Pulitzer-Prize Winning Playwright David Mamet On Religion And The Modern Apostate

Though specifically writing about the Jewish apostate, the excerpt is easily related to religion generally:

When the individual's awe has already been cathected in the pagan [worship of man], the abstract relationship of awe to religion (which is to say, to the mystery of the prime mover) may be correspondingly disparaged. This is the situation in which the apostate Jew finds himself. He may worship wealth, fame, status, sex, physical fitness, good works, or the notion of human perfectibility, but the already-discharged awe is now unavailable to its original progenitor, and the religious urge may be easily overlooked or, indeed, despised... In substituting conveniently elected totems and ceremonies for their more ancient counterparts, we have become neither more rational nor more humane, merely more confused - we have replaced awe by superstition. The ceremony of circumcision is derided as savage self-mutilation, that of breast augmentation accepted as logical fulfillment of healthy individual prerogative. Plastic surgery performed in aid of self or community propitiation is simple cosmetic alternative; that performed in aid of religion is viewed, by the enlightened, as monstrous... But every obesiance, performance, or sacrifice the apostate finds irrational or ludicrous in religion will be found, under another name, in his daily life. The apostate might balk at consulting a rabbi as he might a soothsayer but finds it logical to consult with a "life coach." He may scoff at the notion of evil spirits, or evil inclination, but participates with a therapist in an ongoing ceremony centered in the belief that constant attendance and a ritual recitation of his wrongs will...stave off some unnameable catastrophe... One might identify as primitive the caste differences between Cohen, Levi, and Israel yet pay exorbitantly to "move up" from one model car to the next - models operationally identical, and differing only in the placement and shape of their fenders and badging. Man is a constantly, irremediably, deeply superstitious creature - no man more than he is assured of his absolute rationality. He may throw salt over his shoulder, knock on wood, wear the lucky golf glove, apply cologne used only when dating, and yet feel the intellectual superior of the poor soul who goes to shul [synagogue]. The apostate is not an agnostic but an unconscious polytheist. Jewish monotheism is, first of all, the intent to "give it a name" - to call to the individual that he is constantly worshiping something and to ask him to consider of what his particular practice is made. Modern life, the Shoah [Holocaust], the destruction of European Jewry and its traditions have vitiated the true demand of religion. The task of reform - to eliminate the taxing, to make a stringent practice of accommodation - has neared completion, but the nagging question, the essential question, the question that can be put and answered only through ritual, though less often asked, remains. It is this: instead of worshiping the wind and the water, fortune and fame, do you have the courage to stand in awe of that which gave rise to them, to you, and to your human urges? The obscenely wealthy seek more wealth, the world-famous more fame, the powerful ultimate power, the beautiful endless youth. Whom do we see that is immune? The thoughtful Jew might use the gift of reason, acknowledging his fears, and seek conviction. The act will not be unrewarded.