Observational Remarks - verbal whippings for the over-educated and under-experienced

Apostasy is so cliche.
Dec. 6, 2005


It is too easy to be original by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing; this is just mechanical.
– Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks.


Sweetheart, listen. I have no patience for this.


If religion signifies "intellectual defeat," as you say, then atheism of your particular brand signifies a failure of imagination, an alarming dearth of cultural literacy. Ultimately, it is nothing less than a specious, juvenile stab at philosophical vainglory. Surely your sophisticated intellect is penetrating enough to see that. But, of course, if you feel that you absolutely must persist with these facile theological fulminations, please sear the following premises into your feckless brain: natural does not imply universal; impossibility is not equivalent to inconceivability; and irrationality, defined in your narrow sense of the word, does not necessarily entail impracticability.

Just because one understands your argumentation, does not mean that one automatically agrees with, or approves of, or even respects it. More to the point, one can have respect for something without necessarily understanding it, and one can absolutely defend its cogency without understanding it.
I am the least religious person you will ever meet; my operative principles are so humanistic, my modus operandi so entrenched in empirical verificationism, that yours would seem hopelessly occult and alchemical in comparison. Engineers weep for the standing that surgical efficiency has in my world. So, my dear, when you say that you find religious individuals laughable and naïve for their unsubstantiated beliefs and practices, and I respond that I find you laughable and naïve for your Orientalist hypocrisy, this should give you pause:
I have no faith to defend or justify. You, on the other hand, ought to at least substantiate your orphic worship of positive atheism with something a little stronger than xenophobic aphorisms, or else accept your own "intellectual defeat." You see, my issue does not rest in your fawning beatification of atheist philosophers, or the zealous, fanatical certainty with which you preach their gospels. Honestly, I could not care less. But you will not, will not, smear the concept of religion as "worthless and inconsequential" in my presence.


And why should I not take offence?

You say you enjoyed your tour of the European peninsula? That film cannot do justice to the aesthetic delicacies of East Asian architecture? Gothic cathedrals adorned with baroque motifs; Renaissance canvases coated with Catholicism's most sacrosanct symbols; illuminated leaves of Biblical scripture; the parabolic curves of Shinto shrines; the sweeping grandeur of Tibetan rockface carvings. Yeah, you've been around, no one contests that.

But come now, surely you are not this vapid. Do you really think that generations of artisans were motivated to perfect their crafts out of boredom alone? Do you think that the literati of so many societies before you chose to devote their intellectual faculties to scripture and theological inquiry because they were all misguided fools, that the pathological machinery of contemporary urbanism has a monopoly on sentient rationality? Do you really think the etymological structures and allusions you seem to enjoy misusing and abusing were produced in cultural vacuums? Do you think the mythological texts you so prize could exist on your bookshelf, or have any intelligibility whatever, evacuated of their cosmological contexts?

Evict religion from the history of the world, and you'd be left with a pretty barren buffet from which to furnish your globetrotter's itinerary, sate your aristocratic passions, indulge your paternalistic humours. Cling to your facile aegis all you want; your enthusiasm for romance and lyrical imagery betrays you: if your chosen deity is this militant perversion of positive atheism, then what's with all the idolatry, man? You'd better burn all those pictures and mementoes; you wouldn't want people to get the impression that you're clinging to some sentimental admiration for religious artifice.

You do, I hope, recognize that no amount of condescending charity can ameliorate the fact of your hypocrisy, or absolve you of your xenophobic envenoming, your own deluded egomania. And if even this is lost on you, well, do feel free to help yourself to my pity. Believe me, there's plenty to go around.


There are worthier candidates for my scorn, however, and I do not count self-aggrandizing instantiations of all that is wrong with analytic philosophy among them.

- Goddess of Tactful Lit-Prose