This may offend some viewers, but...

[lunadelcorvo]

I love this: Religious Intolerance, or 'What I Want to Say When Asked Why I Have a Problem with Religion.'

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(You don't HAVE to read the post before this, but it will make a bit more sense of you do...)

I know this may really make some folks mad, particularly if you happen to be a religious literalist of any stripe. But I just can't keep forgiving the constant harm done by the childish refusal of my species to give up its fear of the dark and its need for a fairy-tale... (I have stated my position on that previously here*.) And I know what the argument in response tot he post linked above will be: people like this aren't 'real Christians (or Muslims, or jews or whatever).'

Sorry, nuh-uh. For one thing, that's a very basic fallacy of argument, known as the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. You don't get to say that someone who does something awful in the name of Christianity isn't a Christian because you don't like what they did, or the way they understand your good book. You don't get to sneak out from under the atrocities done in the name of religion (like Crusades and Jihad and Hitler and misogyny) by saying those examples don't count.

There is a (terrifically important) difference between placing responsibility on religion as a social/cultural institution and placing responsibility on every religious person. The Catholic Church carries the blame for an ongoing pattern of child molestation, but that doesn't make every Catholic a child molester. That fact does not absolve the Church as an institution for those harms however. (Nor, incidentally, does whatever good it may have done absolve it from responsibility for harm it has done.)

Which beings me to the second point. The people in every one of the examples above did what they did based on their belief in the same god, the same book, the same basic doctrine. Their actions, however abhorrent**, can be and are grounded, defended, and supported from their source texts and doctrines. Regardless of the text in question, for every verse anyone cites showing that dreadful things are not to be done, there is one that says they should. So I submit that the problem is not with the interpretations of the doctrine after all. The problem is with the doctrine itself.

Why? Because it's ALL interpretation. Because it's all a bunch of archaic, vague, contradictory folklore gathered over centuries that can be used to justify pretty much any damned thing anyone wants it to. And because no one has the slightest whiff of evidence that *this* way of interpreting it is 'The Right Way.' But inherent in the very core of the idea is that 'my way' MUST be right, because if it's not, I lose. And at the end of the day, if one way *has* to be right...you see where I'm going here, don't you? So the very doctrine at it's core is predisposed to allow, justify, reify, and even mandate every one of the examples in the post referenced above. And THAT is why I have a problem with religion.

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*It's not often one can really say they stand behind a post made on a rant 5 years previous!
**This means their direct actions and/or their defense of their actions (e.g. the Church vis a vis child molestation, for example).

Comments

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

When I was reading this, I suddenly thought of the Republican Party. They desperately need the religious right to gain any kind of strength. In a way that party has become (since Ronald Reagen anyway) a theocracy. It's platform is designed by the religious right. In that way the US can become a theocracy (the way Ireland is for example, or for that matter, the state of Utah) In the past they got away with it by having the winning Republican president ignore the that platform. Yet they never give up. Who knows, it might actually happen.

All religions believe that they are the only truth. But if there were not any belief in that truth, there would not be any religion. It is faith after all, including blind faith. All religions, including the political ones.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! The GOP/social conservative/Neo-con/Religious Right synergy is pretty well documented (and no secret on this LJ anyway!) I tend to think there is a far deeper connection with the RR and the tea party as well. It's more like the same company making four competing soft drinks; make people think they choose, but really, it all goes the same place anyway.

But yeah - this is exactly why I think humanity has to redefine 'faith' and 'religion' as something personal, not something that enters the public or political sphere.

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

Found an icon for you. It's from fritters a very funny and well...you'll like her humor.

(http://pics.livejournal.com/girlspell/pic/000p6ba4/)

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Yes, to all of this.

I get really annoyed by people who expect people outside their religion to deal with the horrible theocrat Christians but also want us to distinguish between "real" Christians and "false" Christians.

These are people who identify themselves as Christians, are identified as Christians by others, and place just as much importance on specifically-Christian values and cultural norms. As an atheist Wiccan, when exactly did it become my job to decide what constitutes "Christian enough?" When exactly did it become my job to clean up Christianity's image for them?

[toll-booth.livejournal.com]

And then, when a Christian does something horrible, the theocrats disown them. Total No-True-Scotsman play on their part.

These people are dishonest liars. And they do not care. They have so deluded themselves into thinking that they somehow have direct access to the Absolute Truth. Fuckers.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

They disown them or else they make a big show of repentance and then it becomes part of their 'faith testimony.' Happens every time a politician is busted with his pants down - a few months later, he's the golden child, with his 'stumble' a testimony to the strength of his faith.... blarg.

Hell, how many times did it take for Ted Haggard to be busted with a gay prostitute for the evangelicals to finally get sick of him?!

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Well, exactly! I can't tell you how many times I have resorted to saying "it's YOUR god, YOUR book, YOUR religion, YOU fix it or take responsibility for it!"

And never, ever, is there anywhere an acknowledgment that the awful things done in the name of Religion X actually CAN be argued from the tenets of said religion! You may not like it when 'other Christians' bully kids with threats of hell, but it actually IS part of your doctrine! If you don't like that part, maybe it's time to rethink whether it's a doctrine you want to continue to espouse....

[ohhhlife.livejournal.com]

YES.

[toll-booth.livejournal.com]

That link to all those news story images was terrifying. And very damning. I agree, this whole "isolated incident" crap needs to stop. There is a systematic pattern of abuse that is clearly associated with fundamentalism of just about any faith.

God damn fundamentalism.

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

I think this is the major issue - it's fundamentalism/extremism that's the problem, rather than any single belief system. If you look at some of what was done in the name of atheism in the Communist bloc, it was pretty horrible too.

[toll-booth.livejournal.com]

That begs the question as to whether it was truly atheism. Because they basically deified their leaders.

Agreed about the fundamentalism bit, though.

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

That begs the question as to whether it was truly atheism.

Begs the question as to whether some of the idiots acting in the name of religion are really Christians as well, if you let that one pass!

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

'm not certain I personally would let that one pass, at least not as such.

However, there may be something to the notion that in 'deifying' leaders, one has simply painted religion a different color. That's not the same thing as supposing a person isn't a 'real Christian/atheist/whatever' because their actions don't conform to one definition of what a Christian/atheist/whatever is supposed to be....

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

I've always got a bit annoyed about what Christians are supposed to be like, because I'm a Christian, but really dislike the stereotypes.

I swear. I think about sex a lot. And I don't generally worry about my eternal destiny. :)

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that extremism will always be a problem. However, I would offer that some systems of belief/worldviews are vastly more likely to produce an extreme interpretation. I would also argue that, in the case of the Communist bloc, Atheism seems to have been a tool, if you will, of the Communist worldview. The flaw, in that case, seemed to lay less in the atheist idea than in the Communist idea.

And really, that's what I'm getting at. The idea of Communism makes some rational sense, and I think it can be argued, is based on some noble, even valid ideas. However, experience has demonstrated that when applied in actuality, Communism results in something much different than its best potential. It is vastly prone towards interpretation into a totalitarian nightmare. And that is why we have more or less come to realize that we should never do that again.

How about monarchies? I mean, real, absolute monarchies. Why don't we do that anymore? Not all kings are tyrants, after all. In the hands of a wise and beneficent ruler, unfettered by the political infighting that plagues democracy, a monarchy can flourish. Certainly we have plenty of examples of such through history. So why don't we have absolute monarchs anymore? Because it is a system deeply prone to abuse, because we know that while there have been 'good kings' that have been too many bad ones. Whatever argument one might make about this good example, or that good idea, the system is flawed, and when enacted, all too often becomes corrupt. So we have realized we should never do that again.

However, religion (be it Christianity, Islam, even Hinduism), while arguably based on noble or even valid ideas, and maybe having some good examples, is also, in reality, vastly prone to interpretations of extremism, exceptionalism, and fundamentalism (not surprisingly - with religion we put at stake some form of personal immortality against the threat of eternal suffering - the stakes don't get any higher). So why is is that we have not learned, as we have with Communism, as we have with absolute monarchy, that this ideology doesn't go good places, so we should never do that again?

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

I can understand why, but I think you're a bit too quick to blame religion for a lot of the world's ills. And it does seem that way sometimes. But...life is a bit more complex than that. People need things to believe in, and many causes can result in things turning sour, regardless of whether there's a deity involved. I wish there were simple answers, but there aren't.

My own experience bears this out. You've seen me bare my soul on here and really struggle with a lot of things. But at the end of the day, I still think there's a God, and I still feel my life is better for it. But I don't hate people. And I don't do anything horrific in God's name. Nor do a lot of other people.

Sadly some do, but people do horrible things in the name of many other things as well.

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

Interesting, as per usual. :)

I think there's a lot here that's very tricky and certainly not black and white. As a moderate Christian who questions everything and tries very hard to make the world a better and more tolerant place, all this stuff troubles me greatly. My own rather intolerant youth troubles me greatly as well.

I often wonder how much of this is a chicken and egg situation. Are these people intolerant because they're fundamentalist Christians, or are they fundamentalist Christians because they're intolerant? I suspect it may be more of the latter than the former. In my own case, a lot of what I was taught in my early Christian days in my mid-teens always sat rather uncomfortably with me, and as I got older, I realised I didn't like the intolerant bits and revised a hell of a lot of my opinions. I'm now a pretty liberal Christian, which has the power to shock more traditional ones (something I confess I love doing ;) ).

So...I think that if it wasn't in the name of God, these people would still find reasons to hate in the name of something else.

A lot of what you've observed is also a purely American phenomenon. OK, we've got a few nutters like that here, but the sort of gruesome fundamentalism on display within Christianity that you point to at the top just generally doesn't happen in Europe. I think that might be down to a particular form of American patriotism and isolationism, that mixed with unthinking religious belief is a pretty lethal combination.

I would suggest that religious belief has actually done more good than harm, and that people of religious belief or none are capable of both amazingly good and amazingly bad things. The causes of horrific behaviour and intolerance are many and varied and there are no simple answers at all.

Unfortunately. :(

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

I think that if it wasn't in the name of God, these people would still find reasons to hate in the name of something else.

I agree. However, it seems also to be the case that we are much more willing to stop those people when they are not sanctioned by religion. We do not allow freedom of expression even a fraction of what we allow freedom of religion, and I'm not just speaking in terms of law. I am speaking of what we as a culture are accustomed to overlook, excuse, explain, defend when it holds a bible or a q'uran that we do not hesitate to condemn when it does not.

In terms of net harm vs. net good, if people will hate with or without religion, will they not love as well? I don't think you can argue that people who do evil in the name of religion would be evil for another reason without it, and still claim the good people do in the name of religion as belonging to religion. However, were religion no longer in the equation, we could lay the evil squarely at the feet of those who do it, and know the good is done for it's own sake, not for fear of hell or hope of heaven....

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Another though on the 'done more good than harm' idea. You know me well enough to know I have this odd and passionate love for medieval Christianity, cathedrals, Dante, etc. I defend the early Inquisition, even! So I am not without sympathy for the good the Church/Christianity has done over time. I'm also a fan of ancient mysticism, and alchemy, and kabbalah, and the like.

That doesn't mean I think they are valid ways of seeing or negotiating the world NOW. They are fascinating, rich, full of meaning for our history as humans, as a culture. They should be studied, preserved, understood, cherished. But they are no more meaningful to life as lived NOW than myths of Apollo, reading the entrails of sheep, or the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Secondly, how much good undoes how much harm? Do we forgive the murderer and let him go free when we learn that he has given millions to charity and saved countless lives? Do good deeds erase evil ones? This may be another of the poisons we inherit from the doctrines of faith - that saying you're sorry and being good removes the stain of sin. But does it? Do all the cathedrals and art and missions erase the crusades and the brutality and the war and the oppression? (and I'm speaking of the institutions of religion, not individual religious people here)

I'd say no. I'd still put the murderer in jail for life. Besides, we have better reasons to be good than religion. We have better reasons to make art, to help others, to love our neighbor.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'If I do all these things and have not love, I am as a sounding brass or a clashing cymbal.'

'Faith, hope and love these three together, but the greatest of these is love.'

The words, I think of a prophet, one Yeshu Bar Joseph.

Fwiw, I'm a Quaker.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

I know, and thank you - despite the ire I hold towards religion at large, I do respect some more than others, and if all who claimed faith lived it as Quakers do (in my experience) I would have a heck of a lot less to say on the matter!

That said, however... None of these sentiments is unique to any faith, or any prophet. Not to mention, were these not also the words of that prophet?

'I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.'

And yes, of course that can be interpreted. All of it can; that's part of the issue. There is enough there to be spun into a doctrine of universal peace and love, and enough there to be spun into a theocratic nightmare of violence and oppression. Certainly people will be violent and will oppress even without religion. But isn't that all the more reason to remove the ideology that makes violence holy and oppression sacred?

And certainly people will love and care and do good with or without religion. Isn't it time we encourage love and good because it's right rather than out of fear and/or hope of reward? We are good as children if we believe in Santa, but isn't it better to be good as adults because we know it's right rather than because we want the goodies?

[lucretiasheart.livejournal.com]

I wish I had a stadium full of people to offer you a standing ovation at this point. Excellent.

May I quote you? I posted the link on facebook, and I'd like to share a little more of what you said.

Because-- yes.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Good heavens, anything but that! LOL

But yes, feel free to share as you like!