Sex, Death, Wonder
Working on a chapter about how the world looks to a naturalistic mind. It’s the last Big Idea chapter, and a good thing — as you can tell by the scarce blog posts, I’m seriously running on fumes.
A bit of the chapter intro:
When someone decides God was created by humans, not the other way around, the rest of the supernatural types tend to follow God out the door. Just as Santa Claus generally takes the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and all the rest with him when he goes, most people who set aside the idea of gods quickly see faeries, goblins, demons, ghosts, and all other magical beings as products of the same fevered human imagination.
What’s left when the supernatural explanations are gone? Natural explanations, of course. Instead of making room for beings that play by a different set of rules, we can assume until proven otherwise that everyone and everything is part of the same natural universe, playing the same natural game — and we set ourselves to the fascinating task of understanding that game.
I then talk about the fact that most converts from religion are surprised to find that the predominant feeling after belief is fully gone is not despair but freedom and relief. I’ve heard those two words together so many times — freedom and relief.
I then give a brief tour of sex, gender, death, virtue, responsibility, meaning, and wonder to show how things look differently once the religious filter is gone — and how they look the same. Ding.