Science Fiction & Fictional Religion

This post kinda ran out of gas because my brain ran out of glucose, as often happens, being that I try to keep my BS as low as possible, so I'm often flirting with hypoglycemia.

Doesn't bother me -- it's all a part of Life's Rich Pageant -- but blogging without a brain, although a popular pastime, is not my thing. Nor, come to think of it, is blogging with a brain. But intellection requires some cooperation with physiology, at least in this life. 

We’re still wondering about the Line, and yesterday I thought we made some progress with the idea that if we can establish a metaphysical truth that clearly contradicts revelation, then we need to reevaluate the passage or doctrine in light of it. But we do not throw out the exoteric baby with the esoteric bongwater.

I find this tremendously liberating. Nevertheless, we must remain vigilant for wishful thinking, rationalization, and metacosmic narcissism. It’s so easy to fool people, especially oneself. Serious liberation is one thing, fatuous gliberation another.

As there is science fiction, so too is there fictional religion. Vis-a-vis the latter, the intentional kind is generally self-limiting, whereas the unintentional kind is Highly Problematic and thensome. 

Sometimes there can even be a combination of the two, as in Scientology or the Nation of Islam, both of which combining bad science fiction with intentional religious fiction.

Which brings us to a problem: just as our most intellectually gifted idiots would say that metaphysics is impossible, -- i.e., that there are no grand narratives (how grand!) -- religion as such is pure fiction, let alone such-and-such a religion, which is not even fiction. Rather, just opium. 

Unless it is some nonwestern religious fiction practiced by marginalized and oppressed victims of color, in which case, grand!

How to convince an entire class of credentialed NPCs otherwise? Which comes down to deprograming them from their religious fiction and talking them down from their own grand narrative which conveniently features them at the center of the bland narrative of activist scholarship.  

I have no idea, nor do I have in my possession a single farque to give. 

Just now in my inbox: A Spotlight on Black Trailblazers.

Okay, I’ll bite. I hope there’s something in here about religion, or at least spirituality, to keep this post a-rollin’.

Only a prog racist (BIRM) could make this up:

Black culture is the sole of sneaker culture. Stay tuned as we retrace the footsteps of some of the legendary icons who turned loving sneakers into a lifestyle.

A Grand Narrative of Religious Fiction revolving around black people and their extravagent footwear.

Makes you long for the Church of John Coltrane, no?

Let’s back away from this toxic vertical spring and get back to our exploration of the Line. 

Even that word -- Line -- is most mysterious, for how do they get here, especially the invisible / vertical / nonlocal ones? 

Dogs, for example, don’t know anything about any lines, which is why they think nothing of mounting your leg or taking a leak in public, as they shamelessly do in Europe or in Democrat-run cities. 

Dogs, of course, do have lines, but they possess no conscious knowledge of them. These lines fall under the heading of “instinct,” which is why they pee on fire hydrants but don’t mount them.

Now, man has an instinct for the Absolute, and I wish I could say that only comedy results from confusing the absolute with sneakers, or with sneaky L. Ron,  or with any other manmade artifact or ideology. Rather, the most massive crimes and tragedies result from violations of the commandment against idolatry.

Yes, but isn’t one man’s idolatry another man’s sacred footwear? Isn’t it all relative?

This is indeed the Line we’re probing, and sometimes you have to go over the line in order to know where the line is.  

I’m thinking of two of Schuon’s essays, The Sense of the Absolute in Religions and The Human Margin. I don’t want to so much review them as engage and dialogue with them, beginning, I guess, with the second, since the margin is synonymous the Line. Let’s conduct what they call a Close Reading of this essay. 

First sentence:

Christ, in rejecting certain rabbinical prescriptions as “human” and not “Divine,” shows that according to God’s scale of measurement there is a sector which, while being orthodox and traditional, is nonetheless human in a certain sense…

Say, is there such a thing as jazz science fiction? You bet! Dancing on the moon with Sun Ra:

Explore the cosmos with him:

Open the door & c'mon in: