I wouldn’t bitch at someone unless they proselytized to me hard core. I’m not going to pee in somebodies cheerios for no good reason.
That said, reasons religion should be relegated to a lunatic fringe:
Birth control eduction
Abortion rights
Creationist dogma taught as science in schools
Gay rights, including marriage
And it creates a Patron/Client mentality where desperate people worry about begging an imaginary person in space for help instead of thinking out how to fix the problem themselves.
There are more but this is all I can think of off the top of my head with limited time.
There are religious people who are in favor of birth control education, abortion rights, and gay rights (including marriage), and opposed to creationist dogma being taught as science in schools, you know… Not all religious people think alike, and we don’t like it when other people seem to assume that we do.
Yeah that’s true. I know there are perfectly sensible religious types out there and they probably are in the majority. However they seem to often vote for politicians that promise to make their more extreme religious codes and practices into law. More atheists will hopefully arrest that trend.
But hey, I’m no sociologist, so I’m sure I could be wrong. I do have to say losing my faith was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I should also state that I still consider myself moral, I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs and I’m in a monogamous marriage. I believe in “family values”, I just think they should be broadened quite a bit.
There’s an unfortunate (IMO) trend among liberal religious folks to be reluctant to criticize a lot of things that more conservative religious people do and say. You see the same thing in non-religious movements- moderate animal rights activists (for example) often don’t want to denounce the more extreme members of the movement, because they don’t want their movement to appear weak and divided.
The other problem is that a lot of sensible religious types are sensible. Many of us won’t vote for somebody just because they say they won’t enact religious-based laws that we don’t approve of- we also want them to do other things that we think politicians ought to do that don’t have anything to do with religion. We want them to cut taxes or increase social services, or stay the course in Iraq or bring the troops home (depending on political viewpoint), too. Because we don’t all think alike, we have different opinions on political matters that don’t have to do with religion. Because we’re sensible about religion, a candidate’s religious views (or lack thereof) don’t make up for disagreeing with us on other issues we think are important.
For example, I think it’s very important to fix the health-care system in this country so that fewer people are uninsured or underinsured. If I had a choice of two candidates for a political office- Candidate A has what I think is a sensible idea for fixing health care and is against gay marriage, and Candidate B is for gay marriage but thinks our health care system is just fine the way it is, I’m going to hold my nose and vote for A. I might wish there were a candidate with a reasonable chance of winning who agreed with me on both gay marriage and health care, but that doesn’t make it so. Of course, that’s not absolute- if A had a great plan to fix health care but also wanted to outlaw birth control or make gay sex a crime, I’d probably hold my nose and vote for B. (Assume in all these hypotheticals that there’s a decent chance that A or B, if elected, could actually implement their plans) Unfortunately, our system of democracy sometimes makes it necessary to compromise with evil to get anything good accomplished…
Self-righteous quotes not withstanding, Christianity has indeed been tried and found wanting. There is room in Christianity for far more than Christians are willing to allow, absent the big giant book, of course. To wit: Christianity is often found wanting for compassion, for acceptance, for, and this is the big one, tolerance. The problem with the construct of the Christian religion is that the big giant book is both scalpel and broadsword, and those that quote it are free to use it exactly as they choose, which means that the existance of the religion in and of itself is up to the ways of men, which makes the entire thing suspect.
Now, if, as a Christian one pared down everything to 10 commandments, and a simple “WWJD” philosophy, that somehow doesn’t include alientating, isolating, proselytizing and the interference of men in the work of God, then you;d be on to something that would not be found wanting.
The elimination of religion would certainly not eliminate evil. Our genetic predisposition to do good and to do evil varies like any other inherited characteristic, and we’ll always have a population of sociopaths. However, isn’t it true that many religions involve substituting God’s morality for our own? So does society, true, but religion brooks no dissent, and claims that you will always be caught if you violate the laws. Joe peasant might not have anything against that guy in the shop, but if the priest tells him that the guy killed his god, then we get Crusades and pogroms. Letting Joe take the shop helps also, no doubt.
Would your ancestors and my ancestors have suffered quite so much without Christianity? I doubt it. However, the Cossacks drove my great-grandfather from Russia to New York, so I suppose I should be grateful to them.
If I designed software so difficult to use that no one did, whose fault is that? Especially if I designed the users also. Christianity as Jesus practiced it would be difficult, but as Paul simplified it, not so much. Many of the difficult to follow rules were eliminated for marketing purposes. But the fact that people sin is recognized, and they get a “get out of hell free” card, assuming they’re sincere, I suppose. What’s difficult about that?
I doubt Jesus would approve of what Bush is doing, but I don’t think you can say he isn’t a Christian.
BTW, the Gandhi quote I was thinking of was:
When asked what he thought of Western Civilization, Gandhi said he thought it would be a good idea. I think that applies also.
If the purpose of the software was to establish world peace and bring an end to human suffering how much effort should we make to learn how to use it? What would be the alternatives to not making the effort?
If God designed the software and the users the question becomes, why is it that way? What is the purpose? Why isn’t it easier? All good questions. Not knowing the answers isn’t the same as there are no answers.
Some religions are like this, but not all are. Unitarianism and modern liberal Judaism or Protestantism are not, for example.
I do think we might be better off without the religions that don’t tolerate dissent. Unfortunately, getting rid of them would not be easy to do. There’s the problem that there are people who don’t like others being legally allowed to be too different, and they get a vote on what the laws ought to be, too… I think xenophobia is, unfortunately, one of the less pleasant aspects of human nature (it’s in the natures of some animals, too), and we’re stuck with it to one extent or another.
But without religion, some political leader can tell Joe peasant that guys of the same color or nationality as the guy who runs the shop have taken their jobs or are going to rape their daughters. The result is similar, though possibly aimed at different people. Not a vast improvement.
There’s a limit to how easy to use you can make software that is trying to solve a truly complex and hard-to-understand problem (this is why we don’t have multipurpose computers where you just press one button to do whatever you want). And I’d say the bad parts of human nature are a truly complex problem.
It’s complicated further by the fact that some of the bad parts of human nature do have useful functions. The human tendency to combine into a community can be used for good (when the members of a group band together to help someone who is in trouble) or bad (when the members of a group band together to persecute a non-group-member).
Could God have made people without those bad parts of human nature, with just the good parts? I don’t know, and neither does anybody else. I doubt it, though- I suspect you can’t really have good without the possibility of evil, though of course I don’t know.
To treat this question more seriously than it deserves: Whatever is meant, in the Bible, by being created in God’s image, it applies to both male and female, so penis-having is not part of it.
The contention was that Christianity is so difficult it is untried, not that Christianity is difficult so not everyone follows it. That would be fine. If you give a test question that everyone gets wrong, either you have a particularly stupid class (and if you control admissions that’s your fault) or you didn’t teach well, or you wrote a bad question. That’s different from complaining that some people got it wrong.
Indeed. I was defending liberal Judaism as a religion where the uncertainty of what the Bible says is quite well recognized. That the Reform Bible commentary was revised to recognize that the Davidic Empire might not exist makes be quite proud to be born Jewish in a strange way. I thought the Dalai Lama saying that if science contradicts Buddhism, then Buddhism had to change was equally cool.
All we can do is to educate in tolerance and to teach well enough so that everyone realizes that everything is open to question. And to maintain Constitutional protections so that religious laws and strictures are followed voluntarily by believers, and not forced down the throats of others.
In fact, I’m opposed to any “true belief” belief system, whether it be fundamentalism, Communism, extreme nationalism, or the misuse of science for racism.
But that’s not the issue. Neither Judaism or Christianity expects or demands us to be perfect. They both give the opportunity for us to repent our imperfections. But where is the difficulty of Christianity such that no one has ever followed it? (Which is what the quote is saying.)
I think I jumped in without fully understanding the discussion. Hmmm I’ve done that before. I wasn’t talking about Christianity specifically. Sorry for interrupting. :o
Okay. I was confused by my assumption that you were mentioning Christianity and world peace in the same breath.
Now, to branch off to what you wrote, I can see interesting theologies that deal with questions, not ultimate answers. Perhaps Zen - based on the one book I read in my college Eastern Religions class - is like this. In this view God has set us a very interesting puzzle to solve. This would be a fine religion, since it wouldn’t force people into one way of solving the puzzle. First Church of the Puzzlemaster - paging twickster
OOO I like that.
I was referring to a god belief in general. If God wrote the software etc.
I doubt I’ll ever be able to join an organized religion again. In the past few months I’ve been enjoying the local Bahai folks. I find their concepts of all religions are one religion and we are one human family to be very progressive. They have no clergy and are warned against proselytizing. How refreshing.
This statement by one of their former leaders impresses me.
It gives me hope that religion can and is progressing.
A religion that is about solving an interesting puzzle that God has set for us, without forcing people into one way of solving the puzzle, with a few followers but not much mass appeal.
A watered-down version, with a theology that says God has set us interesting questions, but in practice it’s all dogma and simple answers, with mass appeal.
Maybe I’m just too cynical, but I think simple answers to complex problems and a socially-approved outlet for some of the darker impulses of human nature (intolerance and the like) is what a lot of people want from religion. They don’t want a religion that makes them think, doesn’t offer simple answers, and tells them they are not doing the right thing when they are trying to gain power and control over others. The theology of the religion can say you should love others and be nice to them, but if it’s to have mass appeal, in practice it should allow intolerance, power, and control at the expense of others.
I think simple answers are a large part of the appeal of young-earth creationism and biblical literalism. It doesn’t ask people to think about or understand difficult concepts, or accept that not all the answers are known.
