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.