Carlota N.

Villaroman, BSAT3-2 Intro to Philo with Logic and Critical Thinking January 23, 2012 6th Reflection Paper

Memorial Service
Menckens essay is a litany for dead, forgotten, or now ridiculed gods. He offered only one detailed myth of Huitzilopochtli, a now obscure and apparently bloody Mexican deity who claimed the lives of 50,000 youths more than 500 years ago through human sacrifice. He also recalled Huitzilopochtlis brother, Tezcatilpoca who also consumed 25,000 organs a year. Mencken then listed dozens of gods once theoretically considered omnipotent, omniscient, IMMORTAL and worshipped with as much devotion and fervor. And if we will ask, all are DEAD and the very tombs in which they lie are lost. At first, the timbre of Menckens brief essay falls somewhere between melodrama and slight sarcasm. He asked questions such as Where are their bones? and Who enjoys their residue estates? He even dared the reader to lead him to Tezcatilpocas tombs and he would weep and hang couronne les perles but the point is no one knows his tomb. Mencken is compelling because he exposed the mortality of immortals by laying their names, like corpses, on the altar. That our god could die is a dramatic myth, but that he could fade into obscurity, discarded like broken pot to be found by future generations, is horrifying. Henry Louis Menckens Memorial Service is really so short but the whole, important point is there: Gods are cultural inventions and that, when a culture dies, the gods die with it. The evidence for this is that either no one remembers past gods names or the gods have become the butt of jokes. From Meckens list, I only know Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, Mars and Ueras. I was even surprised to find there are gods before which are named only within two vowels: Aa and Ea. Irish revered all these gods but today, even the drunkest Irishman laughs at

them. According to Mencken, gods enslave humans through their demands and impositions and religious activities are at best a waste of time and at worst the cause of needless suffering on a massive scale. When you doubted Jupiter, you were easily tagged a barbarian and an ignoramus. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them. To doubt them was to usually die at stake. Villages were burned, women and children were butchered, and cattle were driven off. While no one can deny the human suffering that has been caused by those religious causes, Menckens view of all religious practitioners as laboring constantly to satisfy fanciful gods ignores NOT ONLY the benefits religion has brought, but also the fact that human abuse of religion is responsible for the suffering done in the name of a god. Religion not only from our past, but also today divides the people, instead of uniting them. Weighing the acts of compassion motivated by religious impulses against the atrocities committed in the name of religion is difficult and ultimately not useful. Human history tells that religious persons promulgate dogmas and creeds that require compliance. They impose disciplinary measures against members who disobey or disrespect those rules or dogmas. The Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, for example, instituted the dreaded Holy Inquisition to prosecute heretics. Thats why Joan of Arc was burned at stake and the astronomer Galileo was arrested to trial, and almost executed, until he refracted his scientifically valid teaching that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around as the church believed it to be. They measure faithfulness to God with human sacrifices BUT to kill for God is not the thing. Humans cannot demand that gods and religions be abandoned; instead, humans must take responsibility for their choices. This article of Mencken should really instill within us the lesson that (1) Gods and deities are not the same Supremes as we have come to personify them; some Gods are just

cultural inventions and (2) spirituality is not the same as religiosity. Being religious means following the beliefs, doctrines, practices, traditions and rituals of a particular organized religious institution, such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. Among the Christians, for example, a person is regarded as religious if he or she goes to mass every Sunday, receives holy communion, prays the rosary, makes contribution to the parish church, confess his or her sins to the priests, and gives alms to the poor. Even if the person treats his maids like slaves, watches pornographic films, cheats on his income tax and business deals, he or she is still considered religious person and a respected member of his parish. Religiosity deals with external, not with internals. It deals with the obvious and what can be seen, not with unseen or the invisible. Religiosity is what one shows to others, or how others see what he does in connection with his churchs beliefs and practices. It has nothing to do with what he does in secret or with his unseen relationship with the divine. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a very individual thing. It need not conform to dogmas, practices, beliefs and rituals of church. One may practice spirituality completely alone and follows no official rules. To be spiritual is to commune with the highest spiritual being in your own unique way. Your actions need not be sanctioned or approved by an authority figure like bishop or rabbi. A spiritual person is his own authority. His relationship with the divine is his own perception of what is good, true and beautiful. He does not try to convince others that he is right and the others wrong. He is content to live his faith in harmony with others. The religious person, on the other hand, tries all the time to convince others that he is right and the others are wrong. He believes he has a divine duty to convert everybody to his own churchs way of thinking. He believes that only through his religion can salvation be attained.

If you dont believe that religion divides and spirituality unites, place the priests, rabbis, imams, theologians and defenders of the faith of all religions in one room and they will kill each other. But if you put spiritual and mystical people of all religions in one room, they will embrace each other as brothers and sisters. I believe that once we die, God will not ask us what religion we belonged on earth before being allowed to enter into his kingdom. Religion is completely irrelevant to our salvation. What he would ask most likely is this: How have you lived your life and how much have you loved? I am sure religious people will object to this, which proves my point. If I believe in God, I can defend my faith not by useless, massive human sacrifices but by elevating Word of God to its true beauty in the exercise of good deeds. It is not enough to confess that we believe in the commandment to love our enemies on a purely cognitive way without any solid action. I also have to do something out of what I received from God. And this is not through demands and impositions which are shown as examples in Meckens short essay.