Cleaning my office, which serves double duty as a guest room. We have company coming in this weekend and that’s always a good excuse to clean up.
So while I’m moving things around, listening to very loud music (Deep Purple, Who Do We Think We Are? which I think is one of the great underappreciated rock’n’roll albums of all time), thoughts are buzzing around my head.
Already this morning I posted a response to someone on a group discussing Science vs Religion—a topic fraught with the potential for all kinds of angsty in-your-face defensiveness—wherein I once more found myself in the position of turning an argument around on someone who had decided that I had insulted him by insisting on evidence and common sense and the practice of looking at alternative explanations that might undercut a cherished experience. In this case, we were discussing ghosts. When I pointed out that the described experience fit well with what is known as hypnogogic hallucination, I was summarily told that if I said that to the experiencer’s face, I’d likely get a kick in the groin. Hardly a mature response.
But then it went on to question why someone like me—a materialist—can’t just stop being insulting by insisting that what people experience is explicable in material terms. It never seems to occur to some people that every time they tell me that I need Jesus or that I’m bound for hell or that my life must be empty and meaningless because I don’t believe in god, that they are being insulting to me. Built into this level of religiosity is the automatic assumption that they’re right and I’m wrong and that’s the end of it. They don’t see this as hubris or arrogance because it comes from, they believe, an outside source—god or whatever—and that all they’re doing is conveying the message.
Well, sorry. We can all be arrogant on someone else’s behalf and beg off the charge of arrogance because we’re just the messenger. Displacing responsibility for being rude and offensive is a handy dodge—oh, it’s not me, it’s The Lord’s word!—but the fact remains, you choose to hand out the insult. That you don’t see it that way is forgivable until it has been pointed out to you how it’s insulting. After that, you’re just being an ass about it.
This is not to say people can’t discuss this without being insulting. I have a few friends who are devout believers and we often bandy the philosophy without ever getting personal or insulting. I have to say, though, that without those few people who are demonstrably intelligent about the subject, I would probably categorize all such folks as raving loonies with poor social skills.
To be fair, I know some atheists who are just as offensive. And while I can understand where it comes from, it never wins any points.
I try—and I’m only human, so lapses occur—ardently to deal with the subject, not the individual. There does come a point when the question arises “Why do you believe this stuff?” and it does veer off into the personal. But it’s the ideas I criticize, not the people.
Unless by acting upon their beliefs they cause harm. Then I get personal. Boy, do I get personal!
Insulated religious communities, such as some of the splinter Mormon sects who practice polygamy, as far as I’m concerned, are deluded. Not because they believe in god, but because they feel that belief gives them leave to treat certain people like shit. Mainly women, whom they view as property. These little pockets are, for all intents and purposes, little feudal kingdoms with one or a few men at the top dictating to the rest. I understand the leaders well enough—no matter how they couch their justifications, they are power-hungry bigots who’ve figured out how to feed their addictions. What I fail repeatedly to understand are all the others who follow them. What drives someone to surrender their conscience, their will, their choices to be ruled over by a self-serving tyrant? Unless they like the arrangement they have within the hierarchy, which then makes it just as self-serving to follow, and becomes collusive. Because it’s a top down, tiered society, and there always seems to be somebody lower down, ending finally with the women and the children, who end up having no say. The ties that bind are like electrical lines dispersing power.
We’re watching a wonderful thing happen in Egypt. Democracy might break out in one of the most populous countries on the planet. They have validated the dictum that people allow themselves to be ruled, that all the power a tyrant has is only what the people give him. Ultimately, this is true. The question is always, how abusive do things have to get before the people have had enough.
It’s the next stage that’s worrisome. The Muslim Brotherhood is waiting in the wings, no doubt, for an opportunity to establish Sha’ria law. Once that happens, democracy is done. Sha’ria is autocratic, brooks no debate, and is not amenable to differences of opinion that stray too far—like, for instance, equal rights for women.
Yet to oppress the Muslim Brotherhood is also wrong. That’s part of what has ultimately undone Mubarak. It’s hard. Even here we have to relearn that lesson periodically, that just because we disagree with someone and that someone is disagreeable, we don’t have the right to suppress or oppress them. It’s more detrimental in the long run to force someone to shut up than any damage they can do by speaking their piece.
If Egypt transforms in the next year into a genuine secular democracy, then we may begin to see the entire Middle East take the same steps. Iran would likely be the next one, and in that instance it would be a transformation 30 years overdue, since after ousting the Shah that’s where they were heading. Within a year, the clerics assumed full authority and democracy in any practical sense was gone. They were able to do this because no one wanted to defy people speaking for god. Once you hoist that banner, people get chary of challenging your authority, because they might be challenging god.
That is the harm in such beliefs. I won’t deny much good comes from religion, but in so many instances the tenets of religions have predisposed people to support autocracy, tyranny, and act counter to their own best interests. The assumption that a given leader is speaking for god and therefore must be telling the truth or could not do anything against the good is naive. By the time everyone figures out that he’s just using the people’s credulity to gain power, it can be too late.
None of which has any bearing on the truth of the basic assertions. Whether there is a god or not has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m describing. What it does have to do with is whether or not one is willing to set that aside in matters of public policy, wherein any use of religion often ends up being a cynical ploy to obtain power or enact laws that may not be for the best.
Anyway, such are the kinds of things that flit through my mind while I’m cleaning up. Dust motes dancing over synapses. Time for another side of rock’n’roll.
