An interesting brief conversation. I think they touched on some very powerful ideas about fame and the secularized idea of salvation. Christians talk about the "God-shaped hole in man's heart." I think fame/popularity/recognition is an increasingly popular way in which we Americans try to fill that hole. I'd like to hear more from Gary and Anthea.

Quoting Bokonon: Christians talk about the "God-shaped hole in man's heart."

Atheists talk about removing a God-shaped tumor from people's minds.

I think fame/popularity/recognition is an increasingly popular way in which we Americans try to fill that hole.

I don't. I don't think the connection between a reduced role of religion and the appetite for celebrity is as direct as these two seemed to think it is. I think people have always looked up to, and paid attention to, the outstanding people in their tribes (however one might wish to identify "outstanding"), independent of how much or how little reverence they held for their deities. I also think that a lot of what drives the attention paid to celebrities these days is the fascination with train wrecks, or the desire to watch the mighty take a fall, or the fantasy that "I could be just like that if only ..." In other words, I don't think there's anything profound in how people look at celebrities -- it's just entertainment.

Quoting bjkeefe: I don't think the connection between a reduced role of religion and the appetite for celebrity is as direct as these two seemed to think it is.

I'm not that interested in religion, although you couldn't tell that from my post. I think there's a spiritual crisis in the world -- always, but perhaps more acute over the past 75 or so years. To me the difference between spirituality and religion is similar to the difference between science and engineering. Spirituality is a genuine quest for knowledge, for transcendent wisdom. Religion is a practice that tries to apply genuine spiritual insight to everyday problems. But we mustn't try to stretch my metaphor too far. Engineering is astonishing in what it has accomplished; religion, far too often, becomes the mindless and ritualistic avoidance of spiritual truth.

Quoting bjkeefe: I also think that a lot of what drives the attention paid to celebrities these days is the fascination with train wrecks, or the desire to watch the mighty take a fall, or the fantasy that "I could be just like that if only ..."

I certainly agree with you here, BJ.

Quoting bjkeefe: In other words, I don't think there's anything profound in how

It’s well stated to say that celebrity fills our hearts with the similitude of God. It’s understated to relegate celebrity to mere entertainment and to minimize the profundity of vicariousness in celebrity. We are all necessarily hierarchical, differing significantly in our fundamental abilities. We both aspire to, and revere, excellence in all things we deem important. Celebrity is, I think, the fluid cultural institutionalization of such aspiration and reverence, of our dreams for ourselves. Not for nothing, therefore, has myth been defined as a people’s dream of itself. Vicariousness points to the depths of such human yearning and longing. These understandings subsume mere entertainment, watching train wrecks and so on, as well as the vulgarities and meretriciousness of celebrity worship. After all, "He was a son of God - a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that - and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” Gatsby is more than just a vulgar, arriviste striver. He has a tragic holiness about him. He's great. There

Quoting Bokonon: I'm not that interested in religion, although you couldn't tell that from my post. I think there's a spiritual crisis in the world -- always, but perhaps more acute over the past 75 or so years. To me the difference between spirituality and religion is similar to the difference between science and engineering. Spirituality is a genuine quest for knowledge, for transcendent wisdom. Religion is a practice that tries to apply genuine spiritual insight to everyday problems. But we mustn't try to stretch my metaphor too far. Engineering is astonishing in what it has accomplished; religion, far too often, becomes the mindless and ritualistic avoidance of spiritual truth.

I guess I don't think we're in any particular spiritual crisis, to the extent that I can compare reading history to the times in which I live, but that's an interesting metaphor, nonetheless. I wonder, are you able to articulate any spiritual truths different from those taught by your namesake?

Well, profundity is where you find it, and you can find it if you seek it. As Shakespeare said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves...." What's profound is not in the particular ways that people seek to fill that spiritual void, but

Quoting bjkeefe: I guess I don't think we're in any particular spiritual crisis....

I wonder if, being an atheist, you actually believe that there is anything spiritual at all. I know people who are complete materialists, who truly deny that any "transcendent truth" exists. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm curious, for example, why you call yourself an atheist instead of an agnostic. It's a distinction I find fascinating and very deep. It revolves around whether one allows oneself to remain "in the question." I would think that a scientific mind would try to remain open, to understand that all of the evidence is not in, and it's always possible that new experience will bring new insight. On a personal level, I went through a very long and vicious bout of depression and after trying the entire pharmacopoeia, I abandoned psychotherapy and decided to treat it as a spiritual crisis. After a great deal of searching, I found a path and a way of thinking that finally made the world make sense to me. So, perhaps I'm only projecting my own spiritual crisis onto the world.

Quoting bjkeefe: I wonder, are you able to articulate any spiritual truths different from those taught by your namesake?

Oh, you know I wrote

Hair.

Quoting Bokonon: I wonder if, being an atheist, you actually believe that there is anything spiritual at all. I know people who are complete materialists, who truly deny that any "transcendent truth" exists. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm curious, for example, why you call yourself an atheist instead of an agnostic. It's a distinction I find fascinating and very deep. It revolves around whether one allows oneself to remain "in the question." I would think that a scientific mind would try to remain open, to understand that all of the evidence is not in, and it's always possible that new experience will bring new insight.

On a personal level, I went through a very long and vicious bout of depression and after trying the entire pharmacopoeia, I abandoned psychotherapy and decided to treat it as a spiritual crisis. After a great deal of searching, I found a path and a way of thinking that finally made the world make sense to me. So, perhaps I'm only projecting my own spiritual crisis onto the world.

Oh, you know I wrote about my (perhaps unfortunate) naming sometime last year. I had an account under my real name, and when the site went through some upheaval, I could no longer

Quoting basman: It’s well stated to say that celebrity fills our hearts with the similitude of God. It’s understated to relegate celebrity to mere entertainment and to minimize the profundity of vicariousness in celebrity.

We are all necessarily hierarchical, differing significantly in our fundamental abilities. We both aspire to, and revere, excellence in all things we deem important. Celebrity is, I think, the fluid cultural institutionalization of such aspiration and reverence, of our dreams for ourselves. Not for nothing, therefore, has myth been defined as a people’s dream of itself. Vicariousness points to the depths of such human yearning and longing.

These understandings subsume mere entertainment, watching train wrecks and so on, as well as the vulgarities and meretriciousness of celebrity worship.

After all,

"He was a son of God - a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that - and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

Gatsby is more than just a vulgar, arriviste striver. He has a tragic holiness about him. He's great.

There

Quoting look: Brendan, I'd like to hear your answer.

Ditto.

Quoting Bokonon: I wonder if, being an atheist, you actually believe that there is anything spiritual at all. I know people who are complete materialists, who truly deny that any "transcendent truth" exists. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm curious, for example, why you call yourself an atheist instead of an agnostic. It's a distinction I find fascinating and very deep. It revolves around whether one allows oneself to remain "in the question." I would think that a scientific mind would try to remain open, to understand that all of the evidence is not in, and it's always possible that new experience will bring new insight.

On a personal level, I went through a very long and vicious bout of depression and after trying the entire pharmacopoeia, I abandoned psychotherapy and decided to treat it as a spiritual crisis. After a great deal of searching, I found a path and a way of thinking that finally made the world make sense to me. So, perhaps I'm only projecting my own spiritual crisis onto the world.

Oh, you know I wrote about my (perhaps unfortunate) naming sometime last year. I had an account under my real name, and when the site went through some upheaval, I could no longer

Quoting Bokonon: I wonder if, being an atheist, you actually believe that there is anything spiritual at all. I know people who are complete materialists, who truly deny that any "transcendent truth" exists. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm curious, for example, why you call yourself an atheist instead of an agnostic. It's a distinction I find fascinating and very deep. It revolves around whether one allows oneself to remain "in the question." I would think that a scientific mind would try to remain open, to understand that all of the evidence is not in, and it's always possible that new experience will bring new insight.

Hi, I'm not Bjkeefe, but I probably share similar viewpoints with bj on this topic. I think that most atheists do believe in "transcendent truths", but from a somewhat different perspective. TTs usually relate to optimal configurations for society and patterns of actions that will promote emotional well being. This shouldn't come as a surprise to an atheist, considering the structural similarities among humans and how different human civilizations face similar problems in regards to resource acquisition. The atheist accepts that evolution and shared environmental pressures is enough to explain commonalities among humans, while the

Quoting Starwatcher162536: As far as agnosticism versus atheism, that is probably because our culture tends to think an agnostic would say "Well, I don't really know, so lets say Christianity has a fifty-fifty chance of being true." while the atheist really wants to say "I don't know if there is a "God" out there, but the odds of your specific religion being correct are infinitesimal."

That's certainly not my understanding of what agnosticism is. Here. To sum up, agnosticism is more of a "technicality" if you want, in the sense that it is an acknowledgment that there may aspects of reality that are not accessible to science or that can't be proven to be non-existent. Beyond that technical aspect, agnostics live their lives, most commonly as atheists, but on occasion they can be ambivalent or agnostic theists. Your understanding of the fifty-fifty chance sounds odd to me.

Quoting Bokonon: I wonder if, being an atheist, you actually believe that there is anything spiritual at all. I know people who are complete materialists, who truly deny that any "transcendent truth" exists. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm curious, for example, why you call yourself an atheist instead of an agnostic. It's a distinction I find fascinating and very deep. It revolves around whether one allows oneself to remain "in the question." I would think that a scientific mind would try to remain open, to understand that all of the evidence is not in, and it's always possible that new experience will bring new insight.

On a personal level, I went through a very long and vicious bout of depression and after trying the entire pharmacopoeia, I abandoned psychotherapy and decided to treat it as a spiritual crisis. After a great deal of searching, I found a path and a way of thinking that finally made the world make sense to me. So, perhaps I'm only projecting my own spiritual crisis onto the world.

Oh, you know I wrote about my (perhaps unfortunate) naming sometime last year. I had an account under my real name, and when the site went through some upheaval, I could no longer

Quoting bjkeefe: ...

I'll put all my quibbles aside for the moment, and just say i absolutely love that quote at the end.

I just now stumbled upon your reply, BJ, and I want to thank you for your thoughtfulness. I, too, love the quote at the end. I just love Bokonon the character. I've often wondered if it's some kind of neologism made from "buck" and "Onan". That matches my sense of Vonnegut's rapier wit; that is, most religiosity is concerned with money and mental masturbation. Onan, of course, is the Old Testament character who "spilled his seed upon the ground." Belief or non-belief in God seems to me to be almost as mysterious as the question of whether or not he exists. I can't imagine not believing. I look at the night sky, or at the HST photos, and it both screams and whispers "God" to me. But I can easily understand how someone could look at the very same thing and believe that we're unutterably alone. I've found something that works for me, but I do not proselytize. Period. I just don't talk about the details very much. Lately I've been watching outtakes from a BBC special with Jonathan Miller called The Atheism Tapes. It's a series of in-depth interviews with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Weinberg and others, and I must say that it was fascinating. I didn't hear a single argument