There are several zombie ideas that simply refuse to die. When I say, "zombie ideas," I mean that more or less literally according to the popular stereotype of "zombie" -- a person who is for all intents and purposes dead but for the desire to consume other human beings, which in turn creates more zombies who are for all intents and purposes dead but for the desire to consume and convert other human beings.
The first, and given the history of mankind perhaps the most pernicious, is the idea of a god and an associated religion. I know this puts me at odds with most of the world, and with my own wife, who wants to believe in a divinity even as she rejects most "organized religion." I have written about this here and there, and I recognize the irony that a contrarian, anti-zombie idea can itself become a zombie idea, so perhaps some explanation is in order. All that follows is a sketch to a full argument, though it's unlikely that I will ever make the full argument, in part because I doubt that there is anything really original in my thinking.
I do want to believe that a "spirituality" is possible, one that is not contingent upon the idea of a super-natural realm, a particular god or a particular religion. A sense of "spirituality" is perhaps inherent to a sentience of sentience. Since I invoked zombies, let me also invoke the pop culture figure of the cyborg, the machine that becomes sentient. One of the more moving scenes in science fiction occurs in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, where the cyborg or replicant, laments "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." Once one becomes sentient of one's own sentience, one also becomes aware of its limitations, particularly the limitation of before and after. There was no "awareness" before one's birth and there will be no "awareness" after one's death. The cyborg's lament is moving, in part because we are aware that he is not human, a machine, and ostensibly without a "soul." The lament reveals his "soul," which will, in effect, be "lost in time" because his awareness and his memory of his awareness will simply "shut down" and cease to exist. Western culture has accepted the idea of no before, but we find the idea of no "after" unacceptable. I have asked students to imagine that they were never born and never existed. It is a Descartian exercise. It reveals, on the one hand, the impossibility of imagining that we don't exist because, as we try to do so, there is always the one attempting to imagine his own nonexistence. As Descarte put it, dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum -- I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. This is not, however, an argument for the immortality of the "soul." Like Scott's cyborg, it is entirely possible, indeed likely, that we will "shut down" at death and simply cease to exist, along with all of our experiences. It also reveals, on the other hand, a sort of extension of Goedel's principle, or Alan Turing's "halting problem," or the limitations of any "formal" system. That we cannot imagine shutting down does not prove either that we do or that we don't just shut down. It is beyond the capacity of our biological system to make this proof, one way or the other. Ultimately, we must live with the uncertainty.
The growing number of people who make the claim to "spirituality" without a particular "religious" orientation have simply resolved the question for themselves, if not indubitably, then as a matter of faith. For reasons outlined above, it is harder to assume (not without doubt, as a matter of faith) that this is it, all there is, nothing more. If death portends an absolute end to my sentience, then it invests this life with a transient significance. One must live their one and only life in the best possible way. It is much easier to assume, not without doubt, as a matter of faith, that my sentience lives on. If death does not portend an absolute end, then the transience of this life must have a transitional significance. Within pop-culture, it is part of the genius of Battlestar Galactica that they invested their version of the cyborg, or the Cylon, with an automated re-incarnation. As Cylons, when their physical bodies are "killed," their sentience is automatically reincarnated into another identical body. As Searle and other have argued, my sentience is contingent upon my having this particular physical being, so the sentience must download into an identical body, otherwise the downloaded "me" would no longer be "me." Even the download into an identical body, because it is not the same body, creates a disruption. Still, the download is not life or death in any meaningful sense of the word, just a temporary interruption, and it leaves open the possibility of a real "death," if the automatic download into a new body is disrupted. In the absence of their automated download, it is likewise beyond the capacity of their mechanical-biological system to prove whether they do or they don't "just shut down." They too, ultimately, must live with the uncertainly.
The two options -- death does or does not mean an end to my sentience -- has moral and ethical implications, but not always in the ways that people portray them. The first option -- that life is transient without either a before or after -- suggests a simple hedonism, although it does not necessarily endorse amoral extremes of hedonism. A being has one life to live, and because we are not only sentience, but aware of our sentience, one strives to live that life in the best possible way, maximizing pleasure, minimizing pain. Anyone who has awakened with a raging hang-over knows that excessive "pleasurable" indulgence does not necessarily lead to a life lived in the "best possible way." Likewise, anyone who has been the victim of a crime knows that "rules" applicable to each and all are necessary to a life lived in the "best possible way." From there, the discussion can grow quite complex, but my point for the moment is relatively simple. One doesn't need the imperatives of a god, simply a reasoned understanding of common experience, to live an ethically and morally "decent life" or create an ethically and morally "decent" society.
The second option -- that this life is not only transient, but also transitional -- however, quickly brings metaphysics into play. For those who adhere to a notion that suggests the re-cycling of souls, it could all be utterly random. The previous life a parrot, this life a person, the next life a paramecia, for no apparent reason beyond the random availability of bodies for the next incarnation. Saying this, however, strikes a discordant and abhorrent note. It is as impossible to imagine myself a parrot or a paramecia as it is to imagine myself shut down, unless it is a parrot or a paramecia invested with my particular human sensibilities and thoughts. Unlike the Cylons who experience death as an interruption (like a dreamless sleep?) in an otherwise continuous "me," we do not remember our previous lives and its unlikely that we will remember this life in the next. Even for those who believe this life is transitional to the next, a random recycling of souls does little to relieve the fog of unknowing surrounding what to expect in the next life. Because a transitional life is wholly a matter of "fath," however, conjecture about what to expect and why can run amok. I must admit I have some difficulty with this sort of conjecture, because for the most part it seems pointless -- like debating the color of a unicorn's horn -- but it has animated much of human discourse over the centuries. In the east, in buddhism, the recycling of souls is seen as progressive. One goes through the cycle of birth and death until one lives a sufficiently enlightened life to end the cycle. What happens then, however, isn't particularly clear, except that one is free from the suffering implicit to the cycle of birth and death. In the west, the transition is more dichotomous -- reward and punishment. I won't attempt a history of religion, but simply suggest that the dispensation of reward and punishment requires a judge, and a god who serves as judge. Another aspect of Battlestar's genius -- that an authoritarian monotheism is at once an outgrowth and simplification of a more republican polytheism. In the latter, anyone attempting to navigate the pantheon, currying favor in this life and the next, must propitiate any number of gods in a way that reflected the interlocking and competitive patronage of the roman republic. In the former, however, one need not navigate a pantheon. One need only curry favor of the one true god in a way that reflected the changed circumstances of imperial rome. There is always a significant, first-order requirement -- that one invest one's faith in the one true god, and one demonstrate this faith by adopting certain forms of life, the specifics of which begin the contentious debates on the color of the unicorn's horn.
As an aside, I have always thought of christianity, in particular, as an antithetical religion, in particular the obverse side of a coin bearing Ceasar's image on the other. On the one side, Nietzsche had it right when he described it as a 'slave' religion, which values submission to the suffering of this life in order to receive a reward from the absolute authority that rules the next life. Turning one's cheek, for example, not only demonstrates the submission that one would expect of a slave, but insofar as christianity values this behavior, makes enduring the shame of slavery itself an heroic act, a defiance of secular authority in obedience to the absolute authority of the divine. It upends the more "traditional" heroic values that would demand revenge for an imposed shame. Insofar as the behavior is observed in this life and rewarded in the next by divine authority, it also upends the more "traditional" lines of authority contingent on the use of violence to exact submission and obedience. Might, as it were, no longer makes right. While the slave may suffer in this life, he will be rewarded throughout eternity in the next. Again, I don't want to develop a history of religion, but there is a particular self subverting aspect to christianity. Taking a cynical view of it all, for those with power, a religion that values submission to suffering can be attractive as a means of social control. Secular authority might smite the cheeks of the people, metaphorically speaking, while the priests extol the heroic virtue of the people as they endure their suffering. Secular power and the priests can quickly fall into cahoots, and as christianity itself became more and more "imperial," became more and more an instrument of the state, it had to reclaim its roots an antithetical religion, and the rise of protestantism seemed inevitable. On a smaller scale, the dynamic played out within the civil rights movement, when MLK turned his cheek, so to speak, submitting to state power's use of violence to enforce the inequities of the existing racial norms. In doing so, however, he also asserted and the television cameras helped document the ethical and moral superiority of his overtly christian movement. All which may be to the good, but there is never a shortage of victims or the suffering of victimization. Valorizing the ethical and moral superiority of victims opens doors to us all. The dynamic has played out again in the self-styled Trump movement now subverting a state power that victimizes whites by "privileging" blacks and hispanics.
That aside, back to the over-arching sketch, the two imperatives of any monotheistic religion -- that there is one and only one "true" god, and this god demands complete faith, a faith demonstrated by adopting certain forms of life. Many of those forms are simply common sensical -- thou shalt not kill, for example, as a categorical imperative applicable to each and all, simply points the way to life lived in the "best possible way," if not maximizing pleasure, then minimizing pain. Many of those forms are, however, utterly arbitrary. Does the path to paradise really demand that we wear a certain sort of under-garment or hide ourselves behind veils? abstain from bacon or alcohol? let our forelocks grow and our foreskin go? There is an element of the absurd in the arbitrary. The common sensical imperatives will always be with us, but it is in obedience to the utterly arbitrary, the absurd, that we really demonstrate our faith. Indeed, the more arbitrary the imperative, the emptier the ritual, the more it demonstrates our faith, in part because there is no other reason beyond faith to obey the imperative, to perform the ritual. On the other hand, however, because they are utterly arbitrary, the formalities of a particular religion's form of life are limited only by the imagination of those inventing them.
There is a sort of recognition of the "unlimited arbitrary" in those who claim to be "spiritual" without any particular obedience to an "organized religion." They have "faith" (or they want to have faith) that this life is transitional to the next, but they keep bumping up against the absurdity of the arbitrary imperative, the empty ineffectuality of the ritual. They want to have, as it were, a private religion. I have been alluding to Wittgenstein for a bit now, slipping his notion of a "form of life" in by the back door. I won't fully explicate what he meant by "form of life." I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to do so. In general, a "form of life" is just what it sounds like -- one way of living differentiated from another way of living in this world. It is akin to "speaking a language." To speak English is one thing, to speak Spanish another, and though it's possible to express the same (or very similar) thoughts in either, to actually speak English, one must use the vocabulary and grammar of English -- to actually speak Spanish, one must use the codes and conventions of Spanish. Likewise, to be protestant is one thing, to be catholic is another, and though they ostensibly worship the same deity, to actually "be protestant one must adopt the imperatives and rituals of protestantism -- to be catholic, one must adopt imperatives and rituals of catholicism. From there, of course, it gets very complicated, but for the present sketch, let me just say that a private religion is akin to Wittgenstein's notion of a private language. If the purpose of a language is to communicate my thought to another, what would a wholly private language communicate? Without the social conventions of a shared language, it would communicate nothing. It would be merely babble. I cannot really even speak a private language to myself. What would I communicate to myself that is not already known? Try, for example, deliberately surprising yourself. Likewise, if the purpose of a religion as an organized form of life is to demonstrate my faith in god, without the social conventions of a shared religion -- one that differentiates what does (and what does not) count as a demonstration of faith -- my private religion would demonstrate nothing. Even for an omniscient god, if anything and everything COULD count as a demonstration of faith, then nothing really DOES count as a demonstration of faith. Moreover, if it is to be a demonstration of faith (and not just the pragmatic dictates of surviving with others in this world) then the imperatives must be arbitrary, the rituals must be empty, for there can be no other reason for them than a demonstration of faith. Moreover again, if it is to be a demonstration of my faith in the one TRUE god, then the imperatives and the rituals peculiar to MY religion, despite their absurdity, take on a supreme significance. It not only explicitly demonstrates my faith in the one TRUE god, but also differentiates me from the those who worship the many FALSE gods.
"To actually be" -- one should note the force of these words, along with "differentiated me from those." I have also slipped the politics of identity in by the back door. One should not underestimate the implicit tribalism of contemporary identity politics. Again, by way of sketch, there is an implicit recognition of the "unlimited arbitrary" in first commandments within the judeo-christian tradition. The imperative to worship no gods but the TRUE god, recognizes that it is possible to worship FALSE gods. In some respects, the omnipotent judeo-christian god is a lackadaisical dictator. Unlike his human counterparts, who adopt all sorts of oppressive measures to maintain obedience, he simply allows what he ostensibly could easily prevent. He bestows on us free will to choose our god and our religion. For those who suspect that this life is transient and we simply shut down on death, the notion that an omnipotent god bestows free will on his subjects seems to be merely a convenient explanation for what is easily observed -- the proliferation of religions and variations on a theme even within ostensibly the same religion -- my god(s), your god(s), their god(s). One chooses one's religion based on what? It cannot be common sense. Those who want see commonality among religions and want to find common ground for co-existence -- e.g. the sanctification of marriage and prohibitions against adultery -- miss the point, and the point is to differentiate between those who worship the one true god, and the others who do not. Such differentiation works both externally and internally as a means of tribal cohesion. It differentiates US, from those OTHERS, unlike US, who worship false gods in false ways. This lends itself to a certain cynicism. It helps of course if tribal leadership actually believes (or appears to believe) in the one true god, but ultimately the theocratic impulse serves a machiavellian calculation around tribal identity and social cohesion. Fear of the external other -- a fear not altogether irrational in a world dominated by tribal warfare, and consequently a fear that is altogether too easily stoked -- is perennially the most effective demagogic tool. There really IS international terrorism that is religiously motivated (or is otherwise motivated and uses religion to sanctify its acts) so it's not surprising that an outsized fear of international terrorism has been stoked by the likes of Steve Bannon and his surrogate. It's also not surprising to see a headline like "Trump Flirts with Theocracy" on the pages of the NY Times. "On Friday afternoon," they write, "Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim countries from entering the United States." That he has other motives seems obvious enough -- he didn't bar all majority Muslim countries, notably those where he had business interests -- but to his credit he is following through on a campaign promise, one that capitalized on fears and built coherence among his tribal base in part around those fears. We must protect ourselves from those others, unlike US, who worship false gods in false ways.
The actual faith of the founding fathers of our country can be debated. For those who want to claim that the US is a christian nation, it is true enough that the founding fathers were culturally christian. When they drafted the first amendment, they likely didn't have muslims or buddhists in mind when they extended the right to worship, but they were more acutely aware of the proliferation of variations on a theme within the christian religion. Washington was likely a believer, for example, but he attended the various services of the various christian denominations without much apparent commitment to any particular version. In my words, although they may have had some sense of the divine, they were acutely aware of the "unlimited arbitrary" nature of religion itself, and as a consequence, they pointedly refrained from establishing a theocracy, a state religion. For those who want to claim that the US is a christian nation, it might seem a good idea that we openly declare ourselves a christian nation, but which variation on a theme will prevail -- Mike Pence's evangelicalism or Paul Ryan's catholicism? Both, one suspects, are true believers, and if we were to declare ourselves a "christian" nation, how long before Pence's evangelicalism is challenged by the "true" form of worship embodied in the catholic church? How long before debates over transubstantiation and consubstantiation become a matter of political life and death, and we begin to resemble Britain and Northern Ireland? And should I even mention the golden tablets? There is some sense that in the US we can choose faith, and we do so on grounds that are wholly personal, but if there is indeed one true god, and the state sanctions and insists upon that one true god, how long before we are killing each other over the color of a unicorn's horn? If you object to my dismissiveness, consider this: beyond the fact that they are NOT-christian, and consequently worship a god as ephemeral as a unicorn, most American's couldn't tell you the basic tenants of the muslim faith, much less the differences between the Sunni and Shiite versions of the same, though much of the conflict within the middle east reverts back to the tribal differences between the two ostensibly muslim versions of the one true god.
Let me end with a reference to Battlestar. The humans in the series are seriously flawed. Although the Cylons present a clear existential threat, the humans spend most of their time squabbling among themselves. Their form of government is reminiscent of ours, and there are any number of allusions to the 13 colonies along with references to more contemporary politics to help reinforce the parallel. There was even an attempt at a rigged election. Although they ritualistically asserted "so say we all," it was clear enough that there was nothing resembling a consensus among them. At the beginning of the series, however, the Cylons were presented from the human point of view as a unified force. It is part of the genius of the series that the Cylons, the machines, as the advocates of a monotheistic religion. There is something mechanistic about monotheism. A machine, a computer, may be sentient, but it is not sentient of its sentience. It does not question, but merely executes its programming. At the beginning of the series, it was clear that they were programmed to rid the universe of the imperfect humans, those who worshipped false gods. There is, of course, implicit in this. If the purpose is to eradicate the OTHERS, unlike US, who worship false gods, what happens upon success? As the series progressed, it became increasingly clear that the Cylons, the machines, were sentient of their sentience, and as such were afflicted with the doubt implicit in the question, "what comes after?" Does the program simply end, and what then? It's difficult, perhaps too difficult, to believe our sentience simply shuts down, like a machine, on death. I have to admit my own non-theism is afflicted with doubt, in part because I can't quite imagine my own non-existence, in part because a nagging voice somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind WANTS to believe in my own immortality. Nevertheless, rationally speaking, there is little to suggest that we aren't for the most part machines, and much to suggest that what is most "me" -- all that is centered in the mush of my brain -- simply ends.
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