A Universal Alternative

The sanctuary was packed, the simple pine casket sat at the front just before the altar. I was glad that the lid was closed now. The hairpiece the mortician had given him replaced the missing swatch of his natural strawberry blond hair—where the bandage had been. If only someone would have told her that he had a cowlick there, then maybe it would have looked more natural. His hair would have never laid that perfect.

The eulogy had already been given, and the pastor asked for friends and family to come forward if they wished and share something they remembered about the boy in the casket. Life should never be cut short in such a horrific way. This was the thought that no one mentioned that day, and especially not in large sanctuary brimming with people who loved him—or at least the idea of him. They couldn’t dwell on this sorrow; they had to find a way to lift their spirits, to elevate the boy to inspire their hope. So the people came forward: his two best friends, a childhood friend, a family friend, and then, someone who didn’t really know him at all. She rattled on and on (and on and on) about his personhood, his kindness, his compassion. His deity. The girl must have needed the boy. She needed the boy to be something that he rationally wasn’t in order to deal with her own mortality, or perhaps to deal with her discomfort that mortality exists at all.

People deify the dead. “He always told the truth,” said his father. “He was incapable of lying.” Others named their children after him and taught them of the dead boy's legacy. People deified him in other ways too. A cousin of the boy (a fundamentalist Christian) deified him because he was a virgin. "He will be a perfect organ donor," she said. "Doctors don't have to worry about any infectious diseases with him." She somehow linked the purity of his metaphysical soul with the purity of his physical body. No negative thing about him was ever spoken. Not then, not ever.

In the Book of the Dead, there is a prayer to the Egyptian God, Osiris. The prayer outlines Osiris’ role within Egyptian spirituality. Osiris was the martyred savior to the Egyptians and, in fact, paralleled the story of Jesus, born of a virgin, death and resurrection, etc. And then there’s Dionysus and Mithras, who were also redeemers to the people who worshiped them, not to mention countless other gods that parallel Christianity. The gods were the givers of immortality. Like the girl who deified the boy, the people needed the gods. They needed the gods to be something that the gods rationally weren’t in order to deal with their own mortality, or perhaps to deal with their own discomfort that mortality exists at all.

That is the accusation, isn’t it? That modern civilizations, like past civilizations, use religion as a crutch, because it is uncomfortable with its own mortality? It is somehow assumed that religious people are weaker than non-religious people because religious people need to come up with myth in order to cope with existence, or rather, non-existence. Religious people just can’t seem to accept that there is nothing.

But it isn’t nothing, otherwise society wouldn’t have dreamed up something. That is a curious question, isn’t it? And really, according to the philosophical applications of quantum mechanics, one can’t simply say there is nothing without accepting an implied boundary by which he can measure nothingness and that is, well, something.

I wonder if those who argue religions, be it for or against, aren’t taking their thoughts far enough. To the Christian, he accepts framework for his beliefs within the boundaries he’s created. He’s accepted Jesus, not Osiris, not Dionysus, not Mithras, as his redeemer. Why Jesus? Why when there are more gods to fit the mold of the prophesied savior? Why can this be the only way? And for the atheist, he accepts the framework of his beliefs within the boundaries he’s created to measure the nothingness. Why can this be the only way?

There might be a deeper question, a question that seems to blow apart our constructs, and this question makes us uncomfortable enough to develop the boundaries around the framework of our beliefs: why?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Someone told me recently that she used to think she was agnostic, but more and more, she has come to identify more with atheism. She cannot believe in a supreme being, much less the Abrahamic God; however, she admits, there is a flaw in her reasoning. No matter how she chooses to draw distinctions between what she believes and doesn’t believe, she can’t bring herself to assert that human beings aren’t spiritual. Spirituality, it would seem, is an experience independent of belief. I would assert that one could even experience what some would call divine in the absence of it.

I wonder if our society, in spite of all the ways we draw hard and fast distinctions between ourselves, can remember that we are perhaps more alike than we care to admit. Perhaps we can all agree that there is something that drives every one of our beliefs. Some of us would say it’s nothing. Some of us would flip a card. Some of us would seat ourselves in lotus. Some of us would give it a name. And some of us, sadly, will ignore this idea altogether.