Beastly Religion

Beastly Religion

I was watching a documentary about insects last night (Bugs that Rule the World). I was interested to discover that bugs are big in Japan, particularly butterflies, fireflies, and stag beetles (kids have them as pets). Butterflies are prized for their beauty, elegance, and otherworldliness. The attitude is vaguely religious (actually not so vague). Now that’s something religious I can get behind. In Japan, Shintoism and Buddhism are the main religions, with very little Christianity (or Abrahamic religion generally). These religions dispense with the supernatural, being more centered on nature and religious practices like meditation.  There is no need to tie yourself up in knots trying to believe in supernatural beings and miracles about resurrection and the like. There is nothing incredible or absurd about revering butterflies and finding them super-cool. And they do perform some remarkable feats: metamorphosis and lengthy migration, in particular. Both are impressive and suggest super-human abilities. You can imagine early man finding out about these things and being mightily impressed: humans can’t transform themselves like that, or fly great distances to unknown lands. If someone told you they were little spirits, you might be inclined to believe them—though you might wonder what “spirits” are. At the least the butterfly would strike you as powerfully symbolic and beautifully designed, capable of lifting your spirits on a dull depressing day. You might wax poetic about little angels in flight and the miracle of nature.

The bee, too, has excited a good deal of human admiration. We depend on the bee for pollination. News of the decline of bees is met with sadness and apprehension. Who does not love the bumble bee? And this is just the world of insects! In Japan, evidently, atheism is happily combined with zoolatry—indeed, insectolatry. And the Japanese are fine upstanding people—educated, intelligent, civilized, polite. They are not savages stuck in primitive religious beliefs and attitudes. They are not superstitious gulls or simple-minded Neanderthals. Maybe they know something we don’t know. If you survey the countries of the world, the least religious include Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (also Vietnam as it turns out): these countries are not populated by uncivilized cavemen (and cavewomen). The most religious country in the world is apparently Saudi Arabia, hardly a model of advanced civilization. I suggest that atheism is a good start on a more realistic form of religion; from that you may ascend to zoolatry, even to lepidoptry. You will find yourself in the company of none other than Vladimir Nabokov and other atheistic butterfly-lovers. All you need to do is look with religious eyes at the natural world—eyes of wonder, reverence, affection, delight. David Attenborough is clearly a religious maniac, though not in the Abrahamic sense–and I have my suspicions about Richard Dawkins, an obvious religious zealot. Me too: I think nature is worth worshipping, loving, celebrating. I believe I could have converted Christopher Hitchens to the fold: he too had a religious center.[1] We are all deeply religious souls (I also have a religious soft spot for logic). We are not fanatics; we don’t preach damnation for the butterfly-indifferent (though we deplore butterfly-killers). Our religion is a gentle, forgiving, joyful religion; we have no hell reserved for those who refuse to bow down and worship animals. We don’t advocate hellfire for the skeptical; we merely feel sad for them. When John Lennon sang about an ideal world “with no religion too” we give him the benefit of the doubt—he hadn’t imagined a religion of butterflies, bees, and birds. No more God and the Devil, just nature in all its magnificence. But not humans, oh no: our zoolatry doesn’t extend to the human species. For humans are hard to love: we don’t admire and extol humans as a species, or regard them as above the grubby world of greed and nastiness. In this we follow tradition: there has never been a religion whose sacred objects are human beings—even the Greek gods were a cut above us. We have never self-worshipped and with good reason. We aspire to be something better than ourselves: a religion of people would be a dismal business, a pointless exercise. You don’t get a religious feeling when entering a mall or standing on the subway. Sometimes we try to elevate movie stars and the like, but it always ends in disappointment and disillusionment. The human is no god, ever. You might think that in our vanity we would make a religion of ourselves and judge all other religions as inferior: but we are not that stupid. We traditionally stick to worshipping other species and supposed supernatural beings. The choice is then really between zoolatry and theism—butterflies or gods. It is hard to have no religion at all—nothing to merit one’s devotion and call forth one’s better nature. We need something to take us out of ourselves—as art can do, or music, or science, or even logic. Insects can perform this service too. So I applaud the Japanese for their religious insight.[2]

[1] Oliver Sacks was clearly a nature-worshipper, from metals to ferns to cuttlefish—also an atheist. His feelings about nature were undeniably religious. I think even so staunch a non-believer as Jonathan Miller could have been brought round to zoolatry by stressing the art-historical dimension.

[2] What would a church of zoolatry look like? I picture butterfly-themed stained-glass windows and butterfly robes (or T-shirts). Bee sculptures would be nice. Soft furry benches, not hard wooden ones. Plenty of light, not gloomy. An air of the outdoors.