Too many kids in the USA have been committing suicide because they were overwhelmed, or bullied, about their sexual orientation. That sucks.
But this is really cool: there's this amazing Youtube movement called "It Gets Better" - a fella named Dan Savage started this Youtube account, and opened it up, that people could post messages on there, expressing support for young homosexuals. The main message is just that: "It gets better" - high school sucks, but somewhere beyond high school, there are people who care, who understand, who don't judge.
I've been watching these videos, and they're touching, and beautiful, and it's heartbreaking hearing story after story of humiliation and ostracization, but it's also amazing watching the whole internet come out in support. It's lovely.
The ones that got me the most were these ones: the christians. I grew up in a Christian home and went to a christian school, and a chrisitian university where any gays were deeply closeted, and where you had to sign a contract that, at the time, stipulated that you were not supposed to partake in homosexual practices, like the girl in the video below. Since then, I've decided, like my friend Melissa, who was one of the first people to nudge me in this direction, that Christians are really on the wrong side in this issue.
It seems like, when you look down the line of history, at other great human rights victories, Christians have been on the ragged forefront, fighting for the disenfranchised - slavery, civil rights, women's rights -- yet this time, the religious right is the antagonist, and that grieves me.
So anyway, spread word about the "It Gets Better Project" because stuff like this reminds me of how much good the internet can accomplish, and it restores my hope in humanity just a little again.
one expat's life in Korea
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Friday, December 19, 2008
Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 2
(and that's just the title!)
OK. They say well begun is half-done, so what does it mean that I’ve started this post five times now?
You can hit play and start reading...but I almost want to encourage you to just listen to the song without any interruptions once, and be moved by it before you hit replay, and THEN start reading. The song deserves it.
Holy Holy Holy, by Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens is an artist. He makes music. He writes songs with a delicacy and creativity that stays constantly intriguing. He tells stories that are easy to care about. Whether the events he sings about are true or fiction, I don’t know, but he sings about them honestly. And I would, in a heartbeat, will the entire Christian Contemporary Music industry out of existence, in order for one other artist like him to come into being.
While I have other issues with the Christian Contemporary Music industry that I won’t get into here, one of the fatal flaws in it is, in my opinion, that it exists at all. See, by the sheer existence of a genre, a label, and even separate shops to sell Christian music, a very clear line has been drawn between Music For God and Music For Everything Else.
I have seen this same false binary drawn in the characters and philosophies of a number of religious people I’ve known. They seem to delineate the parts of their life into Things Of God and Things Of The World. Here: I’ll give you some examples: yeah, it’s a bit of a caricature, but what ya gonna do?
How Roboseyo Lived His Life Until 2002:
Things of God
Church
Bible Study
My mind/spirit/soul
My friendship with John (who’s a good Christian)
My friendship with Janice (I’m trying to get her to come to Church with me)
1/3 of my music collection (the CCM stuff and the classical stuff by Bach, because he wrote “to the glory of God” at the end of his compositions)
Things of The World
The R-Rated Movies I own, including three with nudity
My coworker Jeff (who swears, and doesn’t believe in God)
My body (especially the parts that excrete things)
2/3 of my music collection (the devil music)
My job (money is Of This World, but you gotta eat)
The “dirty” pictures on my hard drive, which I periodically delete because I feel guilty, but then find more
My favorite restaurant (I should give that money to the poor, and it’s a fleshly indulgence, and I should fix my mind on higher things, not animal pleasures like food, but it’s just so darn good)
and the thing is, by drawing a circle around Things of God, and keeping them separate, Things of God are slowly painting themselves into a corner, a little niche so specific that it’s no longer relevant to anybody’s life. I wrote a poem once that described it as a leviathan trapped in a well. I mean, come on. Who except Christians listens to Christian Contemporary Music? And why do THEY listen to it? Because it’s comforting and comfortable, (usually) not because it’s making them think about new things or pushing the envelope, either musically or lyrically. Most praise songs are written to be easy for a near-novice to learn how to play on guitar, so that church bands can sing them without throwing the amateur praise leaders for a loop. The lyrics? Don’t get me started.
sidenote: please do not confuse Christian Contemporary Music with Sacred Music.
For a simple explanation:
Christian Contemporary Music, or my personal (un)favorite: "I could repeat this line forever"
Sacred Music:
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
And the a cappella verse moved me to tears that night: somehow the bottom dropped out of this Christmas album, and it went from some very nice Christmas music to a moving experience. It has stayed in that wonderful place since, and I've been listening to it like an addict.
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
I went home after that night, and watched the Youtube video of "Holy Holy Holy" before bed (the same one that started out this post), and again, was moved right to tears, and God was absolutely in the room, saying, "Our story's not finished yet, pal." There's no way I can walk away from that. Absolutely no way. Yeah, the way I worship now looks way different from how it looked five or seven years ago, but more places shine now than then, more of the world is sacred and beautiful now than then, and God is way, way bigger now. Where we go from here, I don't know. Whether I talk about it with a single soul in the universe remains to be seen...though I wouldn't be surprised if God and I saw fit to keep it mum, it being only between us anyway.
To the people who are missing me and thinking of me this Christmas: merry Christmas. I miss you too.
To everybody else who was patient enough to read this whole thing. . . wow. Good on ya. And merry Christmas to you, too.
love
Roboseyo
OK. They say well begun is half-done, so what does it mean that I’ve started this post five times now?
You can hit play and start reading...but I almost want to encourage you to just listen to the song without any interruptions once, and be moved by it before you hit replay, and THEN start reading. The song deserves it.
Holy Holy Holy, by Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens is an artist. He makes music. He writes songs with a delicacy and creativity that stays constantly intriguing. He tells stories that are easy to care about. Whether the events he sings about are true or fiction, I don’t know, but he sings about them honestly. And I would, in a heartbeat, will the entire Christian Contemporary Music industry out of existence, in order for one other artist like him to come into being.
While I have other issues with the Christian Contemporary Music industry that I won’t get into here, one of the fatal flaws in it is, in my opinion, that it exists at all. See, by the sheer existence of a genre, a label, and even separate shops to sell Christian music, a very clear line has been drawn between Music For God and Music For Everything Else.
I have seen this same false binary drawn in the characters and philosophies of a number of religious people I’ve known. They seem to delineate the parts of their life into Things Of God and Things Of The World. Here: I’ll give you some examples: yeah, it’s a bit of a caricature, but what ya gonna do?
How Roboseyo Lived His Life Until 2002:
Things of God
Church
Bible Study
My mind/spirit/soul
My friendship with John (who’s a good Christian)
My friendship with Janice (I’m trying to get her to come to Church with me)
1/3 of my music collection (the CCM stuff and the classical stuff by Bach, because he wrote “to the glory of God” at the end of his compositions)
Things of The World
The R-Rated Movies I own, including three with nudity
My coworker Jeff (who swears, and doesn’t believe in God)
My body (especially the parts that excrete things)
2/3 of my music collection (the devil music)
My job (money is Of This World, but you gotta eat)
The “dirty” pictures on my hard drive, which I periodically delete because I feel guilty, but then find more
My favorite restaurant (I should give that money to the poor, and it’s a fleshly indulgence, and I should fix my mind on higher things, not animal pleasures like food, but it’s just so darn good)
and the thing is, by drawing a circle around Things of God, and keeping them separate, Things of God are slowly painting themselves into a corner, a little niche so specific that it’s no longer relevant to anybody’s life. I wrote a poem once that described it as a leviathan trapped in a well. I mean, come on. Who except Christians listens to Christian Contemporary Music? And why do THEY listen to it? Because it’s comforting and comfortable, (usually) not because it’s making them think about new things or pushing the envelope, either musically or lyrically. Most praise songs are written to be easy for a near-novice to learn how to play on guitar, so that church bands can sing them without throwing the amateur praise leaders for a loop. The lyrics? Don’t get me started.
sidenote: please do not confuse Christian Contemporary Music with Sacred Music.
For a simple explanation:
Christian Contemporary Music, or my personal (un)favorite: "I could repeat this line forever"
Sacred Music:
(Ave Maria, by Shubert)
But the problem is this: the more I think about it, the more I reject this kind of reductionist view of the world. Compartmentalizing things might make them easier to manage, but it’s just not true to life. (and yeah, I know this is a bit of a straw man argument, and I’ve unfairly characterized/simplified the binary here. You don’t have to tell me that. There may even be some CCM artists worth their salt, but I’m just not ready to wade through the rest to find them. Sorry.)
Back to Sufjan Stevens. He sings about God. He drops a reference to bible study into his song, he met the girl after church one day. He also sings about serial killers, ex-presidents, leukemia, Santa Claus, and cities he’s visited, and lakes, and it’s all one. It’s all Sufjan, and the spiritual stuff is in contact with all the other topics he sings about, and when it does come into play, it’s all the more surprising for its appearance, like a flashbulb at midnight, or an unexpected hint of lemongrass in a stirfry, BECAUSE it’s in the mix with everything else, and not segregated, the way Elvis made Gospel Albums, and Rock Albums, and nary the two should mix. This means all Sufjan’s work shimmers with this sensitivity, everything is enhanced by his spirituality, and we end up with this feeling that the guy down the street is sacred, is just as sacred as the altar at the front of the church, even. And it's not affected, there are no strings attached: he never stops singing and says, "Well, now that I've got your attention, I'd like to tell you a story about a man who lived a long time ago..." with that "I know what's best for you" tone that's so off-putting.
This is what Franny wanted to realize when she tried to Pray Without Ceasing in Franny and Zooey. It’s what Zooey was driving at when he said, “There isn’t anybody out there who isn’t the fat lady” and later, “Don’t you know who that fat lady is?. . . It’s Christ himself.”
And that’s what spirituality is like. Or should be like, I think: if I have to draw a line around what’s spiritual and what isn’t, then the sacred, the holy, well, yeah, it has a pretty space, when I go there, but for the rest, it kind of doesn’t affect my life, does it?
So I haven’t been to church in a year. I’ve been in churches. Some beautiful churches, churches built for God’s Glory, and been moved by the way the architect did his work as an act of worship. But not during a 9 a.m. church service, not with hymns, organs, announcements, a sermon, handshakes with strangers, and a closing song. Not where we orally read bible passages or creeds in call and response.
And saying this will cause a great deal of concern for some of my family back home. They might think I’m falling away from God, but they’d be wrong.
You see, I have met God this year, and spent time with her in a zillion places. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and JD Salinger's books. In the laugh I unintentionally got out of an old lady while goofing off for girlfriendoseyo, in the mountainsides of Gyungsan province on the train to Andong, in the Korean fireworks and the jjim dalk. In the bamboo forest. In a Korean Traditional performance, and in Blue, by Joni Mitchell. In me and my best friend finishing each-other’s sentences, or making the same wise-crack at the same time, while our significant others watch, bemused. In this incredible meal at a two-person restaurant near Dongguk University. In a musical bliss-out, and a lot of caramel macchiatos. In cherry blossoms and fall colors and pigeons scattering as the kid runs out to catch them. In telling stories with a few old Canadian boys over beers. In a coffee shop near Inwang Mountain, in sunlight waking me up through my curtains, in a brilliant witticism from a level one student, in a little girl on the subway who became my friend in five seconds, in smooching with girlfriendoseyo.
I have found the community of God’s people and the exhilaration of minds meeting in truth in conversations with pastors’ wives, atheists, muslims, Christians (with a big c), christians (with a small c) pantheists and buddhists, in the bible, in books of poetry, in the Dalai Lama’s teaching, and in some photography that moved me. In watching a person make the friends she needed to survive in Korea, in seeing my best friend be goofy-in-love with his wife. And you can’t discount that. You can’t discount any of that: if that stuff’s not sacred, then nothing is, and if I’m not allowed to appreciate its sacredness, I don’t want to hear what else you have to say about what is and isn't holy and worthy of my startled wonder. Again, from JD Salinger’s “Seymour, An Introduction,” “Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one piece of holy ground to the next. Is he NEVER wrong?”
This is the world, this is life, and God made all of it, and it is wonderful, and seeing that and appreciating it is an act of worship, and an act of thanks, if ever there was one, and if you tell me it’s not, if you tell me I’m not as close to God as I once was, because I haven’t gone to Church, or if you ask me about my journey not to hear about it, but to evaluate it, and judge whether I'm checking the right boxes and will still get to heaven...
I’ll change the topic, dodge the questions, or say what you want to hear and move on, because frankly, you’re not God, and I don’t need anybody but her to approve my journey before I can be sure that me and the hep-cat upstairs are square.
So when I wanted to pray for Sally, instead of rejecting God altogether, sure, you can call that the Holy Spirit calling... I’ll accept that. And yeah, when people tell their stories in Church, about how God pulled them back to The Fold after they’d wandered far, they invoke the Holy Spirit too, but somehow, the Holy Spirit isn’t leading me to the place everyone expects, when somebody tells a story like that, and I'm not going to retroactively revise the story in order to fit the normal testimony arc. Starting my spiritual narrative on a half-truth is pretty shaky, if you ask me. I still don’t know just where I'm going, except that one: God ain't through with me yet, and I'm not through with God, and two: I’m still moving, and listening, and trying to become Who I Really Am (which is another way of saying Who God Created Me To Be, for those of you who prefer blogs to be written in Christianese). Honestly, if the journey keeps going like this, full of learning, growth, change, and spackles of beauty all over the place, I'd even argue that Getting Home is overrated.
So I was tempted to say I’m taking the long way home... and that phrase gives me an excuse to put this lovely, lovely Tom Waits song, which had a lot of meaning for me in 2006, into the post. (Soundtrack: hit play and keep reading: The Long Way Home, by Tom Waits [later covered by Norah Jones. He did it first.])
but I don’t think it’s about getting home anymore: as I said in last year's advent post, when I wrote about recovering from grief:
But the problem is this: the more I think about it, the more I reject this kind of reductionist view of the world. Compartmentalizing things might make them easier to manage, but it’s just not true to life. (and yeah, I know this is a bit of a straw man argument, and I’ve unfairly characterized/simplified the binary here. You don’t have to tell me that. There may even be some CCM artists worth their salt, but I’m just not ready to wade through the rest to find them. Sorry.)
Back to Sufjan Stevens. He sings about God. He drops a reference to bible study into his song, he met the girl after church one day. He also sings about serial killers, ex-presidents, leukemia, Santa Claus, and cities he’s visited, and lakes, and it’s all one. It’s all Sufjan, and the spiritual stuff is in contact with all the other topics he sings about, and when it does come into play, it’s all the more surprising for its appearance, like a flashbulb at midnight, or an unexpected hint of lemongrass in a stirfry, BECAUSE it’s in the mix with everything else, and not segregated, the way Elvis made Gospel Albums, and Rock Albums, and nary the two should mix. This means all Sufjan’s work shimmers with this sensitivity, everything is enhanced by his spirituality, and we end up with this feeling that the guy down the street is sacred, is just as sacred as the altar at the front of the church, even. And it's not affected, there are no strings attached: he never stops singing and says, "Well, now that I've got your attention, I'd like to tell you a story about a man who lived a long time ago..." with that "I know what's best for you" tone that's so off-putting.
This is what Franny wanted to realize when she tried to Pray Without Ceasing in Franny and Zooey. It’s what Zooey was driving at when he said, “There isn’t anybody out there who isn’t the fat lady” and later, “Don’t you know who that fat lady is?. . . It’s Christ himself.”
And that’s what spirituality is like. Or should be like, I think: if I have to draw a line around what’s spiritual and what isn’t, then the sacred, the holy, well, yeah, it has a pretty space, when I go there, but for the rest, it kind of doesn’t affect my life, does it?
So I haven’t been to church in a year. I’ve been in churches. Some beautiful churches, churches built for God’s Glory, and been moved by the way the architect did his work as an act of worship. But not during a 9 a.m. church service, not with hymns, organs, announcements, a sermon, handshakes with strangers, and a closing song. Not where we orally read bible passages or creeds in call and response.
And saying this will cause a great deal of concern for some of my family back home. They might think I’m falling away from God, but they’d be wrong.
You see, I have met God this year, and spent time with her in a zillion places. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and JD Salinger's books. In the laugh I unintentionally got out of an old lady while goofing off for girlfriendoseyo, in the mountainsides of Gyungsan province on the train to Andong, in the Korean fireworks and the jjim dalk. In the bamboo forest. In a Korean Traditional performance, and in Blue, by Joni Mitchell. In me and my best friend finishing each-other’s sentences, or making the same wise-crack at the same time, while our significant others watch, bemused. In this incredible meal at a two-person restaurant near Dongguk University. In a musical bliss-out, and a lot of caramel macchiatos. In cherry blossoms and fall colors and pigeons scattering as the kid runs out to catch them. In telling stories with a few old Canadian boys over beers. In a coffee shop near Inwang Mountain, in sunlight waking me up through my curtains, in a brilliant witticism from a level one student, in a little girl on the subway who became my friend in five seconds, in smooching with girlfriendoseyo.
I have found the community of God’s people and the exhilaration of minds meeting in truth in conversations with pastors’ wives, atheists, muslims, Christians (with a big c), christians (with a small c) pantheists and buddhists, in the bible, in books of poetry, in the Dalai Lama’s teaching, and in some photography that moved me. In watching a person make the friends she needed to survive in Korea, in seeing my best friend be goofy-in-love with his wife. And you can’t discount that. You can’t discount any of that: if that stuff’s not sacred, then nothing is, and if I’m not allowed to appreciate its sacredness, I don’t want to hear what else you have to say about what is and isn't holy and worthy of my startled wonder. Again, from JD Salinger’s “Seymour, An Introduction,” “Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one piece of holy ground to the next. Is he NEVER wrong?”
This is the world, this is life, and God made all of it, and it is wonderful, and seeing that and appreciating it is an act of worship, and an act of thanks, if ever there was one, and if you tell me it’s not, if you tell me I’m not as close to God as I once was, because I haven’t gone to Church, or if you ask me about my journey not to hear about it, but to evaluate it, and judge whether I'm checking the right boxes and will still get to heaven...
I’ll change the topic, dodge the questions, or say what you want to hear and move on, because frankly, you’re not God, and I don’t need anybody but her to approve my journey before I can be sure that me and the hep-cat upstairs are square.
So when I wanted to pray for Sally, instead of rejecting God altogether, sure, you can call that the Holy Spirit calling... I’ll accept that. And yeah, when people tell their stories in Church, about how God pulled them back to The Fold after they’d wandered far, they invoke the Holy Spirit too, but somehow, the Holy Spirit isn’t leading me to the place everyone expects, when somebody tells a story like that, and I'm not going to retroactively revise the story in order to fit the normal testimony arc. Starting my spiritual narrative on a half-truth is pretty shaky, if you ask me. I still don’t know just where I'm going, except that one: God ain't through with me yet, and I'm not through with God, and two: I’m still moving, and listening, and trying to become Who I Really Am (which is another way of saying Who God Created Me To Be, for those of you who prefer blogs to be written in Christianese). Honestly, if the journey keeps going like this, full of learning, growth, change, and spackles of beauty all over the place, I'd even argue that Getting Home is overrated.
So I was tempted to say I’m taking the long way home... and that phrase gives me an excuse to put this lovely, lovely Tom Waits song, which had a lot of meaning for me in 2006, into the post. (Soundtrack: hit play and keep reading: The Long Way Home, by Tom Waits [later covered by Norah Jones. He did it first.])
but I don’t think it’s about getting home anymore: as I said in last year's advent post, when I wrote about recovering from grief:
Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.So, you know, I haven’t turned my back on God. I just don’t think that’s how things work. See, saying I’ve switched from Christianity to Buddhism (as I did on April Fools’ Day) doesn’t really wash to me either, because that’s just a label, and my label can’t change the way my mind has been wired for 29 years now, how my character has been put together. It seems to me, switching which book I read for my morning meditation and which building I visit to worship, balanced against the sheer mass and inertia of my 29 years of life and thought and choice-making, is about as fundamental a change as painting my black car red, and saying it’s a new one. I’ll still be the same guy, either way, I’ll still treat strangers the same way, and follow the same steps to solve a problem, and be moved to a place of sacredness, meditation, or elevation by the same things. I don’t even think it’s possible to turn my back on God: she’s been woven into my cloth too intricately, and I wouldn’t want her out anyway. Instead, I think it’s more accurate to say that God has spilled out of The Church Space, and started making every part of my life shine, exalted and transubstantiated entire tracts of what used to be The World, and soaked them with holiness. Jeez, guys, God is way bigger now than she used to be...and quite a bit awesomer, too, to be honest.
This song was also on Sufjan Stevens' Christmas album. (Seriously, go and buy it. You can download it for free, but you should buy it, so that you're supporting the artist.) I'd listened through the album a few times, but then one night I was walking around Gyungbok Palace with girlfriendoseyo, and we were sharing the MP3 player in that cheesy way couples do in Korea, and this song came on, and in the dark and cold, walking with my lady, the gentle beauty of Sufjan Stevens' songs, about all kinds of holiday topics, led us to a point where I was finally ready to be moved by this song again.
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
And the a cappella verse moved me to tears that night: somehow the bottom dropped out of this Christmas album, and it went from some very nice Christmas music to a moving experience. It has stayed in that wonderful place since, and I've been listening to it like an addict.
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
I went home after that night, and watched the Youtube video of "Holy Holy Holy" before bed (the same one that started out this post), and again, was moved right to tears, and God was absolutely in the room, saying, "Our story's not finished yet, pal." There's no way I can walk away from that. Absolutely no way. Yeah, the way I worship now looks way different from how it looked five or seven years ago, but more places shine now than then, more of the world is sacred and beautiful now than then, and God is way, way bigger now. Where we go from here, I don't know. Whether I talk about it with a single soul in the universe remains to be seen...though I wouldn't be surprised if God and I saw fit to keep it mum, it being only between us anyway.
To the people who are missing me and thinking of me this Christmas: merry Christmas. I miss you too.
To everybody else who was patient enough to read this whole thing. . . wow. Good on ya. And merry Christmas to you, too.
love
Roboseyo
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
I'm beginning to see the light.
Soundtrack time: I'm Set Free, by the Velvet Underground.
Hit play and start reading.
Yeh.
It's been a difficult decision to write this post. . . I've thought and thought, and struggled with how I'm going to share this news with my family back home, and I'm still not quite satisfied with the idea of just blogging about it, but whenever I think of getting on the phone, my stomach starts shaking and I know I just can't do it.
If you follow my blog, you've read some of my thoughts lately on faith -- I know I've seemed pretty harsh on Christianity here, here, here, and here, and especially here.
If you read between the lines, you might notice a kind of relaxing of the rigid lines that used to define my faith. . .
you may have also noticed this. Well, I don't know how to say this, but here goes.
Back in 2006, I had a pretty rough year -- you've also read my writings about that. In this post, I finished off my discussion of my own search for meaning with these words:
Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.
I think a few of you have kind of read between the lines and spotted some of what I'm going through; I've spent the last two years or so trying to work out a framework where the things I believe, my spiritual life and practice, begins to focus more on the process instead of the destination -- gently stepping away from a destination helps me focus on the joys of the process, helps me to commit to being the person I am, in the place I am, rather than yearning discontentedly for some future, some heaven, some illusory attainment.
In light of that, I've been reading the Dalai Lama a lot lately, and finding that it makes a lot of sense to me, and I love the way that in Buddhism, it's more a question of finding a harmonious way to live, than of having the "right" doctrine or belief.
So I've decided to become a practicing Buddhist. I want to renounce the trappings of desire -- all those things that make me feel like a hamster running on a wheel -- and clear my mind, so that I can finally walk in the world as it is, instead of always comparing it with the way I want it to be.
"Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away."
Aitken Roshi
The thing I like about Zen Buddhism is that it's not so much about setting a goal or an aim, but more about letting go-- being in that neutral, mindful place helps me to feel like it's really ME who is walking through this life.
Another thing I like is that Buddhism doesn't ask you to renounce any other belief, ritual or practice you have; it just supplies a kind of different framework for understanding why we do the things we do. This means I don't have to throw aside the Bible, the (wonderful, wonderful) teachings of Christ, or the morality I was raised with; it's more that I add this new thing to the other things I've already learned!
(title of this post from this song: "I'm beginning to see the light" by Velvet Underground
Here is a passage of the Dhammavadaka, edited a bit for length:
Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.
...
Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.
...
Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.
Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are.
Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance. If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.
You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remose nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on.
--Dhammavadaka
To me, seeking the Buddha nature means becoming more alert and attuned to the people around me, and their needs. It means no longer clutching for the things other people tell me I want (money, status) or things that I can't see, and which can thus never satisfy my daily cravings and desires (heaven). By dropping this baggage, I can finally be free.
This is a kind of startling thing to finally announce! Sorry if it's a little shocking to some of you, but it's been really good for me. I've been writing more than ever before, and every bit of sunlight seems sacred now, every step I take seems like a celebration of life and creation!
In order to truly awaken myself to Buddha nature, and to finally die to the desires of the world, I have decided it is time to learn how to embrace silence. I'm taking a pledge of silence -- I'm going to stop all writing except the books and plays I'm working on. That means that you might want to read this post carefully, because it will be my last, until a year from today, when (hopefully) I've re-centered myself, and I break my vow of silence. Until then, I'll phone and be in touch with you that way, my loved ones! Thank you for enjoying my blog. I hope I'll see you again in a year.
(now, check the date of this post)
Hit play and start reading.
Yeh.
It's been a difficult decision to write this post. . . I've thought and thought, and struggled with how I'm going to share this news with my family back home, and I'm still not quite satisfied with the idea of just blogging about it, but whenever I think of getting on the phone, my stomach starts shaking and I know I just can't do it.
If you follow my blog, you've read some of my thoughts lately on faith -- I know I've seemed pretty harsh on Christianity here, here, here, and here, and especially here.
If you read between the lines, you might notice a kind of relaxing of the rigid lines that used to define my faith. . .
you may have also noticed this. Well, I don't know how to say this, but here goes.
Back in 2006, I had a pretty rough year -- you've also read my writings about that. In this post, I finished off my discussion of my own search for meaning with these words:
Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.
I think a few of you have kind of read between the lines and spotted some of what I'm going through; I've spent the last two years or so trying to work out a framework where the things I believe, my spiritual life and practice, begins to focus more on the process instead of the destination -- gently stepping away from a destination helps me focus on the joys of the process, helps me to commit to being the person I am, in the place I am, rather than yearning discontentedly for some future, some heaven, some illusory attainment.
In light of that, I've been reading the Dalai Lama a lot lately, and finding that it makes a lot of sense to me, and I love the way that in Buddhism, it's more a question of finding a harmonious way to live, than of having the "right" doctrine or belief.
So I've decided to become a practicing Buddhist. I want to renounce the trappings of desire -- all those things that make me feel like a hamster running on a wheel -- and clear my mind, so that I can finally walk in the world as it is, instead of always comparing it with the way I want it to be.
"Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away."
Aitken Roshi
The thing I like about Zen Buddhism is that it's not so much about setting a goal or an aim, but more about letting go-- being in that neutral, mindful place helps me to feel like it's really ME who is walking through this life.
Another thing I like is that Buddhism doesn't ask you to renounce any other belief, ritual or practice you have; it just supplies a kind of different framework for understanding why we do the things we do. This means I don't have to throw aside the Bible, the (wonderful, wonderful) teachings of Christ, or the morality I was raised with; it's more that I add this new thing to the other things I've already learned!
(title of this post from this song: "I'm beginning to see the light" by Velvet Underground
Here is a passage of the Dhammavadaka, edited a bit for length:
Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.
...
Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.
...
Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.
Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are.
Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance. If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.
You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remose nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on.
--Dhammavadaka
To me, seeking the Buddha nature means becoming more alert and attuned to the people around me, and their needs. It means no longer clutching for the things other people tell me I want (money, status) or things that I can't see, and which can thus never satisfy my daily cravings and desires (heaven). By dropping this baggage, I can finally be free.
This is a kind of startling thing to finally announce! Sorry if it's a little shocking to some of you, but it's been really good for me. I've been writing more than ever before, and every bit of sunlight seems sacred now, every step I take seems like a celebration of life and creation!
In order to truly awaken myself to Buddha nature, and to finally die to the desires of the world, I have decided it is time to learn how to embrace silence. I'm taking a pledge of silence -- I'm going to stop all writing except the books and plays I'm working on. That means that you might want to read this post carefully, because it will be my last, until a year from today, when (hopefully) I've re-centered myself, and I break my vow of silence. Until then, I'll phone and be in touch with you that way, my loved ones! Thank you for enjoying my blog. I hope I'll see you again in a year.
(now, check the date of this post)
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins, Part 4: Why Should I Listen To You? or The Crisis in Moral Authority
Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. I'm intentionally choosing religious music outside my own culture for this essay.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, luminary of Quawwali singing, a form of worship from Sufi Mystic Islam, where they repeat lines praising God until they reach a nearly ecstatic state. If you give it a chance, it's actually quite amazing. Our man Nusrat has an amazing voice; Quawwali singing is a tradition that's been passed down through his family for six hundred years! Even Jeff Buckley paid his respects to him.
To read this essay in the context of the other parts, go to the previous essay, or the table of contents.
There's a babble of voices these days, see, where so much information is coming at us from every direction that it becomes difficult to even look at most of it, much less investigate, inquire, and discern spirits. While wading through such an overload of input, the difference between a voice I attend and a voice I ignore can be razor thin. When competing with so many other voices for people's attention (to say nothing of trust), the voice of faith and spirituality needs every bit of help it can get, and can barely afford any clutter before it starts losing credibility.
There are different ways a voice can gain influence: the threat of violence, the potential for profit, the sheer power or extremity of the rhetoric, the sheer number (or wealth, or might) of the group speaking (a billion Catholics can't be wrong, can they? What if a billion and three Muslims say they are?), the potential to help one/many/the world toward some goal (world peace, environmental sustainability, personal profit, peace of mind), the qualifications and history of the speaker (when the Dalai Lama speaks on human rights, more people listen than when Kim Jong-il does). All these things can increase the volume of one's voice in the babble. Some of them increase the volume at the cost of credibility (like people who use violence to demonstrate their beliefs), while others increase their volume through credibility.
With so many voices out there, the voice for faith must actually be what it claims to be: this is the first step toward legitimate moral authority. Every time religion gets mixed up in politics, or money, every time any religion attacks something it doesn't understand (science and art come to mind) instead of engaging, it loses credibility: we appear stubborn and disingenuous, angling our spiritual claims into political or financial power, to protect our interests, or to suppress ideas that make us uncomfortable. I would never trust a church which had a tithing chart on the wall to shame members into giving the full 10% (as one of my students' mothers' church does): how could I know whether the pastor gave me godly counsel, or just flattered me to maintain his meal ticket? When Korea's new President names Somang Church deacons to important positions in his government, or George Bush says stuff like this, it makes religion look like a way to get ahead, a card to play for political points, rather than a worthy pursuit of holiness, or an example of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's at the point, here in Korea, that when church leaders start talking, a lot of people automatically start looking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interested in political influence, publicity, money, outperforming other churches, and inflated membership numbers, over community, integrity, and help for the helpless is an outright tragedy!
Faith gets dragged through the mud when people tack religion onto their agendas in a play for a little extra legitimacy. Religion's credibility and moral authority is in tatters, when it should be the very engine of our claim to legitimacy, and the longer we let all this agenda-poisoned, disingenuous angling pass for religion, the less religion will be able to compete with other influential voices, that are what they say they are.
It's no wonder Dawkins wants to picture religion as a disease in human society, of which humanity is slowly curing itself. Imagining that the aforementioned duplicity will eventually end is a hopeful, cheerful wish for the future indeed! Baby nothing, this bathwater is emitting mustard gas!
So what's to be done, eh?
Well, here's the ten point list for restoring our credibility. Yes, I'm gonna be prescriptive.
1. Head for the front-lines: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere. Don't wait for video cameras to show up: just do it. While I don't know enough to speak for the other major religions, the most respected Christians of the last century were Mother Theresa, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoner, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for social justice. Pope John-Paul II and Billy Graham might come next, and both of them may have faced criticism for this and that, but they also both were exactly who they said they were.
2. If we don't understand it, don't talk about it. There are very smart religious people in every field of knowledge, who have well-informed and worthwhile views on everything from Harry Potter to Creation to the moral questions raised by medical technology that can keep a person alive long after they would have died back in the days when religious positions on euthanasia were originally formed. Let's listen to them, and support them, instead of wading in over our heads! If I meet another Christian who says "I haven't read them, but I'm sure the Harry Potter books are all about the occult, so you shouldn’t read them, either," I'm gonna scream. (Also: respect other fields of knowledge for what they do. If I meet another Christian who flatly says, "I'd never see a counselor: I'm a believer!" I'll scream, too.)
3. Stop being satisfied with "well, that's what I believe." Nobody else is satisfied with that answer, so if we want to get beyond, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," we'll need to dig up something a little more convincing.
4. Recognize that fundamentalism is not only off-putting, but too inflexible to respond to a quickly-changing world. (See here if you disagree) -- fundamentalism turns faith into a foxhole where we hide, when a framework of belief ought to be a hill on which we stand to get a better view of things. Once faith began repudiating society, rather than working in and with it, we started the long march toward irrelevance.
5. Find a positive definition for who we are and what we believe, instead of a negative one. Instead of focusing on how the others are wrong, or bad, let's create and maintain a positive community, where the communal and spiritual benefits of membership are so obvious that recruiting is unnecessary. Instead of writing hate letters to Richard Dawkins, let's get our butts into the community and help so many people, in such tangible ways, that non-religious people stop nodding their heads in assent with Dawkins, and start exclaiming, "Who is this clown? Has he ever actually met a Christian? Why doesn't he attack groups that deserve to be taken down a notch?"
6. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
7. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people use religion and religious language for personal, political, social, or financial gain.
(by the way, if religion must get political, we need to pick our battles better: it is an outrage that the Christian lobby in America is fighting against gay marriage and supporting the war in Iraq, rather than lobbying with every ounce for universal health care in America, help for the poor, and social freedoms everywhere. So what if Christians were called "bleeding heart liberals" when they opposed slavery -- it's better than getting tied in with Bush's oil crusade.)
8. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people preach hate, murder or fear, while waving religious flags. The world needs to know that we are just as offended as they are by Fred Phelps, and his ilk, and that they are a lunatic fringe, in no way representative of the majority of religious people, who are decent, moral, and helpful, and loving: these people are the straw man I mentioned in part three. Instead, we need to get behind people like the writer of this letter, and represent. If we don't hold the wackos accountable in-house, we'll be grouped with them.
9. Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?
10. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
Soundtrack: hit play on Huun Huur Tu, the Tuvan Throat Singers who are like nothing you've EVER heard before.
Yeh.
On Modern Religion's To Do List for finding a way spirituality can jive with the Global Village and the Information Age: Here's where things get harder. We have to do something about these dilemmas; if we bend too far, then we don't really stand for anything, but if we're unwilling to bend, we're irrelevant, because we can't contribute anything to a dialogue if we aren't also listening.
Engage with: art, other religions, humanities and science in a way that doesn't condemn, condescend to, inherently repudiate, or attempt to establish primacy over any of them, and that is more meaningful than simply "agree to disagree." Religion is no longer the core value of society, and the faster we adjust to this, the better off we'll be.
Recognize that the polemical passages in the holy books were written at times when religious groups needed to band together in the face of persecution, or to create a good strong "in-group" feeling that helped them fight off the raiders from the hills, and do not fit in a global village with quickly dissolving borders. It's a new world, where "us" meets "them" every day, such Amish-style segregation or cloistered fear of the "other" no longer washes. Think really carefully about such passages, and how they ARE used vs. how they SHOULD be used, if at all (we've stopped following other parts of the bible; I'm sure it's the same for the Quran). The world will allow us to keep repeating the same "we're right, they're wrong" points. . . but our audience will shrink with each repetition, until religion as we know it will remain only in quaint little pockets, neatly segregated like the Pennsylvanian Amish now, and ignored except as a novelty.
Recognize that the world is very different than it was when the holy books were written and when the organized religions' infrastructures were designed. We must adapt or fade away: an overly rigid top-down model is too cumbersome for the quick shifts of the information age. We need to recognize and empower grass roots movements, and make information freely available. In the age of transparency, being authoritarian and mysterious breeds mistrust instead of a sense of sacred awe.
Think very carefully about the arrogance inherent in any claim to be the "one, true religion," and how often one's religion mostly depends on one's birthplace and family. Think long and hard about what kind of creator would send all Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Atheists (basically, all Notmygroupians), to hell, basically because they had the misfortune of being born in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, China, Israel, America, or France, instead of in Myculturesville. Think long and hard about how the claim God would send every Muslim to hell for the sin of being born in the Middle East or North Africa, makes God look a little arbitrary and capricious, and also kind of reeks of 19th century colonial arrogance. Think about the possibility (and the hope) that God is subtle enough to see beyond a checklist of signifiers ("Baptized? Check. Communion? Check. Sinner’s prayer? Check. Went to church every Sunday? Check. OK, You’re in." "You? Sorry. My name's God, not Allah. You wanted to serve me, but you were reading the wrong book. Tough nuts for you!") and actually read the heart. Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
Create a framework that is integrated and useful. By integrated I mean NOT saying "Here's the sphere of religion; here's the sphere of art; here's the sphere of science, and never the twain shall meet," but one that acknowledges all aspects of being a human, alive and learning, in the modern world, and finds useful ways that each aspect can enhance and inform the others.
See, I think organized religion can be really good. It can offer people a chance at connection and community; it offers a hope for the future that'll get you through the deep valley, when applied properly and compassionately. It provides a concrete moral compass as well as a community that can be around, ready to help when the things get confusing, or when the feces hit the fan. It can connect people with opportunities to make a difference in others' lives, to help others in concrete ways, and it can inspire them to get involved. These are all good things, and I (unlike Mr. Dawkins) am convinced that despite having been abused, and despite some hiccups of intolerance and ugliness, the world IS better because of religion's influence through history.
Yeah, things look bad right now, and it's time for a splash of cold water and an honest look in the mirror for pastors, priests, imams, rabbis, monks and everyone else who is responsible for saying of religion, "This is what we are." It's time for a calling to account of those who are manipulating religion and the religious for their own ends. It's not too late.
You know, the only time in the Bible that we see Jesus fly into a full-blown rage is when he was cleaning the money-changers and crooks out of the temple: the people who used the name of God for their own personal business made Christ himself see red! When religion has become a lever for financial or political gain to many, let's ask again, "What would Jesus do"? He would have stormed into those bastards' offices and started flipping tables!
To survive this atheist attack, faithful readers, it's time our religious institutions did the same.
Update: My friend tamie is a beautiful human being, in all the important senses of the word, and she writes beautifully about why religion, why going to a church (or a temple, or a mosque) IS a good thing. Don't take it from me; Here's why faith can still be relevant.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, luminary of Quawwali singing, a form of worship from Sufi Mystic Islam, where they repeat lines praising God until they reach a nearly ecstatic state. If you give it a chance, it's actually quite amazing. Our man Nusrat has an amazing voice; Quawwali singing is a tradition that's been passed down through his family for six hundred years! Even Jeff Buckley paid his respects to him.
To read this essay in the context of the other parts, go to the previous essay, or the table of contents.
There's a babble of voices these days, see, where so much information is coming at us from every direction that it becomes difficult to even look at most of it, much less investigate, inquire, and discern spirits. While wading through such an overload of input, the difference between a voice I attend and a voice I ignore can be razor thin. When competing with so many other voices for people's attention (to say nothing of trust), the voice of faith and spirituality needs every bit of help it can get, and can barely afford any clutter before it starts losing credibility.
There are different ways a voice can gain influence: the threat of violence, the potential for profit, the sheer power or extremity of the rhetoric, the sheer number (or wealth, or might) of the group speaking (a billion Catholics can't be wrong, can they? What if a billion and three Muslims say they are?), the potential to help one/many/the world toward some goal (world peace, environmental sustainability, personal profit, peace of mind), the qualifications and history of the speaker (when the Dalai Lama speaks on human rights, more people listen than when Kim Jong-il does). All these things can increase the volume of one's voice in the babble. Some of them increase the volume at the cost of credibility (like people who use violence to demonstrate their beliefs), while others increase their volume through credibility.
With so many voices out there, the voice for faith must actually be what it claims to be: this is the first step toward legitimate moral authority. Every time religion gets mixed up in politics, or money, every time any religion attacks something it doesn't understand (science and art come to mind) instead of engaging, it loses credibility: we appear stubborn and disingenuous, angling our spiritual claims into political or financial power, to protect our interests, or to suppress ideas that make us uncomfortable. I would never trust a church which had a tithing chart on the wall to shame members into giving the full 10% (as one of my students' mothers' church does): how could I know whether the pastor gave me godly counsel, or just flattered me to maintain his meal ticket? When Korea's new President names Somang Church deacons to important positions in his government, or George Bush says stuff like this, it makes religion look like a way to get ahead, a card to play for political points, rather than a worthy pursuit of holiness, or an example of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's at the point, here in Korea, that when church leaders start talking, a lot of people automatically start looking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interested in political influence, publicity, money, outperforming other churches, and inflated membership numbers, over community, integrity, and help for the helpless is an outright tragedy!
Faith gets dragged through the mud when people tack religion onto their agendas in a play for a little extra legitimacy. Religion's credibility and moral authority is in tatters, when it should be the very engine of our claim to legitimacy, and the longer we let all this agenda-poisoned, disingenuous angling pass for religion, the less religion will be able to compete with other influential voices, that are what they say they are.
It's no wonder Dawkins wants to picture religion as a disease in human society, of which humanity is slowly curing itself. Imagining that the aforementioned duplicity will eventually end is a hopeful, cheerful wish for the future indeed! Baby nothing, this bathwater is emitting mustard gas!
So what's to be done, eh?
Well, here's the ten point list for restoring our credibility. Yes, I'm gonna be prescriptive.
1. Head for the front-lines: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere. Don't wait for video cameras to show up: just do it. While I don't know enough to speak for the other major religions, the most respected Christians of the last century were Mother Theresa, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoner, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for social justice. Pope John-Paul II and Billy Graham might come next, and both of them may have faced criticism for this and that, but they also both were exactly who they said they were.
2. If we don't understand it, don't talk about it. There are very smart religious people in every field of knowledge, who have well-informed and worthwhile views on everything from Harry Potter to Creation to the moral questions raised by medical technology that can keep a person alive long after they would have died back in the days when religious positions on euthanasia were originally formed. Let's listen to them, and support them, instead of wading in over our heads! If I meet another Christian who says "I haven't read them, but I'm sure the Harry Potter books are all about the occult, so you shouldn’t read them, either," I'm gonna scream. (Also: respect other fields of knowledge for what they do. If I meet another Christian who flatly says, "I'd never see a counselor: I'm a believer!" I'll scream, too.)
3. Stop being satisfied with "well, that's what I believe." Nobody else is satisfied with that answer, so if we want to get beyond, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," we'll need to dig up something a little more convincing.
4. Recognize that fundamentalism is not only off-putting, but too inflexible to respond to a quickly-changing world. (See here if you disagree) -- fundamentalism turns faith into a foxhole where we hide, when a framework of belief ought to be a hill on which we stand to get a better view of things. Once faith began repudiating society, rather than working in and with it, we started the long march toward irrelevance.
5. Find a positive definition for who we are and what we believe, instead of a negative one. Instead of focusing on how the others are wrong, or bad, let's create and maintain a positive community, where the communal and spiritual benefits of membership are so obvious that recruiting is unnecessary. Instead of writing hate letters to Richard Dawkins, let's get our butts into the community and help so many people, in such tangible ways, that non-religious people stop nodding their heads in assent with Dawkins, and start exclaiming, "Who is this clown? Has he ever actually met a Christian? Why doesn't he attack groups that deserve to be taken down a notch?"
6. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
7. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people use religion and religious language for personal, political, social, or financial gain.
(by the way, if religion must get political, we need to pick our battles better: it is an outrage that the Christian lobby in America is fighting against gay marriage and supporting the war in Iraq, rather than lobbying with every ounce for universal health care in America, help for the poor, and social freedoms everywhere. So what if Christians were called "bleeding heart liberals" when they opposed slavery -- it's better than getting tied in with Bush's oil crusade.)
8. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people preach hate, murder or fear, while waving religious flags. The world needs to know that we are just as offended as they are by Fred Phelps, and his ilk, and that they are a lunatic fringe, in no way representative of the majority of religious people, who are decent, moral, and helpful, and loving: these people are the straw man I mentioned in part three. Instead, we need to get behind people like the writer of this letter, and represent. If we don't hold the wackos accountable in-house, we'll be grouped with them.
9. Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?
10. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
Soundtrack: hit play on Huun Huur Tu, the Tuvan Throat Singers who are like nothing you've EVER heard before.
Yeh.
On Modern Religion's To Do List for finding a way spirituality can jive with the Global Village and the Information Age: Here's where things get harder. We have to do something about these dilemmas; if we bend too far, then we don't really stand for anything, but if we're unwilling to bend, we're irrelevant, because we can't contribute anything to a dialogue if we aren't also listening.
Engage with: art, other religions, humanities and science in a way that doesn't condemn, condescend to, inherently repudiate, or attempt to establish primacy over any of them, and that is more meaningful than simply "agree to disagree." Religion is no longer the core value of society, and the faster we adjust to this, the better off we'll be.
Recognize that the polemical passages in the holy books were written at times when religious groups needed to band together in the face of persecution, or to create a good strong "in-group" feeling that helped them fight off the raiders from the hills, and do not fit in a global village with quickly dissolving borders. It's a new world, where "us" meets "them" every day, such Amish-style segregation or cloistered fear of the "other" no longer washes. Think really carefully about such passages, and how they ARE used vs. how they SHOULD be used, if at all (we've stopped following other parts of the bible; I'm sure it's the same for the Quran). The world will allow us to keep repeating the same "we're right, they're wrong" points. . . but our audience will shrink with each repetition, until religion as we know it will remain only in quaint little pockets, neatly segregated like the Pennsylvanian Amish now, and ignored except as a novelty.
Recognize that the world is very different than it was when the holy books were written and when the organized religions' infrastructures were designed. We must adapt or fade away: an overly rigid top-down model is too cumbersome for the quick shifts of the information age. We need to recognize and empower grass roots movements, and make information freely available. In the age of transparency, being authoritarian and mysterious breeds mistrust instead of a sense of sacred awe.
Think very carefully about the arrogance inherent in any claim to be the "one, true religion," and how often one's religion mostly depends on one's birthplace and family. Think long and hard about what kind of creator would send all Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Atheists (basically, all Notmygroupians), to hell, basically because they had the misfortune of being born in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, China, Israel, America, or France, instead of in Myculturesville. Think long and hard about how the claim God would send every Muslim to hell for the sin of being born in the Middle East or North Africa, makes God look a little arbitrary and capricious, and also kind of reeks of 19th century colonial arrogance. Think about the possibility (and the hope) that God is subtle enough to see beyond a checklist of signifiers ("Baptized? Check. Communion? Check. Sinner’s prayer? Check. Went to church every Sunday? Check. OK, You’re in." "You? Sorry. My name's God, not Allah. You wanted to serve me, but you were reading the wrong book. Tough nuts for you!") and actually read the heart. Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
(a sidenote tangentially related to the previous point:
One final thought about Richard Dawkins and his book:
I must say that I respect Dawkins' integrity in qualifying even the chapter that "has contained the central argument of [his] book" (187), by titling it "Why there Almost Certainly Is No God" (my emphasis) rather than "Why There Is Definitely No God" -- to qualify even the statement he most passionately believes to be true shows an impressive accountability to the other side, to the possibility that he might yet be wrong. One of the things I respect about the scientific method is that scientists always know exactly what it would take to change their mind about a topic: compelling evidence. If faced with that evidence, any self-respecting scientist WOULD change sides.
This might sound like a petty swipe, but I sincerely wish I saw such "I don't think I am, but I still might be wrong" intellectual integrity and humility in more religious debates and inter-faith dialogues; things might go a little more smoothly if we did.
sidenote over.)
Create a framework that is integrated and useful. By integrated I mean NOT saying "Here's the sphere of religion; here's the sphere of art; here's the sphere of science, and never the twain shall meet," but one that acknowledges all aspects of being a human, alive and learning, in the modern world, and finds useful ways that each aspect can enhance and inform the others.
See, I think organized religion can be really good. It can offer people a chance at connection and community; it offers a hope for the future that'll get you through the deep valley, when applied properly and compassionately. It provides a concrete moral compass as well as a community that can be around, ready to help when the things get confusing, or when the feces hit the fan. It can connect people with opportunities to make a difference in others' lives, to help others in concrete ways, and it can inspire them to get involved. These are all good things, and I (unlike Mr. Dawkins) am convinced that despite having been abused, and despite some hiccups of intolerance and ugliness, the world IS better because of religion's influence through history.
Yeah, things look bad right now, and it's time for a splash of cold water and an honest look in the mirror for pastors, priests, imams, rabbis, monks and everyone else who is responsible for saying of religion, "This is what we are." It's time for a calling to account of those who are manipulating religion and the religious for their own ends. It's not too late.
You know, the only time in the Bible that we see Jesus fly into a full-blown rage is when he was cleaning the money-changers and crooks out of the temple: the people who used the name of God for their own personal business made Christ himself see red! When religion has become a lever for financial or political gain to many, let's ask again, "What would Jesus do"? He would have stormed into those bastards' offices and started flipping tables!
To survive this atheist attack, faithful readers, it's time our religious institutions did the same.
Update: My friend tamie is a beautiful human being, in all the important senses of the word, and she writes beautifully about why religion, why going to a church (or a temple, or a mosque) IS a good thing. Don't take it from me; Here's why faith can still be relevant.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part three: The Straw Man We Gave Him
Soundtrack: just hit play and start reading.
REM: Losing My Religion
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
I strongly recommend you read my summary/explanation Dawkins' his attack on Christian morality, here. I did not include it in the essay, for the sake of length and aesthetics, but it is important/worthwhile to read, and know what I'm talking about, and my basis for the assertions I make here.
I read Dawkins' book carefully: I sure wasn't going to let him get away with anything, when he's taking aim, among other things, at the first twenty-two years of my life, and the better part of the following six, most of my moral fiber, as well as my Dad's livelihood. I was looking, and expecting, to find the straw man argument -- a logical error where someone misrepresents an opponent's position.
And oh, I had my radar set on ultra-sensitive! I would sniff out the first hint of straw like a bloodhound with hayfever! And. . . Dawkins looked ready to offer a straw man. In Chapter Nine, he describes a Jewish child being kidnapped (rescued) by the Catholic Church, taken from his home to be raised by good Catholics instead of by hellbound Jesus-killers (according to them). Now, the problem is, this happened in the late 1800s, and after the ground-rules he himself established in Chapter Seven (about the moral zeitgeist, and the necessity to refrain from judging other eras according to modern values), Dawkins' offering an example of religious fervour gone haywire from bygone times is a red herring. "Yes!" I thought, "Next he's going to start referencing the Inquisition and the Crusades, and then we'll have him: all we have to do is answer, 'Well times have changed, you know; we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.' " Every bickering couple knows that bringing up the past just makes things ugly, and only hurts your case. Never give up the high ground!
I had my "the scientist doth protest too much" defense at the ready, tucked in my sleeve and ready to lay on the table decisively and gleefully!
But then Dawkins did something. . . not entirely unexpected, but much more problematic for the defense. He didn't name-drop the Crusades or the Inquisition, except to mention that he wouldn't unfairly dredge up times when religion was a mere excuse for manipulative, power-mad or hateful people to puke their black souls all over whatever institution had given them power and leeway. Darn! He saw me coming, and refused to pull the cheap trick that would have given me the rhetorical high ground! Instead. . . (Mayday! Mayday!). . . he started drawing examples from mainstream religion in the last seven years!
Forget corrupt Medieval Popes and Bloody Mary and all the Reformation wars -- that stuff's easy to dismiss. Our man Dawkins planned to use relevant examples!
So instead of this:
he was using this:
(Ann Coulter is the most abrasive person I've ever seen.)
and this:
(Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated.)
This would be harder than I thought. In fact, it shaped up as the worst-case scenario: he had a leg to stand on! His one example of the Church's immoral behaviour from times past (when the moral zeitgeist hadn't developed as far as it has now), got my hopes up, but the following pages and chapters chronicled examples of religious intolerance, clannishness, and extreme fundamentalism from our very own day and age. So many, and so sharp, it is shocking and dismaying.
From Salon.com, a few articles I spotted that kind of get at some of the problems:
October 23, 2007: "How Bush Wrecked Conservatism" -
"The Coulterization of The American Right"
"In Bush We Trust" -- GWB has attempted to set in place a theocracy
Soundtrack: Hit play and read.
Jim White: If Jesus Drove a Motorhome
Pastor Poposeyo called on Wednesday night, and we brushed on some of this, and then I veered away, saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my next post."
Here's the problem, dear readers.
Of all the spiritual and faithful people I know, I don't think any of them believe America, or any government, should be(come) a theocracy. Most of them bluster when they hear somebody lobbying to put creation into the science curriculum. They rankle when somebody says that the only proper place for a Christian woman is in the home, submitting humbly to her husband and head. Most of the Christian women I know don't wear floral prints, and none of them own any precious moments paraphernalia. They can't listen to Christian Talk Radio without squirming.
To a person, they agree that faith works best when tempered by sensitivity, humility, tact, and reason, and that it behooves each person of faith to build a workable framework by which they can be spiritual and intelligent, guided by faith and common sense, living integrated and edifying lives. Most of them try, in different ways, to develop their social consciousness and make the world better in practical ways. They volunteer, and sponsor acres of rain-forest and children in Afghanistan.
Problem is, these aren't the people jumping in front of TV cameras, representing the various faiths. Somehow, the media digs up the dumbest, most knee-jerk conservatives for their pundits and random interviewees, and make it look like Christian folk are all either gun totin' tabacca chewin', gay-hatin' furraner fearin' right-wing nuts, or Ann Coulter. Ditto for the other faiths. The Christian lobby's agenda is so different from the goals of the spiritual people I know personally, that it's a little startling to see them both described as Christian. The way the religious are portrayed in movies is even worse (case in point: I watched "There Will Be Blood" today;) but whose fault is it that screenwriters only have Pat Robertson to watch on TV as an example of "What Christians are like"?
Unfortunately, it is our fault. You see, we let those wingnuts speak for us. The moderate faithful, rather than kicking up a duststorm of our own, asserting our existence and saying "Hey! Not every Christian agrees with Jerry Falwell!" and getting behind the spokespeople who do, we quietly distance ourselves from the fundamentalist wingnuts, and the politicized, fundamentalist Christian Lobby. Oh, so quietly, we distance ourselves. We do not denounce them publicly so that it damages their credibility (and boosts ours) but quietly, so that nobody notices, and our silence is mistaken for tacit approval, or even assent.
As a result, instead of the Christan community marginalizing the crazies in-house, thus marking our turf and claiming a workable place in enlightened society, we have allowed them to bark and squeal, never complaining that they do not actually represent us. Because, in our complacency, we did not marginalize them, we have now been grouped with them, and marginalized by ever-growing tracts of the educated, democratic world.
In conclusion, the problem is not that Richard Dawkins uses a straw-man argument to discredit organized religion, dear readers; the problem is, we have given him the straw man, and it is not surprising, now that we have allowed the media and the intelligentsia to lump us all together, that we find ourselves under attack.
Dear, faithful readers, the moderates have dropped the ball, and now we are reaping what we allowed others to sow, as if on our behalf: we are losing our credibility, and our voice.
From the outside, this is how we look:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, on 9/12/2001
I could go on, but even Dawkins is kind enough not to cite more of that kind of dreck in his book -- though he does tell you where you can find it.
All of us are being made to look smug, tribal, belligerent, interested (that is, angling for our own interests, rather than fighting for things like social justice), willfully ignorant, and (thanks, gay-bashers) hateful. Soon to be irrelevant, too if we keep on in this direction.
If Christians at large represented themselves, and supported moderate, sensible spokespeople, and leaned on the media for going with the unfair, cheap stereotypes instead of actual representatives, and meanwhile became the kind of wellspring of grace and love and acceptance, the powerful force fighting for justice and defending the helpless that religion has (at its best, during certain periods) been, then people would read Dawkins' attack and say, "Who is this clown, and where is he digging up his examples? I don't think he's ever met an actual Christian in his life!" instead of nodding their heads and thinking, "Yeah, I've seen/heard/read/met someone exactly like that." It is our fault that people do not. The dire truth, faithful readers, is that at this point, Dawkins IS right, far too often, and we need to get back to proving him wrong. Stay tuned for part 4: How.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
REM: Losing My Religion
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
I strongly recommend you read my summary/explanation Dawkins' his attack on Christian morality, here. I did not include it in the essay, for the sake of length and aesthetics, but it is important/worthwhile to read, and know what I'm talking about, and my basis for the assertions I make here.
I read Dawkins' book carefully: I sure wasn't going to let him get away with anything, when he's taking aim, among other things, at the first twenty-two years of my life, and the better part of the following six, most of my moral fiber, as well as my Dad's livelihood. I was looking, and expecting, to find the straw man argument -- a logical error where someone misrepresents an opponent's position.
And oh, I had my radar set on ultra-sensitive! I would sniff out the first hint of straw like a bloodhound with hayfever! And. . . Dawkins looked ready to offer a straw man. In Chapter Nine, he describes a Jewish child being kidnapped (rescued) by the Catholic Church, taken from his home to be raised by good Catholics instead of by hellbound Jesus-killers (according to them). Now, the problem is, this happened in the late 1800s, and after the ground-rules he himself established in Chapter Seven (about the moral zeitgeist, and the necessity to refrain from judging other eras according to modern values), Dawkins' offering an example of religious fervour gone haywire from bygone times is a red herring. "Yes!" I thought, "Next he's going to start referencing the Inquisition and the Crusades, and then we'll have him: all we have to do is answer, 'Well times have changed, you know; we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.' " Every bickering couple knows that bringing up the past just makes things ugly, and only hurts your case. Never give up the high ground!
I had my "the scientist doth protest too much" defense at the ready, tucked in my sleeve and ready to lay on the table decisively and gleefully!
But then Dawkins did something. . . not entirely unexpected, but much more problematic for the defense. He didn't name-drop the Crusades or the Inquisition, except to mention that he wouldn't unfairly dredge up times when religion was a mere excuse for manipulative, power-mad or hateful people to puke their black souls all over whatever institution had given them power and leeway. Darn! He saw me coming, and refused to pull the cheap trick that would have given me the rhetorical high ground! Instead. . . (Mayday! Mayday!). . . he started drawing examples from mainstream religion in the last seven years!
Forget corrupt Medieval Popes and Bloody Mary and all the Reformation wars -- that stuff's easy to dismiss. Our man Dawkins planned to use relevant examples!
So instead of this:
he was using this:
(Ann Coulter is the most abrasive person I've ever seen.)
and this:
(Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated.)
This would be harder than I thought. In fact, it shaped up as the worst-case scenario: he had a leg to stand on! His one example of the Church's immoral behaviour from times past (when the moral zeitgeist hadn't developed as far as it has now), got my hopes up, but the following pages and chapters chronicled examples of religious intolerance, clannishness, and extreme fundamentalism from our very own day and age. So many, and so sharp, it is shocking and dismaying.
From Salon.com, a few articles I spotted that kind of get at some of the problems:
October 23, 2007: "How Bush Wrecked Conservatism" -
"The Coulterization of The American Right"
"In Bush We Trust" -- GWB has attempted to set in place a theocracy
Soundtrack: Hit play and read.
Jim White: If Jesus Drove a Motorhome
Pastor Poposeyo called on Wednesday night, and we brushed on some of this, and then I veered away, saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my next post."
Here's the problem, dear readers.
Of all the spiritual and faithful people I know, I don't think any of them believe America, or any government, should be(come) a theocracy. Most of them bluster when they hear somebody lobbying to put creation into the science curriculum. They rankle when somebody says that the only proper place for a Christian woman is in the home, submitting humbly to her husband and head. Most of the Christian women I know don't wear floral prints, and none of them own any precious moments paraphernalia. They can't listen to Christian Talk Radio without squirming.
To a person, they agree that faith works best when tempered by sensitivity, humility, tact, and reason, and that it behooves each person of faith to build a workable framework by which they can be spiritual and intelligent, guided by faith and common sense, living integrated and edifying lives. Most of them try, in different ways, to develop their social consciousness and make the world better in practical ways. They volunteer, and sponsor acres of rain-forest and children in Afghanistan.
Problem is, these aren't the people jumping in front of TV cameras, representing the various faiths. Somehow, the media digs up the dumbest, most knee-jerk conservatives for their pundits and random interviewees, and make it look like Christian folk are all either gun totin' tabacca chewin', gay-hatin' furraner fearin' right-wing nuts, or Ann Coulter. Ditto for the other faiths. The Christian lobby's agenda is so different from the goals of the spiritual people I know personally, that it's a little startling to see them both described as Christian. The way the religious are portrayed in movies is even worse (case in point: I watched "There Will Be Blood" today;) but whose fault is it that screenwriters only have Pat Robertson to watch on TV as an example of "What Christians are like"?
Unfortunately, it is our fault. You see, we let those wingnuts speak for us. The moderate faithful, rather than kicking up a duststorm of our own, asserting our existence and saying "Hey! Not every Christian agrees with Jerry Falwell!" and getting behind the spokespeople who do, we quietly distance ourselves from the fundamentalist wingnuts, and the politicized, fundamentalist Christian Lobby. Oh, so quietly, we distance ourselves. We do not denounce them publicly so that it damages their credibility (and boosts ours) but quietly, so that nobody notices, and our silence is mistaken for tacit approval, or even assent.
As a result, instead of the Christan community marginalizing the crazies in-house, thus marking our turf and claiming a workable place in enlightened society, we have allowed them to bark and squeal, never complaining that they do not actually represent us. Because, in our complacency, we did not marginalize them, we have now been grouped with them, and marginalized by ever-growing tracts of the educated, democratic world.
In conclusion, the problem is not that Richard Dawkins uses a straw-man argument to discredit organized religion, dear readers; the problem is, we have given him the straw man, and it is not surprising, now that we have allowed the media and the intelligentsia to lump us all together, that we find ourselves under attack.
Dear, faithful readers, the moderates have dropped the ball, and now we are reaping what we allowed others to sow, as if on our behalf: we are losing our credibility, and our voice.
From the outside, this is how we look:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, on 9/12/2001
I could go on, but even Dawkins is kind enough not to cite more of that kind of dreck in his book -- though he does tell you where you can find it.
All of us are being made to look smug, tribal, belligerent, interested (that is, angling for our own interests, rather than fighting for things like social justice), willfully ignorant, and (thanks, gay-bashers) hateful. Soon to be irrelevant, too if we keep on in this direction.
If Christians at large represented themselves, and supported moderate, sensible spokespeople, and leaned on the media for going with the unfair, cheap stereotypes instead of actual representatives, and meanwhile became the kind of wellspring of grace and love and acceptance, the powerful force fighting for justice and defending the helpless that religion has (at its best, during certain periods) been, then people would read Dawkins' attack and say, "Who is this clown, and where is he digging up his examples? I don't think he's ever met an actual Christian in his life!" instead of nodding their heads and thinking, "Yeah, I've seen/heard/read/met someone exactly like that." It is our fault that people do not. The dire truth, faithful readers, is that at this point, Dawkins IS right, far too often, and we need to get back to proving him wrong. Stay tuned for part 4: How.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part two: Creation/Evolution, Science and Anti-intellectualism
For the sake of length, attention span, and aesthetics, I moved my summary of Richard Dawkins' explanation of darwinism/origins here. If you want more background, read up! If you think you can go it without, read on!
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
"Jesus" by Velvet Underground -- one of my favourite VU songs.
A name came into my mind as I was thinking about this whole Creation/Evolution thing. See, Darwin is not the first scientist whose theory flew in the face of conventional theology. Let's think for a moment about Galileo:
In 1633 Galileo Galilei was imprisoned for publishing his theory that the earth rotated around the sun, rather than vice versa. This idea didn't fit with the way the church understood scripture at the time. However, the inquisition found it easier to throw one guy up against the wall than to re-think the arrangement of the heavens. For them, putting Galileo in the wrong through sheer force of "because I said so," was easier than going through all that thinking.
If we look at this with a little perspective, I’m sorry folks, but the creationist lobby flying in the face of all the cumulative scientific evidence just doesn't wash any better than those priests arguing to Galileo, “That can’t be! The bible says. . . “. Arguing for the six-day, young earth creation in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is a losing battle, and the more bitterly creationists fight it, the sillier all Christians ultimately look.
Now, we shake our heads and snicker at how short-sighted and self-serving Pope Urban VIII and Robert Cardinal Bellarmine were when they released the hounds on Galileo; we tut-tut that they should have been open-minded enough not to impede the march of science, we intone that such blatantly obvious truths, based on growing volumes of observable evidence, should have been given more weight. . .
And three hundred years from now, I have very little doubt that people will sniff and snort in the same way at George W. Bush and James Dobson and the Kansas School Board and whoever else is trying to get Intelligent Design on the science curriculum. (Heck, the Kansas School Board is already being mercilessly mocked, and it isn't even a decade!)
How is this any different, really? It's the same dilemma: it's less work to dismiss a new idea than to factor it into a new, workable framework, but folks, citing scripture to disprove Darwin only further undermines the intellectual credibility of all faith, and undermining our own credibility, in a world with a multitude of voices competing for attention, is the very, very last thing we want to do!
Just as the church, after Galileo, had to reinterpret and retool the way they understood the bible's account of Earth's place in the universe, the burden lies on us to be intellectually responsible and re-examine our approach to Genesis creation story. Falsely setting up faith and intelligence as mutually exclusive sets religion on a path toward total irrelevance, so a tactical retreat is in order: we are wasting energy and credibility on losing battles, and it would suit us better to get back to the areas where the church still CAN have influence in the world: feed hungry, clothe naked, help prisoners, defend the defenseless, fight for justice, so that even if people can't agree that the bible (or any other holy book) is scientific, they can agree that Christians (or any other believers), through tireless effort, are certainly making the world a better place.
And you know what else, folks? Faith SURVIVED Galileo. Big G's publications weren't an attack, and they only damaged the church exactly as much as the church leaders proved themselves ignorant and dogmatic in response to Galileo's attempt to learn more about God's Creation. Faith CAN survive Darwin too, if we're willing to re-think this whole origin thing with open minds.
I am afraid that, if fundamentalism runs unchecked (both here and in the Muslim world), religion will come to be seen as a politicized, rallying point for dogmatism, a point from which one guards against new ideas, rather than one vantage point from which one can survey all the various fields of knowledge in the world God (presumably) created. If this drawing-lines-in-the-sand, belief-over-evidence trend continues, religiousity will slowly become marginalized, viewed as anti-intellectual and (next after that) outright superstitious, and then (eventually) anachronistic, a leftover of “those dark, old superstitious days of the bloody religious wars." Richard Dawkins will be proven a prophet!
There has to be another way.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins, Part 1: Parameters
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.
(King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 and 3, by Neutral Milk Hotel.)
What the hell are you doing, Roboseyo? Why do you zero in on the most controversial topic you can? I mean, everybody knows that religion, politics and money are poor form and bad manners at the dinner table.
True, true, it is bad manners. (Why do you have your computer at the dinner table, anyway?) But, you see, this guy named Richard Dawkins, a respected scientist, has written a book, and gained fame and notoriety by suggesting that, GASP! religion is not only wrong, but, to wit, the world would be better off if it disappeared entirely! (He even makes a case for why religion should not be privileged above other topics, and made "off limits" for any critical talk, thus, according to him, it's open season already, anyway.)
While my faith does not follow the exact pattern of my dad, Pastor Poposeyo, who sent me to Christian schools and everything (I chose the Christian university myself, though), my spiritual life is very important to me, and it enriches my life a lot (even if I don't talk about it often, and then only obtusely). Yeah, I've unorthodox'd the hell out of what I believed back in high school, but when old Dr. Dawkins publicly, articulately and unequivocally says the world would be better off if religion vanished completely, regardless of my mixed opinions and oddball postures, I stand up and take notice.
As humans often do when faced with a sustained and emphatic attack, many religious folks find it comfortable to write Richard Dawkins and his polemic off completely, either disregarding his rhetoric, or counterattacking.
However, I don't think either of those responses quite washes. If my colleague comes to me and says, "Hey, can we talk about the way you sing loudly to yourself and laugh randomly and suddenly at your inner monologue's jokes during office hours?" and I plug my ears and shout, "NANANANANANA" until she goes away, or call her a dum-dum-head and slap her with my brown-bag lunch, I'm not exactly winning friends, OR influencing people. Faced with a harsh criticism, I ultimately help my office-cred more when I try to look for the valid points beneath mean Sharon's* brutal honesty (even if she IS a shrew).
(Names have been changed to protect the privacy of shrew coworkers. Danielle.)
The hardest times in my life are the ones that taught me the most. . . might it not be the same with criticisms, that the harshest appraisal can teach me the most? Moreover, why WOULDN'T a group being roundly attacked listen carefully to those attacks. . . and rather than listening only to gather ammo for the counterattack, why not listen, and then root out the cause for those criticisms, and do away with them, pulling the rug right out from under such strident opponents? Scratch any criticism, however aggressive, however rude, and there's a teachable moment. . . if we listen. (Yes, I'm using first person plural to refer to the huddled hordes of spiritual people; hope you don't mind.)
Iron sharpens iron. Accountability helps me become a better person, and by the same token, I believe organized religions would be better served by listening humbly to Richard Dawkins' intelligent and not ungrounded attacks, than by simply ignoring or condemning him. Personally, I think Dawkins' book (and Christopher Hitchens' book, etc,) is a wake-up call of the highest order, friends, and urgent as indigestion! Whether he's right about everything or not, whether his information is all accurate and fair might be debatable, but what cannot be argued is that THIS is what modern religious practice and culture looks like to an outside observer, and THAT, dear readers, is a sobering thought.
My discussion of Richard Dawkins' attack upon Christendom and religiondom in all its stripes and shades, will come in four parts. This, the first one, will basically only outline the reason I'm writing, and what I am and am not trying to do with this series. The next one will deal with what Dawkins says about origins, and the way religions have responded to scientific claims about origin. The third one will deal with Dawkins' direct attacks on organized religion and practice in the second half of his book, and how I think religious leaders ought to respond to them. The final one will discuss, "what next" -- what is the outlook for the future of organized religion, in light of the attacks and criticisms discussed in the first three parts of the essay.
Parameters and Disclaimers:
So I read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"; I read it with an open mind, because if you've made up your mind what you plan to think about a book before even reading it, why waste your time? I headed in ready to be convinced (if he presented a convincing case), but also carefully attuned for bullocks (if he misstepped). If you're not willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt, you probably won't agree with most of the rest of what I say here, so kindly move on. (Here is as good a place as any.)
In this series,
1. I AM discussing organized religion at large. To do this, I will paint with a broad brush. These are generalizations, and OF COURSE I know that not all religious people act in the way I describe; however, when a critic like Mr. Dawkins sees what he sees when he looks in from the outside, it means that TOO MANY religious people ARE acting in the way I describe (if they weren't, Dawkins would have no reason to aim his big guns at religion, and would have picked on somebody else, like maybe nationalists, or capitalists, cheese-eaters, or SUV drivers).
2. I AM dealing with material Richard Dawkins discusses in his book "The God Delusion" -- I may refer to a few other books. I strongly recommend you read this book, if you are not sure what you think about this topic, or if you are VERY sure what you think: an unchallenged victory is without honour, and an unchallenged belief is vulnerable both to attack AND manipulation. If somebody can recommend an intelligent, well-written and persuasive defense of God and religiousity, please cite it in the comment board! There are other books both for and against Christianity, faith in general, and God, but I haven't read them, so we'll just have to keep the focus narrow, to indulge my ignorance and laziness. (I do recommend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller, a defence of Darwinism written by a scientist who is also a devout Christian.)
3. I AM discussing religion as it is practiced in modern society; this won't be a philosophical or theological discussion; it will be a discussion of current practice and attitudes toward religion, as seen by a careful and interested observer (your friendly neighbourhood Roboseyo). The practice is the interpretation and embodiment of a religion's beliefs; the texts might show what we want to be, but the actions show what we are. As such, I am not here to discuss what Paul, or Jesus, or Mohammed said about religion, nor how I personally am spiritually fed; I am here to discuss how religion is practiced by its followers today, and how it appears to outsiders.
As THIS GUY says (about Islam, this time) here, "People say 'you can't judge islam by its followers' but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers" -- nobody cares what the playbook looks like if the team can't win on the field. Or as one might say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the recipe.
4. I AM trying to offer a look at current religious controversies that will be interesting to non-religious outsiders, and challenging to religious readers.
5. I AM trying to discuss the organized religions in general (because Dawkins' attack is a general attack on organized religions); however, like him, I was raised in a Christian family, so that's what I know. Some of my comments may be a little Church-0-centric, out of ignorance of the finer details of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., not because I think that they are irrelevant. Hopefully the principles I discuss are broad enough that they can be applied to other groups as well. Also: I live in Korea, and come from North America, so a lot of my examples discuss the North American and Korean church; this is not meant as a snub to Europe, South Asia, or anywhere else, but a simple concession that I don't know as much about them.
Also, in this series,
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God exists.
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God does not exist.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of one religion over another.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of science over religion, or vice versa.
I am NOT attacking you, personally, or your beliefs (really, I swear).
I am NOT ignoring the great variety of different ways people practice religion, and saying every religious person is the same.
I am NOT saying I approve of the strident, and some say shrill way Dawkins attacks religion.
As I said before, and as King Solomon (may have) said long before me, "Iron sharpens iron" -- clear, focused, intellectually vigorous thought begets more clear, focussed, intellectually vigorous thought, and right or wrong, Dawkins has given me a great deal of intelligently and vigorously argued thoughts about God and religion. This WILL sharpen my own thinking, trimming the fat of superstition away, and leaving only the muscular integrity of tested belief, and that, dear readers, is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.
(King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 and 3, by Neutral Milk Hotel.)
What the hell are you doing, Roboseyo? Why do you zero in on the most controversial topic you can? I mean, everybody knows that religion, politics and money are poor form and bad manners at the dinner table.
True, true, it is bad manners. (Why do you have your computer at the dinner table, anyway?) But, you see, this guy named Richard Dawkins, a respected scientist, has written a book, and gained fame and notoriety by suggesting that, GASP! religion is not only wrong, but, to wit, the world would be better off if it disappeared entirely! (He even makes a case for why religion should not be privileged above other topics, and made "off limits" for any critical talk, thus, according to him, it's open season already, anyway.)
While my faith does not follow the exact pattern of my dad, Pastor Poposeyo, who sent me to Christian schools and everything (I chose the Christian university myself, though), my spiritual life is very important to me, and it enriches my life a lot (even if I don't talk about it often, and then only obtusely). Yeah, I've unorthodox'd the hell out of what I believed back in high school, but when old Dr. Dawkins publicly, articulately and unequivocally says the world would be better off if religion vanished completely, regardless of my mixed opinions and oddball postures, I stand up and take notice.
As humans often do when faced with a sustained and emphatic attack, many religious folks find it comfortable to write Richard Dawkins and his polemic off completely, either disregarding his rhetoric, or counterattacking.
However, I don't think either of those responses quite washes. If my colleague comes to me and says, "Hey, can we talk about the way you sing loudly to yourself and laugh randomly and suddenly at your inner monologue's jokes during office hours?" and I plug my ears and shout, "NANANANANANA" until she goes away, or call her a dum-dum-head and slap her with my brown-bag lunch, I'm not exactly winning friends, OR influencing people. Faced with a harsh criticism, I ultimately help my office-cred more when I try to look for the valid points beneath mean Sharon's* brutal honesty (even if she IS a shrew).
(Names have been changed to protect the privacy of shrew coworkers. Danielle.)
The hardest times in my life are the ones that taught me the most. . . might it not be the same with criticisms, that the harshest appraisal can teach me the most? Moreover, why WOULDN'T a group being roundly attacked listen carefully to those attacks. . . and rather than listening only to gather ammo for the counterattack, why not listen, and then root out the cause for those criticisms, and do away with them, pulling the rug right out from under such strident opponents? Scratch any criticism, however aggressive, however rude, and there's a teachable moment. . . if we listen. (Yes, I'm using first person plural to refer to the huddled hordes of spiritual people; hope you don't mind.)
Iron sharpens iron. Accountability helps me become a better person, and by the same token, I believe organized religions would be better served by listening humbly to Richard Dawkins' intelligent and not ungrounded attacks, than by simply ignoring or condemning him. Personally, I think Dawkins' book (and Christopher Hitchens' book, etc,) is a wake-up call of the highest order, friends, and urgent as indigestion! Whether he's right about everything or not, whether his information is all accurate and fair might be debatable, but what cannot be argued is that THIS is what modern religious practice and culture looks like to an outside observer, and THAT, dear readers, is a sobering thought.
My discussion of Richard Dawkins' attack upon Christendom and religiondom in all its stripes and shades, will come in four parts. This, the first one, will basically only outline the reason I'm writing, and what I am and am not trying to do with this series. The next one will deal with what Dawkins says about origins, and the way religions have responded to scientific claims about origin. The third one will deal with Dawkins' direct attacks on organized religion and practice in the second half of his book, and how I think religious leaders ought to respond to them. The final one will discuss, "what next" -- what is the outlook for the future of organized religion, in light of the attacks and criticisms discussed in the first three parts of the essay.
Parameters and Disclaimers:
So I read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"; I read it with an open mind, because if you've made up your mind what you plan to think about a book before even reading it, why waste your time? I headed in ready to be convinced (if he presented a convincing case), but also carefully attuned for bullocks (if he misstepped). If you're not willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt, you probably won't agree with most of the rest of what I say here, so kindly move on. (Here is as good a place as any.)
In this series,
1. I AM discussing organized religion at large. To do this, I will paint with a broad brush. These are generalizations, and OF COURSE I know that not all religious people act in the way I describe; however, when a critic like Mr. Dawkins sees what he sees when he looks in from the outside, it means that TOO MANY religious people ARE acting in the way I describe (if they weren't, Dawkins would have no reason to aim his big guns at religion, and would have picked on somebody else, like maybe nationalists, or capitalists, cheese-eaters, or SUV drivers).
2. I AM dealing with material Richard Dawkins discusses in his book "The God Delusion" -- I may refer to a few other books. I strongly recommend you read this book, if you are not sure what you think about this topic, or if you are VERY sure what you think: an unchallenged victory is without honour, and an unchallenged belief is vulnerable both to attack AND manipulation. If somebody can recommend an intelligent, well-written and persuasive defense of God and religiousity, please cite it in the comment board! There are other books both for and against Christianity, faith in general, and God, but I haven't read them, so we'll just have to keep the focus narrow, to indulge my ignorance and laziness. (I do recommend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller, a defence of Darwinism written by a scientist who is also a devout Christian.)
3. I AM discussing religion as it is practiced in modern society; this won't be a philosophical or theological discussion; it will be a discussion of current practice and attitudes toward religion, as seen by a careful and interested observer (your friendly neighbourhood Roboseyo). The practice is the interpretation and embodiment of a religion's beliefs; the texts might show what we want to be, but the actions show what we are. As such, I am not here to discuss what Paul, or Jesus, or Mohammed said about religion, nor how I personally am spiritually fed; I am here to discuss how religion is practiced by its followers today, and how it appears to outsiders.
As THIS GUY says (about Islam, this time) here, "People say 'you can't judge islam by its followers' but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers" -- nobody cares what the playbook looks like if the team can't win on the field. Or as one might say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the recipe.
4. I AM trying to offer a look at current religious controversies that will be interesting to non-religious outsiders, and challenging to religious readers.
5. I AM trying to discuss the organized religions in general (because Dawkins' attack is a general attack on organized religions); however, like him, I was raised in a Christian family, so that's what I know. Some of my comments may be a little Church-0-centric, out of ignorance of the finer details of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., not because I think that they are irrelevant. Hopefully the principles I discuss are broad enough that they can be applied to other groups as well. Also: I live in Korea, and come from North America, so a lot of my examples discuss the North American and Korean church; this is not meant as a snub to Europe, South Asia, or anywhere else, but a simple concession that I don't know as much about them.
Also, in this series,
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God exists.
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God does not exist.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of one religion over another.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of science over religion, or vice versa.
I am NOT attacking you, personally, or your beliefs (really, I swear).
I am NOT ignoring the great variety of different ways people practice religion, and saying every religious person is the same.
I am NOT saying I approve of the strident, and some say shrill way Dawkins attacks religion.
As I said before, and as King Solomon (may have) said long before me, "Iron sharpens iron" -- clear, focused, intellectually vigorous thought begets more clear, focussed, intellectually vigorous thought, and right or wrong, Dawkins has given me a great deal of intelligently and vigorously argued thoughts about God and religion. This WILL sharpen my own thinking, trimming the fat of superstition away, and leaving only the muscular integrity of tested belief, and that, dear readers, is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Oh no. He's talking about religion again: The H-Bomb
Cake. Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell.
So, I read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins last week. It was really interesting, and I'm working on an essay series titled, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins" that will appear on the blog in several parts. If god talk is too much for you, I'll try to intersperse it with normal blogoseyo stuff, so it doesn't get too heavy.
Dawkins gave me a lot of food for thought, and stirred up a bunch of stuff I've had on my mind before, too.
Here's one interesting point. This wasn't in Dawkins, it was triggered by something I read here (point 10), which has been turning around in my head for a while.
I used to say "nobody flew airplanes into buildings to prove The Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones."
It was my way of saying "Religion is important. God is important. Don't dismiss it too lightly." Yeah, heart-poisoning hate, and a bunch of geopolitical yuk played its role, but in the box "reason for killing innocents" on their application for heaven, Osama's hijackers wrote, "Defending our Religion from the Infidel". So why is it, I thought, that when religion is on the table, the stakes get frighteningly, murderously high.
The answer is complex, but the theological part of it is simple.
Heaven and hell, grasshopper. Just so simple, polarized so quick. No middle ground can ever exist between two people who each honestly believe the other is going to hell.
See, if I say "I like avocado salad" and Robby-Bill-O, that charming hyuk from the boonies, says, "I like roast squirrel," we can go on our merry ways, cheerfully thinking, "To each his own."
But if I say "I like avocado salad, and you can go to hell if you don't!" and Robby-Bill-O, that ignint backwoods redneck says, "If you don't like roast squirrel, you can go straight to hell for all I care," it gets a little harder to let our differences slide without contesting the point. Especially when he's an uneducated redneck just parroting what his momma taught him, who never learned to think for himself the way I did in college. He can't even spell intransigent!
However, with religious talk, that's EXACTLY what happens. If my friend Ahmed says "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet," and I say, "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever shall believe may not perish, but shall have eternal life," the implication/assumption, "I'm going to heaven because I believe this" is there, not far from the surface. A little deeper underneath, "and if you don't, you aren't," is often tied on like a free sandpaper sample with my moisturizing lotion set. Those undertones have been known to complicate interfaith dialogue, yo.
My man Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) says "You can't bargain with the truth" in his song, "In the end."
It's a beautiful, light pop song, catchy and hummable, but the posture he strikes: "you can't bargain with the truth" is pretty inflexible; the song's actual message, packaged in this sound is like a brick in a fluffy pillowcase.
Two points come up because of this:
1. When neither side can supply compelling, empirical evidence, opposing truth claims kind of cancel each other out: all we can really, finally finish on is "well, you'll see after you die!" -- decision deferred. Seeing as nobody's come back from the dead and said, "Yeah, hey everyone, the Hindus had it right all along, and you're all coming back as rhino buttworms for fighting so much", we're back where we started, with my word against yours. Each tradition has a case for their truth claims, many followers, HUGE repositories of teachings, arguments, and anecdotes to support them, and all we finally finish with is several camps shouting what amounts to, "Is so!" "Is not!" "Oh yeah? You'll see!" "No, YOU'LL see!" in a see-saw with makes both sides look a bit small, when there are, you know, hungry mouths to feed and prisoners to visit and aid organizations to support and people being oppressed in all kinds of ways around the world.
2. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell, in the absence of the aforementioned empirical evidence, will not convince a rational thinker who does not already believe what I am telling them. Bringing heaven and hell into a conversation with a non-religious person pulls very little weight.
As this guy (same one I linked to earlier) pointed out, in rational discourse, one does not answer a question with a threat.
"Why should I agree with your doctrine of atonement?"
"Because you'll go to hell if you don't."
Because I can't prove that I'm right until we both die, that statement reads as a non sequitur, and makes further discussion impossible, just as much as
"Why should I vote socialist instead of conservative?"
"Because I'll punch you in the throat if you don't."
By the same token, the offer of heaven is unsupportable, except through reading from a book that my bud isn't convinced yet is true, and maybe anecdotes that he wasn't there to witness.
"Why should I come to church with you?"
"So you can come to heaven!"
is tantamount to
"Why should I sign this petition?"
"Because I'll give you a cookie." (admittedly, with much higher stakes, though)
Where the truth of an assertion is unprovable, incentives and disincentives to agreeing do not change the unprovability of said assertion.
Religions need to find a new way to legitimize their claims, and also to contradict their critics: if nothing else, this heaven and hell talk is a rhetorical dead-end. It also leaves religious proselytizers/apologists vulnerable as an inverted hedgehog to the old trap, where my non-religious friend asks me, "So do you think I'm going to hell, then?"
I have to either answer, "Yes." and piss off my bud, "No," and make it sound like I waffle on the very thing I want her to believe, or dodge, leaving myself open to the "You don't know. You CAN'T know" objection.
All I can really say is, "Here's the information, here's what I think, and like my man Yusuf Islam says, we'll all find out in the end". . . and then keep humble, because it might be ME who's wrong! It might be better to let God decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as tiny finite humans, respectfully step away. These days, when somebody asks me about heaven/hell topics, I answer, "Not mine to decide." Yeah, it's nice when somebody says, "I agree with your positions on X issue. You seem like a good Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/fillintheblank" -- but as far as I know, God doesn't ask for reference letters when separating the sheep from the goats.
So, as I hope I've demonstrated, playing the heaven and hell card is unfruitful at best, when dealing with someone who doesn't believe, and won't be convinced without evidence, and incendiary at worst, when dealing with someone who DOES believe in them, but passionately disagrees on how to get there.
Now don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in Heaven or Hell. Go ahead and believe in it, and even go ahead and play the heaven/hell card in a religious discussion, but recognize that it's taking you out of the realm of rational discourse and into the muddy waters of unsupportable faith-based belief. If you're comfortable starting sentences with "I believe that..." instead of "We can see that...", delve away. . . but don't expect to convince Richard Dawkins.
In fact, for the sake of good manners and mutual benefit in interfaith and faith/non-faith dialogues, we might be better served not to play the heaven and hell cards at all, unless we're honest enough to admit that the only support we have is our interpretation of the book our conversation partners haven't necessarily accepted as the absolute truth (and which they may interpret differently anyway), and using it is essentially a rhetorical molotov cocktail that boils down to "I'm right because I said I'm right, OK?", and turning the whole conversation from a discussion to an argument.
But religion IS important, right? I mean, remember what you said about the airplanes back in the beginning? Sure, it's important, but the airplanes bring us back to another important point. Flying airplanes into buildings didn't automatically make Osama's truth-claims right OR wrong. It's time to admit that the actions of a faith's adherents, though sincere, do not prove the TRUTH of their convictions, only the depth and type. Cutting off my finger because I believe the world is flat doesn't make me right; it only makes me a fanatic. Recognizing this distinction is another step toward an actual, fruitful interfaith dialogue. A million pilgrims walking the Camino trail in Spain does no more to prove Christianity's truth than a million Muslims doing the hajj in Saudi Arabia; it is a touching demonstration of devotion, but it doesn't actually change the facts under discussion.
Just because the worship of Isis and Amon-ra led to the building of the pyramids and the sphinx does not mean they deserve a continued following, if their beliefs and practices are shown to be superstitious, irrational, or harmful. This "what have you done for me lately/how do you like me NOW?" crucible swiftly removes history from relevance in discussion of the clash of cultures. It is not relevant that Muslims in the 8th to 12th centuries led a blossoming of study that influenced pretty much every field we know, any more than it is relevant that Michaelangelo's greatest works were all on religious themes. The question is, today, right now, is a religion's practice producing and encouraging the long-term sustainability of humanity, reconciliation and the kinship of all humans, or is it fostering divisiveness and scorn and tribalism, RIGHT NOW? Wiping the slate clean and looking at things as they are instead of as they were might be a breath of fresh air on this whole stagnant debate/culture clash. Having wiped the slate clean, things look rough: this is how the religious look to some outsiders, and they're publishing books, and getting on TV, and spreading their ideas, which shows that they're finding others who agree with them, too.
That's a serious wake-up call, dear readers, and dear believers.
When you boil away all the historical baggage, the crusades and Constantine's christendom and the inquisition and the demonization of the west as "the great Satan", when you close the holy books with mutually exclusive truth-claims, when we stop being afraid to say stuff that might offend someone, and simply judge the tree by its fruit, well, then we're at least ready to discuss the current relevance of organized religion, and whether it is a help or a hindrance to a more enlightened world, rather than running aground on the kind of intractability and dogmatism that hinders discussion when heaven, hell, holy texts and absolute truth-claims come into play.
On those terms, right now, according to Richard Dawkins, it isn't, and the fact he can say that and support it doesn't necessarily make him completely right (I'll get to that), but the fact he says it at all, and can support it at all, and especially the fact that he's found a LOT of support, and has sold a buttload of books, should be a bucket of icewater in the face of religious leaders around the world, who were so busy fighting their culture-wars that they never noticed, in the zeitgeist of the times, it seems that people are starting to get sick of their barking about the same old things, and refusing to listen to dissenting opinions.
And as we go, let's not forget, too, that if somebody DID fly an airplane into a building to prove the Stones were better than the Beatles, it would not automatically win the argument, it would not elevate the topic to any degree of reverence (or should not). How does it help the discussion, OR change rock history, if Beatlemaniacs become afraid to declare their loyalty, and nervous to whistle "Love Me Do" in public, for fear of offending those militant Jaggerites and Richardsonians, who want "Satisfaction" played instead of the national anthem at sports games? To cease further discussion of beatles vs. stones because of such a demonstration, or for fear of reprisals, is a kind of anti-intellectualism that shrivels under scrutiny, but robs credibility from everyone involved in the dialogue before it goes. To declare a topic off limits because of a threat amounts to intellectual terrorism -- surpression of discourse fits better in a Stalinist regime than a modern democracy. So yeah, let's be ready to talk about this. Let's be ready to disagree, even, but let's not send people to hell for disagreeing, let's listen to each other, and let's actually be willing to have our minds changed.
(PS: Yeah, sure, I do believe in heaven, and wouldn't want anyone to stop on account of me, and I'm sure Mom's up there now, having a grand old time, but I'm not ready to stick my neck out anymore and tell anybody that THEIR way of getting there is wrong, because I'm not God, and such talk will never help religious culture get along peaceably and positively with those in society who respectfully disagree. -- if they respectfully disagree, and we disrespectfully disagree (by telling them they're going to hell), who has the moral high ground?)
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
Go to the table of contents. Go to the next essay.
So, I read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins last week. It was really interesting, and I'm working on an essay series titled, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins" that will appear on the blog in several parts. If god talk is too much for you, I'll try to intersperse it with normal blogoseyo stuff, so it doesn't get too heavy.
Dawkins gave me a lot of food for thought, and stirred up a bunch of stuff I've had on my mind before, too.
Here's one interesting point. This wasn't in Dawkins, it was triggered by something I read here (point 10), which has been turning around in my head for a while.
I used to say "nobody flew airplanes into buildings to prove The Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones."
It was my way of saying "Religion is important. God is important. Don't dismiss it too lightly." Yeah, heart-poisoning hate, and a bunch of geopolitical yuk played its role, but in the box "reason for killing innocents" on their application for heaven, Osama's hijackers wrote, "Defending our Religion from the Infidel". So why is it, I thought, that when religion is on the table, the stakes get frighteningly, murderously high.
The answer is complex, but the theological part of it is simple.
Heaven and hell, grasshopper. Just so simple, polarized so quick. No middle ground can ever exist between two people who each honestly believe the other is going to hell.
See, if I say "I like avocado salad" and Robby-Bill-O, that charming hyuk from the boonies, says, "I like roast squirrel," we can go on our merry ways, cheerfully thinking, "To each his own."
But if I say "I like avocado salad, and you can go to hell if you don't!" and Robby-Bill-O, that ignint backwoods redneck says, "If you don't like roast squirrel, you can go straight to hell for all I care," it gets a little harder to let our differences slide without contesting the point. Especially when he's an uneducated redneck just parroting what his momma taught him, who never learned to think for himself the way I did in college. He can't even spell intransigent!
However, with religious talk, that's EXACTLY what happens. If my friend Ahmed says "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet," and I say, "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever shall believe may not perish, but shall have eternal life," the implication/assumption, "I'm going to heaven because I believe this" is there, not far from the surface. A little deeper underneath, "and if you don't, you aren't," is often tied on like a free sandpaper sample with my moisturizing lotion set. Those undertones have been known to complicate interfaith dialogue, yo.
My man Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) says "You can't bargain with the truth" in his song, "In the end."
It's a beautiful, light pop song, catchy and hummable, but the posture he strikes: "you can't bargain with the truth" is pretty inflexible; the song's actual message, packaged in this sound is like a brick in a fluffy pillowcase.
Two points come up because of this:
1. When neither side can supply compelling, empirical evidence, opposing truth claims kind of cancel each other out: all we can really, finally finish on is "well, you'll see after you die!" -- decision deferred. Seeing as nobody's come back from the dead and said, "Yeah, hey everyone, the Hindus had it right all along, and you're all coming back as rhino buttworms for fighting so much", we're back where we started, with my word against yours. Each tradition has a case for their truth claims, many followers, HUGE repositories of teachings, arguments, and anecdotes to support them, and all we finally finish with is several camps shouting what amounts to, "Is so!" "Is not!" "Oh yeah? You'll see!" "No, YOU'LL see!" in a see-saw with makes both sides look a bit small, when there are, you know, hungry mouths to feed and prisoners to visit and aid organizations to support and people being oppressed in all kinds of ways around the world.
2. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell, in the absence of the aforementioned empirical evidence, will not convince a rational thinker who does not already believe what I am telling them. Bringing heaven and hell into a conversation with a non-religious person pulls very little weight.
As this guy (same one I linked to earlier) pointed out, in rational discourse, one does not answer a question with a threat.
"Why should I agree with your doctrine of atonement?"
"Because you'll go to hell if you don't."
Because I can't prove that I'm right until we both die, that statement reads as a non sequitur, and makes further discussion impossible, just as much as
"Why should I vote socialist instead of conservative?"
"Because I'll punch you in the throat if you don't."
By the same token, the offer of heaven is unsupportable, except through reading from a book that my bud isn't convinced yet is true, and maybe anecdotes that he wasn't there to witness.
"Why should I come to church with you?"
"So you can come to heaven!"
is tantamount to
"Why should I sign this petition?"
"Because I'll give you a cookie." (admittedly, with much higher stakes, though)
Where the truth of an assertion is unprovable, incentives and disincentives to agreeing do not change the unprovability of said assertion.
Religions need to find a new way to legitimize their claims, and also to contradict their critics: if nothing else, this heaven and hell talk is a rhetorical dead-end. It also leaves religious proselytizers/apologists vulnerable as an inverted hedgehog to the old trap, where my non-religious friend asks me, "So do you think I'm going to hell, then?"
I have to either answer, "Yes." and piss off my bud, "No," and make it sound like I waffle on the very thing I want her to believe, or dodge, leaving myself open to the "You don't know. You CAN'T know" objection.
All I can really say is, "Here's the information, here's what I think, and like my man Yusuf Islam says, we'll all find out in the end". . . and then keep humble, because it might be ME who's wrong! It might be better to let God decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as tiny finite humans, respectfully step away. These days, when somebody asks me about heaven/hell topics, I answer, "Not mine to decide." Yeah, it's nice when somebody says, "I agree with your positions on X issue. You seem like a good Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/fillintheblank" -- but as far as I know, God doesn't ask for reference letters when separating the sheep from the goats.
So, as I hope I've demonstrated, playing the heaven and hell card is unfruitful at best, when dealing with someone who doesn't believe, and won't be convinced without evidence, and incendiary at worst, when dealing with someone who DOES believe in them, but passionately disagrees on how to get there.
Now don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in Heaven or Hell. Go ahead and believe in it, and even go ahead and play the heaven/hell card in a religious discussion, but recognize that it's taking you out of the realm of rational discourse and into the muddy waters of unsupportable faith-based belief. If you're comfortable starting sentences with "I believe that..." instead of "We can see that...", delve away. . . but don't expect to convince Richard Dawkins.
In fact, for the sake of good manners and mutual benefit in interfaith and faith/non-faith dialogues, we might be better served not to play the heaven and hell cards at all, unless we're honest enough to admit that the only support we have is our interpretation of the book our conversation partners haven't necessarily accepted as the absolute truth (and which they may interpret differently anyway), and using it is essentially a rhetorical molotov cocktail that boils down to "I'm right because I said I'm right, OK?", and turning the whole conversation from a discussion to an argument.
But religion IS important, right? I mean, remember what you said about the airplanes back in the beginning? Sure, it's important, but the airplanes bring us back to another important point. Flying airplanes into buildings didn't automatically make Osama's truth-claims right OR wrong. It's time to admit that the actions of a faith's adherents, though sincere, do not prove the TRUTH of their convictions, only the depth and type. Cutting off my finger because I believe the world is flat doesn't make me right; it only makes me a fanatic. Recognizing this distinction is another step toward an actual, fruitful interfaith dialogue. A million pilgrims walking the Camino trail in Spain does no more to prove Christianity's truth than a million Muslims doing the hajj in Saudi Arabia; it is a touching demonstration of devotion, but it doesn't actually change the facts under discussion.
Just because the worship of Isis and Amon-ra led to the building of the pyramids and the sphinx does not mean they deserve a continued following, if their beliefs and practices are shown to be superstitious, irrational, or harmful. This "what have you done for me lately/how do you like me NOW?" crucible swiftly removes history from relevance in discussion of the clash of cultures. It is not relevant that Muslims in the 8th to 12th centuries led a blossoming of study that influenced pretty much every field we know, any more than it is relevant that Michaelangelo's greatest works were all on religious themes. The question is, today, right now, is a religion's practice producing and encouraging the long-term sustainability of humanity, reconciliation and the kinship of all humans, or is it fostering divisiveness and scorn and tribalism, RIGHT NOW? Wiping the slate clean and looking at things as they are instead of as they were might be a breath of fresh air on this whole stagnant debate/culture clash. Having wiped the slate clean, things look rough: this is how the religious look to some outsiders, and they're publishing books, and getting on TV, and spreading their ideas, which shows that they're finding others who agree with them, too.
That's a serious wake-up call, dear readers, and dear believers.
When you boil away all the historical baggage, the crusades and Constantine's christendom and the inquisition and the demonization of the west as "the great Satan", when you close the holy books with mutually exclusive truth-claims, when we stop being afraid to say stuff that might offend someone, and simply judge the tree by its fruit, well, then we're at least ready to discuss the current relevance of organized religion, and whether it is a help or a hindrance to a more enlightened world, rather than running aground on the kind of intractability and dogmatism that hinders discussion when heaven, hell, holy texts and absolute truth-claims come into play.
On those terms, right now, according to Richard Dawkins, it isn't, and the fact he can say that and support it doesn't necessarily make him completely right (I'll get to that), but the fact he says it at all, and can support it at all, and especially the fact that he's found a LOT of support, and has sold a buttload of books, should be a bucket of icewater in the face of religious leaders around the world, who were so busy fighting their culture-wars that they never noticed, in the zeitgeist of the times, it seems that people are starting to get sick of their barking about the same old things, and refusing to listen to dissenting opinions.
And as we go, let's not forget, too, that if somebody DID fly an airplane into a building to prove the Stones were better than the Beatles, it would not automatically win the argument, it would not elevate the topic to any degree of reverence (or should not). How does it help the discussion, OR change rock history, if Beatlemaniacs become afraid to declare their loyalty, and nervous to whistle "Love Me Do" in public, for fear of offending those militant Jaggerites and Richardsonians, who want "Satisfaction" played instead of the national anthem at sports games? To cease further discussion of beatles vs. stones because of such a demonstration, or for fear of reprisals, is a kind of anti-intellectualism that shrivels under scrutiny, but robs credibility from everyone involved in the dialogue before it goes. To declare a topic off limits because of a threat amounts to intellectual terrorism -- surpression of discourse fits better in a Stalinist regime than a modern democracy. So yeah, let's be ready to talk about this. Let's be ready to disagree, even, but let's not send people to hell for disagreeing, let's listen to each other, and let's actually be willing to have our minds changed.
(PS: Yeah, sure, I do believe in heaven, and wouldn't want anyone to stop on account of me, and I'm sure Mom's up there now, having a grand old time, but I'm not ready to stick my neck out anymore and tell anybody that THEIR way of getting there is wrong, because I'm not God, and such talk will never help religious culture get along peaceably and positively with those in society who respectfully disagree. -- if they respectfully disagree, and we disrespectfully disagree (by telling them they're going to hell), who has the moral high ground?)
To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
Go to the table of contents. Go to the next essay.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Part two: The Advent of Meaning. . . at least for one guy.
This is the second part of a two-part post. Please read the first part first, here.
Rilke again, 'cause dammit, he deserves to be read twice. (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
"How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage. . .
place and settlement, foundation and soil and home"
(still elegy number 10)
Another pitfall:
I am surprised and amazed at how impatient people who grieve can be, for their own wholeness (myself included). I am dismayed, but not quite as surprised, at how impatient OTHER people can be with mourners, dispensing Bible verses like medical prescriptions and declaring the issue done with. "Why are you still sad? I told you to give your grief to God a month ago!"
When Bruce Lee injured his back in 1970, he spent six months in bed, reading, because if he took a short-cut or rushed his recovery process, he would have put a ceiling on his own post-recovery ability, or worse, re-injured himself. The human body needs recovery time for injuries. That's just how it works. (Bonus points: I just compared myself to Bruce Lee! I kick ass!) Seriously, though, why do I think my heart would work any other way than the rest of me? The only part of me that can change quickly is my mind, and even then, the mind often has to wait for the heart to catch up -- that's why it was so hard to break up with exgirlfriendoseyo, even when I could see that we had no future.
I finally realized it's OK to say "actually, my life is pretty shitty right now," instead of "God is teaching me patience", when my friend wrote "I think God honours honesty more than anything else we try to give him" in an e-mail. I'll buy that. Isn't that what the entire book of Job is about: finding an honest answer instead of a quick answer? Also: thanks for that, Mel.
I believe an honest doubt honours God more than a blind faith, and waiting for real meaning is more beautiful, and more consecrated, than skipping to a rote, ready-made meaning, even if the quick answer comes in the form of a bible verse. I think an afternoon volunteering at an orphanage or a soup kitchen honours God more than either of those. (And helping others can do wonders for one's own hurt.)
During the dark, disappointed, meaningless parts, I found comfort remembering that during the wait for a messiah, God made Israel the nation it needed to be, not through a series of growing successes, but through a string of spectacular failures. (Don't believe me? Go read Numbers, Judges, and Chronicles.) Ditto for Saint Peter. The word Israel does not mean "He Who Has All His Shit Together" or "He Who's Squared Things Up With God". Israel means, "He Who WRESTLES with God," and what a wonderful name for a chosen people!
So after all that grief, after avoiding those false trails, where am I now? What meaning HAVE I found? Well, my ideas about God are very different than they used to be, and I think that's a good thing. There's a lot more honesty in the mix now, and a lot more knowledge of my weaknesses.
I no longer think of faith as a helicopter, lowering a ladder from the sky, to rescue me from my griefs -- I think now that faith is more like a walking companion, someone with well-worn shoes and holes in the knees, who doesn't always know the way, and certainly doesn't have all the answers, but who'll point out a root across the path, or pick me up after I trip on it, who makes interesting observations about the trail, who'd have my back in a pinch, and who's always good company. No, he doesn't make the path shorter, but at least he makes the time pass faster, and maybe from time to time, he just happens to have an umbrella when I really need one, or a pocketknife, or a joke that helps me laugh through a windstorm. In my diary, four months before my mom died, I wrote "I want a faith like a steel cable: tough, flexible, and useful." Maybe I'm closer to that now than I was before, but I'm not out of the woods yet.
I'm beginning to think it's OK not to be out of the woods, maybe that's not a statement of despair, but a statement of hope, hope that there's still more to be learned, if I keep myself open to learning. Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.
"Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. . . .
How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you."
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Tenth Elegy, Opening)
Rilke again, 'cause dammit, he deserves to be read twice. (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
"How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage. . .
place and settlement, foundation and soil and home"
(still elegy number 10)
Another pitfall:
I am surprised and amazed at how impatient people who grieve can be, for their own wholeness (myself included). I am dismayed, but not quite as surprised, at how impatient OTHER people can be with mourners, dispensing Bible verses like medical prescriptions and declaring the issue done with. "Why are you still sad? I told you to give your grief to God a month ago!"
When Bruce Lee injured his back in 1970, he spent six months in bed, reading, because if he took a short-cut or rushed his recovery process, he would have put a ceiling on his own post-recovery ability, or worse, re-injured himself. The human body needs recovery time for injuries. That's just how it works. (Bonus points: I just compared myself to Bruce Lee! I kick ass!) Seriously, though, why do I think my heart would work any other way than the rest of me? The only part of me that can change quickly is my mind, and even then, the mind often has to wait for the heart to catch up -- that's why it was so hard to break up with exgirlfriendoseyo, even when I could see that we had no future.
I finally realized it's OK to say "actually, my life is pretty shitty right now," instead of "God is teaching me patience", when my friend wrote "I think God honours honesty more than anything else we try to give him" in an e-mail. I'll buy that. Isn't that what the entire book of Job is about: finding an honest answer instead of a quick answer? Also: thanks for that, Mel.
I believe an honest doubt honours God more than a blind faith, and waiting for real meaning is more beautiful, and more consecrated, than skipping to a rote, ready-made meaning, even if the quick answer comes in the form of a bible verse. I think an afternoon volunteering at an orphanage or a soup kitchen honours God more than either of those. (And helping others can do wonders for one's own hurt.)
During the dark, disappointed, meaningless parts, I found comfort remembering that during the wait for a messiah, God made Israel the nation it needed to be, not through a series of growing successes, but through a string of spectacular failures. (Don't believe me? Go read Numbers, Judges, and Chronicles.) Ditto for Saint Peter. The word Israel does not mean "He Who Has All His Shit Together" or "He Who's Squared Things Up With God". Israel means, "He Who WRESTLES with God," and what a wonderful name for a chosen people!
So after all that grief, after avoiding those false trails, where am I now? What meaning HAVE I found? Well, my ideas about God are very different than they used to be, and I think that's a good thing. There's a lot more honesty in the mix now, and a lot more knowledge of my weaknesses.
I no longer think of faith as a helicopter, lowering a ladder from the sky, to rescue me from my griefs -- I think now that faith is more like a walking companion, someone with well-worn shoes and holes in the knees, who doesn't always know the way, and certainly doesn't have all the answers, but who'll point out a root across the path, or pick me up after I trip on it, who makes interesting observations about the trail, who'd have my back in a pinch, and who's always good company. No, he doesn't make the path shorter, but at least he makes the time pass faster, and maybe from time to time, he just happens to have an umbrella when I really need one, or a pocketknife, or a joke that helps me laugh through a windstorm. In my diary, four months before my mom died, I wrote "I want a faith like a steel cable: tough, flexible, and useful." Maybe I'm closer to that now than I was before, but I'm not out of the woods yet.
I'm beginning to think it's OK not to be out of the woods, maybe that's not a statement of despair, but a statement of hope, hope that there's still more to be learned, if I keep myself open to learning. Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.
"Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. . . .
How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you."
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Tenth Elegy, Opening)
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