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The
Cascade Ranges (sometimes referred to as Eastern and Western, and sometimes as Old and New)
have thousands of rock formations that consist of magma which hardened
underground and was exposed when the surrounding rock eroded
away. Like nearly all of them, Symbol Rock (pictured) sits quietly to itself, for that
which would be the centerpiece of a park in most places is commonplace in
Oregon. Indeed, Symbol Rock and dozens—if not scores—of similar formations
can be found within fifty miles of here, although few people know of them because few people venture into the wilderness.
As
was true elsewhere in America, most of Oregon’s indigenous peoples died of
European diseases without having ever seen a European, the diseases being
introduced by a relatively few pre-settlement explorers, traders, and
missionaries. This makes it impossible to know what the original Americans
thought of most intrusions, but they generally regarded impressive natural
features as possessing healing powers, and they created anthropomorphic myths
to explain the origins of such features. I believe that natural features (along
with art, music, friendship, literature, placeboes, and various other things)
can indeed heal people, but I have no thought that tales of warring spirits or
trickster coyotes are relevant to explaining their existence. For this, we must turn to
science.
Many
western Oregonians would disagree because the region is attractive to those who
take a mystical view. Many of them view both science and mythology as nothing more than culturally-based interpretations of nature, with science being inferior to
mythology in that its mechanistic outlook, its human centeredness, and its
faith in reason and evidence, deny the possibility of a spirit realm and
therefore of ordained purpose. My animus toward such people comes from the fact
that they take obvious advantage of the fruits of the science that they profess
to hate while the fruits of the spirituality that they profess to love
remain anything but obvious. Indeed, I think their claim to
heightened respect, insight, sensitivity, compassion, and morality, are simply the products of their narcissistic imaginations. Our one area of agreement is that we both view the dominant forms of Western religion as wicked and depraved.
At
the one end, in our Western world, there lie the beliefs and practices of those
whom I have referred to, people who embrace such titles as pagan, spiritual,
and mystical; at the other are those like myself who uphold reason and evidence
as humanity’s only shot at objective truth; and between the two, the dominant
forms of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity; authoritarian religions all that
proclaim the earth accursed and treat it accordingly even as they pursue worldly wealth and power. As much as they hate one another,
pagan/spiritual/mystical people and mainstream religious people are alike in that
they share a contempt for reason and evidence, at least in regard to such things as they themselves believe in the absence of reason or evidence. Truly, once
rationality is declared a hindrance to the
discovery of “higher truth,” people are free to believe whatever they please without the least
embarrassment.
Yet,
in the case of the mainstream religions, if two people worship different Gods
of love—each of whom demands that he (they are invariably male, you know) alone be worshipped—how are they to resolve their differences in the absence of
reason and evidence? They cannot. They can but agree to disagree or, as usually
happens when one or both sides thinks it can win, resort to intimidation and
violence.
“A
religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving
to those who do not belong to it.” –Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the
Analysis of the Ego, 1921
