Good Morning Friends,

Humankind, in or out of religious belief, exists without justification. Because this is so we have created and we daily maintain structures of justification. But since we have no external justification we are condemned to be free.

Remember I told you that I heard Slavoj Zizek say that (a saying he picked up from somewhere): If God exists everything is permitted (extreme freedom); and if God does not exist then nothing is permitted (extreme restriction).

This is a seemingly paradoxical notion, to be sure. But there is something to it. You will recall that I made a sports analogy in support of it. I suppose agnosticism and skepticism represents a moderate, centrist position between the "extremes" of faith and atheism.

Slavoj Zizek gave a talk, which can be found on the Internet, called "Why only an Atheist Can Believe." He says, counterintuitively, that fundamentalists do not believe. We can almost concur by asking of fundamentalist: if they really believe, why do they maintain such elaborate structures of justification (in terms of dress code, liturgy, prayer rituals, diet in some cases, and the like)?

What are structures of justification? Let's talk about it next time.

wingedcentaur