Readers sometimes suggest that I am against religion. Which is simply not true.
Life is a long time, pocked with misfortune and death. Faith in some kind of comforting story seems to help, filling the empty hours, creating the illusion of meaning, and comforting sufferers when reason fails. I’d never dream of trying to yank that blankie away.
Rather, I believe religion should be voluntary. A radical thought, I know, so let me explain. You review the beliefs and practices dictated by a particular faith — angels, Kashrut, the giant tortoise balancing the universe on his shell, whatever — and freely decide what to embrace and what to reject. Your call. Not mine.
This liberal lunacy can confuse religious types, who consider forcing their practices upon the unwilling an integral part of their belief system. So much that to oppose their doing so strikes them as attacking their faith, root and branch. If I decide not to celebrate Christmas, I am deliberately offending them.
And the faithful have a genius for taking offense. The acts of others, if contrary to their religion, are a sort of death ray, effective over huge distances. That baffles me. There’s almost nothing you can do to offend me. Call me awful names? Get in line. Make a big pile of my books and set them on fire? Fine, if you paid for them. I’ll tweet a photo of the flames. That kind of vituperation is a compliment — people sharing hate mail are slyly bragging: “I matter; look at the reaction I inspire!”
To me, taking offense only draws attention to criticism. By culling books on America’s racist past, the state of Florida didn’t suppress history; it magnified it.
The ability to absorb criticism is a challenge everywhere. Are you following the problems radiating from Sweden? On June 28, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee, burned pages torn from a Quran in front of a Stockholm mosque during the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha (while waving Swedish flags and blasting the Swedish national anthem — a dramatic touch). The complication is that in Sweden, you need official approval to hold a protest. He had it.
The burning turned an isolated act into an international crisis. Iraq expelled its Swedish ambassador and a mob attacked the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Some argue that burning Qurans is not free speech, but hate speech, and thus illegal. That makes some sense to me — a burning Quran could be like a burning cross. The whole imbroglio might stall Sweden’s membership in NATO.
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Further evidence that the human niche is overcrowded, and as a result, a large number of the denizen have lost their marbles.
ReplyDeleteCall me an idiot but after reading that twice im not sure what your trying to say. You are not against religion?
ReplyDeleteI would never do that. (Although, if the shoe fits...) Seriously, as the great Samuel Johnson once said: "I have given you an argument, sir. I am not also obligated to give you an understanding."
DeleteKaye Grabbe
ReplyDeleteA perfect gotcha-thanks! Who knew when I had to read Dante back in college in freshman English that that would enable me to remember enough to understand your reference. And, as I recall, the Inferno was the best reading of the 3 levels; Purgatorio being the next best and Heaven being boring. I have a wonderful translation still in one of my bookcases; I am going to take a look and reread some of Dante.
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't know. While certainly it's hard to top creating a fiery hell and placing all of your enemies uncomfortably within it, the second and third volumes have their excellences. I love in Purgatorio where, in Canto 30, Dante finally gets to heaven's gate, where Virgil takes off and Beatrice starts to dress him down. And heaven has this marvelous swirling roseate complexity. Plus half of it are Jews. I took that as a big wink from Dante to me, as a kind of reward for seeing the thing through.
DeleteSo many crimes in the name of religion. Religion should be private, like sex. I don’t want to hear about yours.
ReplyDeleteGood points; I yield to your superior memory. Thanks for a wonderful piece today. Now I am going to read that section of Inferno you wrote about.
ReplyDeleteI don't care if people worship balloons or stars or Gods or Yahwey or a bench in a park. But a question; why do so may people who have a belief system want to force it on others. If not by force (the crusades or Spaniards in Mexico) then by trying to convince me "you must accept Jesus as your lord and savior to get into heaven." If there is a heaven, which I hope there is. I'm a lapsed catholic, I have my beliefs, the collective you have yours. Burning a Koran or a Bible or a scroll. Would Muhammed, blessed be him, or God or G-d (always male but that's another topic) not forgive? Is there a religion that doesn't have forgiveness as a tenet? Does a child dying in childbirth or in an accident not get to the hereafter because they never had a chance to pick a religion or to accept Jesus? I'm 70 years old and I just don't get it. You do you, I'll do me.
ReplyDeleteKeep writing, I'll keep on reading.
The question of what happens to a child who dies young without the opportunity to pick a religion is neatly dealt with in the brilliant 1991 Albert Brooks film "Defending Your Life."
DeleteThe newly-deceased Daniel Miller finds himself in a kind of legal limbo, where he is assigned attorney Bob Diamond (Rip Torn) to advocate for him to "move forward" (to Heaven or wherever). During the explanation of why he's there and why he has to defend his life's actions, a question occurs to him that is neatly resolved in three sentences of reply:
Daniel: Do children come here?
Bob: Children don't have to defend themselves. When a child is taken, they automatically move forward. Isn't that nice?
They argue that it is against their religion to interact with people who don't submit to the vagaries of their superstition - to the point of denying services they provide to all others - and the Supreme Court of Angry Conservative Catholics agreed with them. Thus our country became of version of the countries the Founders specifically turned their backs on when creating this nation. The willful, destructive obliviousness of the Right is stunning.
ReplyDeleteSCOTUS - Supreme Coven of the United States
ReplyDeleteBurn every religious text, I say.
ReplyDeleteAll scripture, meaning any religious text supposedly inspired by a god, is written by mortal human beings. Burning a "holy" book does not destroy the idea, though it might give temporary amusement to the arson. Imagining a gruesome death or afterlife is hope for justice. That eternal agony of hellfire isn't enough for Dante is somewhat disturbing and lessens the chance that I would read him at this late stage. Right now I would settle for any prison sentence served by The Cowardly Liar, to unsettle the idiots still bowing at his disgusting feet.
ReplyDeleteI originally wrote this on a now-defunct messageboard, years ago, and posted here in 2018, in response to another EGD that dealt with religion--and about being Jewish. Sorry it's so long, but I decided not to cut it:
ReplyDeleteJews are the home team....and it's hard not to root for the home team. White yarmulkes for the home games, black ones on the road. It doesn't matter if the owner is a jerk and the manager stinks, or if the current roster is pathetic. They're the colors and the team you grew up with. I like to say I was born a Democrat, a Jew, and a Cub fan. I'm still a Democrat by choice and and a Cub fan by choice. That third one? It's like choosing brown eyes or the color of your skin. You are what you are.
My ethnic origins are as Jewish as lox or gefilte fish. My father's mother was a Bolshevik who fled Russia because she ran with the terrorists and there was a price on her teen-aged head...the Bernadine Dohrn of 1905. But my old man had no use for Judaism because his parents were too poor to send him to Hebrew school. (The youngest of his six brothers did get to go, but he later became a beatnik, so maybe it was a big waste.) My mom was religious, and only spoke Yiddish until she started school. Her mother left her family behind and emigrated at 17, from the town where "Fiddler on the Roof" was set. Twenty-five years later, they all went up the chimney. The letters stopped coming to East Garfield Park.
But I guess somebody forgot to install some vital part before I left the factory. The engine sputters and misses. I grew up in a town that was majority Jewish, with a few Italians...so naturally I wanted to be an Italian greaser. Too many Jewish kids were only concerned with looks and money and status. After two years of Hebrew school, I quit, and wouldn't go back. Oh, I loved the language, and learning the history of my people, but hated the way it was such a circus, with fights and kids screwing around all the time. (And worshipping on the High Holy Days required tickets. They were not free. At the age of 11, I was appalled and outraged). Finally had a tutor, and got bar mitzvahed anyway.
That was the last of the megillah for me. I rarely dated among my own faith. My college girlfriend was Scandinavian, and I've had two non-Jewish wives. To read that 71 percent of non-Orthodox Jews marry non-Jews is to realize how much that figure has skyrocketed...it was a fraction of that figure when I was growing up.
Nu? I guess all this means is that I'm a Jew, and always will be, but I'm not really Jewish. One of the tribe, but non-observant. I come for the food and stay for the music...the brisket sandwiches make me drool, and I love klezmer bands. It's all about ethnicity with me, and not much else, although I still say the Hanukkah blessings over the same menorah I've been lighting for sixty-five years.
And most Jews don't really agonize over an afterlife. We're just light bulbs. There's no light bulb heaven or light bulb hell. The light within goes out when the brain ceases to function, and the bulb begins to decompose and has to be disposed of. Read that one at thirteen. Still believe it.
Most faiths seem to be merely mental constructs that people use to stave off the fear of nothingness, which gets more real as one ages. And the realization that life will continue to proceed, just as it always has, only without you. No snow. No summer. No baseball. No beaches. In heaven, there is no beer.
To walk through a cemetery on a beautiful summer's day, and to realize that all these people once had lives and thoughts like your own, or that a summer will come and that you will not be here to see it....that's the saddest and hardest and scariest part of all. If religion helps someone to deal with all that, fine. Good for you. Whatever gets you through the night. But it's definitely not everyone's glass of tea. Include me out.
Are you aware WHY they charge for high holiday tickets? Well let’s look at what other religions do. They pass a collection plate. That’s not permitted on the Jewish holidays. It’s not permitted at services on the Sabbath. So charging for High Holiday tickets if you aren’t a paying member makes sense.
DeleteThat is only part of the story. Never enough seats to go around. Dues-paying members get priority. Like the season ticket holders get the playoff seats in sports venues. Everybody else? The "once-a-year Jews" are clamoring for seats.It's a golden opportunity to make a few extra bucks. First come, first served. Pony up or stay home.
DeleteAs a kid in Hebrew school, I was finally considered to be "old enough" to attend Yom Kippur services. I was still young and foolish. Still really into it. I actually WANTED to go. But Hebrew school students did not get a free pass...it was "pay to pray"...and I was furious.
I told my father, who was not a pious man, that the synogue's Star of David should be replaced by a big dollar sign. That one did not sit well with the old man, and I got a royal ass-whupping. A real zetz.
I'm far from a committed Catholic, but I was certainly raised in and received a fine, dare-I-say-liberal, education via followers of that religion, and many probably think I ought to be committed -- so close!
ReplyDeleteI realize that contributing even a half-assed defense of faith here at the occasional gathering of the EGD non-believer's club is pointless, but so are all my other comments, so here goes...
If all Christians were as thin-skinned as you claim, NS, your email today must be filled with a lot more howling than we're seeing here. You're allegedly not "against religion," yet reduce 2,000 years of erudite, often brilliant theology as a "blankie" and a belief in angels on par with believing that a tortoise balances the universe on his shell. I'm not suggesting that the "good" side of religious practice is all of what's on display in this forsaken world, nor even necessarily most. But a lot of the Catholics I know read a column like this and shrug. They're no more interested in telling a committed agnostic such as yourself what to embrace and what to reject than you are in telling them. There are all kinds of Catholics out there -- those to the right of Amy Coney Barrett and those who are mortified that she is on the Supreme Court.
Mar-Tee asked: "why do so many people who have a belief system want to force it on others"? Well, there are a lot of bad reasons; history is filled with them, a couple of which were then noted. But adults voluntarily convert to various religions every day. Because they see reasonable people for whom faith is important and valuable and who are willing to share their experience with others. People who are charitable and kind. I don't see what's wrong with that, though it surely doesn't indicate that their beliefs are actually valid. Heck, Tom Cruise is a very successful guy and he's a Scientologist. Mitt Romney is a much more reasonable and better man than the Biggest Loser, yet he's a Mormon.
So, it's not that I don't "get" the point of the brief, extremely dismissive sentence equating beliefs in the third paragraph. But when it comes to burning the Koran, or a giant cross in front of a bunch of people in white hoods, or a Star of David -- those things aren't done to make salient points about varied beliefs. They're done to inflame passion, and it usually works. Seems to me we'd be better off if it weren't done by anybody, regardless of whose ox is being gored. Mar-Tee then asks: "Is there a religion that doesn't have forgiveness as a tenet?" Exactly, and a much greater embrace of the Golden Rule would go a long way toward making this a better world. Of course, "This liberal lunacy can confuse" lots of folks... As has been said by our host when other pie-in-the-sky wishes are evoked: "And ponies for the children!"
Wonderfully stated, Jakash, thoughtful and eloquent. Your comment here summarized the exact way that I felt reading today’s post, but would never have been able to conjure the words for as you so brilliantly did.
DeleteJakash writes a beautiful response an I agree with what he/she said. I went to Catholic schools through graduate school but after high school the "forced" participation really ended. I was an altar boy and sang in the choir. I liked those things, the uniformity and the group doing something together. I also liked the army for the same reasons. As an aside, after 12 years of nuns and priests, drill sergeants didn't seem too bad. What I don't remember is catholicism being the only way to eternal life as seems to be the idea in fundamentalism. Accept or be denied. Our view or eternal damnation. Seems exclusionary to me. And wrong.
ReplyDeleteAs Carlin so elequently put it religion has the biggest BS story ever told. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE&t=1s
ReplyDelete