Letters to the Editor
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Pot call kettle black?
In the Salon interview of Dawkins that's already been mentioned, he calls (directly or by implication) religious folks the following:
ignorant, bigoted, unsophisticated, uneducated, retarded, primitive, childish, programmed, infected, delusional, unpersuadable, hateful, vengeful, violent, hostile, vain, and presumptous
Indeed. All of them down to the last are clear indications that we’re dealing with a clear-headed objective scientist here.
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the argument so far
"the central issue: all theist religions are by definition authoritarian".
Hm. Karen Armstrong: "Western people think the supernatural is the essence of religion, but that's rather like the idea of an external god. That's a minority view worldwide." What's your problem with this? It sounds to me like the two propositions are closely related.
Let me get your argument straight:
[you] all theist religions are by definition authoritarian.
[armstrong] disagrees
and for this you accuse her of "ducking the issue"?
But I would like to follow your argument more closely if I can. You referred to a definition. Could you point me please to that definition? The one that makes all theist religions authoritarian? With whom did it originate?
Yes, Mr. Essig, I am a Christian. I would like to dialog; but I simply do not recognize my religion in your parody. How can we talk if we cannot even agree on the names of things? Like many of my fellow worshippers, I have been examining the issues raised here for a very long time. What are your qualifications for instructing me in the nature of my own worship?
I will describe my worship and my religion for you, beginning with these propositions:
[1] It is theistic (trinitarian, in fact).
[2] It is not authoritarian.
Are you going to claim these are mutually inconsistent? On what premises? Is it from sociology? From psychological texts? What do they tell you about me, when their authors never so much as learned my name or sent me a questionnaire?
Recommended reading:
John MacMurray, The Self as Agent
John MacMurray, Persons in Relation
Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.
You want authority? At the time of his death in 1997, Rappaport had been teaching at the University of Michigan since 1965. He was President of the American Anthropological Association from 1987 to 1989.
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I had hoped...
...that it would be possible to have some sort of interesting, deep, exploratory discussion of this interview here. Sadly, we seem to have just divided into two armed camps lobbing rhetorical grenades at each other from behind massive walls. Is it too late to go back and look at the parts of Karen Armstrong's ideas other than her perceived attacks on fundamentalists of any stripe, and talk a little about the kind of hope that such a perspective offers for those of us who live in the land of faith but no certainty?
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Mythic Relativism
Armstrong reminds me of the mythic writers and thinkers, Jung, Campbell, Thomas Mann, and others, who wrote in the last century. The relativism they espoused has been largely discarded by Christian fundamentalists, politicals like Ronald Reagan, and most liberals. The real problem which confronts us is leadership which has fallen under the spell of the tribal night, born again in evangelical robes, while clinging to its linear, and imperial mindset. The tribal idea of God is no less infantile, but at innappropriate moments the old and the new fuse into something unholy. Jesus preached against the sort of tribal leadership we have in this country today.
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and what about half of humanity?
Ms Armstrong does not mention that almost all the religions she admires so much are patriarchal institutions where women are definitely second-class citizens.
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Lots of good stuff in this interview
There are many unhappy people of various philosophies reacting negatively to this interview. And I cannot understand why. Please, people, read it as poetry!
If this interview softens a single person's view of other people, it is a success. Judge it by that, if you must judge it.
There is so much that I love about this interview, that I cannot begin to cover it all. But I will hit what I believe are important highlights.
First, I want to address the concept of Armstrong's views of "God".
I take it you don't like the question, do you believe in God?
No, because people who ask this question often have a rather simplistic notion of what God is.
One of the things the minister at the Unitarian Universalist church I attend likes to say, when confronted by an "athiest" is, "What God are you talking about?" After hearing the description, he replies, "I don't believe in that God either."
(And yes, I understand that Unitarian Universalism is not a real religion, it is just a club where people can get together and tell each other how smart/wise/clever they are. Whatever.)
Also there are the teachings of Confucious. Lately I have heard many negative things about Confucious, mostly talking about how he was intolerant in one way or another, or how he does not count all people as equal. That, of course, clearly means that nothing he ever said was worth hearing. :p
I will freely admit that I don't know too much about him, not nearly enough to draw any conclusions.
But my version of the golden rule has long been, "Don't do things to others that you don't want done to you." I therefore cannot help but react positively to Armstrong's quote of Confucious stating, "Do not do to others as you would not have them do to you."
daksya says, "My poison may be another's food." Well, yes, but at least that is a sin of omission, not a sin of commission. And the other always has the option to request whatever that "poison" may be.
And finally, what I see as the most important point of all is the relationship Armstrong sees between religion and science. "...myth and science, [are] complementary. One [doesn't] cancel the other out." Exactly exactly exactly!!
But the primary thing I see in all of this is, here is a person who is talking rationally about religion. Who is trying to put everything in a perspective that we can use to peacefully coexist.
Is it all correct? Maybe, maybe not. But isn't that what she is trying to say? Why argue about things that can never be proven??? And especially, let's not kill each other about it!