Corey Anton schooled me on some hot communication theory back in michigan. Check out his new essay for Wide-Eyed Nation.


by Corey Anton

CONSIDER THE NOVELTY OF COPERNICUS’S revelations about the Earth and Sun. Since the dawn of humanity everyone witnessed the rising of the Sun on one horizon and its setting on the other. “Things are not necessarily what we see,” Copernicus argued.

“The Earth is rotating, and the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the universe.” Psychologist Allen Wheelis tells us that the Copernican discovery was two-fold: it lessened humanity’s sense of cosmic significance by diminishing the centrality of Earth but it simultaneously congratulated human ingenuity for having been able to make that discovery. All said, it forcefully advanced the prerogative for continued debunking and unmasking of received traditions.

But make no mistake; no one has adequate resources and context to remove all the mysteries that comprise our lives. The world is mysterious and so are we, and both profoundly so, and yet, we so often act as if all the mystery is gone. Not only have the greatest magic tricks been revealed, but the grand cosmic mysteries of our being and origins seem increasingly passé and misguided. For example, if we were to ask your average atheists on the street if they could forgive “God,” most would likely tell you that this is misguided. “There is no God to forgive; You’re obviously confused; ‘God is Dead,’” would be the likely response. Point well taken, but I’m often left with the thought: How many people decide to call themselves “atheists” basically because they first were seduced into overdrawn expectations? Or, how many of those who call themselves “atheist” simply are fed up with fundamentalist religious-types? Admittedly, many Neo-Conservative Evangelical types do seem to be pretty deluded and worth distancing oneself from.

Consider this too: if we were to ask your average Christians on the street if they could forgive God, many would likely say, “Forgive God? You don’t forgive God! God is all good and all loving and all perfect. If anything, God forgives you!” But, for the sake of argument, what if there is no afterlife? Perhaps God could not give people an afterlife any more than He could create a rock that is so heavy that even He cannot lift it. How many people could forgive (or would still believe in) God if it were the case that there is neither an afterlife nor ultimate justice? How many people would rather be atheists than believe in a Divinity who is so impotent that He’d be unable to issue cosmic justice and grant eternal life? How many people’s religious beliefs basically hinge upon the afterlife question? Is this world really not enough?

And just what if the Divine Mystery that resides in the depths of our being does need deep and profound forgiveness for all the eternally unresolved injustice and terror of existence? The trouble with being born is that no one asks for it. Seriously, I never asked to be born. Were you consulted? Forgiveness in this light would not be given to some guy in the sky (here atheism may be spot on) but to our deepest sense of life’s mysteries. All animals on this planet die, but only humans seem to build theories about immortal souls. Might we, on the contrary, see that evolution evolved beings who came to know of their own death, and we, those very beings, need to forgive the mysterious origins for such possibilities. If we do, we learn to accept death and thereby to open to other people in new ways.

If it is not yet obvious, my own guess is that there is no afterlife; our only persistence post-mortem is in the memories, words, and deeds of the still living. But none of that means that life itself is bereft of Divine Mystery; none of it implies that life, Nature in its grandest sense, is without spiritual import. Perhaps people have confused mystery, which is the very condition of our lives, with momentary acts of dispelling uncertainty. Perhaps there is something else too. The world admittedly has countless injustices, cruelties and senseless suffering, but it also has babbling babies, wide varieties of tasty fruits, countless genres of music, soap bubbles, butterflies, orgasms, and rainbows. Can’t we say: “Despite all that is painful, tragic and limiting, I am still thankful.”

In open forgiveness and a growing sense of gratitude, without any sense of resentment regarding the fact of knowing about our ultimate demise, we accept death and hardship as the price of admission. We feel thrilled, genuinely grateful, that we received an invitation to the mysterious feast. And, just for the sake of argument, if there is no life after this one, I hope that we can learn to forgive the mystery of evolution for evolving beings who may be able to imagine more than they ever will experience. Such imaginations, fantasies about eternity, might well be one of the most mysterious fruits on this planet. And, who knows? Just maybe there is an afterlife, a wonderful one too, but for the time being I’m pretty confident that no one can know for sure. It is probably best to just celebrate the mystery of life and to be suspicious of anyone who thinks that all the world’s mysteries have been revealed.

A sure sign of spiritual maturity is the ability to forgive the mystery as well as give thanks to it. Our sense of gratitude grows, in fact, only where we are able to forgive. If more people could understand this, they might be able to properly address the vast and ancient mystery all around them, the very mystery that they are.