Here's the gent I met this morning: poet, businessman, and confirmed atheist Charles Potts.
Mr. Potts sees religion largely as a response to the fear of death. I tend to agree, and while I'm not a classical theist, I don't see why theists would have trouble with this notion, either. In fact, when I asked some folks in my congregation about why they thought people so often turned to religion, answers like "seeking comfort" and "fear of death" were among the first given. Is it somehow irrational to fear death or to seek comfort in the face of it?
In our conversation this morning, I mentioned the equally prevalent idea that religion is a response to a basic dissatisfaction with how things are, an intuition also discussed at other sites.
What we didn't talk about, though, was whether religion could be more than that, or whether it was fair to reduce it merely to those sorts of essentially negative motivations-- fear of death, craving for sense/comfort, distraction from reality (i.e., opiate of the masses), etc. There were other issues we didn't have time to discuss, such as what counts as evidence when making the claim that religions construct their belief systems on absolutely no evidence. Is "evidence" to be interpreted only in a scientific way, or is there room for the data gleaned from a sort of "inner empiricism," in which certain experiences aren't open to public scrutiny, but are nevertheless "evidence" in a personal, subjective sense? I'm not hinting at any answers, here, but I wish we'd had time to get into this.
Alas, Mr. Potts is a busy man. He had just moved out of his enormous house on Palouse Street, where I met him (he was supervising a final cleanup; a carpet cleaning service was also there, soaping and vacuuming away). The home was practically a mansion, and Mr. Potts says he bought it years ago for only about $67,000. Incredible. Apparently, such properties are now worth quite a lot after a long period of real estate slump.
I'll try to transcribe the fascinating conversation I had with Mr. Potts as soon as I can. Sit tight. Meanwhile, check out Mr. Potts's online bookstore here. He's an author (lots of poetry!), and many of his own books are on sale at the site. Click through the links and you'll find video of him in action.
Ah, yes: he's also got a Wikipedia entry devoted to him.
_
Marathon
12 years ago
3 comments:
I look forward to reading the transcript. It will be quite fascinationg to see all your past and future dialogues transcribed and assembled into a book. For the purpose of engaging an audience (and not lulling them asleep), I suppose you'll need to present it in a narrative style, but it will still be excellent reading. Of course, you'll add stories and observations. Those will enliven the prose.
Interesting that Mr. Potts feels religion is a response to the fear of death. For me personally, I seek religion as a way to define the Infinite -- a very silly exercise, in the end, as I can never hope to comprehend the Infinite with my puny, finite mind. But that's me: Always wanting to understand and then finding understanding only leads to infinitely more questions.
As most religious traditions agree that some binding Force exists in the universe -- and most can agree that human beings are bound by limitation and must learn, therefor, to transcend limitation -- it makes sense that we seek to confine the Infinite into a $1.99 Happy Meal box. We humans are fond of boxes. I am no exception.
Have you ever read these lyrics from Harry Chapin? They are a favorite of mine:
"The higher you climb,
the more that you see;
the more that you see,
the less that you know.
The less that you know,
the more that you yearn.
And the more that you yearn,
the higher you climb."
That sums up the religious impulse for me.
"Mr. Potts sees religion largely as a response to the fear of death."
OK. My first response is: So is that a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? That is, is this observation supposed to make us take religious belief and practice more seriously or less seriously?
The answer is far from evident. I can imagine people who are deeply religious, as well as those who are fundamentally hostile to religion, both agreeing with Mr. Potts' statement.
(I'll try to write more about this later.)
Alan,
I'm pretty sure Mr. Potts would say that religions in general are A Bad Thing, and should be taken less seriously. He did, however, say that, in the history of religious striving, there were moments when the ancients "got some things right." I think he was alluding mainly to the Buddhist analysis of the human predicament and to things like Taoist process metaphysics. As for the Abrahamic faiths and Hindu polytheism ("the bottom of the barrel," he said)-- nope. Garbage.
Kevin
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