(no subject)

[which_chick]

There's an elephant in the conference room and apparently nobody can see the damn thing.



I'm looking at the Israel/Hezbollah-Lebanon conflict at the moment, but in a broader context, I'm looking at the problem of religion. As most of you are probably aware, I don't play the game myself, but I do know the rules and I'm an interested bystander by way of living in a world where a surprising number of people DO play the game, quite seriously. The problem, I guess, is that we're here trying to have a pluralistic world. In Los Estados Unidos we're going on about religious freedom. The country was FOUNDED on religious freedom -- we all learn that in grade school about the time we study the Pilgrims. In England, the Puritans were getting whupped up upon because of their religious views... and they fled persecution into Holland and then from there to the New World. Religious freedom is what we're all about, over here. Well, that and cheap gasoline. (We don't seem to be doing too well on the cheap gasoline thing, but that's not the topic for today.)

So we're all about the freedom of religion. Yay! Huzzah! But, and this is the elephant, quite a few of the existing religions are kind of weird about people who aren't True Believers. The great unwashed people who aren't True Believers are, in most religions, going to a bad end and, depending on what religion you're looking at, it may even be OK to treat the Nonbelievers differently... even to kill them. Religion as a whole seems to be some kind of process for dividing up the people in the world into Star-bellied Sneetches and Plain-bellied Sneetches and then convincing the Star-bellied Sneetches that they're somehow better than the other kind. (If you do not have any idea what I'm talking about, you can read the text of the thing here along with some musings about the Unitarian Universalist church.) In a surprising number of the religions where it is NOT OK to kill the Plain--bellied Sneetches, the Star-bellied Sneetches are still supposed to try to affix stars to the Plain-bellied Sneetches. I don't get this. Can't you be all happy about your own damn star and not be worrying about the star or lack thereof on someone else's belly? What the hell does it matter what other people do?

And so Brother Jacob the Star-bellied Sneetch sayeth unto me thusly: But, sistah, the Plain-bellied Sneetches are going to BURN IN HELL FOREVER AND EVER if they don't get stars! It is our duty to SAVE these poor sinners and bring them into the arms of Jaysus!

Uhm. Yeah. That's what you say. And over here is Ahmed the Star-bellied Sneetch who says that killing the infidel Plain-bellied Sneetches will grease his way into paradise where he'll be attended by a gazillion virgins (What's with the virgins? They're like, y'know, beginners at teh hawt sex0r. I think I'd rather have someone I didn't have to explain things to...) who'll demonstrate their eternal gratitude for his slaughter of the Plain-bellieds by regrowing their hymens overnight or whatever. (I also don't know how me getting virgins who regrow hymens overnight is supposed to be a selling point. Hymens are a feature of girl virgins, some of them, and I'm not sure what the hell I would want with a bunch of girls anyway... is Ahmed's paradise only for guys and lesbians? What do the straight chicks get, then? Anybody know?)

Are Brother Jacob and Ahmed both right? Explain your answer, use back of the page if necessary.

I think that in order to have a plurality of religions in a Can't we all just get along? world, everybody has to have a mental headspace where it's NOT OKAY to kill over matters of faith, where it's NOT OKAY to do more than visit the infidels with explanatory pamphlets, where it's NOT OKAY to push one's religion with public money or in publicly-funded locations like public schools. I am not certain that this mindset is compatible with the bulk of the religions I have encountered -- most of them have some level of geas (probably a subspecies of sneetch, really) on the True Believers to address the problem of the nonbelievers by eradication or conversion.

I do not know what to do about this... but pretending this is not an issue hasn't worked yet.

Comments

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I wish it were possible to bow online; that was a masterful mini-essay.

I do, however, object ever so slightly to being called a fanatical atheist. I'm technically an agnostic (of the form: "The question 'is there a god' is malformed because it cannot be meaningfully answered as asked"). I merely have disdain for every religion I have ever seen, as they all appear either completely mad or viciously evil. Those religions which insist on a good, omnipotent god are laughable on their face; those religions without an omnipotent god are worthless to humans; and those religions with an evil god would certainly be in line with the universe, but should be fought every step of the way were there any which had developed beyond the stage where they're followed by a few self-deluded lunatics.

Were you to call me a fanatical agnostic, however, I would gladly accept the title.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Hrmph. You know, you're one of those agnostics who *cause* this regrettable confusion of terms in the first place.

Personally, I disapprove of rhetorical wars against the religious, if for nothing else, because those folks represent what possible future there shall be. From a sociobiological prospective, agnosticism and atheism are losing bets - neither group really replaces itself by reproduction. In that sense, both atheism and agnosticism are rather like Shakerism on a grand scale - morally admirable, occasionally upright, renowned for products of great craftsmanship and surpassing cleverness, and yet, in the end, doomed to extinction by suboptimal reproductive strategy at a doctrinal level. I fear some days that the whole of secular Western civilization will pass with the sands, leaving behind us nothing more than the vast megacultural equivalent of really fine if somewhat uncomfortable dining-room furniture (http://www.shaker.net/).

Ahem. What I mean is, I'm not reproducing. Neither are a lot of people like me. But people like my church-going cousins *are* reproducing. They are, in a sense, those who will carry on afterwards. Fighting with them, and by rhetorical extension, their progeny, born and yet-to-be-born, does not seem to be a worth-while endeavor. Moulding the general temper of society such that those among them who fall out of love with the church are not destroyed by that loss of faith - this is the goal, I think. Because atheists and agnostics are... transient phenomena. We don't last. We aren't the main-stem, the main-spring, the living heartwood of society. We are epiphenomena (http://www.allwords.com/word-epiphenomena.html).

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

That started out as an apology, I swear.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I didn't think that you needed to apologize, so I read it as a very entertaining rant. :)

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

I know that either Electroweak or his spouse is an agnostic, and the other is an atheist. I can never remember which though.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Electroweak is an agnostic. Not sure what Ives thinks on the matter.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

She's Jewish, actually.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I am not having a rhetorical war against the religious. I am concerned that the current mindset of way too many religious folks does not allow for a world where we all get along. Rather a lot of religions are exclusionary and exhort their believers to DO SOMETHING about unbelievers, either by converting them or by killing them. I kind of think that this is going to continue to be a problem in the world. That was all I was going for.

And no, I am not reproducing. If I got absolutely nothing else out of junior high, I did learn solidly and for true that the world neither wants nor needs another one of me. One was probably too many, to be honest.