(6) Religion and/or politics

RJ: Is this, in a way, your religion? Is this an expression of your spirituality?

AO: It's pretty clear to me we are more than just a physical body. The most important part of us is not our physical body. To some people, that means religion, which is a shortcut through all this bullshit. But to me, religion is just a very fucked-up kind of activism, using the word very loosely. It's their way of feeling part of the world. It does reduce pain. But I got a better way to reduce pain. I've got the altar, in here [tapping his chest]. It's all in here, so I go to services every hour or every day, in a way.

But I must admit that sometimes I'm jealous of people who believe in God. It obviously can be very comforting, which is one reason religions are powerful. There's a need for comfort. There's a big empty hole in every human being, almost a bottomless well of loneliness, and you can fill it in various ways. You can drink it full, you can smoke pot, you can fuck all the time. You can do all kinds of shit and you don't fill it up. Religion is this magic thing for lots of people. Sometimes I wish it would happen to me. But it can't. What about you? Do you consider yourself an atheist?

RJ: I've been an atheist since I was old enough to ask the question.

AO: I used to be an atheist, but I'm not anymore because the truth or falsity of these assertions is not demonstrable. I'm happy with saying I don't know, and you don't know, and it's not knowable, so it doesn't enter into my ...

RJ: Yes, I agree with that. When I say I'm an atheist, I just mean that I've never found some of the questions that religion takes up very interesting. Even as a kid, I never understood why people cared so much about what happens to us when we die, for example. The question never resonated with me. I knew, even as a kid, the answer was beyond human knowledge. So, why fuss about it? It's interesting to ponder, but not terribly relevant to me. The answer to the question "Is there a God," from the time I was old enough to formulate the question, seemed obvious: I don't know, there's no way to know, and in the absence of compelling evidence for it, I'm going to assume there isn't, just as I would not believe any extraordinary claim for which there was no compelling evidence.

I think the real question is how we act. Do we act on the assumption there could be a god? I act on the assumption there isn't. So, I act like an atheist. I would say that you act like an atheist, too.

AO: I had a time in my life when I was younger where I really believed there is a God, and that he was a basket case, because how could a person have all the power and sit by and watch all this shit fly. There's a part of me that still holds to that. When somebody comes on to with me with strong religion, that's the point I make: Either God is all powerful or he isn't. If he's all powerful, tell me why he allows this? So if there is a God and he's a fascist, if you want to go by the evidence, well ....

RJ: But you know the true believer's answer to that: God has a plan that's beyond your capacity to understand. So, it may look to you like God is a fascist, but that's only because you can't understand the bigger plan. That's why these arguments are of so little interest to me.

AO: They're boring.

RJ: They're boring -- to me -- because, in the end they're not based in fact or logic or anything tangible. Those claims are based in this human need to explain things that are, as far as I can tell, beyond our capacity to explain. I am happy to acknowledge the possibility there is something I just don't understand about all this, but to date no one has ever said anything that makes me think much differently than when I was 9 years old. So, if I were to decide to identify with a religion it probably would be to have some scaffolding on which to hang my ethical values and political commitments, but I don't have a need to base my ethics and politics in theological claims. I'm happy to say there are lots of things I don't know -- that are beyond human knowing -- and leave it at that.

AO: I'm equally divided between orthodoxy and skepticism. Communism became an alternative for me. It became a religion of sorts, and in its extreme form it became as crazy as other religions. Communism, institutionalized, was as fucked up as the Catholic Church, and it very much resembled it. The Pope's infallible, and so was the party. Confession, we had that in the party, too.

RJ: Does that suggest that there is some deep-seated human need for orthodoxy or conformity?

AO: No, not an absolute need. But it suggests there's something in the human soil in which orthodoxy -- religious or secular -- can grow. You never know how it will play out in people. I have met rabbis who are religious and are incredible, wonderful activists. On the other hand, most orthodox rabbis I've known are semi-fascist. I grew up in a secular family, but it was a community in which 95 percent of the people were Jewish. The language in the streets was Yiddish, not English. I didn't speak English, and even then with a broken accent, until I was 6 years old. I wasn't religious, but I did wonder. When I was about 10, 11, 12, around that age, I used to look up and see the stars, and see things growing, and it was always wondrous. I used to think about how the whole world can be contained in a little seed, and I began to think there must be some force, something out there. So, kids would talk to me about God, and I thought maybe there is such a thing.

But then I remember challenging God. I did it publicly with a bunch of other kids, like a theatrical act. I said, "You son of a bitch, I ain't afraid of you. Fuck you." I really expected a lightning bolt, and the kids did, too. They separated from me; they thought I'd go up in smoke. Nothing happened, of course. So, I figured that either he doesn't hear me or he does and doesn't give a fuck. And I began to have an image of a God who was a fascist of some kind. Look at the shit he pulls on us. Why do we live like this? There's enough to live better. Why is it that my uncle Jake drives a car, which nobody I knew did in those years, and lives in a good house, and he's a fucking crook? Why is it that my dad busts his ass in the same industry, contracting, and my dad is just a worker? Why does my dad have to bust his ass so you just pay the rent and eat? That's wrong.

Part 7 - Reason and passion

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