For a little bit I was thinking of being a Druid. For a long time, I thought it was a rather flakey hippie religion, until I was in Hong Kong over the winter, on Lantau island, an island in the South China Sea famous for having a giant bronze Buddha statue on top of a mountain. The Path of Wisdom makes a circuit shaped like the infinity symbol, rising steep and rocky up the scrubby mountainside. Zen proverbs have been charcoal-etched into massive pine columns erected by monks at intervals, striking in their power and simplicity. At the top of the path I look down at the mountain pine forest laid out below me, and across an awesome vista.

Across that unspanned chasm is Phoenix Mountain, a promontory of bare stone that glows when sunlight strikes. All the elements are in harmony. To my right, the mountain drops off into the sea, the sun blazing fire on its liquid surface wreathed in golden mist. Clouds of mist form and unform about the Phoenix peak, transient yet ever-present, undefined yet ever-flowing, against the immutable face of the eternal mountain.

For the first time I hear the voice of a mountain. It is not a voice like one "hears" because it is silent, but a voice one feels. It is not the voice of an individual, and the voice has no words, yet it speaks, and the not-words are. "I AM HERE."

Above and around me the Zen columns rise against a blue mountain sky, cold and pure. I can't read the Chinese characters. According to a broad English translation, they are about the nature of non-existance, and the impermanence of self. I have learned more by not-reading them. This is why they call it the Path of Wisdom.

I used to believe in humanity and in the March of Human Progress. Things would get better; science would let us live lives in glory and splendor unparalleled in times before us, unthinkable to our ancestors. Society would advance, a sort of Darwinian manifest destiny, moving from laborers cowed by the lash of whip and god-priest-king, to feudal warlords ruling self-sufficient serfdoms, to centralized nation-states of Church and King, to democratic republic where all men are equal, to God knows what next, each state marking an improvement in the rights, liberty, and happiness of those involved. In each state we grew to understand a moral truth that our ancestors in all their smallness, brutality and cruelty did not know. One day we would reach utopia and perfection.

We were noble, beautiful, and rational, given our ability to love, reason, and decide our own fates by God, or the Watchmaker, or the Prime Mover, or perhaps mere miraculous chance. Around us the sky and firmament stood strong, and the spheres circled in their celestial orbits. Above us stood God and the angels, below us the beasts of the earth, air, and water, each in its rightful kingdom. I didn't believe in sin or hellfire, but rather that a universal morality and intuitive natural decency resided in all this glorious humanity. Life well spent was self improvement, insatiable curiosity, public virtue, civic duty, and above all, the happiness of self and others. A life well spent was good company for dinner and lively conversation, music, art, a little mischief, a deep regard for natural beauty, and deep compassion for others less fortunate.

Yet I think myself unwise to ignore science. The science which I have so steadfastly endorsed says in shouts and whispers that am wrong. Every objective, impartial scientific study has said that humans are a wretched, dismal species. What am I to think of Stanley Milgram? What am I to think of the Stanford Prison? What am I to think of an idle crowd that time after time in controlled studies will idly allow a woman to be raped on a bus? We are easily warped by habit, culture, and prejudice. Given conditioning and genetic predisposition, we are not so different from Pavlov's dog after all.

I am an irrational atheist, meaning I take my atheism on faith. Unlike many people I did not develop the atheism rash after years of religious infection. :P I kind of just always was. I don't have the sort of self-righteous pride where I declare myself so much smarter than all religious people. I enjoy my irrational, internally inconsistent (and alliterating) beliefs full well knowing how stupid most of them are. I enjoy ghost stories, believe in UFOs and telepathy, play Dungeons and Dragons ("magic missle!"), and daydream about winning the lotto. Most of it is rubbish but if I'm going to be dead within the next century and experiencing the next gabillion years as an icy rock hurling towards the depth of space, I might as well distort my reality so it's irrational and interesting, rather than rational and boring. Does all this show me lacking intellectual rigor and discipline? That I have not the maturity or moral fiber to handle truth and all its attendant responsibilities? I wonder sometimes. The other times, I enjoy myself.