Bewitched? Now that’s a thought

Last updated on: January 6, 2011 at 12:58 pm by Dave Griffey

Bewitched? Now that’s a thought 2011-01-06T12:58:00-04:00 Dave Griffey

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Tired of the IRS? Well, follow what these Romanian witches are doing: curse them by hurling mandrake into the Danube river. Mandrake in the Danube river? How wonderful. I know there’s a certain contemptuous scorn in the article’s tone. And you can’t help but chuckle. But there’s something almost warming about the notion that there are still places in the world where folks insist that the non-material, supernatural is real. As a Catholic, so do I. The witches, of course, go about it in a way my Faith teaches is wrong. But at least they go about it. Unlike the prevailing influence of secular materialism that says we’re born, we live, we die, we rot. All fine and dandy for most of the spokesmen of the modern atheist movement who live pretty high on the hog. Just as Sam Harris pointed out in a recent editorial about why we should listen to rich people with no other credentials than high math scores and lots of money when it comes to our societal woes:

“I find that I have very few financial concerns. Many of my friends are in the same position: Most of us attended private schools and good universities, and we will be able to provide these same opportunities to our own children.”

Yep, that’s about right. For that small percentage of folks who live the Champagne and caviar life of wealth and luxury, a belief system of strict materialist atheism, that says this is all you get and you needn’t worry about a hereafter in which you may be called to atone for what you had, works.* But for the bulk of humanity, including some for whom this life has showered blessings of material gain, there is a realization that more exists than mere atoms and DNA.

In some ways, these Hungarian witches see more than Harris, or Richard Dawkins, or P.Z. Myers will ever be able to see. For they realize a tale of inevitable oblivion goes down hard for the bulk of humanity who suffer in squalor, misery, and oppression. And unlike the skeptical elite, who imagine such fairy tales are just ways of coaxing out the harsh realities of a pointless life, those witches, believers, and poverty stricken devotees of religious faith believe what they believe because something inside them clicks. That something says, instinctively, that there is more to the universe than our eyes can see. And moreover, it realizes the the real fairy tale belongs to those who think the universe was destined to put a bunch of random carbon based lifeforms at the zenith of moral realization in order to drink the wine of life and never have to answer for anything except the next luxury automobile.

*Harris may not be a strict materialist, as he frequently showers certain strains of Eastern religious practice with praise and adoration, reserving his hatred and contempt for those religious traditions – like Theism – with which he disagrees.

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