OK everyone, lets risk it! Lets mock, shock, belittle and dispraise, dismiss, and discount peoples worshiping styles. People have been doing it for millennia. Are people fundementally evil? Doubt it, there’s too many ‘good’ people in the world right. Then if there are so many diversly ‘good’ people in the world why do people care who worships who? This supposition based soley on the idea that the majority of the worlds population is ‘good’.
Or are we just a bunch of followers, following which-ever shepard pleases us personally. Whether it be a fascist dictator, or short over-weight guy sitting indian style, or a bronze skinned man with a beard who can make a blind man see or an ill man well.
Why do we mock others beleifs? Is it going to make us better people? Surely not. Is it going to satisfy an inner sanctity and make us stronger? Hope not.
Why would another human being truly care from the heart what another beleives? Could it be a global power struggle? Does it really matter if your good neighbor Bob and his family go to the Catholic Church, and your other neighbor Jill and Ted go to the Presbyterian Church, or the people across the street who follow the teachings of Sri Ramanuja.
Basically, I am not asking dopers to seriously mock, shock etc…etc…What I am truly asking is why do people/humans FUNDAMENTALLY care what or who another worships?
Because you’ll be cast into the everlasting void of existential snapping turtles if you don’t follow the teachings of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, who has commanded me to ring your doorbell and ask you for a donation, brother.
I think some people care because they need validation that they’ve picked the “right” way. It’s a control thing, too. Busybodys in general want to control other people’s actions, which is why they must know what others are doing and thinking at all times, then tell those people about how they are doing it all wrong. Some people do it because their religion tells them to either as a form of evangelism or condemnation.
I think a strong argument can be made that we are inherently solipsistic. We live inside our own minds, behind our own eyes, and our thoughts, needs, and emotions are paramount. It’s hard to transcend that.
Further, we are generally very dualistic, especially in the Western world. Yes/No, Good/Bad, Black/White . . . in a world so full of shades of grey (and scary shades at that), we tend to lump, label, and categorize to make things safer and easier.
As a result, our views are Correct, they are Right. And if our views are Right, by golly everyone who disagrees with me must be Wrong.
Empathy requires effort, thinking outside our own heads requires effort, and breaking free of our propensity to categorize requires effort. And most people just don’t care enough to make that effort.
I agree with this andros. Is this perhaps also due to an inner need to somehow find ‘truths’? The concept of ‘truth’ may eventually lead us to a ‘yes-no’ conclusion or view of things and the rejection of the greys and opposites?
Chosen People Syndrome: I also think that the more self-sacrifice and rules that your religion involves, the more you need to believe that you are Right, that your faith is Special and that others will be Punished. Because if a bunch of dancing, drinking, masturbating, fornicating, gluttonous, rock-music listening, agnostic degenerates can reach Nirvana or get into Heaven or get the Big Reward, why have you spent all your time eschewing fish on Fridays and feeling guilty? Or worse still, what if the people who hold that there IS no Big Reward are right?
It was such a huge revelation to me personally when I realized that the fact that I was born into a Catholic family was completely a matter of chance and circumstance. How could we be so sure we had the answer? 3/4 of the world’s people saw things quite differently. Could they all be wrong? I started to think in terms of universal ethics rather than the ceremonies and strictures of a particular faith.
That said, I think I would be disturbed by a resurgence of religions that involved human sacrifice. I deplore those who use their religion (be they Muslims, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses) to oppress people socially or politically. I’m hardly a Bible scholar, but I think one of the most powerful messages of Jesus is that rule books, ceremonies, and all the surface trappings of religion are unimportant compared with how you treat others.
I generally agree with The Witch. I am sure you can chalk some of it up to cuiousity. Like in public school when you’d go around and ask all their friends what project they were doing for social studies (or whatever).
I think the vast majority of the people care because they are afraid they picked the wrong path and thus try to secure themselves that theirs is better by trying to make the alternative seem less respectable (struggled for a word there…). This generally comes out as “mock, shock, belittle and dispraise, dismiss, and discount peoples worshiping styles”.
Well Walor, this is true and I think that the existential world view is also changing with this truth. I am not a theologian but I do like to study peoples beliefs and how they actualize those beliefs in their daily lives. I am modestly well read, but an amateur just the same. I started the above thread while re-reading Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, I was wondering is the bickering between religions gaining “us” anything, or is it infact holding “us” back from our own global spiritual evolution?
This is an interesting suject and I hope to see a diverse debate.
