Today's Sermon is on Religion
Pre-rant caveat: I'm pretty drunk.
Tonight, Jon and I got lost in one of my favorite geek past-times: The philosophical debate.
We debated many things, but the topic that kept rearing its head was the existence of God and the beginning of life. A wise man once said that personal wisdom begins with admitting, "I don't know." I'll be the first to admit that I don't KNOW anything. I think many things, and even believe a good amount. I'm one hundred percent positive, however, about very little.
This is my foremost problem with religion. The religious right (and indeed organized religion in general) exists on the precept that the religious somehow GET some fundamental truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to say that that the current ruling power of America is that of Christian Orthodoxy. Today's Christians, however, are Christians in name only.
Take a hard look at the teachings of Christ and you find a man who has more in common with Socrates than with any of today's so-called "religious scholars." Study Jesus and you find a man more apt to ask questions and challenge precepts that someone who torpedoes-be-damned clings to some ancient doctrine of right and wrong. Jesus was a cat who had a groovy philosophy for understanding and accepting your fellow man - a way of living-and-let-live that allows for the evils of human nature and teaches a way of being personally moral and personally responsible. Flash forward two thousand years and I bet this guy would be rolling in his (supposedly) empty grave at the way his teachings have been bastardized by modern man.
I believe (as many do) that religion should be a personal thing - something that you've studied and have come to accept as a spiritual philosophy that helps you- as an individual- get through the day. Instead we find a politicized dogmatic organization whose fundamental ideology says, at its core, "do what we say or burn for all eternity." In this regard I can see how the religious right and conservative republicans make such good bedfellows - both govern through fear-based, "our way or the pitchfork highway" tactics.
The moment you take a personal, philosophical ideology and build a structured, dogmatic infrastructure around it, you BY DEFINITION corrupt it. So now, instead of a personalized, agonized-over, hard-fought individual ideology arrived at through intensive reflective study and meditation (and god-forbid DEBATE), you have an imposing, threatening dogmatic dictatorship that leaves no room for interpretation and commands that you obey every aspect of their ideology lest you burn forever in a pit of eternal torment.
No thanks.
As I said before, I'm the first to admit that I don't KNOW anything. But as someone who was an altar boy for four years, a sacristan for three, a catholic school student for eighteen years and an amateur student of the Bible, Qur'an, Talmud, Kanjur and any other religious, historical scripture I can get my hands on, I've come to terms with two truths:
1. - Virtually all religious texts have at their core the same fundamental tenants of morality and codes of human behavior.
2. - Virtually none of them are accurately reflected by the current tenants of the popular modern forms their respective religions take on.
Religion, as a personal tool, is a useful rubric through which one can come to a personal understanding of their concept of god.
As an organized belief structure, it is a deadly weapon that can be corrupted into excusing, even ENCOURAGING any extremist viewpoint already inherent in a person. It can (and HAS) been used to justify almost every historical tragedy from slavery, witch-hunting, gay-bashing, and every form of repression from sexual to racial to cultural.
What it comes down to is that like anything, Religion is easily perverted by man. And because it claims to be the word of god, it is all that more effective and deadly a perversion.
What's saddening is that this country was supposedly founded on the denunciation of religious persecution and thus was set up as a religion-free zone of sorts. What has happened is that a Judeo-Christian regime (well, mostly Christian) has taken power. One cannot even get ELECTED to public office without being devoutly religious it would seem, which, as a result, has only led to a public that is begging to be lied to by their potential leaders.
Why is science a vice? Why is doubting hell-worthy? Why is Atheist a dirty word?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident... That ALL men are created equal..."
Why then do evangelical Christians- BY DEFINITION- feel they are superior to those they deem "not saved." This assumes that they GET some greater truth that the rest of us are too stupid to see. They can call it concern for our souls, or pity for our godlessness, but what it comes down to is that they feel smugly superior because they think they're going to heaven and I'm going to hell.
I know that you were blind and now you see. I know you were hungry and now you are full of the lord. Well I'm not hungry, and I see just fine, so fuck off.
It's a cliche, but remember that old tenant of Americanism? "I may not agree with what you say, sir, but I will defend with my life your right to say it." What ever happened to that? Why can't I rationally question the nature of the universe and admit that I have doubts about God's existence and that I believe that Jesus was a wise and honorable man with some revolutionary ideas but NOT God's biological son immaculately conceived of a virgin? Why does that make me somehow some horrible person? That's like the argument that homosexuals shouldn't be scoutmasters or teachers. Why is that you think gays are less able to keep their hands to themselves? Why does nonreligious automatically mean immoral and evil?
I know people that honestly think that not only does hell exist, but that I'm going there because I don't accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. That means that every non-Christian in the history of the world (even those who lived and died long before Jesus was born) is now burning in hell. Well fuck that, good sir, I’d rather rock out with Ghandi, Nietze and Kant than sit around and self-flagellate with you guys. Afterall, the devil's got the best tunes.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm an optimistic pessimist. I hope to hell there is a god. Seriously. I want there to be. Even if it meant I was wrong, I'd rather burn forever in hell than suddenly blink out of existence. Better to burn out than to fade away, a wise man once said. I'm willing to admit to the possibility of a god.
Even though I can understand the theory of evolution... Even though I can follow the notion of the big bang and of coalescing gasses that explode and spread debris which form galaxies and solar systems and planets and chemicals and proteins and single-celled organism and plant life and living creatures and reptiles and mammals and apes and US. Even though I can (sort of) wrap my mind around the concept that the universe is like a giant piston, constantly and repeatedly expanding and retracting, creating and destroying life in an endless and repetitive cycle.... Even though I can grant all that.... I can't- as a mortal human- fathom all of this not having some sort of a beginning.
As humans, everything we are is based on a life cycle. An alpha and an omega. A Beginning and an End. Capital B, Capital E. Everything about the scientific theory of the origin of the universe makes sense except for the self-perpetuating cycle with no beginning. EVERYTHING has a beginning doesn't it?
And look at chaos theory... When you step back and examine existence and the universe as a whole... when you examine mathematically the random ridiculousness of EVERYTHING... patterns start to emerge. From fractal geometry to fibonacci spirals, there seems to be an almost lyrical symmetry to things. There MUST be or logically none of this would WORK. Is it the hand of God? I don't know... But I'm open to the idea.
This is where we differ from the die-hard religious right. I doubt God's existence... but I'm willing to accept the idea. I'm willing to debate it. With them there is no debate. There is no gray, only black and white. Complexity is pushed aside for absolutism. Moral ambiguity is abandoned for zealous certitude.
They KNOW God exists and they KNOW what he/she wants and they UNDERSTAND his/her will. All others be DAMNED! (Literally)
I like to think that I aspire to wisdom. I know nothing for sure.
I think certain things.
I even believe others.
But I'm willing to hear you out.
Tonight, Jon and I got lost in one of my favorite geek past-times: The philosophical debate.
We debated many things, but the topic that kept rearing its head was the existence of God and the beginning of life. A wise man once said that personal wisdom begins with admitting, "I don't know." I'll be the first to admit that I don't KNOW anything. I think many things, and even believe a good amount. I'm one hundred percent positive, however, about very little.
This is my foremost problem with religion. The religious right (and indeed organized religion in general) exists on the precept that the religious somehow GET some fundamental truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to say that that the current ruling power of America is that of Christian Orthodoxy. Today's Christians, however, are Christians in name only.
Take a hard look at the teachings of Christ and you find a man who has more in common with Socrates than with any of today's so-called "religious scholars." Study Jesus and you find a man more apt to ask questions and challenge precepts that someone who torpedoes-be-damned clings to some ancient doctrine of right and wrong. Jesus was a cat who had a groovy philosophy for understanding and accepting your fellow man - a way of living-and-let-live that allows for the evils of human nature and teaches a way of being personally moral and personally responsible. Flash forward two thousand years and I bet this guy would be rolling in his (supposedly) empty grave at the way his teachings have been bastardized by modern man.
I believe (as many do) that religion should be a personal thing - something that you've studied and have come to accept as a spiritual philosophy that helps you- as an individual- get through the day. Instead we find a politicized dogmatic organization whose fundamental ideology says, at its core, "do what we say or burn for all eternity." In this regard I can see how the religious right and conservative republicans make such good bedfellows - both govern through fear-based, "our way or the pitchfork highway" tactics.
The moment you take a personal, philosophical ideology and build a structured, dogmatic infrastructure around it, you BY DEFINITION corrupt it. So now, instead of a personalized, agonized-over, hard-fought individual ideology arrived at through intensive reflective study and meditation (and god-forbid DEBATE), you have an imposing, threatening dogmatic dictatorship that leaves no room for interpretation and commands that you obey every aspect of their ideology lest you burn forever in a pit of eternal torment.
No thanks.
As I said before, I'm the first to admit that I don't KNOW anything. But as someone who was an altar boy for four years, a sacristan for three, a catholic school student for eighteen years and an amateur student of the Bible, Qur'an, Talmud, Kanjur and any other religious, historical scripture I can get my hands on, I've come to terms with two truths:
1. - Virtually all religious texts have at their core the same fundamental tenants of morality and codes of human behavior.
2. - Virtually none of them are accurately reflected by the current tenants of the popular modern forms their respective religions take on.
Religion, as a personal tool, is a useful rubric through which one can come to a personal understanding of their concept of god.
As an organized belief structure, it is a deadly weapon that can be corrupted into excusing, even ENCOURAGING any extremist viewpoint already inherent in a person. It can (and HAS) been used to justify almost every historical tragedy from slavery, witch-hunting, gay-bashing, and every form of repression from sexual to racial to cultural.
What it comes down to is that like anything, Religion is easily perverted by man. And because it claims to be the word of god, it is all that more effective and deadly a perversion.
What's saddening is that this country was supposedly founded on the denunciation of religious persecution and thus was set up as a religion-free zone of sorts. What has happened is that a Judeo-Christian regime (well, mostly Christian) has taken power. One cannot even get ELECTED to public office without being devoutly religious it would seem, which, as a result, has only led to a public that is begging to be lied to by their potential leaders.
Why is science a vice? Why is doubting hell-worthy? Why is Atheist a dirty word?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident... That ALL men are created equal..."
Why then do evangelical Christians- BY DEFINITION- feel they are superior to those they deem "not saved." This assumes that they GET some greater truth that the rest of us are too stupid to see. They can call it concern for our souls, or pity for our godlessness, but what it comes down to is that they feel smugly superior because they think they're going to heaven and I'm going to hell.
I know that you were blind and now you see. I know you were hungry and now you are full of the lord. Well I'm not hungry, and I see just fine, so fuck off.
It's a cliche, but remember that old tenant of Americanism? "I may not agree with what you say, sir, but I will defend with my life your right to say it." What ever happened to that? Why can't I rationally question the nature of the universe and admit that I have doubts about God's existence and that I believe that Jesus was a wise and honorable man with some revolutionary ideas but NOT God's biological son immaculately conceived of a virgin? Why does that make me somehow some horrible person? That's like the argument that homosexuals shouldn't be scoutmasters or teachers. Why is that you think gays are less able to keep their hands to themselves? Why does nonreligious automatically mean immoral and evil?
I know people that honestly think that not only does hell exist, but that I'm going there because I don't accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. That means that every non-Christian in the history of the world (even those who lived and died long before Jesus was born) is now burning in hell. Well fuck that, good sir, I’d rather rock out with Ghandi, Nietze and Kant than sit around and self-flagellate with you guys. Afterall, the devil's got the best tunes.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm an optimistic pessimist. I hope to hell there is a god. Seriously. I want there to be. Even if it meant I was wrong, I'd rather burn forever in hell than suddenly blink out of existence. Better to burn out than to fade away, a wise man once said. I'm willing to admit to the possibility of a god.
Even though I can understand the theory of evolution... Even though I can follow the notion of the big bang and of coalescing gasses that explode and spread debris which form galaxies and solar systems and planets and chemicals and proteins and single-celled organism and plant life and living creatures and reptiles and mammals and apes and US. Even though I can (sort of) wrap my mind around the concept that the universe is like a giant piston, constantly and repeatedly expanding and retracting, creating and destroying life in an endless and repetitive cycle.... Even though I can grant all that.... I can't- as a mortal human- fathom all of this not having some sort of a beginning.
As humans, everything we are is based on a life cycle. An alpha and an omega. A Beginning and an End. Capital B, Capital E. Everything about the scientific theory of the origin of the universe makes sense except for the self-perpetuating cycle with no beginning. EVERYTHING has a beginning doesn't it?
And look at chaos theory... When you step back and examine existence and the universe as a whole... when you examine mathematically the random ridiculousness of EVERYTHING... patterns start to emerge. From fractal geometry to fibonacci spirals, there seems to be an almost lyrical symmetry to things. There MUST be or logically none of this would WORK. Is it the hand of God? I don't know... But I'm open to the idea.
This is where we differ from the die-hard religious right. I doubt God's existence... but I'm willing to accept the idea. I'm willing to debate it. With them there is no debate. There is no gray, only black and white. Complexity is pushed aside for absolutism. Moral ambiguity is abandoned for zealous certitude.
They KNOW God exists and they KNOW what he/she wants and they UNDERSTAND his/her will. All others be DAMNED! (Literally)
I like to think that I aspire to wisdom. I know nothing for sure.
I think certain things.
I even believe others.
But I'm willing to hear you out.