(No, not me.)
If you haven’t read the classic Greek short play Oedipus the King, here is a highly abridged version: Oedipus’ past is gradually revealed as he pursues a series of clues which ultimately leads him to discover that he was adopted, that he killed his father, and that he married his mother shorty after his father was killed. Of course, Oedipus’ wife (and mother) Jocasta is also unaware of his past. The play begins many years after his father’s death.
At one point in the play, Jocasta becomes alarmed as the clues begin to converge on an answer.
JOCASTA: …[T]alk, empty nonsense,
don’t give it another thought, don’t even think —OEDIPUS: What — give up now, with a clue like this?
Fail to solve the mystery of my birth?
Not for all the world!JOCASTA: Stop — in the name of god,
if you love your own life, call off this search!
My suffering is enough.OEDIPUS: Courage!….
JOCASTA: Oh no,
listen to me, I beg you, don’t do this.OEDIPUS: Listen to you? No more. I must know it all,
must see the truth at last.JOCASTA: No, please—
for your sake — I want the best for you!OEDIPUS: Your best is more than I can bear.
JOCASTA: You’re doomed —
may you never fathom who you are!
A question is often asked here: Is Oedipus responsible for his own demise? In a way, yes. Had he not pursued the matter, he might have continued with a normal life. In fact other warnings were given to him, long before this exchange with his wife. But that is not his intent in the least! He wants to know the truth, whatever may come of it.
I can relate to Oedipus because the above conversation is similar to one that I once had. It was between myself (in the role of Oedipus) and my father (in the role of Jocasta). My father, a fundamentalist Christian, was advising me to stop reading books by New Testament scholars, to stop learning about the history of Christianity. Those books are biased—it’s best not to pursue it, he said. But like Oedipus, at that point I knew a little too much. There was no going back, even if my darkest fears would become manifest: that I would not live forever, that neither would anyone I knew, that the whole religious enterprise would be revealed as an elaborate mistake. Even the worst truth was better than the best falsity, I thought.
I believe that one reason (among others) Oedipus the King has endured for 2500 years is because it speaks to a deep aspect of our psyche: the fear that there is some unfathomable despair awaiting us, lurking, and that we could avoid it if only we would resolve not to look. Let no one disturb our ignorance!
Fortunately in my case the scope of the analogy is limited. When the truth became known, Oedipus’ worst fears were realized. Mine were as well, but the realization of my fears amounted only to the loss of a fantasy, and soon thereafter the fears themselves dissolved.
This work is licensed under a
The Buddha Is Not Serious 
A Freudian explanation as to why the story sticks with us is also good 😀
I come from a Christian fundamentalist family, and I think that my experience was similar. The difference is that I moved away from Christianity by beginning with a process of radical doubt and a prima facie reading of the Bible as opposed to learning from critical scholarship. I gradually understood that I just could not make sense of much of it, and that in trying to figure out if this was some shortcoming of my reason, I was being told that reason was itself the problem. What I had realized by my early teenage years, i.e., there is no consistently applicable epistemic standard which would bring me to the exclusive truth of Christianity as I understood it, would force me to make a choice: pretenses to knowledge and rationality concerning God through inconsistency or fideism. When the choice is put like this, the decision is almost forced.
Of course, at this point it was a question of whether or not I would even attempt to come back to Christianity, as I had suddenly realized while showering one day that hold on, I really don’t believe it anymore. My departure from the faith happened while I wasn’t paying attention, and it took quite some time to fully explain to myself why I no longer believed, but that process has given me fulfillment in a way that religion never did.
I initially despaired at the prospect of my mortality, but I was never sorely tempted to consciously abandon the pursuit of truth as I understood it in order to salvage false hopes… I knew that I would be kidding myself. Young as I was (and am), I understood that perceived pleasantness and truth were very different things; keeping them separate comes naturally to me. In a fairly short span of time, I also concluded that the initial choice was a silly one. I’ve ceased to consider promises of heaven an automatic “positive thing,” rejecting a lack of belief in such a thing as some sort of loss or detriment. I’ve come closer to Hitchens in this regard; the afterlife holds no interest for me, and I’m rather glad that it doesn’t. Even if there is one, we can be fairly sure that religious beliefs have nothing to do with it.
Excellent post. As you can see, it resonated with me.
Thanks Zach, those are some interesting insights.
A small clarification: critical scholarship was just one aspect of my investigation, one which happened to be the topic of the conversation which bore similarity to the Oedipus the King quote.
Our story is similar in that I cannot pinpoint the moment I lost belief either. One day I just noticed it was missing.
Your present view of the afterlife is like mine, though I came to it from a totally different angle. Here I am sympathetic with Buddhism, which considers belief in the afterlife to be itself a source of suffering.
I have to admit that I’m digging this whole “looking at eastern religions, old myths, and conspiracy theories as a lens for equal parts skeptical thinking and random personal musing” thing. OK, spelled out, that seems kind of long and disjointed, but in practice I think it’s a great gimmick for a blog as long as it doesn’t get too formulaic (which so far it shows no sign of becoming).
I hope it keeps up, and that you can accrete a regular cadre of commenters on threads other than just the “Great Train Wreck of 2010.” I look forward to more discussion here at TBINS in the future.
I suspect that this blog will attract some permanent residents, Kirth, even beyond those initially attracted by the shock and awe opener. So far, the posts have been thoughtful and enjoyable, but I also suspect that Oedipus has managed to earn a very rounded sort of respect from the otherwise frequently disagreeing local blogosphere through his (is it a he?) handling of the affair. In other words, there is no reason for anybody to suspect that this blog will end up being a kitsch Pharyngula or The Intersection in a minor or Butterflies and Oedipus or some other tired replica. I smell novelty, which is why I’ve added it to blogs I’ll be checking regularly in the future.
Also, I can see Ophelia/Laden discussing Oedipus’s posts in the future.
Kirth and Zach, thank you for your encouragement. This blog started rather unintentionally, and continues to operate with no plan and no direction at all. I just wrote some stuff which was on my mind. I’m glad you’ve appreciated it.
I have to say, my path to disbelief was pretty rational, by comparison.
I was a bornagain, having followed a Baptist girlfriend into the church. That fell apart but I continued to try.
I had a particularly trying time and prayed all night for help. Needless to say, none came. The more I thought about how fundamentalist Christianity was set up, the more outraged I became. Sure, salvation is a ‘gift,’ but one you’d better accept unless you want eternal damnation. (Some gift.)
My mind then wandered into logic. If God knows all, including the future, then he KNEW that Adam and Even would fail the test, that they would eat of the tree of knowledge. The game was rigged!
At this point I decided to leave Christianity, even though I still believed. I figured even if God was real, if he was this petty I wouldn’t worship him. Wasn’t it Heinlein who said “mankind never invented a god that was better than he was?”
As time passed and my distance from the community increased in time and space, my belief quite naturally crumbled. Still, at the time, I believed — I still bailed.
For what it’s worth.