I think first that science isn't above nature. I remember a physics teacher in school that once responded to a comment like 'planes defy gravity to fly' by reminding us that planes fly only by comprehensively respecting the laws of gravity. So when the lab-grown meat kicks in, or however we solve that particular carbon problem, I think it'll be us giving back, as you say, rather than rising above nature. You can't grow meat without comprehensively respecting biology.
But on religion and God - I used to think I'm an agnostic but actually realized that I just don't like the way organized religion depicts gods. I think things around us are already plenty magical: trees talk to each other, our bodies heal wounds, and the physics behind the universe is beautiful. I also like the concept of luck (but I don't like calling it karma, because again, organized religion), and I often feel that the combination of all these things - luck, nature, science, people, whiskey, whatever - this sum-total of existence is plenty magical, not to mention sentient and omnipresent. Put good things into it, and then it doesn't matter what you name it.
Thank you Nick for answering our question! That made my day! I am like you, agnostic, not really sure what there is waiting for us, but it is my fervant hope that we can be reunited with loved ones that have gone before us. Well, this is truly something that remains to be seen. Thank you for making my time here on earth more pleasant!
Nick, I am with you totally on this deep (6 feet) subject. I used to be a very serious Christian, was a deacon, preached occasionally and did the whole dance. As time went on it became clearer and clearer that it is all BS. But, but, but, I still would love it if there was something after, so even though I call myself an atheist, I also lean back to being agnostic. No one knows if there is or is not a god. As to “going into the light” when on the operating table, I enjoyed seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comment that, of course you are going into the light - if you have ever been on an operating table (and I have a few times), what is above you is a very intense bright bank of lights, so there you go! This remains one of life’s great mysteries and we won’t know until we sign off. As to funerals, sorry but my money is going to fund several rounds of drinks at the local watering hole with a glass on the bar for me and my body is going in a zip bag at Harvard Medical School. Signing off with my verse: Offerman, 6-12-22
Nick, I'm gonna guess you are more like the poet who pitches past the "context of meanings". :)
(Great question and great response!)
Joseph Campbell/Thou Art That
...half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
...How, in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These images must point past themselves to that ultimate truth which must be told: that life does not have any one absolutely fixed meaning...
If we give that mystery an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its real depth. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the function of metaphor that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make, past all categories of definition.
Expanding on this idea, do you wish to be cremated when you make your grand exit, and if so, would you want to be scattered somewhere to be reclaimed by Mother Earth? (As opposed to the tradition of living life after death in an urn on a mantle?)
Wow. Nick - all I can say is, Hakuna Matatta. This resonated with me so deeply. I feel inspired. THIS is what I keep showing up for. Thank you (and also, didn't mean to end that sentence with a preposition - Auntie Stinks would be thrilled). I'll leave you with a poem that my Garden Lady told me:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — Gandalf
As the great Iris DeMent sings so exquisitely,
“ Everybody is a wonderin' what and where they all came from
Everybody is a worryin' 'bout where
They're gonna go when the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be.”
This video sparked a ton of thoughts for me.
I think first that science isn't above nature. I remember a physics teacher in school that once responded to a comment like 'planes defy gravity to fly' by reminding us that planes fly only by comprehensively respecting the laws of gravity. So when the lab-grown meat kicks in, or however we solve that particular carbon problem, I think it'll be us giving back, as you say, rather than rising above nature. You can't grow meat without comprehensively respecting biology.
But on religion and God - I used to think I'm an agnostic but actually realized that I just don't like the way organized religion depicts gods. I think things around us are already plenty magical: trees talk to each other, our bodies heal wounds, and the physics behind the universe is beautiful. I also like the concept of luck (but I don't like calling it karma, because again, organized religion), and I often feel that the combination of all these things - luck, nature, science, people, whiskey, whatever - this sum-total of existence is plenty magical, not to mention sentient and omnipresent. Put good things into it, and then it doesn't matter what you name it.
Thank you Nick for answering our question! That made my day! I am like you, agnostic, not really sure what there is waiting for us, but it is my fervant hope that we can be reunited with loved ones that have gone before us. Well, this is truly something that remains to be seen. Thank you for making my time here on earth more pleasant!
Nick, I am with you totally on this deep (6 feet) subject. I used to be a very serious Christian, was a deacon, preached occasionally and did the whole dance. As time went on it became clearer and clearer that it is all BS. But, but, but, I still would love it if there was something after, so even though I call myself an atheist, I also lean back to being agnostic. No one knows if there is or is not a god. As to “going into the light” when on the operating table, I enjoyed seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comment that, of course you are going into the light - if you have ever been on an operating table (and I have a few times), what is above you is a very intense bright bank of lights, so there you go! This remains one of life’s great mysteries and we won’t know until we sign off. As to funerals, sorry but my money is going to fund several rounds of drinks at the local watering hole with a glass on the bar for me and my body is going in a zip bag at Harvard Medical School. Signing off with my verse: Offerman, 6-12-22
Nick, I'm gonna guess you are more like the poet who pitches past the "context of meanings". :)
(Great question and great response!)
Joseph Campbell/Thou Art That
...half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
...How, in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These images must point past themselves to that ultimate truth which must be told: that life does not have any one absolutely fixed meaning...
If we give that mystery an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its real depth. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the function of metaphor that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make, past all categories of definition.
Expanding on this idea, do you wish to be cremated when you make your grand exit, and if so, would you want to be scattered somewhere to be reclaimed by Mother Earth? (As opposed to the tradition of living life after death in an urn on a mantle?)
Thanks for the deep donkey thoughts!
Sydney from Colorado
Wow. Nick - all I can say is, Hakuna Matatta. This resonated with me so deeply. I feel inspired. THIS is what I keep showing up for. Thank you (and also, didn't mean to end that sentence with a preposition - Auntie Stinks would be thrilled). I'll leave you with a poem that my Garden Lady told me:
The warmth of the sun for pardon
The song of the bird for mirth
One's heart is closer to god in the Garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.
Thank you, from Lilac Village <3
Jessie