One night while watching the Colbert
Report with my wife I said that Colbert is a national treasure. And he is.
But I want to riff on something I
uncovered during his interview with Bill Maher.
Now it was clearly in jest when Colbert
intimated that Maher should come back to the Catholic church.
“Come on back, Bill. The door is always open. Golden ticket right before you, all you have to do is humble yourself before the presence of the Lord, and admit there are things greater than you in the universe that you do not understand, and salvation awaits you,” Colbert said. “Take Pascal’s wager: If you’re wrong, you’re an idiot, but if I’m right, you’re going to hell.”
It is this, or rather these “greater
than you” and “salvation” ideas that I want to flush out a little more. And put in reference
to the recent Paris attacks. (Oh and you might check the blog for Pascal.)
Attaching oneself to something greater
than you can have profound effects. Alcoholics and drug addicts can cite it as
part of their recovery, people can find their calling, etc.
But isn’t it obvious that there are
two sides to that coin? Can’t the profound effects also be negative, as
evidenced by terrorism in general and suicide bombings specifically?
Stop. This is not an indictment of
Islam. This is skepticism of the idea that accepting something greater than you
is always a good thing.
The directions from the voice of
something greater than yourself can tell you to do good things like kick
alcohol or drugs and support your children but it can also, as George Carlin
once quipped, tell you to take a shit on the salad bar at Wendy’s, or as
evidenced by 9/11 and Paris, murder people.
Next.
Salvation. How do we know which
people are getting it wrong? How do we say that the message from one god is
right and the other wrong?
Perhaps this is what Maher and
Dennett and Dawkins and Harris (and Hitchens) are getting at; maybe we don’t
(gasp) need something greater than ourselves to get by in the world? Maybe we
might be a little nicer to our neighbors if we had no supposed moral authority
to cite? Maybe we’d be nicer to each other if we recognized that, along with
Nietzsche, we are “all too human?” Maybe if salvation was earth/time bound, we
would appreciate our finiteness (finitude if you prefer) more and accept at the
end of the day that we’ve got to live together.
If Buddy Miles is wrong, I don’t
want to be right.
