Letters to the Editor
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belief
there is one time in life when a person should put a hand on their wallet--or their purse: when another person says "I believe..." because what's coming next is nearly always some kind of weightless gabble designed--consciously or unconsciously--to mess with your mind, or your wallet.
Belief is no different from smoke. Changeable. Without core substance, as the Buddha might phrase it. ;>
Belief has brought more misery, suffering, and sheer evil into the world than probably any other human frailty. You'd think we'd *think* a bit more about belief.
Alas, no.
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One True Scripture?
thingswesaid -
Oddly enough, the experience you have when you read the religious texts of other religions is the same experience I, and many others, have when we read yours. Except for one difference: I respect and appreciate most holy texts (including the Bible) as including sincere attempts by human beings to understand their experience of the divine, and therefore worthy of study. I suspect you don't feel this way about most of them (in fact, all but one).
Before you convinced yourself that the Bible "so perfectly interrelates" with itself, you probably needed to be TOLD it did by someone who presented himself as an authority. Or, you needed to read some of the thousands upon thousands of pages of "Christian apologetics" (how I love that word!) which attempt - often through convoluted, contrived methods - to reconcile the Bible and Christian theology with itself and the world.
For example, in Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat the fruit, "On that day thou shalt die." But they eat the fruit, and they DON'T die on that day. Any reader not already immersed in Christian belief would look at that and say something strange is going on - God was wrong, or he changed his mind, or he lied. Which would lead to questioning the literal truth of the story.
But if you're "lucky," some silver-tongued minister will explain to you that "by 'die,' God meant 'die spiritually,' which they did." And you can say, thank God!, it all makes sense after all! (You may be further motivated by the minister threatening you with hell if you don't agree.)
But once you accept that "die" doesn't mean "die," then any part of the Bible can be interpreted in any way that the Church or your minister sees fit. And thus prove to you, with a thousand such questionable explanations, that it all "so perfectly interrelates."
Hint: If you start with the assumption that the Bible is literally, inerrantly true, you can come up with nlikely interpretations that explain away all the apparent errors. But if you start without that assumption, and just read the thing, you will discover that it is: fascinating; self-contradictory; poetic; inspiring; metaphorical; and a mixed bag. Just like most other religious texts.
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My criticisms of religion
I am sure people find comfort in their religion, the thing is it hasn't actually done anything much for us.
It turned medicine into a theoretical science right up until the plague, which really heralded the start of the enlightenment.
It retarded scientific growth in every avenue it has appeared in, from basic geography in the middle ages, to genetics today.
It hasn't prevented bad people being bad people and it hasn't made good people good people. People, on a whole, are people - whatever their beliefs.
It is a force of ignorance, not understanding in that it teaches people to believe things without evidence. The ideal of faith, when applied to any other aspect of your life is termed not a virtue, but being a gullible fool.
If you believe that nice chap from Nigeria wants your help to move his funds from his country and really just needs your bank details to do it, then you are showing faith in his claims.
Now people cite charities as being an example of faith doing good, well by the same token the Mafia was wonderful in the 1930's, when it operated soup kitchens in the midst of its extortion rackets.
There is very little difference between extortion and threatening non-believers with hell.
Morally speaking, we are far more advanced in this day of secularism, than states which are highly religious such as Saudi Arabia, where it was world pressure, not internal disgust, which led to a woman not being beaten for the crime of being raped.
When Christianity had a similar degree of power, the world was rife with witchhunts and slavery. The so-called Christian states don't do that anymore, because religion is no longer really accepted as a legal argument.
This is not to say that religion leads to immorality, but rather that it does nothing to prevent it and slows any movement towards true morality - by offering convenient scapegoats.
The devil made me do it, the gays are out to get us, them dirty secularists are corrupting our children and even the focus on new media, be it Shakespeare's theatre or computer games are all scapegoats offered by religious leaders.
These scapegoats offer religious people a way of not focussing on their real problems. It is so much easier to find someone else to blame for your kid being a little psycho, than to face the idea that you might be a rotten parent or the kid might just be a rotten kid.
Further, religion seems to encourage the worst impulses of second-hand martyrs. As religious people are crying about those nasty atheists writing books, atheists are having their cars keyed, police officers refusing to protect atheist marches, being deprived of their right to meet other atheists if they are in the military.
Indeed, one case had an athletic atheist schoolchild being taken off of a sports team, because she wouldn't pray with the other children. When CNN ran the story it followed it with a debate, in which no atheists were allowed, and the consensus was that the atheists should "Shut the hell up."
In fact, GHW Bush was elected to office after saying that he didn't believe atheists qualified as being American citizens.
And all of this while Christians whine about "Happy Holidays" in their shopping malls and no forced prayer in school.
So when people write that religion can be a positive and valuable aspect to someone's life, I argue the reverse. And I am not going to "shut the hell up" any time soon.