My education in college continued to shape my thinking about the world. I became more educated about the process of evolution by natural selection. I continued to find it to be a very powerful, compelling theory. It seemed as though the primary job of religion — explaining the existence of life on Earth — had been done scientifically. Everything made more sense with this worldview.
It interests me that large numbers of liberal religious institutions have conceded the facts of modern science. Because of their concessions, I think there’s a worry within the Christian milieu that liberal churches don’t have a strong, firm idea to which they can point to appeal to people. Maybe it was my rather fundamentalist upbringing that made me disinterested in the positions taken by these institutions, and perhaps I moved a little too hastily from fundamentalism to atheism, but I still don’t see the appeal of moderate religiosity. That worldview strikes me as a bit of a cop out.
With everything that I have gone through during my religious journey, at this point in my life, I feel very sane. But with that sanity has come some difficult conclusions. Perhaps more than anything else, the most difficult subject has been the way that I now view death. I had believed that even though my parents and friends would die someday, we’d all be together again. Not having that, especially at first, was very difficult. It felt like a raw deal. But I can’t dictate terms to the universe.
I actually think that life is better the way that it truly is. I like how it is. I don’t think that I would want an afterlife. I have always been a bit creeped out by the idea of eternity, no matter if that would be in heaven or in hell. Because I now believe that my time on this planet is so limited, I need to treasure what I have now. There’s a sweetness to life that’s been added because I know that it’s not permanent, that eventually it will end.
I’m a different person now. I feel that the idea that I’m on my own, that I need be responsible for my life, that I don’t have someone who’s going to come in and help me with magic, is in its own way an exciting notion. To me, it’s empowering.
XI.
______________
Eric Gold: Batman, Judaism, and God
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Childhood can be a confusing time. For a literal-minded child like Eric Gold (a pseudonym), the concept of God, as taught in his Jewish community, was rather vague. The Almighty, as best he could understand, was similar to a superhero, like Superman. When Eric would play with action figures as kid, both Batman and Moses were literally Godlike, possessing superhuman powers.
Eric drifted from Judaism as time passed. Despite not going to synagogue in years, he’s viewed as no less Jewish by the Jewish community than anyone who fully dedicates himself or herself to the religion. He doesn’t like such unchosen affiliations, though, and asks people not to call him Jewish. First and foremost, he considers himself a human being.
I was raised in a Jewish environment; most of the families in my neighborhood were of that religion. I lived on the Main Line, Lower Merion, right outside Philadelphia. My mother was not born Jewish. She converted when she married my dad because she wanted her children to be able to be accepted into the Jewish community if they wanted to be part of it. So I was circumcised. I had a bris. My parents did all of the things that would make my brother, sister, and me Jewish in the eyes of other Jewish people. Because of their dedication to the idea of me being Jewish, I could, for example, become a citizen of the state of Israel if I were so inclined. Had my mother’s conversion not been Kosher, I would not be able to do so.
The religious Jews I knew growing up would go to temple and do Shomer Shabbat; during a 24-hour period from sunset on Friday night to sunset on Saturday night, they wouldn’t use electricity, make phone calls, watch TV, or drive cars. My family didn’t do that; we went to many different synagogues, but never really settled on which branch of Judaism we belonged to. Our family tradition was as follows: we had a ceremony each Friday night in our home where we said three short prayers and then ate an awesome dinner. My father always said “bon appétit” at the end of the prayers. I used to think that was a Jewish phrase.
There are a couple major forms of Jewish practice. I use the word “practice” because Judaism as a religion is less about faith and more about methodology. Jews come in many different varieties. Generally speaking, they don’t expect miracles or visions of angels. For many, Judaism is a lifestyle: you eat kosher, and you wear your clothes in a certain way.
I remember that religion influenced me from a very early age. As a kid, I was very interested in science, science fiction, the universe, the galaxy, and the solar system. I knew from a very young age that the Earth’s not flat, that it’s not the center of the universe, that it’s much older than the Torah says that it is. Perhaps because there is such an emphasis on intellectualism in that culture, in my Jewish education, I remember there being very little emphasis on anything in particular. I have heard some people say that the Jewish faith is about values and morality. I wasn’t instructed in that way. I was never asked to truly believe any of the Bible stories about miracles or other supernatural oddities — not by my parents, not by any rabbi. These stories were discussed like literature is discussed in school. The emphasis was not so much on faith as it was on critical thinking.
This absence of clarity stretched to the very core of the religion. I had no idea what the temple’s understanding of God was supposed to be. What I got out of its teachings was that this guy God is fucking Superman. He has powers, and so does his friend, Moses. When I played with action figures, I would take out Batman, and in my imagination I would think, “He’s not Batman, he’s God!”
When I first enrolled in school, I began to realize that most people aren’t Jewish. My parents told me that Jews are very rare, that they’re a very small percentage of the world’s population. I didn’t know this before I went to kindergarten or the first grade. I went to public school, and one of my really good friends, Donald Dermond, was a Christian and, from a young age, was very into that identity. I found out that all of my Christian friends believed in this guy called Santa Claus. It was mind-blowing to me that their parents would make up this figure, a person who seemed like a cartoon character. I simply could not imagine my parents doing that to me. I began to think, “If there are so many different religions, maybe none of them are true.”