“All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even fifteen billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses.

Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird’s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts.

This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space. Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe?

I am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced there’s more to beauty than biology, more than cultural convention. It flows around and through us in such abundance, and in such myriad forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere evolutionary need. Which is not to say that beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it has everything to do with survival. Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us. It reminds us of the shaping power that reaches through the flower stem and through our own hands. It restores our faith in the generosity of nature. By giving us a taste of the kinship between our own small minds and the great Mind of the Cosmos, beauty reassures us that we are exactly and wonderfully made for life on this glorious planet, in this magnificent universe. I find in that affinity a profound source of meaning and hope. A universe so prodigal of beauty may actually need us to notice and respond, may need our sharp eyes and brimming hearts and teeming minds, in order to close the circuit of Creation.”

Good fix, Avi.

But let’s not forget that we all have unseen motivations and reasons for our choices. And someone who chooses Atheism may be in more, not less, of a rut than someone who chooses to be, say, Ahmish or even Born Again.

The problem with such a period of change is that for the people who think they’re moving ahead, there’s a responsibility to lead others (by example, hopefully) and not go college-dorm-crazy or else we all face a giant pull-back by the fearful fundamentalists who really just want their mommies.

(and I fixed the typo link in my name above. No wonder no one ever comments on my blog

Having left the nest awhile ago, and having had more than a few bedrock beliefs shaken to their core, I am sometimes comforted by Edgar Allan Poe’s Sonnet to Science, first published in December 1829, and its admonition that stark reason is fine, even inevitable, but it is not everything and it need not completely supplant imagination or our belief in something larger than ourselves:

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Adolescents. But adolescents are still children. When we “leave the nest” there is always a backwards facing and childish fear. We want the comfort of youth (i.e. the recent resurgence of strict orthodoxy in many faiths.) I believe these faiths (evangelical Christians among them) are afraid of the many changes in the world and seek the comfort of “the good ol’ days” by imposing outmoded and antiquated belief systems on their members.

But some of us are forward facing and are trying to reconcile what we’ve learned of the world with the knowledge given to us by our parents. I believe this second camp contains those like you who question the concept of a deity and also those who believe in some form of spirituality but do not prescribe to any particular orthodoxy about that faith. I would consider myself in this group.

In a human being there is always ambivalence during any period of rapid change, and the human race, taken as a collective entity, is having such a period, in my opinion. Some will look back and hold on tight to mommy and daddy. Some will take the leap in stride. And some will fall in the middle.

Matt, I like your comparison of human cultural development with the growth of an individual human. I wonder, though, are we adolescents or infants?

Egipsey, Avi’s right. We are writers. But don’t let that fool you. My work suffers immensely because of the time I spend on this blog. But everytime my boss (me) tries to whip me in shape, I give her the finger and keep on blogging.

But the world is so much bigger than we are, and we are terrified of the great big Unknown. Along comes Mom & Dad (read God figure) to scold us and guide us and tell us myths about the world that may or may not be true to assuage our fears. And we use these tales, regardless of whether they really happened, as valuable lessons to help us grow (read the evolution of religion). But as wise a story as the Boy Who Cried Wolf is, the real world tends to be much more complex than a myth, and try as we might to apply it to everything, it doesn’t always fit. (read the hard-liners who believe the Earth was created 6000 years ago.)

In our growth we stumble and fall many times as we try to make a place for ourselves in the world, but our insecurity grows with our egos. We become solipsistic in our teenage years and the world revolves around us (So does the Sun and the planets and the universe.) But maturity and awareness of the world soon painfully disabuse us of that notion, and we begin to wonder if our parents (i.e. religion) have all the answers. It is then that we become aware of our own power to affect the world (read the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.)

Humanity, as I see it, is about to make the transition from child to adult. We are about to leave the nest. This means forming our own opinions about the world and the shedding of our parents antiquated beliefs. But one should not, I think, abandon ones parent’s completely, regardless of their faults. Without them, we would not be here, able to discuss this. The important thing, of course, is to grow.

I’d argue that the Marxists got at least that part right. The way to the “Superman” is for individuals to take personal responsibility for their own morality (among other things). In other words, we shed the parental/authoritarian forces and grow the fuck up.

The fact that the Soviet Union was such a miserable failure in so many respects is not, I’d guess, a result of Atheism, but of a substitution of political authoritarianism for that of religion. The people never had a chance.

I’d even suggest that Atheism tied to real moral education can accelerate individuals more than any religion on earth. The fact that it doesn’t is more a function of our poor or non-existent moral education, IMO.

When staring into that void of moral nihilism, the key is learning how to cross it, not get stuck on the starting bank.

(not that I’m claiming any special moral prowess, btw).