Is it just me, or has it been a bad week for religion?
I mean, you’ve got those twits praying to the good lord above for a reduction in gas pump prices, a tactic sure to bring prompt results, since prayer has been so helpful for everything from ending war and curing heart disease to restoring faithful amputee’s limbs, right?
And you’ve got those twerps at Madonna House (!), who’ve returned their Orders of Canada because Dr. Henry Morgenthaler, whose clinics have provided women with the choice of safe abortions in the face of the most obscene “Christian” activism, was awarded an Order of Canada, too. Yes, do return your awards, please, so they can be handed out to equally-deserving (and more appreciative) recipients.
And you’ve got that guy in Michigan, Bradley Fowler, who’s suing Bible publishers for $70 mil (reports the fuckwit wingnuts at WorldNetDaily) because they progressively altered some relatively-benign biblical passages to something quite clearly homophobic and, as he asserts, in violation of his (U.S.) constitutional rights. While he doesn’t have a hope in, um, hell of collecting, the repeated exposure of the way hate-fuelled religiosity gets a pass in North American society is hugely gratifying.
And now the kids I wrote about a week ago, Anonymous, present a wonderful video of their work exposing the intellectual and moral wound in my downtown Toronto neighbourhood, at the Church of $cientology:
By the way, Anonymous Toronto, whose regular protests in my neighb, in addition to being a delightful change from the annoyance of constantly, constantly having to tell the clams hawking “stress tests” to fuck themselves sideways every goddamned time I pass their blighted store entrance, are actually trying to bring hate crimes charges against the “church” for their institutionalized bigotry against gay and lesbian people.
Whether they’re successful or not is yet to be seen, of course, because the whole thing depends on how “religion” is legally defined. And that’s kind of the cool thing about this particular dissection of $cientology — just because their ludicrous fictions are only 50 or so years old doesn’t make them any more or less ludicrous than fictions from 2000 years ago.
And exposing $cientology as hateful, harmful bullshit ultimately calls into question the hateful, harmful bullshit of all religion. And how the price paid, by manipulating and infantalizing a population to achieve whatever positive benefits religion points to in justifying its own existence, is way too high.
We’ve got to find a way of understanding what it is about the religious experience that provides a very real, human benefit to so many people, and achieve it through means other than lies and wholesale bigotry. And, it goes without saying (I hope), without expensive deprogramming seminars.
Sam Harris speaks about it thusly, in The Four Horsemen:
Well. I think there’s one answer to that question which may illuminate a difference, or at least the difference that I have, I think, maybe with all three of you. There’s something about … I mean, I still use words like “spiritual” and “mystical” without furrowing my brow too much and, I admit, to the consternation of many atheists. I think there is a range of experience that is rare, and that is only talked about without obvious qualms in religious discourse. And because it’s only talked about in religious discourse, it is just riddled with superstition. And it’s used to cash out various metaphysical schemes which it can’t reasonably do. But clearly people have extraordinary experiences. Whether they have them on LSD, or they have them because they were alone in a cave for a year, or they have them because just happen to have the neurology that is particularly labile that allows for it, but people have self-transcending experiences. And people have the best day of their life where everything seemed, you know, they seemed at one with nature. And for that, because religion seems to be the only game in town in talking about those experiences and dignifying them, that’s one reason why I think it seems to be taboo to criticise it, because you are talking about the most important moments in people’s lives and trashing them, at least from their view.
Let’s find out about that experience and find a way to replicate it without the hurtful, nonsensical trappings. Like, right now.
(Thanks to Joe. My.God. for the video link).
8 comments
Now here’s my idea of transcendence. (You’ve probably read bits of this before but not with as much colourful detail as it’s written here–from pinknews.co.uk.)
—-
Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is suspected of orchestrating a homoerotic spectacle that went “right up to the line” of the US state of Arkansas’s morality laws.
At two cage-fighting events in the state last month, which promised “hot chicks, cold beer and hardcore fights,” crowds came to see wrestlers beat each other to a pulp — but instead they saw two men kissing and gyrating.
Crowds of 1,000 people were attracted to Red White and Blood in Texarkana and Blue Collar Brawlin in Fort Smith, advertised on websites such as Craigslist.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Baron Cohen’s spokesman has refused to confirm that the comedian was behind this latest prank.
Punters were charged $5 (£2.50) to enter the event and were plied with $1 beer, but were also told to leave their phones and cameras in their cars.
They were also made to sign release forms, saying they were willing to appear on camera.
T-shirts reading “Straight Dave’s United Straights of America”, emblazoned with pictures of guns, beers and bikini-clad breasts, were handed out at the event while audience members were encouraged to sing stridently heterosexual songs.
At the Fort Smith event, a series of “unevenly matched” fights followed, with a character named “Straight Dave”, who some witnesses identified as Cohen, coming out to goad the crowd between the bouts.
A witness said:
“Towards the end a guy got into the ring with Borat [and] staged a short fight and before long Borat had him pinned against the cage kissing him as the stands were clearing from the homo activity.
“I looked back to see Borat on his knees in front of the unknown man, you can figure the rest.”
Cohen is currently working on a new film revolving around a gay Austrian reporter with a liking for mesh T-shirts.
The film’s working title is Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt.
Earlier this week Cohen is alleged to have tricked a former Israeli intelligence officer and a Palestinian academic into discussing the difference between Hamas and hummus.
As we’ve covered more than once… oh, hey, I’m a Christian.
And so my argument for “what is it that people get out of religion” is: “Well… God.”
But religion doesn’t *have* to be built on hatefulness and bigotry. I go to church. I have a great relationship with my parish priest – and I’m out to her. I’ve never heard her, or any of our guest preachers, speak hatefully or harshly – we do the classic Anglican thing of making church and Christian faith about improving oneself, becoming a better person, the idea that it’s better to try and lead people to understanding Christianity by being good Christians than, for example, by telling them they’re going to hell (which mainstream Anglican theology does not in fact believe). As one of my fellow parishioners put it: “We’re not put on Earth to judge people.”
So the way to replicate the religious experience without the hurtful, hateful trappings, I’d say, is to try and get people past the hurtfulness and hatefulness that’s just unnecessary and unChristian. (I can’t speak to other religions – or cults.)
Jesus gave only two commandments:
1) Love the Lord
2) Love everyone else
All this hateful bile-spewing is thoroughly unChristian.
Why does everyone feel compelled when they choose to go to church to give their parish Extra Credit for not being homophobic? I always think “What’s the big deal here, besides the fact that we expect so goddam little that we’re just thrilled when we don’t get bashed in the head and chained to a fencepost?”
Sorry.
Having grown up in the part of the country that Sacha Baron Cohen is currently working, I have to admit that part of me is deeply suspicious of his set-up method. I think “How much disdain does this guy have for these people? And how toxic is it going to be to him eventually?” And then I think “Ah, fuck it. Let us all praise SBC for giving the rednecks the opportunity to humiliate themselves in a way that delivers the same dose of nasty as they take such joy in delivering to others on a daily basis.” YEE HAW!
mcQ: I don’t give my parish extra credit for not being homophobic assholes, I just don’t go to churches where they *are*. I give my church extra credit for the truly lovely people I’ve met there, and I adore my priest because she’s a wonderful person with a gift for giving sermons on thought-provoking topics that help me become a better person and live a better life, both happier in myself and better prompted to be good to other people.
It is, however, worth bearing in mind that a lot of church-goers tend to be conservative, and conservative people tend to be homophobic. The rising number of progressive-minded churches and priests is a pleasing thing to those of us who are both Christian and (for want of a better word) moral.
When we non-heterosexual Christians are looking for a church, yes, it is a nice thing to find one that’s filled with people who’ve taken “love thy neighbour” to heart and have absorbed Jesus’s message of love.
Sadly, it’s not in doubt that many people who call themselves Christian are far from being good advertisements for the faith. However, the persistence of religious adherence (even in areas where it’s actively suppressed) can surely be held to indicate that religion is going to resist elimination. My church’s theology doesn’t say that atheists are doomed, but efforts to convert the rest of us probably are. My point is that religion doesn’t *have* to be bad.
Sami, I think Sam Harris might argue that not only does the persistence of religious adherence point to it’s long-term existence but that it’s evidence of something else. Not of the existence of a divine being — you knew that was coming, right? — but, rather, that there’s something about the human experience and, quite possibly, in our neurobiology which has benefited from it.
I totally understand how frustrating it must be to experience religion, as you do, without the hurtful trappings and nonsense and simultaneously see so many people who claim the very same faith — if not a greater level of the very same faith — actually embracing the hurtful trappings and nonsense.
Well, yes, no argument there, regardless of the faith. But, always, that pesky Book enters the picture. That’s, I think, where the problem lies. Get past That Book.
It’s incredibly frustrating. That joke slogan – “Jesus, save me from Your followers” – comes to mind fairly often.
I recognise there’s a certain problem with the Bible, but unfortunately it’s not directly solvable, I think. See, people cherrypick the parts of it they want. Progressive-orthodox types like me take the “well, the Old Testament was kind of a different thing, we got a new covenant for a reason, check out this entire set of scriptures that are all about love and kindness” approach. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, beams in one’s eye, by this all men shall know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another, etc. The wrathful, vengeful God of the Old Testament is not the God we face; we are already forgiven for our sins, because the *old* covenant wasn’t working.
Whereas the kind of assholes who get featured on Fundies Say The Darnedest Things take the “salvation by grace” part but not the “love thy neighbour” part, the Leviticus proscription of teh gay but not, you know, EVERY OTHER part of Leviticus, like the ones banning mixed-fibre shirts for example, and use the same Christ who said all that stuff about loving thy neighbour, turning the other cheek, and suchlike to justify hate.
It’s like… I’m sorry, are we talking about the same Jesus? Mine is the Nazarene who wanted us to love and forgive, the one who loved the poor and the outcasts of society, and spoke against the wealthy instead of somehow deriving some smug conclusion that being rich makes you a better person.
The Book isn’t the problem. The people are the problem. The way to change religion is to change the people, not the Book. If you actually read it, the Book is fine, because all Jesus asked us to do was love and care for one another.
I get a bit passionate about this, but… it matters to me, a lot, and for more reason than just the fact that the visible minority (and I’m pretty sure they are a minority, based on my experience with Actual Christians, or maybe it’s partly national, I don’t know) make the rest of us look bad, and make me feel embarrassed to be Christian, and kind of defensive about the no, really, it’s possible to be Christian and a good person! factor.
I really empathised with Fred in this Something Positive strip.
I hafta disagree; The Book’s a huge problem. And, of course, by not referring to it specifically, I think you can guess I’m talking about all of Those Books, not just The Bible. It’s because it’s so rife with inaccuracies, so contradictory, so unaware of the universe as we now understand it that it’s rendered not just obsolete but dangerous, too, especially in the hands of those who’d manipulate it for their own greed and power.
There’s no internal instruction within The Books as far as which passages to accept as truth and which to take as allegory and which to maybe ignore because they’re really creepy and ugly. And that’s probably where they fail the most.
You make a very strong argument that arriving at what’s basically The Golden Rule via religion — as you and your fellow parishioners have done — should mitigate the harm and nonsense and it does, in my mind, but only to a degree (and I’d imagine that that degree is where we disagree most). I’d argue that the Golden Rule can be arrived at by not just common sense but also through the evolutionary imperative, that it’s actually beneficial to the species to behave in such a manner.
I guess for many it just doesn’t matter how we arrive at that state of loving yourself and others. But I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to mitigate the bad stuff by the eventual arrival of a few at that state, when it can be arrived at by other, less-problematic means.
I can see your point. Of course, as I’m sure you recognise, to me there’s also the “… but God is real” factor.
I believe, though, that everyone has to find enlightenment their own way, because nobody really comes to God through forced conversion.
The Golden Rule is, interestingly, a major facet of just about every religion – there was an interesting article on that in a recent issue of Anglican Messenger.
I’m not sure I agree that the That Book problems apply generically to all Books. The potential for misuse of the Bible is well-documented throughout history, alas; if there was a spiritual leader whose work I could, by some power, require to be studied in depth in all schools, around the world, I wouldn’t necessarily pick a Christian. I’d probably choose the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Dude is wise, and Buddhism doesn’t seem to be as prone to causing, say, Inquisitions.
On the other hand, since it’s a significant problem with major Books, yeah, fair point.
The thing is? I’m not saying that the fact that Good Christians exist really makes up for the bad ones. My parish, as lovely as it is, doesn’t really provide an adequate offset for WBC. My adherence to Christianity isn’t based on ideological satisfaction (though the Anglicans are trying), it’s that I have felt the touch of the divine in my life, and it *is* fulfilling, in a disgustingly wholesome way, to share the church experience with good people.
It’s *not* ideologically pure, it’s not rational, but it is perhaps pragmatic. You can’t discard The Book. People *can* achieve a pleasing enlightenment without direct experience of God. (You’re missing out, but I’m not going to tell you how to live.) But it’s not just that they might not, it’s that religion is something we’re more or less stuck with. I’d like to find a way to shape that into something non-hurtful, since eliminating it completely is impractical as an objective, and – what with the being Christian thing – not something I actually want to achieve.
Sorry if I’m not being very coherent, I’ve had a terrible day and it’s late.