[MD] The End of Faith - Spirituality

[Arlo Bensinger]

Final thoughts from me on this...

[Platt]
Say what? Are you claiming the Founding Fathers rejected religion?

[Arlo]
I'm saying the ideas of liberty and freedom as articulated by these 
people came to us from secular enlightenment, not from religion. That 
the "founders" pandered to religion, does not surprise me, any more 
than it surprises me that modern leaders pander to religion. But what 
we have seen in the past few hundred years in an enlightenment 
philosophy being usurped by the very malicious dogma it neutered.

[Platt]
Makes perfect sense in response to your claim that "it's far from 
true" that those who advocate state supremacy are atheists.

[Arlo]
There were more advocates of state supremacy historically that we not 
atheists than the few you list here. Again, you keep pointing to the 
last hundred years, and again I say "wise of you", since that's the 
period following religion's neutering.

[Platt]
Recent history has seen the consequences of replacing the supremacy 
of God with the supremacy of the state.

[Arlo]
One should reject dictatorial regimes whether they be "in the name of 
God" or "in the name of the nation".

[Platt]
Who are these secular enlightened people you keep talking about?

[Arlo]
You need for me to list for you the enlightenment philosophers?

Consider what Pirsig had to say. "And yet, although Jefferson called 
this doctrine of social equality "self-evident," it is not at all 
self-evident. Scientific evidence and the social evidence of history 
indicate the opposite is self-evident. There is no "self-evidence" in 
European history that all men are created equal. There's no nation in 
Europe that doesn't trace its history to a time when it was 
"self-evident" that all men are created unequal. Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, who is sometimes given credit for this doctrine, certainly 
didn't get it from the history of Europe or Asia or Africa. He got it 
from the impact of the New World upon Europe and from contemplation 
of one particular kind of individual who lived in the New World, the 
person he called the "Noble Savage." (LILA)

[Platt]
Are they the same intellectuals Pirsig says have led us to 
PARADISE  . . .PARADISE . . .PARADISE?

[Arlo]
No, these are the intellectuals who followed the materialistic, 
individualistic doctrine of consumerism and mass production. The same 
people who advocated, as Pirsig explains a few sentences later, the 
following. "Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," 
"scientific" view of life that told each person that his essential 
self is his evolved material body." (LILA)

In direct parallel, Pirsig tells us in ZMM, "Along the streets that 
lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the 
concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are 
grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will 
convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of 
style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and 
paid for by the vendors of substance." (ZMM)

Yes, it is a lonely dark night. As Pirsig bemoans, "I know what it 
is! We've arrived at the West Coast! We're all strangers again! 
Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral 
procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, 
supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. 
We've been out of it for so long I'd forgotten all about it." (ZMM) 
"People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task 
from eight to five without question because the structure demands 
that it be that way. There's no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them 
to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system 
demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of 
changing the structure just because it is meaningless." (ZMM)

As for Pirsig, I consider him an astounding secular philosopher 
carrying the beacon of secular enlightenment.