The Experience of Clarity

28 The happiest qualities in life come on their own after I have labored and suffered vainly for the things that represent them.  It is provident, this web of habits that supports mentality above the mundane or dangerous ... it lives in the luxury of the sweetest illusions and then through sour disappointments delivers a permanent understanding in sudden shocks of pleasure. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

29 For the sake of truth, to resist the maximum sensation produced by a strictly mechanical projector, wouldn’t that be something like the anguish of sacrificing a cherished god? Wouldn’t that be our own crucifixion?  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

30 Facing but defying the godless in the universe, I rise to the stature of the cruelest fate, equalized in a love for its necessity to my being.  This too is providence. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

31 I would rather keep my purity as an atheist than profane God by denying His creation. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

32 This is Purity of Heart: to ask for nothing in return from God — not even that He exist.  In fact, a saint could renounce all of the “world beyond” just so that his worship might become genuine. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

33 An honest atheist is worth more than a smug “believer” — easy argument since there is no such thing as even an honest believer.  Were I so wise and brave I would not even be the atheist ... since this is not a God-AntiGod world. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

34 A genuine worship does not make room for God.  On the contrary, it is just this making room for God which I attack, so as to elevate myself ... to win the honor of struggling toward honest conclusions. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

35 To repeat solid inferences from claims beyond anyone’s possible sensory experience ... to be so stupefied by the preceding that finding oneself a “genuine follower” is not a contradiction ... to pay tithe now for one’s inherited obligations to this institution of averaged minds ... what kind of religion is that? What kind of God does its herd-unity require?  It has its claims however: it is mostly Good, for it requires all of the virtues except honesty. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

36 If there is no God, then how can I oppose his non-existence?      I am to take a stand, it seems, upon what is not there and so fall comically. If there is no God, then “God” was only a word ... a representation of something Human.  What is that something? Hope of compensation?  Is this life so horrible?  And when it is indeed horrible, does this life have no compensation for those horrors? Hope of Heaven?  Is Hope a business contract where I am to forgo the luxury in this world so that I might have more luxury in the next? Immortality?  Is this another clause in the business contract, where I am to serve my master faithfully only if I am guaranteed an Eternal Pension?  If I received no such guarantee, would I forsake my God?  Is Hope cowardice?  Does the word “God” represent nothing more than a Human fear of mortality? If God is not the other-worldly, then perhaps God is that which persists in the absence of the above menti...

37 Perhaps it is weakness that accounts for society’s dramatic evolution: against the superior individual, two cowards had to come together to defend themselves. Or is it strength that accounts for civilization?  ... a single individual so strong that he conquered all others ... or perhaps the others simply cowered under his protection, just as a dog cowers under a tree during a storm.  But then if this is so, if we see these “others” as essential to the definition of the city, have we not again suggested that our city is made up of weakness and cowardice?  And if so, how can anyone, after coming across this discovery, expect to value existence through the standard of community spirit?  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

38 There is a type of human that must be contained, a type which will send the whole machine of civilization flying apart if allowed to accelerate beyond its capacity.  It is one of the oldest cogs of civilization ... formerly called the “slave,” but now called the “good citizen.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

39 This man has a dull exterior, but when I brush up against him, in opposition or polite conversation, he gains a luster, which only begins to cloud over again when a third person enters the room. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

40 Youth often suffer from an identity crisis because  we  insist that they be someone else ... that they abandon themselves to become a piece in  our  jigsaw puzzle.  We twist them this way and that in the hope that they might fit into our perspective of ourselves.  In short, they suffer  our  identity crisis ... and then we criticize them for it. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism