Offense Alert - This post is likely to annoy some people and be misunderstood by others I am writing this to open up a dialogue. My views here might be wrong and I may have made factual errors, in which case discuss with me, correct my errors and show me new facts Ive missed. Thats the only way we learn - only keep it respectful. Religion is a way of making sense of experience, and in itself it is no better or worse than any other. Horrible things have been done in the name of religion, but atheist ideologies that treat people as no more than objects have also led to some dreadful things. So theism versus atheism is not the problem. Some religions are inherently more problematic than others. Religions without sacred texts probably tend to be the most flexible, after all its just your word versus mine and we can talk about that. Also religions that are based around wisdom literature, that is beliefs and standards learned from experience and not revealed by anything super-natural are also a bit safer than other ones. When religions have a sacred text they tend to come in two types: inspired versus revealed, and it is religions with revealed texts that tend to be the hardest to engage with. For most Jews and Christians their sacred texts are inspired, that is they believe that God inspired people to write the texts, but didnt dictate them. Sure, there are ultra-orthodox Jews and Fundamentalist Christians who believe God literally dictated The Book, but most dont believe that. For the rest this means that it is OK for their texts to be human, to be less than perfect. It is possible to say that was written for a specific time and place and so doesnt apply now, or even to say the author didnt fully understand what God meant. If it wasnt for that any Christian would have to accept that genocide is sometimes OK (and I know, some do!) But for religions with a revealed text, one that is shown or dictated word-for-word by God, things are more difficult. As I understand it, for Mormons or a Muslims, they cannot treat their holy books as human narratives that can be interpreted, they are literally the word of God/Allah and cannot be messed about with. What this means in effect is that for religions with an inspired text you can always have an argument that goes something like this: This is what it says here. Yes, but the writer was interpreting that through their own experience and in their own times, so we cannot apply that now. So how can we apply that to todays situation? Whereas for a religion with a revealed text the conversation is more like to go: This is what what is says here. Yes, but the writer was interpreting that through their own experience and in their own times, so we cannot apply that now. Are you saying that God made a mistake or changed his mind? No, only that we cant apply that uncritically to todays situation. Yes we can. God said it. God is perfect. We just need to do what it says here. This applies to all religions (and individuals within religious communities) who treat their holy writings as revealed texts rather than inspired texts. Revealed texts close down conversations and stop people from learning. What I find most strange is that in the Middle Ages it was Christianity that was the rigid closed book that stopped people learning whereas exciting progress in human thinking emerged from the Islamic world. Now we have fundamentalist of all shades pushing back against human progress in the name of their various religions. I have no real conclusion to this meandering, just a vague sense that we need to open up a dialogue and a sense of pessimism that this dialogue will be blocked when people treat their religious texts as the literal, dictated word of God. Any ideas? Do you agree with this view? What are the implications of this view in terms of creating a safer, healthier and more just world?
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 06:38:27 +0000
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