In a widely publicized survey on religion released a couple days ago, some remarkable changes in religious beliefs were noted. Changes that, to my mind, make me once again question what people believe. Let me preface this by saying that there's really not much wiggle room in the major world religions. Almost all of them have a religious text, like the Bible, Koran, or Talmud, that the practitioners view as sacred. These books are believed to be the literal words of the particular God of the religion, either directly reported or coming through some minion(s). Again, there's no wiggle room in this. If the God of your book says that you should not condone homosexuality and you believe that this book is the true word of your God, then you cannot condone homosexuality. There's no choice here. You either believe or you don't.
In this latest survey, one of the things I found interesting is that the overwhelming majority of Americans professed a belief in God. The interesting part is that more than half the respondents also indicated that they believe there are multiple paths to God. In other words, it's okay if you're a Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim of Christian, as long as you believe. That sounds all nice and fuzzy and inclusive but it smacks in the face of what the religious books say. The God of the Old Testament was not super-inclusive. Recall that He especially had a problem with golden idols. This God, the God that the vast majority of Americans would claim to believe in, would not at all think it is okay to be a Hindu. In fact, He would smite you for believing in Vishnu.
Once again, this is why I assert that most people aren't even really religious. They claim to be because they want to be able to pray when they need something, to assert their morality over others, or simply feel like they have a hedge bet against death. But the reality is that if you believe you cannot cherry pick. You can't just practice the parts of the Bible that you're okay with and ignore the others. Either you believe or you don't.
When presented with this argument, some people would assert that the Bible is not literal or that it contradicts itself in places so some behaviors are not clearly delineated. Well, if the Bible isn't literal, then it isn't literal. You can't say the story of Adam & Eve is true but not the rest. Or that there really was a Noah but that God didn't mean you should hate Hindus. You can't have it both ways.
My point, which I've made before on this blog, is that I get sick of people being all sanctimonius about their religious beliefs but then not living according to their own supposed ideals. They'll argue that not having prayer in school is destroying our families while ignoring the alcoholism going on in their own house (something forbidden in the Bible). All you have to do is look at a couple statistics to see how hypocritical the faithful are. Over 90% of people in this country profess a belief in God. Yet 50% of marriages end in divorce (until recently prohibited by the Catholic Church) More than 60% of married men and women reportedly commit adultery (also forbidden in the Bible). Of these adults who get divorced, I'd venture to say that most start dating again and probably have sex before getting remarried. They probably had sex before their first marriage since more than half of teens have had sex before graduating high school (premarital sex also a big no-no in most religious texts). Gluttony is one of the "seven deadly sins" and yet 60% of Americans are overweight and about 40% are obese. It goes on and on and on.
If 90% of people believe in God, really believe, then it seems to me that the world ought to be a better place. Pundits like Bill O'Reilly bemoan the steady rise in secular influence but I say look around at the world. The majority believes in God and I don't think they've done such a great job. Why haven't their ideals led to a better world? They've certainly got the numbers. They could make anything happen. Then again, maybe I've got this all wrong. Given all the hatred and violence espoused in most religious texts, maybe the faithful really are living in accordance with their beliefs.
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8 comments:
The point of your post is precisely why I gave up on the Church entirely a few years ago. To that point, I thought maybe it had some redeeming value (no pun intended) when it came to community, or soulfulness, or a place to gather a little steam for the private inner mysteries of figuring out life. But in the end, I could not tolerate the boldfaced hypocrisy, the growing evangelical and pop-rock nature of the Mass, or the fact that I never heard a single member of the clergy, ordained or un, say a prayer for all the Iraqis who were being slaughtered in the war.
It amazes me that so many millions of people still march to the beat of St. Peter's drum alone. I once believed in the power of being soulful, that "religion", from the Latin, "re-ligare" or to bind up again, had a real if unrecognized meaning that could give people a way to reflect or figure things out. But people don't want to do that, they want, even need, to be told what to do. They are like sleepwalkers, having as little to do with their own spirituality as with likely anything else in their over-full, overbusy lives. It's a terrible human tragedy.
drdon, I believe in god. I have faith in a power greater than myself, and that this power has, in my case, performed a miracle that I was incapable of doing on my own. I am nearly 20 years clean and sober (July 18 is my AA anniversary), and this is truly because of a profound psychic and spiritual rearrangement.
That said, I am deeply suspicious of a kind of "born again" faith that strikes one an instant believer. You know the type: the "I used to be an asshole, but now I can walk on water." I don't sit well with people who tell me how holy and spiritual they are and at the same time tell me how they hate "teh gays," or they won't vote for Obama because he's a "nigger", or tell me that we need to bomb Iran to kingdom come.
The problem is not with the teachings in the various texts - The Torah is a magnificent spiritual text. If you insist on a literal understanding of any of the sacred texts, you are going to be screwed. They were all written in a language of metaphor and pertinent to their time. When the Torah speaks about sexual behavior, it is actually speaking about a form of idolatry, NOT about love. As for the New Testament, the translation from Hebrew to the King James bible is suspect in itself.
The primary message in these writings is to teach love and tolerance. So what is the problem? The problem is that small minds filled with fear rise to positions of power and poison the message. My problem is not with religion, or with faith. My problem is with those hate-mongers who would twist the language and paralyze people with fear.
Regardless of how one believes, or not, an unexamined life is not worth living.
Mando - That is one of my problems, and I have many, with religion. It gets even more personal for me than praying for the Iraqis. How about the guy who goes right home from church on a Sunday, cracks open a beer, and treats his family like crap the rest of the day? That's something a person has the power to change and yet millions of Americans don't take their "faith" seriously enough to be better people.
Diva - Congratulations on your sobriety. Because I don't believe in God, I guess I feel like you did have the power to do it yourself, and have. And that's another part of the way I tend to see things in life. I think it is so much more empowering to believe that each of us has the ability to really change our lives than to credit some invisible, supernatural force for the good, or bad, things that happen to me.
I agree with you in one aspect of religious texts and that is that literal interpretation will leave you quite confused. That being said, my argument is that you can't be literal when it suits you and then metaphorical when it doesn't.
The one thing I'd disagree with is that these are generally books about love and tolerance. Maybe the Tao Te Ching but certainly not the Bible, Torah or Koran. These books were largely written to control an illiterate population and to secure the privilege and power of holy men. They are replete with violence, exclusionary thought, and heinous punishment of those who disagree. Certainly if people want to focus only on the "love thy neighbor" parts they can. But it can't be denied that the God of these books is a jealous, vengeful God. That's not something I deem worthy of worship.
drdon, in my opinion, it isn't god, nor the texts, that is the problem. It is the privilege and power of holy men who are corrupted absolutely by this privilege and power. Mankind loves violence, exclusionary thought, and heinous punishment of those who disagree. We are the ones who interperet, and we are the ones who wrote these holy texts.
While Orthodox Jewry would disagree with me (they believe the Torah was written by the hand of god), historical evidence suggests the Torah was written over time, by more than one man. As were the books of the New Testement. As was the Koran. And these books are interpereted by mankind.
So why would some of us interperet from a place of love, tolerance, and kindness and still others form a place of vengence, and punishment? Because those in power are corrupted by power.
Jewish thought is this: we were placed on earth to complete and heal the world, which god left incomplete. God gave us free will. Most of us are not following the task of healing the world; instead, we are destroying it, and each other, with greed, fear and hate. Sorry state, indeed.
I don't demand that you, or anyone else, have faith in a god. It is a completely personal choice. And anyone whose faith is so shaky that they demand complience with their own rigid set of rules, that person does not have real belief nor faith at all. Thus the rigid fundamentalists, in my opinion, lack faith. They lack belief. They lack conviction.
As for recovery in AA: real alcoholics are unable to stop on their own. Or, to stay stopped and be changed at depth. There is tremendous power in surrender - and surrender I did, because alcohol and cocaine had beaten me completely. And it is through that surrender that I have become personally empowered. It is one of the great paradoxes of AA; and no, AA is neither cult nor religion. We are controlled anarchy.
Diva - Exactly my point. These texts were all written by humans so the laws in them, some good and some bad, are all creations of human beings as is, in my opinion, the supposed creator who inspired them.
It's not my purpose to debate the topic here as a few paragraphs back and forth can do justice to neither argument but as a non-believer, I'm always fascinated as to what drives the faith of different people I meet.
I cannot speak about addiction personally but I have had family members who have quit drinking alcohol and have now been sober for many years without attending AA or any expressed belief in God. Certainly these people may not be telling me the truth and maybe they really only felt like they quit with divine intervention but they've told me otherwise. In Europe, the idea of abstinence is not popular and controlled drinking is the model. There have been a number of well-designed studies indicating that people can learn to drink responsibly and, considering the relapse rate of abstinence only programs, many European substance abuse experts believe a controlled use program is much more effective.
This is not intended as a criticism of AA or similar programs that have helped millions. My opinion is simply that experience and research lead me to believe there are multiple ways to save oneself, if a person is interested in doing so. And again, being an atheist, I will never believe that God intervenes to help people with these problems because I don't believe there is a God. Therefore, while people may not believe we have the strength in us to do it, I think we do. I think we own all of our successes and all of our failings.
Dr. Don, I am awarding you the Arte y pico! LINK
Oh, Blueberry, well done.
You make a good point:
"But the reality is that if you believe you cannot cherry pick. You can't just practice the parts of the Bible that you're okay with and ignore the others. Either you believe or you don't."
BUT, you've gotta remember:
All people are hypocrites. You are. I am. It's our human nature to be selfish, greedy, gross individuals.
What I find most fascinating - and what I think you might be missing here- is that most, if not all, characters in the Bible made errors. Huge errors. Sins that would make your head spin.
(ie, David, the "Man after God's own heart", lusted after a woman who was bathing on rooftop, committed adultery with her, and then had the "other man" murdered.
And Abraham, "Father of all of the nations," schemed his way into Egypt by pretending his wife was his sister so that Pharoah could have his way with her. THEN the story goes one to say that he got drunk and had sex with his daughters.
Also, Peter. "Cephas". "Rock". Even though Peter violently sliced off a Roman soldier's ear & denied Christ 3 times.
Talk about disgusting and disgraceful. Talk about inconsistent. Why would this filth be recorded in the "perfect" Bible?
But check out Mark 2.
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Mark 2:
13Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
---
So that's the point. True believers in Christ are saved by grace. Not perfection. It's all about relationship, not performance. Relationships with anyone you care about aren't ever perfect, but they're real. And if they're sincere, they take WORK.
Also, I might add that most people casually believe in God, that's true. But most people don't follow Jesus in that same Book. And if Jesus states in the Bible, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the FATHER but through me," then the people who say they only believe in God and not Jesus really don't have access to Him, thus not really having a relationship with God at all in the first place, if that makes sense.
And those are my 2 cents. Take it for what its worth. ;)
love ya. :)
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