At the risk of beating a dead horse
I have never once asked for responses to a blog post, mostly because it seems bossy and narcissistic, but also because it would certainly reveal the paltry number of people who actually read this blog. Which is no skin off my nose, but why go out of the way to point it out?
However, there's a piece on Slate that serves as a timely counterpoint to my recent longwinded post on religion, which moves me to encourage some responses from my few loyal readers. I suspect I am wedged between loyal readers who are more traditionally (in a Western sense) and monotheistically religious, who find my religious leanings so vague and watered down as to be virtually meaningless - a mile wide and an inch deep, so to speak; and those loyal readers who find the entire concept of religion useless and even dangerous, and fear that I've gone off the deep end every time I broach the subject, averting their eyes as if from an otherwise rational person who maintains an embarassing belief in fairies.
Certainly, the latter view is vigorously espoused by Christopher Hitchens in his upcoming book as excerpted on Slate, and it is a view that has seen increasingly aggressive articulation of late from thoughtful atheists who are - understandably - alarmed by what fundamentalist and oppressive religion seems to be doing to our world.
I will thus offer up Mr. Hitchens' piece, as well as a few other counter-arguments to my own position, and I would warmly invite non-abusive comment of any viewpoint on this subject.
Because I see a growing confrontation between two extremes - those who sincerely believe religion in a particular form must be imposed on everyone, and those who sincerely believe religion must be eradicated from human culture. I find this alarming because I think trying to eliminate the spiritual impulse is fruitless.
So - some final counterarguments heard from respected friends and family:
Talk amongst yourselves.
2 comments:
Not having read the articles in question, I will still respond to the call for comments. I personally don't subscribe to a religion. I think there are nice parts to a bunch of them, but there is this pattern of control in all of them the I can't see as a coincidence. I've seen enough spirituality in folks who eschew religion to believe that the two don't need to go together. I also think Chritopher Hitchens is a jerk. I really liked his Kissinger book, then he went off the deep end with the Iraq thing. Which gets me to my point. I think there are lots of people in the world who are authoritarians. They like that there exists a higher authority that must be obeyed, be it Dad, Bush, and/or God. Religion seems to (often) be an authoritarian framework for people to fit into. Works for some folks, not for others.
I thought a lot about your earlier post, where you defined spirituality as an "AHA moment"; faith as an articulation of that, and religion as a group of people getting together to share that (drastic summarizing I know). Well, as you describe it, there is nothing wrong with that, and I think most people would think that is just fine. But the problem as I see it, is that that is not what religion is to many people. What non religious people like myself get offended by is other parts of religion, such as:
1. The idea that you cannot have any moral values if you are not religious.
2. The idea that if you are not religious, you are condemned.
3. The whole idea of proselytizing, or trying to convert people. Let me think what I want.
4. The idea that there is one right answer. Clearly, if there are many religions, then there must be multiple answers to whatever drives people to be religious.
I could go on and on, as I get older I get more anti-religion. I am pro spirituality, pro faith, but anti-religion. There is nothing wrong with seeing joy in the world, marvelling at nature, trying to capture your amazement and wonder, but religion in the 21st century is very very far from that. Maybe not for everyone, but for enough people that it is very scary.
I heard an athiest talk on TV (dont know who it was just a sound byte) and he said to him athiesm was so natural it didn't even need a word. That is kind of how I feel, I am a naturalist who finds wonder and joy in the world, but I do not feel any need to go beyond that, either in codifying my beliefs or in sharing it with others, or in trying to make others agree with me.
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