Will Humanity Survive Religion?. W. Royce Clark
be needed would be 86,400. (If the projector were to run at speeds more or less, the realistic picture would be obtained only by setting the camera to that particular speed. Any variation by the camera speed presents either a very slow motion or a fantastically fast movement in the projection.) If one wanted only a realistic sense of the whole, one would use the same speed for capturing the images and for projecting the images.
But suppose one decided to save money on the duplicated copies, and just select one frame per hundred or one frame per thousand. When distributed and projected, it likely would not win an Academy Award. If one of a hundred frames were used, it would be a very short movie, less than seven seconds. If only a single frame out of a thousand frames, one wouldn’t see it if one had to sneeze. Even if the distributed copy consisted of one of every hundred frames, it would prevent the viewer from ascertaining any plot or any conversation as well as most of the spatial connections and relations between different persons and entities that appeared on a frame or two. In fact, one still image for which a person is allowed only one-sixteenth of a second to view would likely be insufficient for the person to form much of an opinion of even general shapes of objects projected. One of every thousand would simply exacerbate the earlier problem at the same speed by having only one-tenth of the frames to give any impression. For either of these, there would be no story, and probably no certain images of anything.
Now if, on the other hand, the frames were projected as “still” or enlarged copies were printed and laid out so they could be studied at length rather than the viewer having only one-sixteenth of a second to try to see each, obviously one could ascertain the objects in any of the frames. But still no real connections or relations would be certain, not any conversation audible. One might guess about some possible relationships, but without knowing more of the context from what came before or after each frame, it would be only sheer guesswork. Thus, one must be able to identify the images, though no name is probably necessary. The different images must have some relationship to each other. There must be a certain sequence or contiguity, depending upon whether there is movement depicted.
Relationships and meanings are established not only by inferring from the proximity or gestures of the shapes, but if they are human, the background needs to be seen, and the process within the relationships that can be inferred need to be more definite by supplementing this with the conversation. With the relationships indefinite because they are deprived of language or conversation by virtue of the missing frames, the meaning is lost. Somehow the process of the images must be realistically depicted against the background, and causality must become apparent by the changes that occur when the relation between the visible subjects is supplemented with the language or conversation. In a sense, the relations are everything, so the frames’ sequential contiguity with each other must be maintained in order to present the whole. If that element is missing, the whole is nonsense. If these and other criteria are met, however, can it not be seen that the whole is greater than the sum of the separate parts?31
If we were speaking of how music becomes meaningful, the perception of interdependent relations necessary for a meaningful structure can come from the originator, or it can be read into the music by a later performer or hearer. If it is meaningful for the later hearer, that is not necessarily proof that he or she perceived any composer’s actual intent, but rather simply that given her particular interests and knowledge as well as the particular cultural milieu in which the listener experienced it, a possible meaning was available to her because the various parts of her brain are able to interact with other parts, with memories, emotional states, imposed schemas, by which the mind is able to structure a coherent whole of the various related parts, a “schema,” as Daniel Levitin points out.32 It certainly does not mean that there is some Absolute or Unconditional that is accessible to the initiated. The human brain is a memory bank, a computational machine, as well as a stimulator. But more accurately, one has to say that the “schema” is everything when we see everything needed to show relations.
In the visual field, there is an indeterminate amount of data or sensible experiences that could become the focus and build the meaning, which means there are myriads of possible “frames” one could use for one’s own story or one’s project of oneself. So how will the decisions be made on which “frames” to use? The innumerable possibilities that actually exist have already been limited considerably by the “absurdity” of one’s particular being “thrown” into existence, one’s “being-there-then” (Dasein). Many “frames” are already established by one’s genes, one’s specific race, sex, culture, parents, family, geographical location and so on, things over which one had no voice. So the “being-there-then” is always also a “being-there-with” all the others to whom one is “related” in time or space, and these relations end up providing more meaning to the film or story than merely being informed of the subject’s time and space.
The recognition of these as the nonrational, “absurd” or “happenstance” elements of one’s identity is necessary and can help for a basis for ethics by which a social contract might be facilitated if one can ignore these as some grounds for vested interests or special privileges. Even with many of these attributes of one’s being already established, there still remains an almost indefinite and very rapidly expanding body of choices over which one does have some freedom to select. It is the same choice a composer has in figuring out how he or she will convey his or her images in musical forms, which instruments, which key, tempo, style, and so forth.
When we apply this to the question of the division religion imposes on humanity, how does that correspond with the parts or the individual people I would have autonomously chosen as the whole to which I should belong? If I have no outside perspective on the whole, either of history or even my own life, I nevertheless have memories, present experiences, and can anticipate, as Heidegger acknowledged. Even if I cannot make my possibilities all actual, since my dying cannot be something I can look back on, I have to settle for anticipation of a slightly smaller whole. But even if my death comes as a surprise, I still have a tentative picture of my own smaller “whole” that I carry with me, a whole which can be continually expanded as long as I live. But how can the authorities of a religion have any idea what particular people and activities I could best utilize in shaping myself into a whole as I see myself?
To beg the issue by saying it is already determined by God means I have no real freedom as a human being, that I am only “God’s project” for His own benefit. But the idea of the radical division of humanity being based not on what fits with each’s personality and needs but rather upon one’s moral perfection or one’s belief or one’s membership in a certain religious group, simply lacks credibility and manifests either an irrational preference for a particular cultural expression and/or a blindness about morality as well as the complexity of being human.
It is precisely here that Sartre speaks so unswervingly that I, as a conscious being, am my own “project” through my freedom.33 I am not someone else’s project to build with his or her right to choose parts for my “whole,” but only my own, just as surely as I know my needs and possibilities much more accurately than anyone else could know them. It would seem that I should be the one in charge of “including” other people, not my religious community or its alleged remote Absolute making those decisions.
Even more to the point, if Kant is right, can one really accept the claim that any supranatural being creates all beings and controls the world but then splits humanity up? To what purpose? Kant saw those old “proofs” for the “existence” of God only created “antinomies” of “pure reason,” as he analyzed them.34 If Kant was right in any way, some images our mind receives are “understood” because of how the empirical images are able to be judged by the a priori “categories,” and that can sufficiently demonstrate the truthfulness of mathematical or physics’ propositions. Other images our mind is given are not able to be judged that way but require our response or action rather than merely a matching concept, and for these, we have to “postulate” our freedom and be responsible morally. However, yet other images that we hear or receive may be totally out of touch with either of these areas, total fantasy, and we must decide whether they are such after we observe how they fit neither of the other alternatives and cannot be legitimated. Symbols of an imaginary other-world, supranatural beings,