The SS Minnow
Photo of local “SS Minnow” near Milwaukee Lake Michigan Shoreline by Helmut Fritz
People living near the city of Milwaukee’s Lake Michigan shoreline are beginning to call her the S.S. Minnow in honor of the fictional boat with the same name from the 1960s Gilligan’s Island sitcom. A very comparable looking vessel sits on the Milwaukee shoreline at the time of this writing. Prevailing information has it that the captain of Milwaukee’s “S.S. Minnow” dramatically misread his navigation system on a foggy evening and beached her. The presumably unintentional landing happened approximately mid to late November 2024 so now the Minnow is becoming somewhat of a landmark. She has the attention of graffiti artists, beach visitors with cameras, getting random decorations such as Christmas lights or flags and even can be found on Google Maps.
Navigation abilities are essential for any person on the move including boat captains. This writer is old enough to remember the reverent sounding fog horns warning ships and other watercraft of the dangers of the Milwaukee harbor when thick fog rolled in. Captains paid attention then because the long list of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes verified the need. Foghorns mostly are gone now because of GPS but clearly technology doesn’t assure success. The Minnow is a witness to that. A navigator can be fundamentally wrong and the world around that captain will be most severe because of the error.
There have been many efforts of aligning our physical realities of wrong and right with other fields of human experience including philosophy and even religion. Important scientists such as Blaise Pascal, Carl Linnaeus and Albert Einstein explored the subject. So, ducking much tooth gnashing from some, we can at least discuss a possibility that a person’s religion may be eminently “wrong.” A world view that a person even tearfully insists on though always respected, still could possibly have that person philosophically or religiously navigating towards a beach rather than a harbor like an erring captain. It arguably would be the moral thing to at least inform a mistaken method of reasoning of a highly probable future shipwreck in life.
In the end, what is religion if not our navigation system through life? Religion is where you get your morals, ethics, even your culture. Religion importantly helps us decide what direction to take in life’s events. Every human makes decisions. My point, we all have a navigation system, “a religion” and no one is exempt. Those that are uncomfortable with the “religion” term still have one even if they refuse to call it that. For the sake of standardization, let us call our paradigm of personal standards as our religion. I have yet to meet even an Atheist for example, who does not see some actions as wrong and others as right. The Polish, United States, Norwegian and Canadian militaries have “non-religious” or Humanist chaplains. There even have been ideas put forward for a great atheist cathedral. Simply renaming oneself as nonreligious is fine if the person doesn’t like the word but we all need a reference point in order to have honest discussion. The crucial matter here is the respectful discussion.
Every healthy democracy must treat all “religions” equally. That is, to have the right to proselytize someone that we conclude is going on a “wrong” tack but then allow others the same rights. In the United States democracy, no government is allowed to favor one religion over another with financial help or otherwise giving one side an unequal playing field whatever that means. This is where the United States democracy must make an extreme correction.
For at least one hundred and fifty years now, the various United States governments have given one world religion direct and indirect support at the expense of all others. This is in clear violation of our U.S. Constitution so it is overdue that we as a nation admit that there is a world religion called atheism/materialism/humanism/agnosticism. Like all other faiths they have rabbis/pastors/priests/mullahs, (differently named of course.) Like every other religion, Atheism/materialism/humanism/agnosticism has competing denominations, formal organizations and informal ones, heresies and statements of faith, have conducted jihads/crusades and have great rabbis/hadith writers that we all can learn from. While insisting that they are not a religion, Atheists and related faiths teach morals, doctrine and seek the conversion of their students, usually in publicly funded institutions where Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahais, different Atheist denominations and other “navigation systems,” are forced to financially participate. To simply rename a human activity and then demand a whole new reality is psychosis. For those who insist on semantics to end this discussion we must ask, can we simply rename the Roman Catholic Church for example, as the International Water Lily Appreciation Society, then allowing them to continue all aspects of their faith but now with direct governmental support? If not, why not?
In “Antiphon,” the third book of a trilogy of which “Welkyrie” is the first and only published work available so far, I present an answer to the conundrum above. Again, discussion is crucial for democracy. By definition, world views will compete with each other because sincere and well-meaning people present their “better” religion and will see errors in other’s religion. As long as we exchange our thoughts respectfully we will all come out the richer as we let the gods fight, not us. It is crucial that democratic governments not become advocates for one particular view and if they find themselves there, must immediately extricate themselves.
