|
The Paul Rosenfels Community Social Progress through Personal Growth |
 |
|
The Paul Rosenfels Community Social Progress through Personal Growth |
|
Religion is a private inner experience, part of man's pleasure and enjoyment life.
— Paul Rosenfels,
|
, the young
protagonist, whose full Indian name is Piscine Molitor Patel, is
looking for what men call God. A more conventional novel might show
that most of what men call God is nonsense, leading our hero to become
a proud, liberated atheist, firmly grounded in one sort or another of
materialism. But Yann Martel is better than that. His young hero
receives all stories about God with equal credulity. He becomes in
turn a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim — never leaving any
system behind. This contradiction seems not to bother him at all. And
why should it? If an elephant can appear in multiple aspects to a
blind man, who is to say whether different men in different times
might not sense God quite differently, with all descriptions adding up
to not much more than the merest hint of the reality to which they
refer?
|
| A rope, a stone wall, a Japanese fan, a snake and . . . some more stuff |
This insight — that some of our most cherished ideas do not map well to the dusty reality of any particular time and place — helps me understand why the Supreme Court regularly emits nonsense. Take the separation of church and state. We seem, most of us, to agree on what a state is. But what is a church? None of the framers had a very clear idea about this, but thought they should talk about it anyway. This was a mistake. If you don't know what a church is, you can't meaningfully decide legal cases concerning it.
Should local governments fund Christmas decorations, for example? Rather than assuming there is one right answer to this question, law makers and courts should mind their own business and try to find something useful to do. Questions like these tend to work themselves out well enough on the ground, away from the clamor and klieg lights of media hysteria.
|
| The Official Flying Spaghetti Monster Logo |
One American iconoclast has claimed that God is a Flying Spaghetti Monster . Can we be sure he doesn't actually
believe this? If not, should his body of doctrine be considered a
church? Are its followers to be allowed the special priveleges
reserved for religious adherents? To show how ridiculous such a
principle can become, several "Pastafarian" pranksters have recently
made fools of government authorities by insisting on wearing pasta
strainers on their heads in government photos on the grounds that they
|
Infographic by Richard Slusher 
|
The life of Pi involves suffering. His parents decide to sell the private zoo they own and move to Canada. Some of their animals are on board, since they will fetch a higher price at their destination — including a ferocious Bengal tiger named (due to a funny clerical error) Richard Parker. The ship sinks and Pi survives on a small raft along with several other zoo animals, most of whom do not survive. Somehow he survives Richard Parker's half-hearted attempts to eat him, and eventually the tiger runs away into a forest on an island they land at temporarily. Pi is finally rescued and, when he tells to several maritime insurance investigators the amazing story of how he survived the unexplained shipwreck, they ask him for a more credible account that will make sense to their superiors. Pi then hints that his actual life after the shipwreck might have been more prosaic. The fierce animals in his tale might merely have represented various humans. But then he says, "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"
| MR. OKAMOTO | That's an interesting question . . . |
| MR. CHIBA | The story with animals. |
| MR. OKAMOTO | Yes. The story with animals is the better story. |
| PI PATEL | Thank you. And so it goes with God. |
By frankly admitting that men's belief in their God is a matter of esthetic preference rather than scientific experiment, Yann Martel both says what we all know and yet somehow rescues the importance of faith. Faith in this view is an important aspect of how we define our lives. Reality can tell us what is, but only faith and hope tell us what we need our reality to become.
| Notes | ||||||||
| 1 | In July 2011, an Austrian atheist, Niko Alm, won the legal right to be shown in his driving license photo wearing a pasta strainer on his head, after three years spent pursuing permission and obtaining an examination certifying that he was psychologically fit to drive. He got the idea after reading that Austrian regulations allow headgear in official photos only when it is worn for religious reasons. . . . In July 2013, a member of the Czech Pirate Party from Brno in the Czech Republic was given permission to wear a pasta strainer on his head for the photograph on his official ID card. The Brno City Hall spokesman explained, "The application complies with the laws. . . where headgear for religious or medical reasons is permitted if it doesn't hide the face." In August 2013, a student at Texas Tech University got approval to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his driver's license photo. The student, Eddie Castillo, said, "You might think this is some sort of a gag or prank by a college student, but thousands, including myself, see it as a political and religious milestone for all atheists everywhere." | |||||||
The Paul Rosenfels Community | ||||||||
|
Formerly
All content by |
|
Write to us at | ||||||
|
Truth is a work in progress.
We like our diamonds rough.
| ||||||||
