Meanwhile back home (in the larger sense)
Oct. 10th, 2011 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularA long time ago, there was a Sunday strip of "Bloom County" that dealt with the diminishing returns of exclusionism.
Er, in plain English, it showed what happens when you keep dividing the world between "Us" and "Them". I forget the exact divisions that were used, countries, religions, philosophies, what have you, but more and more people kept getting excluded.
In one of the Presidential races, something's starting to percolate, like a toxic witch's brew. It's about religion.
More and more, it's about which is the right religion. The President is vilified for supposedly being part of a non-Christian faith, even in the face of loads of evidence. And among the challengers, in order to pass muster, you must be overtly part of the right religious faith.
But which faith is that?
One of the leading candidates is a Mormon. And that faith is being torn down as not being "Christian". As being a "cult".
So the definition of "the right religion" narrows. And who gets excluded next time? Which sect becomes "Them" as opposed to "Us" next?
In Greece, the Greek Orthodox Church has preferred status. Christianity is written into the Greek constitution as the official religion. I've mentioned my experiences in the army with religion - how I was "other", isolated from the full group, separated out from the crowd at the formal oath-swearing, sent to clean the latrines during church services, and ultimately ordered to undergo baptism - ordered to join the accepted religious creed, an order I only escaped because the clock ran out on my tour.
I don't want that to happen to my homeland - the mandating of a particular faith, the ostracizing of those who choose to believe or feel differently, even those like me who can't figure out where their faith should lie. (In the army, almost nobody could differentiate between an atheist and an agnostic.)
To all too many, it's not even enough that you believe; you've got to believe the right way, or you might as well not believe at all. Those signs that say "you can't have 'Good' without 'God'"? They're saying "if you don't believe in the proper way, you are evil."
And with every iteration, more and more are excluded. Believe or be damned. Convert or die.
It's not new. The Puritans did it; run out of England for adhering to a faith that didn't match the Church of England, they set up in Massachussetts and proceeded to turn around and impose the same intolerance.
(I always thought that logic was flat-out insane when I learned about it in school.)
(Maybe that's why I get queasy about home-schooling; the isolation from varying viewpoints is a good way to induce what they call epistemic closure.)
I do have some bias, though. I was brought up by people with a scientific frame of mind. I was exposed to a number of religions without being told explicitly which one was right. And as I grew older, I began to interpret Pascal's Wager a bit oddly:
It's not about choosing to believe or not, where the only nasty consequence comes of choosing not to believe and being wrong.
It's more like placing a bet on a roulette wheel. Where there are a thousand numbers on the table, and no edges, corners, colors, dozens, or other side bets are allowed. One chip, one number, one bet.
Oh, and when the wheel spins, it's got every one of those thousand numbers on it. Plus a trillion more that weren't even on the table.
Les jeux sont faits.
Er, in plain English, it showed what happens when you keep dividing the world between "Us" and "Them". I forget the exact divisions that were used, countries, religions, philosophies, what have you, but more and more people kept getting excluded.
In one of the Presidential races, something's starting to percolate, like a toxic witch's brew. It's about religion.
More and more, it's about which is the right religion. The President is vilified for supposedly being part of a non-Christian faith, even in the face of loads of evidence. And among the challengers, in order to pass muster, you must be overtly part of the right religious faith.
But which faith is that?
One of the leading candidates is a Mormon. And that faith is being torn down as not being "Christian". As being a "cult".
So the definition of "the right religion" narrows. And who gets excluded next time? Which sect becomes "Them" as opposed to "Us" next?
In Greece, the Greek Orthodox Church has preferred status. Christianity is written into the Greek constitution as the official religion. I've mentioned my experiences in the army with religion - how I was "other", isolated from the full group, separated out from the crowd at the formal oath-swearing, sent to clean the latrines during church services, and ultimately ordered to undergo baptism - ordered to join the accepted religious creed, an order I only escaped because the clock ran out on my tour.
I don't want that to happen to my homeland - the mandating of a particular faith, the ostracizing of those who choose to believe or feel differently, even those like me who can't figure out where their faith should lie. (In the army, almost nobody could differentiate between an atheist and an agnostic.)
To all too many, it's not even enough that you believe; you've got to believe the right way, or you might as well not believe at all. Those signs that say "you can't have 'Good' without 'God'"? They're saying "if you don't believe in the proper way, you are evil."
And with every iteration, more and more are excluded. Believe or be damned. Convert or die.
It's not new. The Puritans did it; run out of England for adhering to a faith that didn't match the Church of England, they set up in Massachussetts and proceeded to turn around and impose the same intolerance.
(I always thought that logic was flat-out insane when I learned about it in school.)
(Maybe that's why I get queasy about home-schooling; the isolation from varying viewpoints is a good way to induce what they call epistemic closure.)
I do have some bias, though. I was brought up by people with a scientific frame of mind. I was exposed to a number of religions without being told explicitly which one was right. And as I grew older, I began to interpret Pascal's Wager a bit oddly:
It's not about choosing to believe or not, where the only nasty consequence comes of choosing not to believe and being wrong.
It's more like placing a bet on a roulette wheel. Where there are a thousand numbers on the table, and no edges, corners, colors, dozens, or other side bets are allowed. One chip, one number, one bet.
Oh, and when the wheel spins, it's got every one of those thousand numbers on it. Plus a trillion more that weren't even on the table.
Les jeux sont faits.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 06:20 pm (UTC)And I believe it's that stance that is fueling some of the drive behind this "one, true religion" movement. They're reacting by saying "we all need to pull together to fight this." Mind, I know the "freedom from religion" mindset is also a reaction, and I know most people whose faith (or separation from faith) is not strong will try to convert more people to their way of thinking so they personally feel they are on more solid ground. It's human nature. (It's why most of the 'need to believe the right way' folks come off as seeming to think the name "Jesus" is a magic word, if used in the right phrases - they're looking for personal validation, not shared faith.)
In my opinion the only right, fair way to settle it is going to be to get over it, as much as we are able to, culturally. Let people be who they are. Let them show who they are. Make space for diversity, and respect that not everyone will agree with you. I'm not a fan of proselytizing, but someone should be able to say "if it is Allah's will" in response to someone's totally non-religious expression of hope without either of them getting bent out of shape, and certainly without the law interfering in the conversation either way. In my opinion, the best public school "winter concert" is going to showcase a bit from all cultural groups within the community, religious or no, rather than carefully tiptoeing around pretending some of them don't exist.
We do it any other way, and we'll be giving extremists on one side or the other fuel to escalate their fight, because we'll be unfair to one side or the other. And then we all lose.
(Of course, I do have limits - I think "cult", and a rather violent "NO!" follows - based on the idea that they are founded on exploitation. And I know a lot of people who think all religion is exploitation, an idea that I would argue with. So I prove right inside my head that there isn't an easy answer here, because of our diversity. Not that I expect most political answers to be easy.)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 06:49 pm (UTC)For me, the real trigger is the creeping fear that it's going to turn into a matter of: believe as we do, worship as we do, obey as we do, OR YOU WILL BE PUNISHED.
Spiritually, in the next world, or temporally, in this world.
I don't know how much is too much to express it: this is not an academic fear on my part any more. I was instructed by a superior military officer to be baptized into a religion. It was an order given with the force of law behind it, which is basically the societally acceptable version of a bald-faced threat.
And it was given without any sense that there was anything wrong being done.
Let people be who they are - that's something that's not exactly in great supply these days, from what I can tell. I don't have a problem with people crossing themselves in public, or with people adding something like "Allah's will" or "God's will" or "blessed be" or stuff like that. It's the "I ask you all to pray to Jesus Christ the one true LORD" that gets under my skin.
Maybe I'm just getting old and set in my ways. But given that the First Commandment and the First Amendment are kind ofin conflict, I'll choose the Amendment every time.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 01:36 am (UTC)I also happen to believe that the assumption that one knows what God plans for someone in this life or the next, or the attempt to threaten them with it, is the most heinous form of blasphemy there is.
Honestly, I'm Christian, and *I* can't stand the "you must all believe and pray like me" stuff. I think everyone has different faith just like everyone has different personality. It would be really boring if we didn't.
As for the Ten Commandments, I find it kind of funny that many of the other rules and laws listed in the Old Testament are thrown out by most of Christianity because Christ's law supercedes them, but the commandments often aren't. I assume it's because most of them uphold the same concepts, but it's something to think about. I might worry more about the first commandment if I thought God had a static definition and that only one word could be used to refer to the 'correct' God. But since I don't, and I in fact expect God to transcend any concept I can come up with, it becomes a less strict commandment.