Our fictional fathers, prodigal sons and pandering prophets should be fictionalized and demoted to the myths they are. From uppercase God to lowercase god, we can thank Christopher Hitchens for his “capital punishment”. Seeing “thank”, “god”, and “Hitchens” written so close together is inspirational at best, especially when the attribution of “thanks” is paid to Hitch. I am predicting here and now that the, “thank God” phrase will be replaced by the secular, Thank Hitch (et al). This Hitch attribution will come to acknowledge fiercely independent, non-repressive, free speech and thought against all oppression. Among many, many others (et al), we can thank Hitch for that as he so nicely summarized in his 2007 book, god is not Great, besides, the gesture could make the following mangled morphic palindrome all the more culpable. An avid diva proclaims in a state of Aibohphobia “A dog! A panic in a pagoda!” Language is fun. Religion is oppressive.
Where does this leave the world’s religions? Are they important? Do they have some resilient function? What is the counterfactual to their non-existence? The extent of religion is manifest. Infiltration to the highest magnitude of the human story. If cows had religions we would all be completely and “udderly” amazed. Are we on to a counterfactual? Perhaps we are. Silliness aside, mammals do not willingly subjugate to a superior entity, they don’t create fictional narratives through speech acts of futurity. If we were to function in a similar bandwidth would we have flourished to the current state of human species? Is this what flourishing looks like? According to Pinker it is. Second guessing has the pull of utopia. Pragmatism is pragmatic in this case. Existential levers in the machine of society dictates the possibilities of our future. The only limit to this futurity are the laws of probability with Liberal protection for those outside the protection of the bell curve. Regression is not only mean, it’s utilitarian.