Christmas Transcendence
Even people who are not religious in any traditional sense will often betray a nagging concern that something unseen and inscrutable is lurking and influencing things. Perhaps you’ve noticed this. Try saying in the office, “The phones sure are quiet today,” and expect to be told to shut up, lest the phones start to go crazy. The author Daniel Strange has called this phenomenon a “quiet conspiracy”—that is, a conspiracy about the word “quiet”—or simply the “Q thing” (to be distinguished, of course, from the “QAnon” thing). Strange quotes a doctor who says that nothing strikes terror in the heart of a physician making her rounds like hearing, “It sure is quiet today.” “Most patients don’t know it,” the doctor writes, “but there is no breed of human more superstitious than a doctor doing shift-work.” Why would extravagantly educated people think one word, said aloud, could unleash trouble in the emergency room?
You might also have noticed that many people who would never darken the door of a church will refer to things that are “meant to be” in their lives. Or they’re concerned about something being “jinxed.” Or, with the sort of certitude that a fundamentalist would admire, they aver that ghosts are among us.
We yearn to know what is beyond, behind, and above. The committed materialist may be uncomfortable with the language of metaphysics but may nevertheless express interest in the notion that we are in Musk’s Matrix-like computer simulation. As Joshua Rothman observed a few years ago, this idea “gives atheists a way to talk about spirituality.” Unseen, super-smart forces are pulling the strings. The concept offers, he says, “a source of awe.”
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