For everyone who eschews supernatural mythology       This site is for all people who believe in nature, science, and reason, and who value ethics, aesthetics, compassion, and truth    Welcome to Heathen Haven Long before humans invented the supernatural and religious "faith" to explain what humans could not then understand, early Heathens pervaded the intellectual world. Today, Born-Again Heathens hope all humans can ultimately come to accept that all phenomena originate in non-intentional natural processes which neither require nor permit any involvement of "intelligent design." Thomas Billings, a Born-Again Heathen, founder of Heathen Haven, a web-based Community that welcomes like-minded intellectuals who seek respite from organized religions of the supernatural, their pious cant, related superstitions, and mythologies. Heathen Haven addresses the needs of people who reject all forms of religion which incorporate belief in the supernatural and, instead, believe that all phenomena in the universe can ultimately be explained as the result of natural rather than supernatural causation and, specifically, that although aspects of the universe may appear to be the result of conscious intelligent design, such appearance is merely an illusion, there being neither intelligent design, intelligent designer, nor any cosmic "purpose." Heathens take very seriously the actual wording of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . ." It doesn't say, as many people misread it, "a" religion. Thus, it is clear the framers intended to guarantee first and foremost freedom FROM religion rather than freedom OF religion. Congress has violated this injunction in many ways over the years. "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is obvious. So is "In God We Trust" on our currency. But these are trivialities compared with subsidies granted to religions by exemptions from taxation and other special concessions. Also, by the holding that no religious test can be imposed on a candidate for public office, it becomes possible for persons with biases grounded in belief in the supernatural to run our government and control our destiny. Someday, Heathens may be able to welcome an end to such outrages. -------------------- THE PERSONAL COSMOLOGY OF HEATHEN-HAVEN'S FOUNDER Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? This writing is largely a trivial reiteration of insights articulated over the millennia by many more elegant thinkers and eloquent writers than I, but for the record, here's my worldview. I'm with Descartes. "Cogito, ergo sum." "I think, therefore I am." I have no way of knowing where or what I "really" am, but the fact I can contemplate "I am" satisfies me that somewhere, in some form or another, there is a consciousness that, albeit transiently, is "I." Actually, I believe I am merely a "bag of chemical soup" and that consciousness, itself, is a purely biochemical phenomenon. Thus, there is no duality of "body and soul." There is only an integral "me." I look at the world with my eyes, not through them. And I differ from the other animals only in degree and not in kind. Where did I come from? I don't know, but I'm very doubtful I'm the handiwork of some sui generis, incorporeal, sentient, intentional, judgmental, caring, puissant, intelligence somewhere "out there" in the cosmos. In the beginning, whenever that was - in this universe or somewhere else - it seems to me there must have been nothing-ness, not just ordinary, everyday, plain-vanilla "nothing." That being so, matter and energy did not expand into vacant, pre-existing space but actually created space as they expanded. That concept is hard for me to really grasp, but "always was" is even harder. As a non-intended and non-intentional happenstance, I believe the cosmos, itself, whatever it may "really" be, must be without purpose. Whether substance or fantasy, it probably just is. Absent cosmic purpose, absolute value concepts like "good" and "evil" would be meaningless. Only in relativistic terms - related to individuals and groups - might such terms have "meaning." From my point of view, that which is "good" is whatever makes my endorphins flow. And that may well be the only universal test of "goodness" for any aware creature, even if awareness itself is - as I now strongly suspect - only an illusion. A person who was perhaps wiser than she realized at the time once said to me, "We aren't here for a long time, so it had better be a good time." Words as profound as seemingly banal. I characterize myself as a "born again heathen," not to be confused with Pagans who in times past believed in various creative pantheons of supernatural "gods" or with neo-Pagans who carry on the essential elements of the Pagan tradition in the guise of embellished monotheism with belief in such as God, Jehovah, Allah, Satan, angels, devils, saints, original sin, redemption, resurrection, hell, heaven, miracles, and all the rest of such fantastical stuff for which there is not a single shred of credible evidence. Was Christ the child of God? Was Christ God? Was God? Not very likely, I think. Whoever Christ was, whether real person or mythical construct and the doctrine of the Trinity to the contrary notwithstanding, he surely was not "God" in any sense of the term. By the same token, the Bible is not the word of "God," revealed or otherwise, nor was Mary a virgin. It's all a wonderful fairy story but virtually none of it is literally true. Like all the other "stuff" in the cosmos, I see Christ as a product of a sui generis, incorporeal, non-cognizant, non-judgmental, non-intentional, non-intelligent puissant impetus "out there" which I think of as "cosmic nature" and which some people may choose to call "God," perhaps as much for the sake of convenience as anything else. In my view, such "God" could have no resemblance to Jehovah or Allah or any other sort of purported consciousness that deals in such stuff as original sin, judgment, redemption, resurrection, life hereafter, or reincarnation. As another thoughtful friend recently said to me, "I finally realized that when it's over, it's really all over." Throughout history - both recorded and unrecorded - people created anthropomorphic "Gods" in their own image for their own convenience, not vice versa. All such "Gods" seem undoubtedly mythological, without any "real" existence except in the minds of the blindly "faithful" from time to time and place to place. Did "God" "choose" the Jews? Hardly. Pretty clearly the Jews chose "God" as a mechanism for rationalizing, justifying and ostensibly legitimizing, among many other things, their original conquest of Canaan and for arrogantly holding themselves out as the "persecuted preferred" throughout the millennia. (Technically, the ancient Israelites did not actually "invent" their god Adonai but, rather, their leaders "adopted" and then modified to suit their purposes, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon whom the Canaanites called "El." Thus, "Emanu-El" literally means "El with us" not "God with us" as in the German counterpart "Gott mit uns.") And of course, there was never any "promised land" since there was no God to do the promising. As there was no "chosen" to begin with, Christians did not inherit "choseness" from the Jews. Beyond that, the disconnect between Judaism and Christianity, between the "Gods" of Torah and New Testament, and their divergent ethical and cultural precepts is actually huge. The modern empathy of fundamentalist Christians with Zionism flows from "non-connection" misperceived. Because of my deep and abiding skepticism, I believe all our social conventions are suspect inasmuch as they proceed from mythological rather than "real" premises. For specific example, I believe we probably live in a deterministic world and that "free will" is actually an illusion. At every turn, we inexorably do whatever is mandated by the cumulative impact of everything that has influenced us up to that instant beginning with a huge amount of genetic memory that, among many other things, dictates how we perceive the world. For example, we perceive light as benign (good) and dark as threatening (bad) because in the days of our aboriginal ancestors, individuals who lacked that knee-jerk reflex rarely survived to reproduce. (Go, Darwin!) I am far from having figured out what the profound implications of such realizations may be, but it seems clear a system of belief that does not contemplate eternal reward or punishment "hereafter" based on "works" or "faith" here-and-now might well give rise to a code of behaviors quite different from any code that "faith-based" persons might advocate for themselves, or for everyone, or only for others. As I continue here and make some comparative judgments, please understand my use of the term "better" implies nothing cosmic but only "tending to maximize endorphin flow" and where groups are involved "tending to maximize endorphin flow for a maximum number." In a reality-based paradigm, the "Golden Rule" - do unto others as you would have them do unto you - works only if everyone involved has been brainwashed, inculcated, or programmed so that their endorphin flows are stimulated by "giving" rather than "receiving," a precept not merely counterintuitive but also dubious. "Do unto others as they have done unto you" is probably more realistic. Tit for tit and tat for tat, as it were, perhaps modified with the opening gambit "do unto others as they would be done by." "God" is invoked routinely to bolster human predilections. "God" lends validity and authority to the pronouncements of those who would manipulate the naive. "God with us!" is the universal battle cry from time immemorial. But "God" does not determine outcomes. They are determined by who is willing and able to waste the most, and by the vicissitudes of fortune. Perversely, in a world suffused with religions, those of "faith" tend to be prey, while predators tend to be the greedy, cheating, corrupt, mendacious, conniving "non-faithful" who deal in connections, influence, privilege, and naked power. Lamentably, our system of jurisprudence, focused as it is on a priori statute and common law rather than a posteriori justice is utterly incompetent to deal with the ever evasive mutations of such artfully dodging transgressors. As long as human behaviors are colored by considerations of "hereafter-ness," they are unlikely to result in genuine "better-ness" here and now. We need only look at Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as manifested in America, Israel, and the Arab world for confirmation. Can the curse inflicted on humanity by religiosity ever be dispelled? Probably not ever, I believe, and certainly not in the brief remaining span of my own existence. Religion is everywhere fostered by ignorance, inculcation, anxiety, terror, hope, ego, and willing suspension of disbelief. Sadly, in disservice to themselves as well as the rest of humankind, the "willing" are all too numerous. -------------------- FROM FREE WILL TO DETERMINISM Now 74 years old, I grew up during the 1930s and 40s. We had idealism and patriotism in those days, too. Even folks in the Midwest where isolationism was rampant supported our involvement in World War II, not anticipating the cold war and its other lamentable ramifications. For many years, right and wrong, good and evil, seemed obvious and unambiguous. Then, starting somewhere along the line, uncertainties began to emerge. There was no lightning flash epiphany, but I gradually came to see that many bright things had darker sides, that desirable things often had undesirable ramifications, and that right was sometimes imbedded in, but obscured by, wrong. And, of course, vice versa. What reshaped my thinking and brought me to a more relativistic view was experience with my wife of 22 years (who died in 2003 at age 57). A bipolar manic depressive, she was both suicidal and homicidal, and it took many years for me to grasp that what seemed evil in her was actually illness that needed to be addressed, albeit imperfectly, with treatment, not punishment. That was the genesis of "The View Less Seen," and I began to re-examine long cherished certainties. In the process, I found that good and evil are always defined by the divergent value systems of the beholders and are not cosmic absolutes. As I learned to empathize with the points of view of others, I began to find that simplistic truths I had held dear were actually complex, ambivalent, multi-faceted, and by no means shared by everyone. In the crusades, Christians purportedly set out to redeem Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims and such elements as rape, plunder, and pillage were dismissed as fringe "benefits." But the Muslim world didn't see what, to it, were depredations of the infidel Christians in quite the same way. That bit of history doesn't justify Islamic fanaticism today any more than the genocide practiced on Native Americans by our European forebears legitimizes jihad, but it's useful to consider the dynamics of such situations from the viewpoint of the losers as well as of the winners. Morally, I deplore those kinds of things, and I especially deplore the inhumane stupidity with which so many goals, right as well as wrong, are often pursued that leaves a legacy of enmity and need for revenge that lasts, as in the case of the Hatfields and McCoys, for generations. I don't like terrorism any more than anyone else does, but I believe we need to find ways of dealing with it that will quell rather than exacerbate hatred. I don't yet know what measures we ought to take for our own longer range best interest, but I'm quite certain the measures we are currently taking as in Iraq will ultimately make matters far worse, not better. Terrorism itself isn't the real problem, only a symptom. If we want the symptom to go away permanently, we need to identify and address the underlying causes and not be lulled into a false sense of security by temporary abatement of the symptoms. Band-Aids can make cancer look okay for while, but only for awhile, and it seems clear to me we are currently in the Band-Aid business big time. In my experience, there are at least three levels of wisdom. One I started out with (seemed wise at the time), a second I evolved to (seemed much wiser at the time), and a third I arrived at more recently. At the moment, it seems the wisest, but I can no longer be certain about that because I now realize there may be a fourth level which, as twice before, I cannot as yet even imagine. --------------------