UGLINESS

     To be in error is by definition to be out of touch with reality as it is. Error is therefore at least misleading, even when it is presented unwittingly and in good faith, and because it is out of touch and often with an element of beguilement, there is in it an element of the ugly. 

        New ageism serves as an example of what we mean. By mingling Oriental texts with a sprinkling of scientific terms and bits of literature and religion that may appear to the unwary to bestow an aura of respectability, contemporary gurus make assertions that are actually nothing more than airy, vague sentiments with no foundations in the actual world: "Field of infinite possibilities . . . the unbounded, ever-loving universe  . . . [we are]all sisters of a mysterious order . . . space and unified field . . . our age of awareness . . . conscious energy field". These romanticized but vacuous feelings may mislead millions into thinking their problems are being solved in some mysteriously ultimate manner. New ageism is pseudosophistication devoid of evidence and serious thought, quite the opposite of the beautiful.

Proposing what may tickle some ears, new ageism makes few or no moral demands, for one need not worry about responsibility to God, about a need to say no. Hence, there is no fear of responsibility and punishment for the choices one makes. A recent critic observed that "the spiritual peace and enlightenment offered by pop gurus doesn't require a lifetime of discipline.  It requires only that  you suspend judgment, attend their lectures and workshops and buy their books or tapes."

        A second example is Buddhism. While we appreciate the sincere intentions of a conscientious Buddhist in his recognizing the inability of the material universe to satisfy the human heart, yet at the same time his system itself is inherently unable to fulfill our fundamental human thirsts and needs: for endless love, beauty, happiness, eternity. Vincenzo Piza, an Italian Buddhist, explains his embracing this Oriental system because he found in it "a non-theistic, non-dogmatic, secular religion, without authority . . . with no God, no doctrine and no authority."

We can add to the list of negations: no ecstatic immersion in Beauty, no eternal life, no transcendentals, no sense to human aspirations and existence, nothing to quench our thirst for the infinite. 

        Michael Platt writes that "although Rock can mix in a bit of other kinds of music, the defining core of a it is easy to recognize by its big, simple, clear, loud, steady, repetitious dumb beat."

Other types of music--opera, blues, gospel, or even jazz--grow "by addition, mixture, and augmentation. Rock grew by subtraction, destruction, loss. . . . Rock 'n roll is beat, beat, beat. . . . This beat, beat, beat is not primarily to be listened to but felt." this diminution and loss come precariously close to reducing rock to being non-musical , devoid of form and thus of beauty

The result of rock are, to put the matter gently, inelegant and unlovely. To be still more plain, Platt considers that "the pleasure rock music provides is selfish, coarse, masturbational, and addictive, and those who do liberate themselves from it seldom regain the capacity to feel anything deeply, to care for another human being, or to long for something noble."

Damning evidence that something is dreadfully wrong. Which reminds me of Soviet psychologists recently discovering that youth who try to overcome their addiction to rock experience withdrawal symptoms similar to those who give up drugs. The

The words in the songs fare no better.

        Ugliness can also be found in atheism, scientism, positivism, materialism]

Chesterton pointed out the preposterous character of atheism when he remarked that "it is absurd . . . to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything."

John Courtney Murray concluded that "atheism is never the conclusion of any theory, philosophical or scientific. It is a decision, a free act of choice that antedates all theories."

For the thoughtful atheist death must loom as a crushing catastrophe. Everything good, noble, beautiful experienced throughout life is about to vanish, not simply for a week or two, not only for a century, but forever. On the atheist's premise death is a nightmare unbroken by a dawn.

Consistent atheists, men like Camus, Sartre, held that reality is absurd.

If the atheist is logically consistent, his views of reality are horrifying, ugly