Jestanuther Religious Nut

Religion is a hairy thing, a thing that licks its butt in the center of the living room floor when guests are over. Lately I've taken to telling people, when they notice my ring (worn beside my plain gold heirloom wedding band, featuring a pentacle with Celtic knotwork adorning about half the band) and ask about it, that my husband is Irish. "Oh," they say, as if they now understand. They're easily placated by this non-explanation because they see me smile, feel my empathy and sense my optimism and general sickening-sweet cheerfulness. This person couldn't possibly be Satanic/pagan/heathen/other than me because this is a good person. Her husband is Irish. We like the Irish--they make good whiskey and believe in leprechauns, and I like wearing green on St. Patrick's Day. She must be harmless! (Don't even get me started about this view of the Irish, btw.)

I've already griped about monotheism. Monotheism appears on the surface an advancement, an evolutionary step from the more primitive polytheism practiced by many if not most of the ancients. Returning to polytheism, however, is not a solution but a passage fraught with peril. Our ancestors were in fact primitive in many ways--brilliant in many ways too and in some cases a lot smarter than us (definitely smarter than we give them credit for)--but also lacking in important information that caused them to blame quite a few problems on the wrong agents. They also blamed success on wrong agents as well. They performed elaborate rites, sometimes to the destruction of their own society, to appease forces that may or may not have existed and if they did exist, may or may not have cared.

Which isn't to say there aren't gods. I think there's good evidence that there are--but not scientific evidence. Science itself can become a religion, and going the way of the Amazing Randy and the Skeptical Enquirer is also extremely fraught with peril. Ooo, how about a good example? The Amazing Randy has a standing offer of $1,000,000 to anyone who can provide scientifically verifiable evidence of any paranormal agent or ability--ghosts, telekinesis, prophesizing, etc. The trap is 'scientifically verifiable.' My friend and I, after several hours of concentration and practice, achieved telepathic communication. No sh*t. Great, you think. Call her up, meet with Amazing Randy, and go for it! Well, in order to control the 'experiment' The Amazing Randy would set us up for failure (but not deliberately, as far as I know. He seems an honest fellow.) Under the stress to perform, separating us, possibly insisting that we transmit to a control (person of their choice) so that we aren't 'tricking' anyone by deciding in advance what to send each other or using some other means besides telepathy to communicate with each other, not allowing us to practice first (it took a lot of warm up to achieve) and not taking 'close' answers (we found that the images transmitted at different speeds--the sender would draw slowly in her mind and the receiver would receive a fast image, often retraced many times which sometimes muddied circles into spirals or ovals and turned an oscillating line into a series of waves) and the general air of skepticism would likely get us laughed out of the lab. And then we'd be out airfare because The Amazing Randy won't come to us--we have to go to him. My understanding of how telepathy works and my confidence in that ability is so fragile I wouldn't want to stake twenty bucks on it, much less airfare and scrutiny by some very self-righteous skeptical scientists, assuming he even used real scientists using proper scientific protocols for the experiment.

After I've provided an example of something that could possibly be scientifically verifiable but will have the deck stacked against it to the point that it probably wouldn't even work under those arduous conditions, imagine trying to prove something that can't be measured by scientific instruments? How about beauty? Awe? "Hey man, the dude was really up there, his awe rating was like totally 7.3." How do you explain people in high risk professions who develop a sense that they're being watched by someone or something hostile? Hey, let's test that in a lab under controlled conditions!

Don't get me wrong. I actually very much admire the spirit behind The Amazing Randy's desire to both debunk quacks and charlatans as well as his apparent desire to find actual proof to support paranormal or otherwise fabulous claims. But (and this but is bigger than my butt by a substantial amount) science has limitations, and this is seldom acknowledged by skeptics. Science has been abused like statistical analysis and even legitimate science has 'proven' completely false ideas. People are fallible, and the science they employ is also fallible as a result.

This wraps back around to religion, gods, and the wearing o' the ring. What's a rational gal to believe these days? If the polytheism of old is flawed, and monotheism is flawed (man, Kami, how arrogant can you get here!) and science is limited and its usage is flawed, what's left?

Life, mortality, intelligence, ecosystems, the wide universe filled with distant stars and planets, music that gives you goosebumps, the feeling that you're in a sacred space, the adrenaline rush when faced with a wild predator that has no interest in your survival and every interest in its own, awareness of how small we our and how brief our lives, love for our children, respect, on and on the list goes. What's left is infinite possibilities, and our finite perceptions compressed into a human lifespan. Religion is learning to coexist with the universe with as much awareness as possible; coexisting with things much larger than yourself, bearing in mind that our minds are good at fooling us. What's the difference between someone who hears voices telling him to kill everyone and me hearing a human voice in my office when no one was actually there (and we didn't have running water or electricity in the house so it wasn't the tv or radio or water burbling in the pipes)? A hair's breadth of difference, if any. It's not scientifically proven that I'm sane, and that my religious experiences weren't all chemical imbalances or group hysteria in the cases where my experiences were shared with others. I'm just another religious nut who tends to anthropomorphize my deities when I'm not paying attention and who relies on faith (one of the deepest and most dangerous forms of trust) that what I believe has enough accuracy that I can stake my life, and my soul, upon it. I'm okay with that. I come from an ancient line of people who have lived within the frameworks of many faiths, and the DNA continues onward through me. I'm willing to take a chance on what I believe.

That probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

So why the pentacle?

Because what I believe has no name. The pentacle is a symbol used by some who try to stay in tune with nature, the feminine, and the masculine as spiritual entities with their own power in our world. They don't believe like I believe, not even really close to the same, but the melody for the chorus is similar even if the words, verses and traditional harmonies are all radically different. We get along pretty well, I think, the community of pagans and me. Besides, the ring is pretty. The symbolism works for me, even though it's not scientifically valid, and I like the knotwork. Carve it on my tombstone. I'll rest easy within the tangled strands.