counterparts.
Then again, timing may be only an added aggravation. Iron Man, despite Iraq War references, made a killing at the box office, but Iron Man is much more about a roguish superhero with great biceps than about the Iraq War. Most moviegoers are not terribly sophisticated, despite the occasional sophisticated blockbuster. I am allowed to say this without sounding elitist because I include myself among the audience with puerile preferences. Admittedly, for me as for many others, however profound and vanguard a film, however moving its antihero and “unhappily ever after” ending, it simply cannot compete with—say—gratuitous sex, clever comedy, spot-on one-liners, and superfluous special effects. (To be fair, even recent “serious” war movies include at least one scene where someone blows something up, but I doubt a sheer fondness for pyrotechnics is behind it.)
Certainly, there is something to be said for being transported, as it were, to an unlikely and not-so-deep world. There is something to be said for making suspension of disbelief difficult. There is something to be said for the kind of crisp humor real life never quite affords and the predictable way the bad guy is always swiftly dispatched in the end. These may be all the more important in times of war, as wartime audiences—whatever their political leanings or levels of sophistication—seem to be proving. In fact, I suspect there may be something to be said for similarly absurd elements in religion, and again, especially in times of war. Indeed, perhaps there is a connection between avoiding war movies and renewing the creationism campaign. In this sense, the nonreligious may be taking a step toward the religious—if only in taste. At the risk of companioning myself too closely with the faithful, I’ll admit I get it. I get the appeal of silly, (literally) incredible, and larger-than-life stories. I just prefer Bond, James Bond, to Christ, Jesus Christ.
There are inescapable problems with Iraq War films even for the generally urbane moviegoer—first, their harsh believability and second, their deeper meaning— and these may be the same problems avoided by biblical literalism. That is, too realistic can be too distressing. And provided that the metaphorical is within one’s intellectual grasp, too deep can be too distressing in the same way.
Ironically, literalism makes folklore less real. In that sense, literalism is not about literal history at all but rather about substituting the unbelievable for the believable, just as escapist cinema substitutes the ridiculous for the poignant. Perhaps that is precisely what people want, especially in volatile times: a pseudo-history that is so absurd, so impossible, and so inane as to be completely without any recognizable connection to one’s own realistic and often painful experience. Perhaps it is the only way to make religion (or for some, movies) palatable. How much easier it is to keep religion in a compact lockbox of cartoonish unreality, and further, to confine it to one day of the week so as to break up the monot-ony of “real” life. After all, during the rest of the week, it is usually best to pay homage to more quotidian concerns, such as gravity and germ theory, not to mention war.
Of course, very bad things happen when religious folk do, in their heart of hearts, believe the ridiculous tripe that makes up their traditions’ folklore. One of those very bad things is often war. If literalism begets war and then war encourages literalism as a form of escapism, what a tricky state of affairs we have indeed. And yet, I have often suspected that even many religious literalists (at least in the Christian West) do not, in their heart of hearts, truly believe. If they did, there would be many more reports of backyard burnings of rams to create an aroma pleasing to the Lord, not to mention stonings of nonvirgins. Likewise, again aligning myself with the faithful if only in taste, I do not believe in the likelihood of a Nikita-esque heroine dodging bullets and drop-kicking a villain while keeping her lipstick intact, and I rather like it that way. Keep it absurd, and keep it at an unbelievable, dismissible arm’s length. Ignorance is certainly not bliss, as Richard Dawkins pointed out in an earlier edition of FREE INQUIRY (Summer 2001), but neither is morose realism. Then there is the issue of religious allegory. If it is easier to swallow stories that are obviously preposterous, shouldn’t it be easier still to embrace them as strictly symbolic? Indeed, religious literature seems to beg for symbolic interpretation while even the most thoughtful, profound war movie can only be applied secondarily to human experience in the broader sense. Apparently, many religious people cannot distinguish even the simplest of metaphors in their own holy texts, however freighted with tired parabolic plagiarism. But perhaps this is not so unwise a position. Perhaps there are stings of truth one has good reason to blunt with the balm of fantasy. Here again, literalism steps in as a comforting agent, defiling deeper (but often painful) metaphors. Consider the stories of that great weapon of mass destruction, the god of Abraham: a spiteful, jealous bully whose temper tantrums often result in genocide and infanticide. These may be easier to take as, well, fairy tales, than as literal in their progression of events. The alternative is to see the metaphor for a fierce, fickle natural world in which we all have to live—and die. To destroy all metaphor is to make it easier to go about the tedium of one’s life without those insulting, burdensome reminders of the transitory nature of existence that religious traditions do, at that deep level, afford.
That is not to say that the only important depths to be plunged in religion and art are dark ones. What about those messages of self-transcendence, ecstasy, love, and joy found in some spiritual traditions (if not, to some extent, in all)? Their discovery, however, obliges a rare sobriety and will. It is no great surprise that there are not many Sam Harrises in the world. It requires an extraordinary dedication to pick through the excremental heap of mythology to find the truly comforting gems of meaning. Besides, for those who have a tendency to erase metaphor altogether, thence goes the baby with the bathwater.
In the meantime, at least as long as Iraq War movies continue to fail, the sadder-but-wiser might have to grant the happier-but-stupider a few points. A doppelganger version of The X-Files’ Mulder might have found himself less entangled in his own pathos next to the slogan, “I want not to believe.” Indeed, I for one will continue to settle for the thankfully unbelievable entertainment of fourteen-year- old-boys—trite flapdoodle, shorn of elements too real or too profound. I say, let guns be seductively extracted from a Bond girl’s garter, not from an eighteen-year-old soldier’s tattered holster. The religious say, let the divine remain a truculent, bearded, male disciplinarian, not a faceless and indifferent natural force.
I admit that the comparison is grotesquely imperfect. After all, biblical bad guys (such as God) are not readily and justly dispatched, and one has to blur one’s senses intentionally not to intuit darker motifs. How unfortunate that biblical fancy comes buried in such hideous baggage, the sort of thing that pedestrian wartime cinema is quite content to leave to the experts.
I Want (Not) to Believe
By: Katrina Voss
Notwithstanding the online music video “Iraq: The Musical,” we may be a very long way from “Iraq On Ice.” A very long way, considering that even theatrical endeavors like movies with the theme “Iraq: You Were Right When You Said It Was a Bad Idea” do not seem to be working. An “I told you so” war movie should, in theory, have appealed to the antiwar majority and earned fortunes at the box office. What could be better than getting one’s choir preached to via superb acting, chilling cinematography, and exquisite, matter-of-fact violence, not to mention poignant themes of the inevitability of human suffering in war?
Iraq War-themed movies have been consistently solid, inarguably well-made, and quite often exceptionally well-reviewed, even critically acclaimed. So the explanation for their near-universal public shunning must lie at some deeper level. After all, the same sophisticated audience that drooled over No Country for Old Men while wholly ignoring In the Valley of Elah could hardly complain that recent war movies are too dark. (The former grossed over $74 million in theaters, while the latter, also starring Tommy Lee Jones, earned a paltry $7 million.) Nor does it seem to be an aversion to war violence per se. (Saving Private Ryan topped $216 million, while Iraq War-themed Rendition claimed just over $9 million and Stop-Loss just over $10 million.) Indeed, even the most cultured moviegoers seem less likely to see an Iraq War movie than to clean urinals with their tongues. The “too close to home” and “too immediate” aspects may be the explanation, and I suspect that in another decade (provided we are out of Iraq by then) such films may be as successful among cinephiles as their non-Iraq War-themed but equally grown-up counterparts.
Then again, timing may be only an added aggravation. Iron Man, despite Iraq War references, made a killing at the box office, but Iron Man is much more about a roguish superhero with great biceps than about the Iraq War. Most moviegoers are not terribly sophisticated, despite the occasional sophisticated blockbuster. I am allowed to say this without sounding elitist because I include myself among the audience with puerile preferences. Admittedly, for me as for many others, however profound and vanguard a film, however moving its antihero and “unhappily ever after” ending, it simply cannot compete with—say—gratuitous sex, clever comedy, spot-on one-liners, and superfluous special effects. (To be fair, even recent “serious” war movies include at least one scene where someone blows something up, but I doubt a sheer fondness for pyrotechnics is behind it.)
Certainly, there is something to be said for being transported, as it were, to an unlikely and not-so-deep world. There is something to be said for making suspension of disbelief difficult. There is something to be said for the kind of crisp humor real life never quite affords and the predictable way the bad guy is always swiftly dispatched in the end. These may be all the more important in times of war, as wartime audiences—whatever their political leanings or levels of sophistication—seem to be proving. In fact, I suspect there may be something to be said for similarly absurd elements in religion, and again, especially in times of war. Indeed, perhaps there is a connection between avoiding war movies and renewing the creationism campaign. In this sense, the nonreligious may be taking a step toward the religious—if only in taste. At the risk of companioning myself too closely with the faithful, I’ll admit I get it. I get the appeal of silly, (literally) incredible, and larger-than-life stories. I just prefer Bond, James Bond, to Christ, Jesus Christ.
There are inescapable problems with Iraq War films even for the generally urbane moviegoer—first, their harsh believability and second, their deeper meaning— and these may be the same problems avoided by biblical literalism. That is, too realistic can be too distressing. And provided that the metaphorical is within one’s intellectual grasp, too deep can be too distressing in the same way.
Ironically, literalism makes folklore less real. In that sense, literalism is not about literal history at all but rather about substituting the unbelievable for the believable, just as escapist cinema substitutes the ridiculous for the poignant. Perhaps that is precisely what people want, especially in volatile times: a pseudo-history that is so absurd, so impossible, and so inane as to be completely without any recognizable connection to one’s own realistic and often painful experience. Perhaps it is the only way to make religion (or for some, movies) palatable. How much easier it is to keep religion in a compact lockbox of cartoonish unreality, and further, to confine it to one day of the week so as to break up the monot-ony of “real” life. After all, during the rest of the week, it is usually best to pay homage to more quotidian concerns, such as gravity and germ theory, not to mention war.
Of course, very bad things happen when religious folk do, in their heart of hearts, believe the ridiculous tripe that makes up their traditions’ folklore. One of those very bad things is often war. If literalism begets war and then war encourages literalism as a form of escapism, what a tricky state of affairs we have indeed. And yet, I have often suspected that even many religious literalists (at least in the Christian West) do not, in their heart of hearts, truly believe. If they did, there would be many more reports of backyard burnings of rams to create an aroma pleasing to the Lord, not to mention stonings of nonvirgins. Likewise, again aligning myself with the faithful if only in taste, I do not believe in the likelihood of a Nikita-esque heroine dodging bullets and drop-kicking a villain while keeping her lipstick intact, and I rather like it that way. Keep it absurd, and keep it at an unbelievable, dismissible arm’s length. Ignorance is certainly not bliss, as Richard Dawkins pointed out in an earlier edition of FREE INQUIRY (Summer 2001), but neither is morose realism. Then there is the issue of religious allegory. If it is easier to swallow stories that are obviously preposterous, shouldn’t it be easier still to embrace them as strictly symbolic? Indeed, religious literature seems to beg for symbolic interpretation while even the most thoughtful, profound war movie can only be applied secondarily to human experience in the broader sense. Apparently, many religious people cannot distinguish even the simplest of metaphors in their own holy texts, however freighted with tired parabolic plagiarism. But perhaps this is not so unwise a position. Perhaps there are stings of truth one has good reason to blunt with the balm of fantasy. Here again, literalism steps in as a comforting agent, defiling deeper (but often painful) metaphors. Consider the stories of that great weapon of mass destruction, the god of Abraham: a spiteful, jealous bully whose temper tantrums often result in genocide and infanticide. These may be easier to take as, well, fairy tales, than as literal in their progression of events. The alternative is to see the metaphor for a fierce, fickle natural world in which we all have to live—and die. To destroy all metaphor is to make it easier to go about the tedium of one’s life without those insulting, burdensome reminders of the transitory nature of existence that religious traditions do, at that deep level, afford.
That is not to say that the only important depths to be plunged in religion and art are dark ones. What about those messages of self-transcendence, ecstasy, love, and joy found in some spiritual traditions (if not, to some extent, in all)? Their discovery, however, obliges a rare sobriety and will. It is no great surprise that there are not many Sam Harrises in the world. It requires an extraordinary dedication to pick through the excremental heap of mythology to find the truly comforting gems of meaning. Besides, for those who have a tendency to erase metaphor altogether, thence goes the baby with the bathwater.
In the meantime, at least as long as Iraq War movies continue to fail, the sadder-but-wiser might have to grant the happier-but-stupider a few points. A doppelganger version of The X-Files’ Mulder might have found himself less entangled in his own pathos next to the slogan, “I want not to believe.” Indeed, I for one will continue to settle for the thankfully unbelievable entertainment of fourteen-year- old-boys—trite flapdoodle, shorn of elements too real or too profound. I say, let guns be seductively extracted from a Bond girl’s garter, not from an eighteen-year-old soldier’s tattered holster. The religious say, let the divine remain a truculent, bearded, male disciplinarian, not a faceless and indifferent natural force.
I admit that the comparison is grotesquely imperfect. After all, biblical bad guys (such as God) are not readily and justly dispatched, and one has to blur one’s senses intentionally not to intuit darker motifs. How unfortunate that biblical fancy comes buried in such hideous baggage, the sort of thing that pedestrian wartime cinema is quite content to leave to the experts.
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Sorry it was so long I didnt write it of course I found it on the secular site through there "Free Inquiry" magazine this article in particular was in volume 28 issue 5 heres the link to the site if you are interested in checking it out... its interesting...
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http://www.secularhumanism.org/
