Carlota N. Villaroman, BSAT3-2Intro to Philo with Logic and Critical ThinkingJanuary 23, 20126th Reflection Paper

“ Memorial Service ”

Mencken’s essay is a litany for dead, forgotten, or now ridiculed gods. He offered only

one detailed myth of Huitzilopochtli, a now obscure and apparently bloody Mexican deity who

claimed the lives of 50,000 youths more than 500 years ago through human sacrifice. He also

recalled Huitzilopochtli’s brother, Tezcatilpoca who also consumed 25,000 organs a year.

Mencken then listed dozens of gods once theoretically considered omnipotent, omniscient,

IMMORTAL and worshipped with as much devotion and fervor. And if we will ask, all are

DEAD and the very tombs in which they lie are lost.

At first, the timbre of Mencken’s brief essay falls somewhere between melodrama and

slight sarcasm. He asked questions such as “Where are their bones?” and “Who enjoys their

residue estates?” He even dared the reader to lead him to Tezcatilpoca’s tombs and he would

weep and hang couronne les perles but the point is no one knows his tomb. Mencken is

compelling because he exposed the mortality of immortals by laying their names, like corpses,

on the altar. That our god could die is a dramatic myth, but that he could fade into obscurity,

discarded like broken pot to be found by future generations, is horrifying.

Henry Louis Mencken’s Memorial Service is really so short but the whole, important

point is there: Gods are cultural inventions and that, when a culture dies, the gods die with

it. The evidence for this is that either no one remembers past gods’ names or the gods have

become the butt of jokes. From Mecken’s list, I only know Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, Mars

and Ueras. I was even surprised to find there are god’s before which are named only within two

vowels: Aa and Ea. Irish revered all these gods but today, even the drunkest Irishman laughs at

them. According to Mencken, gods enslave humans through their “demands and impositions”

and religious activities are at best a waste of time and at worst the cause of needless suffering on

a massive scale. When you doubted Jupiter, you were easily tagged a barbarian and an

ignoramus. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them. To doubt them was to

usually die at stake. Villages were burned, women and children were butchered, and cattle were

driven off.

While no one can deny the human suffering that has been caused by those religious

causes, Mencken’s view of all religious practitioners as laboring constantly to satisfy fanciful

gods ignores NOT ONLY the benefits religion has brought, but also the fact that human abuse

of religion is responsible for the suffering done in the name of a god. Religion not only from

our past, but also today divides the people, instead of uniting them. Weighing the acts of

compassion motivated by religious impulses against the atrocities committed in the name of

religion is difficult and ultimately not useful. Human history tells that religious persons

promulgate dogmas and creeds that require compliance. They impose disciplinary measures

against members who disobey or disrespect those rules or dogmas. The Catholic Church during

the Middle Ages, for example, instituted the dreaded Holy Inquisition to prosecute heretics.

That’s why Joan of Arc was burned at stake and the astronomer Galileo was arrested to trial, and

almost executed, until he refracted his scientifically valid teaching that the earth revolved around

the sun and not the other way around as the church believed it to be. They measure faithfulness

to God with human sacrifices BUT to kill for God is not the thing. Humans cannot demand that

gods and religions be abandoned; instead, humans must take responsibility for their choices.

This article of Mencken should really instill within us the lesson that (1) Gods and

deities are not the same Supremes as we have come to personify them; some Gods are just

cultural inventions and (2) spirituality is not the same as religiosity. Being religious means

following the beliefs, doctrines, practices, traditions and rituals of a particular organized

religious institution, such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. Among the Christians, for

example, a person is regarded as religious if he or she goes to mass every Sunday, receives holy

communion, prays the rosary, makes contribution to the parish church, confess his or her sins to

the priests, and gives alms to the poor.

Even if the person treats his maids like slaves, watches pornographic films, cheats on his

income tax and business deals, he or she is still considered religious person and a respected

member of his parish. Religiosity deals with external, not with internals. It deals with the

obvious and what can be seen, not with unseen or the invisible. Religiosity is what one shows to

others, or how others see what he does in connection with his church’s beliefs and practices. It

has nothing to do with what he does in secret or with his unseen relationship with the divine.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is a very individual thing. It need not conform to dogmas,

practices, beliefs and rituals of church. One may practice spirituality completely alone and

follows no official rules. To be spiritual is to commune with the highest spiritual being in your

own unique way. Your actions need not be sanctioned or approved by an authority figure like

bishop or rabbi. A spiritual person is his own authority. His relationship with the divine is his

own perception of what is good, true and beautiful. He does not try to convince others that he is

right and the others wrong. He is content to live his faith in harmony with others.

The religious person, on the other hand, tries all the time to convince others that he is

right and the others are wrong. He believes he has a divine duty to convert everybody to his own

church’s way of thinking. He believes that only through his religion can salvation be attained.

If you don’t believe that religion divides and spirituality unites, place the priests, rabbis,

imams, theologians and defenders of the faith of all religions in one room and they will kill each

other. But if you put spiritual and mystical people of all religions in one room, they will embrace

each other as brothers and sisters.

I believe that once we die, God will not ask us what religion we belonged on earth before

being allowed to enter into his kingdom. Religion is completely irrelevant to our salvation. What

he would ask most likely is this: “How have you lived your life and how much have you loved?”

I am sure religious people will object to this, which proves my point.

If I believe in God, I can defend my faith not by useless, massive human sacrifices but by

elevating Word of God to its true beauty in the exercise of good deeds. It is not enough to

confess that we believe in the commandment “to love our enemies” on a purely cognitive way

without any solid action. I also have to do something out of what I received from God. And this

is not through demands and impositions which are shown as examples in Mecken’s short essay.