Introduction. When asked, I tend to describe myself as a Pagan Atheist. On first hearing this it may appear to some to be a contradiction in terms. To be honest, it can seem like a contradiction in terms even when you have heard it a number of times, and given it some thought. But, try as I might, I have not yet managed to come up with any better, or simpler, description of my philosophy for life. The next thing I am often asked is to elaborate on what Pagan Atheism is. So I decided that it could be useful to get something down on paper. Something that could help both myself and anyone else who is struggling with the concept of Pagan Atheism. What follows is my attempt at this.
Definitions.
Before anything else, I need to define just what it is I understand the words Pagan and Atheist to mean. To my understanding, the minimum requirement any person must have before regarding themselves as being a pagan is that they must be seeking a relationship with the land that nurtures them. From this point of understanding your oneness with the land, it is possible to seek oneness with the cosmos. Paganism is the integration of the human, body and spirit, with the land and all which that land sustains. This is the opposite of what the Judao-christian-islamic or Hindu-Buddhist traditions seek to achieve. These philosophies seek to isolate the human spirit from the human body and the baser parts of the land and nature.
Atheism is the rejection of a belief in Gods. Rejection of the concept that there are any kinds of "supreme beings" somewhere "out there", beyond self, that govern and interact with that which is our world. For me control over self comes only from within self. The only divinity that exists in the cosmos is that which is contained within each of us.
Life would be really simple if I felt that only one of these concepts was applicable to my cosmic experiences. But of cause, life can never be that simple. To me, both concepts can be argued for in a positive way, and therefore have merit. Because of this I needed to seek an integrated theory of Pagan Atheism.
These nagging questions of life and stuff can be a real bitch.
So is there some kind of underpinning principle which permeates every aspect of the creation and destruction that is our cosmos? I am a scientist, a biologist in fact. I do research into the fundamental makeup of life things. I study the interaction of DNA and RNA, amino acids and proteins, fatty acids and sterols, carbohydrates, vitamins, billions of other organic compounds, minerals and of cause, most importantly, water. These are the things which make up what we know as "Life on Earth". This may also mean that I study all the life there is in the cosmos. As yet, the only evidence we have that life exists anywhere else, other than the planet Earth, is statistical probability. (And we all know what they say about statistics, i.e.. There are lies, damned lies and statistics.) In recent years it has become the accepted norm to discuss the biological world in terms of its diversity. We campaign to save the rain forests or coral reefs by arguing that X or Y number of species are being lost to us. It is true that this diversity is both interesting to study and useful to utilise. However, for me, the wonder of natural systems is how much similarity there is between the different species within the biological world.
All known lifeforms contain RNA (Ribonucleic acid. This is made up of a number of sub-units each of which contains a ribose sugar, a purine or pyrimidine base and a phosphate ion. A sub-unit is called a nucleotide.) This RNA is used as a template for the production of polypeptides and proteins from amino acids. Large numbers of lifeforms use DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid, which is almost the same as RNA except that the deoxyribose sugar molecule has one less oxygen atom in it than does the ribose sugar.) as a template for the production of RNA. It is important to realise that RNA is only a template for proteins. The proteins themselves are actually built up from amino acids by other proteins. The DNA & RNA templates themselves are put together by proteins. There is a paradox question that is often asked about which came first, the chicken or the egg? The same kind of question can be asked here. What came first the RNA or the protein? People who study such things have a habit of being somewhat vague on this point.
In the laboratory it is possible to create a mixture of gasses, liquids and solids which simulates how it is thought the Earth's environment was during its early development. Heat this up a bit then pass high voltage electrical charges through it, to simulate lighting, and a brown goo is produced. This goo contains a whole range of interesting organic (i.e.. carbon based) molecules. Also, if you look at the stuff that is floating around the cosmos in between the stars, you can find all sorts of the same kind of organic molecules. This evidence makes it very probable that the basic building blocks of RNA (i.e.. Sugar phosphates & Bases) and Proteins (Amino acids) would be available. It has also been shown that certain natural, but rare, clays can act as a catalyst to join amino acids up to form polypeptides (the precursors of proteins). There is no evidence what so ever that if you leave a bunch of sterile amino acids (There are some 22 used to make proteins.) together that they spontaneously produce a protein. Likewise a bunch of nucleotides left to their own devices will just sit around and remain nucleotides. It takes a grate deal of high-tech machinery or sophisticated biology to make them do anything in the way of combination.
So, what came first, the RNA or the Protein? The argument goes that during the millennia of the primeval soup a molecule was produced, by chance, that had the ability to reproduce itself. With that event the whole rich tapestry of life as we know it was begun. What molecule? This is where the vagaries begin. It is also where the niggling questions of life start gnawing away at my supposedly rational scientists mind.
Okay, I know that serendipity plays a part in things. Being in the right place at the right time when the fortuitous cock-up happens has made many a reputation in science. But when all is said and done, science is about working out the probability of an event occurring, then basing your world view on those probabilities. I find it very difficult to get my mind around the probability of a protein being spontaneously created in the primeval soup that could catalyse the process of building a nucleotide (i.e.. two separate processes of attaching the phosphate to the sugar and the base to the sugar.) then joining all these nucleotides together in such a way that they just happen, by chance, to form a template that will reproduce the same protein!
My rational(?) mind is not able to come to terms with such a degree of improbability. Because of this, I need some form of primal guiding principle that will help me cope with such matters. The principals I understand as Pagan, oneness with the Earth and, through it, the cosmos, allows me to integrate myself into what I observe. I am the stuff of stars and the stuff of atoms. I am as much a Human as I am a Bacteria, a Fish, at Tree or any other life thing with which I shear a common inheritance which began with a primal event, be it big bang or otherwise. I believe that our cosmos is permeated by a "primal resonance" that predisposes any spontaneous event that may occur to precede in a predictable way. For convenience I refer to this as the "Mother Principle". This is mainly because the poet in me demands I give it a name. As my natal conditioning is every bit as anthropomorphic as the next humans, it helps me to think this way. But what ever else the "Mother Principle" is, it is not any kind of God because it is immutable, it has no free will. It is only a principal of disposition.
Where do little Gods come from?
So what about these Gods? When you think about it there does seem to be an awful lot of them around. Even when you lump all of those who do the same job but have different names together, there are still large numbers to be accounted for. Of cause you can get rid of virtually all of them by becoming a monotheist as the Jews did a few thousand years ago. But even this option leave you with at least one god to come to terms with. Even then, as the Christians have found with their three varieties of the one god, gods tend to multiply at the drop of a hat. It is this trend for gods to multiply that I believe gives the best clue as to where they come from. How ever many of them there are, gods always seem to have one characteristic in common, their humanness. Even the ones that are depicted as animals or winds are anthropomorphised into humans. Of cause there is a neat get out for this. Humans, it is often claimed, are made in the image of gods. As I said, Gods have a habit of proliferating. This seems to be an odd phenomena for an entity that is supposed to govern some aspect of the cosmos. After all, once you have one "god of thunder" in the world then that should be enough. One thunder god should be adequate to serve the needs of Norsemen, Hindus, Polynesians, Aztecs or Dinkas. Yet each culture has managed to come up with a thunder god not only with a different name but different personalities and physiques.
The concept of Gods spontaneously coming into existence for each tribal grouping, simply because they have migrated from one bit of land to another, seems to me improbable. It seems far moor likely for them to have been created in the Human mind, adapted to deal with the situation they have found in the new land. So it is the gods who are made in the image of humans. But if these gods are nothing more than human mental creations, surely we should be able to get rid of them simply enough. The problem is that these gods are created as perfected images of humans. But they do not become corrupted by humans greatest fears, old age and death. They are created immortal. It is very difficult to kill something that is immortal, even when it is a figment of the imagination.
Another problem is that the creation of these "Gods" can be very useful to us. I regard what I call the "Mother Principal" in a very Goddess like way. The ability to create then destroy an image that will help us to focus on a problem or idea is, I believe, a defining Human trait. To be able to project our problems into something else, analyse the problem, act upon it, then reintegrate it into ourselves, is what has allowed our species to achieve the things that we have. They can also be imbued with the powers that Humans have but are unable to use effectively.
Like all animals humans are basically lazy. Once we have fed ourselves and dealt with those tedious chores of life, like reproduction, there is nothing better we like to do than to curl up under a tree and doze. For a Lion or a Rat that is fine, they have not developed the Human mind (Rat or Lion minds maybe, but not Human.) The demands that our minds place upon us means that we, in order to fulfil our demands to be lazy, happily delegate large portions of our imaginative functioning to those convenient little creations we call gods. But as we made them immortal, when our children come along, they grow up with this bunch of immortals already around, plus a few they dream up for themselves. The delegation of problems becomes habitual. Instead of us using these "gods" as a focusing device through which we solved our own problems, they began to be treated as the complete answer in their own right. What started as questions asked of yourself turned into prayers to an all knowing, all powerful deity.
In reality there are no, and never have been, any gods or goddesses out their to answer our prayers. Only that which has always resided within each of us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 2 Metaphysical Thought Gardening.
Pergolas.
The next question I have get asked is why bother being a Pagan Atheist. It's a very good question. After all, if you do not believe in gods and such stuff, why bother with any of the peripheral religious junk. Am I on some kind of a power kick, trying to gather a bunch of beautiful girlish acolytes about me who pander to my every whim while I work my evil pleasure on their tender young bodies. Or perhaps I want to send out hoards of well muscled young men to extort money from innocent passers bye on the streets. I am afraid that not only are there no girlish acolytes, but I am totally skink. But to the point, in this section I will try to explain why I need both the pagan and the atheist paths in my life by describing how I arrived at the position I take today. I say "the position I take today" because I want to keep my personal options open. Today I am pagan and atheist because that is the stance I need to take at this stage in my spiral of life. Before this I have explored a number of stances including Christianity, Buddhism, Baha'iism and a range of Pagan paths. Each of these paths taught me a great deal, but as my spiral of life has progressed so my needs and understanding have grown in some parts, wilted in others. In ten years time I may not be advocating Pagan Atheism but be harvesting new crops from the seeds I am now planting in my metaphysical thought garden.
Because of the numerous metaphysical shrubs I have grown in the past, the garden from which I have plucked the present bouquet I call Pagan Atheism is a rich and varied thing. I do not think that what I believe is particularly original, you need to be something very special for that. I do know that what I believe is unique. This is because it has developed in one of the billions of minds that work on this planet (mine), each one of which is the unique centre of its own universe. It is this uniqueness of every mind, human, animal, plant or fungal (and possibly even inanimate things,), that has provided me with one bloom in the bouquet and my conclusions about atheism.
Simply being atheistic is not enough. There is still too much in this world that cannot be explained away by rational investigation. I have been experiencing this "too much" since I was a child, but I became properly aware of it one day while I was undertaking a conservation project in the River Allen near Wimborne, Dorset. It had been a hot sweaty day at the end of which the cold water of the river was very inviting. I removed my shirt and shoes then lay down in the water. As it happened, I found a place where I could become totally immersed in the water apart from my nose and mouth.
Relaxing, I let myself go with the flow of the river and, quite by accident, found myself at one with the water, flowing, cascading over little rapids. Then I was in a completely different kind of flow. Cosmic in scale but without the form of river or sea or man. It was a glorious experience that I have often tried to capture in words but have failed at every attempt. I snapped back into myself when my colleagues on the conservation project began splashing around, dragging me from the water. They told me later that they reacted in this way because they couldn't see me laying in the water. They only saw me after I sat up and started cursing at them for disturbing my pleasant relaxation.
I have repeated that experience of joining the cosmic flow numerous time since. Although not always underwater that is still a favourite place to use. I am still not exactly sure what it is I am experiencing when I do this. To try and delineate just what is happening when I enter this "flow state", I have tried working through a number of concepts (the metaphysical shrubs in my thought garden) and reached some tentative ideas. I refer to the cosmic flow as the "Mother Principal" for no better reason than I have a need to call it something and this name appeals to the poet in me. It is the principle that gives birth to all other principles, therefore their mother. However, the Mother Principal has nothing human or even godlike about it. It is not a mind, it has no will, it is only a principal of disposition.
Growing the Lotus.
One of the metaphysical shrubs on which I found some plump seeds worth developing was that of Buddhism. I must I must remind you that what I am writing here are my interpretations of these various spiritual paths. Other people will view them with different eyes and so in different ways so draw different conclusions. Which is how it should be. I do not have the monopoly on truth. Nobody does. As I understand it, the object of Buddhism is to achieve enlightenment and through enlightenment, Nirvana, the transfiguration of self to the grater realms of the unself. A quote which has stayed with me from the Buddhist teachings I was offered (usually via oral tradition) is "A person who knows others is a wise person, but a person who knows themselves is enlightened". There is another slogan which I picked up from being involved in the Green movement that says the same thing in fewer words. "Think globally, act locally." You cannot get any more local than yourself.
I did not find the path I must tread in Buddhism. It seemed to me to be more to do with the obliteration of humanities links to the earth than knowing self. The concept of reincarnation, taken from its Hindu roots, is about removing the animal aspect of what humans are. The concepts of the four noble truths seemed to have nothing but suffering at their heart. Yet all around me at the time were people who were not suffering but partying. Enjoying themselves in ways that old Siddharta Gautama would not even be able to imagine. The noble eightfold path, some of which appeared on the surface to be valid, when explored in more detail, again did not seem to fit into late twentieth century England.
So the bulk of Buddhism went onto the compost heap of my past. Some seeds were gathered and cultivated. Knowing oneself stayed with me, as did the transfiguration of self into something else. And, of cause, the essential atheism of Buddhism showed me that you can have a spiritual path without being stuck with a bunch of useless gods. Remember, at this time I had already experienced the flow of the Mother principal. If this principal was everywhere, I decided, then the best place to look for it was within myself. Think cosmically, act locally. But how to search it out? I worked my way through a number of esoteric paths including Christianity. Not the Graeco-roman orthodox forms of Christianity, but something very different. The concept of Gnosis came my way and I began to learn.
Gnostic Mildew.
I first became interested in Gnosticism after reading the Canadian author Robertson Davies' book The Rebel Angels (1982). The references in the narrative of this novel lead me to the works of Elaine Pagels (1980) and other interpreters of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, a library of Gnostic Christian texts. This in turn led me to the pagan Gnostic's and the Cathars. From Gnosticism I got a view of the universe that appealed to me in many ways. The concept of the perfect "unattainable light" which, in being perfect, has to contain all possibilities, including imperfection. It is from this imperfection flowed the fragments of the perfect light which congealed into the Demiurge or creator god, who made the cosmos as we know it, and the Sophia, the lady of wisdom. The objective of gaining gnosis, a Greek word for knowledge of the light, had a grate deal of resonance with what I knew of Buddhism. Gnosis appears to me to be the same as enlightenment. I was also struck by the similarity between the Gnostic cosmic creation story and that of the Big Bang creation theory (Collins 1993a).
To gain gnosis we are told that we must know ourselves. It is only by knowing ourselves that we will be able to recognise the divine light which burns within each of us, but is masked by the evil material creation forced upon it by the Demiurge. Christian gnosis is achieved by following the path laid out for us by the Christ, a very different figure to the Roman Christ Jesus who has dominated Europe for the past 1500 years. As I read the texts it became obvious to me that I had already made contact with the divine light within and beyond me. It was what I was already calling the "Mother Principal".
The Christian Gnostic path, although far superior to the Graeco-roman Christian path, still had to many hang-ups in Jewish mythology, and so organised guilt, for my liking. Catharism, although very interesting as a subject of study was in effect only an extension of Judao-christian guilt. The pagan gnosticism of the Greeks provided me with some hope, but, in the end, even this failed to satisfy me.
Gnosticism's basic treaties is that the land, the physical cosmos in general, was the fruit of evil, it having been created by the Demiurge. As the object of achieving gnosis was to obtain oneness with the grate and perfect light, the creation of a physical universe which contained and restrained the fragments of the divine light, so preventing them reuniting with the grate light, had to be intrinsically evil. This description is another way of elucidating the concept of original sin by combining elements of the fall of Lucifer and the fall of man.
As a biologist this totally rankled with me. I can-not accept that such a wonderful system as the grate spiral of life and death that is this planets biosphere could possibly be evil. This ecosystem tells such wonderful stories of creation and destruction that the mythologies created by humans can never measure up. And I am part of that grate spiral. We all are. I did not have to have faith to know this, I just had to look around me to the see how it all fitted together. How every living thing (and some non-living things) fed on, and in turn were food for others in the system. Even we mighty humans, who can kill so much so effectively, become food for the worms eventually (or if cremated, food for the plants.) So I gathered the few good seeds of Gnosis while the shrub itself joined Buddhism on my metaphysical compost heap ready for recycling.
Glorious in the garden.
It was like spring in my metaphysical garden with lots of seed scattered around the place but nothing more that the odd shoot poking through the soil, promising things to come. My metaphysical compost heap quietly steamed in the background promising fertility to come. So, for want of anything better to do, I raided the metaphysical seed catalogue. Druidism and Wicca were explored but they struck me as being far to rural in intent, but urban in reality. This whole rural/urban conflict has prompted me to write a number of papers considering this dichotomy (Collins 1993b, 1994). It was while looking at things from an urban perspective I began to realise what it was that so bugged me about all of this religion stuff. The only things that have ever said that there are any Gods have all been produced by humans. All the holy books human's put any store by have been written by humans (usually men). All the dictates, codes of life, concepts of good and evil, are all human inventions. The gods, even those who are either elemental or animalistic, were just humans writ big. They only ever existed in our imaginations. They were not controlling us, we were controlling them. We were using these figment of our imagination as scapegoats. To excuse our own shortcomings. Our imaginations had taken what was biologically no more than an ape and given it aspirations to godhood.
The Gnostics and the Buddhists had got it right when they said that the rout to enlightenment or gnosis was by knowing oneself. But they teach that knowing oneself would allow us to escape the biosphere with all its animal passions and pains. But it seems to me that when you truly know yourself you are able to place yourself in the context of the flow, of the "Mother Principle." To become the animal that nature has devised for you, the animal that controls itself. The animal that takes responsibility for its own actions. The highly efficient killer animal who can chose not to kill, purely because it does not wish to. The sexually promiscuous animal who chooses to control its promiscuity, not because it will go to hell for eternity if it does not, but because it sees the advantage for the whole biosphere in doing so. Gods are created by us as focusing tools in the many varied processes of life, but gods are not necessary to the progress of our lives.
The "Mother Principal" is not "out there" waiting to be discover by us. It is us, and everything else with a life spiral in the cosmos, be it a virus, a bear, a planet, a galaxy or a cosmos. It is the principal that makes everything proceed in the direction it does rather than any other of the billions of alternative options. A planet condensed out of the solar debris just at the right distance to have liquid water because the principal weighted that option. It did not care whether the planet formed there or not, for it has no human emotions in that way. The fact of its being merely tipped the odds in favour of it happening.
Conclusions?
At the beginning of this paper I asked why Pagan Atheism? Atheist because I reject the premise that there are gods in or beyond this cosmos that created the cosmos as I perceive it. There is only a principal of disposition which the poet in me insists I give a name to, my Mother Principal.
Pagan because we are part and parcel, intrinsically bound to, the land and all that exists in, on and above it. This relationship holds because of the binding quality of the Mother Principle.
The reason I could flow into the River Allen was because I was already part and parcel of what I had immersed my body in. The barriers that my conditioning had placed between myself and all other parts of the flow was breached and I achieved oneness.
I am still working on the question of with what.
References. Collins M. (1993a) Gnosticism and the big bang. Phoenix Vol.1, p 5. Collins M. (1993b) The Streetwise Goddess. Phoenix Vol.1, p 25 Collins M. (1994) Stones. Phoenix Vol.2, p Davies R. (1982) The Rebel Angels. Allen Lane. Pagels E. (1980) The Gnostic Gospels. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epilogue:
What songs do birds sing for your gardens delights? What fragrant shrubs do you grow their? What tugs at your soul beneath the moon light As moths do their dance so darkly in flight? What answers are there when the sun once more shines? When colours cascades confusing the sight. Look to yourself , the gardener skilled, For yours is the hand on the watering can.
Much Simpler Approach
« Reply #2 on: 2003-04-05 15:49:47 »
In order to create the same impression for the same question I sometimes describe myself as a "non-practicing pagan." Christians in particular understand what this means -- you go through the forms sometimes because it's socially or emotionally convenient, but you don't *cough* "believe."
The word 'pagan' has nothing to do with nature. Pagan means that you worship a false god. People have warped it's meaning to be anything non-Christian and then to mean anything not mainstream. You apparently assume that since the best known "Pagan" religons have nature as a central theme that pagan means you revere nature.
The word 'pagan' has nothing to do with nature. Pagan means that you worship a false god. People have warped it's meaning to be anything non-Christian and then to mean anything not mainstream. You apparently assume that since the best known "Pagan" religons have nature as a central theme that pagan means you revere nature.
Saying the word 'pagan' has nothing to do with nature is like saying 'Jesus' has nothing to do with Christianity, because it's originally a pre-Christian Greek word.
Stop being a puerile history Nazi and recognize that the meanings of words change over time, and that this "warped" definition of pagan is a completely acceptable one, formed by the same pattern of 'warping' that every other word goes through to get its modern semantic status.
I guess I agree with you on everything. I tend to refer to myself as an agnost, because the truth is that although common sense leads me against it, I can't completely refuse to believe in a "higher being". Shame on me.
These are interesting concepts, and it sounds a lot like pantheism. I guess I could call myself a "pagan atheist" since I agree with just about everything you wrote here. However, I prefer to retain the simple label of an atheist.