Even as we throw a wall of barbed wire and tin across our southern border, we’re allowing the only national wall that actually serves a legitimate purpose to fall into serious disrepair, with signs of active government collusion in its collapse.
The wall, of course, is the one that separates church and state — and establishes what may be, arguably, the single most important agreement we have as a nation and free society: the agreement that secularity is sacred.
This agreement has to be more than a genteel abstraction if it’s going to survive Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department and the Evangelical takeover of the Air Force Academy and the simmering witches’ brew of money and Old Testament intolerance that is George Bush’s political base. For that reason, gloves off, my friends — about faith, values, spirituality and even that loaded term, God.
Bear with me as I attempt to release “God” from the captivity of religion — release not the authoritarianism or psychotic vindictiveness invested in the word, but the awe-brimming radiance and creative spirit so destructively partnered with those other qualities, so that we secularists can dance and celebrate what we have wrought. I speak of the God at the edge of language, the God that blesses all loving human endeavor — the God within, the life force, humanity’s collective conscience, the diverse, flawed, manmade Gods of all religions, the God that ignited Walt Whitman when he cried, “I and this mystery here we stand.”
Shoo, then, inane pollsters. “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” they ask, as though such a question equaled “Barack or Hillary?” They purport to probe and quantify human spirituality with questions that reduce the great mystery to a presidential primary, then come up with a winner. In Newsweek’s poll last spring, God kicked butt, racking up Saddam-like numbers: 90 percent of Americans believe in God, the newsmagazine trumpeted in March. But so what? As with Saddam’s last election, there were no other candidates — just None of the Above, the empty, airless room of card-carrying atheism.
For myself, I am neither a believer nor an unbeliever. If I were forced to invent a label, it would be trans-believer: I am frustrated and furious with most dogma (especially Christian, because I grew up with it, and learned that all Jews, etc., were going to hell), but I am also indelibly shaped by it, permeated with it — in particular, by what I would call the Inconvenient Jesus, the one who has patiently been whispering for 2,000 years: forgive, be humble, turn the other cheek.
A while ago I read words of unwitting wisdom from a fundamentalist minister who, complaining about the imposed restraints of secular tolerance, angrily observed, “But that’s a religion too” — meaning the whole concept of scaling back one’s own absolutism in order to get along with and share public space with other belief systems and maybe even, good Lord, learn from them. Exactly!
The secular realm is a dynamic realm. And to be a trans-believer is, I believe, the essence of secularism: that is to say, to be not merely “tolerant” of diversity but to relish it, to partake of the extraordinary variety of ideas that occurs when all ideas are welcome, and to participate actively in the synergy they generate.
I think to be a trans-believer is also to be directed toward humanity’s future, not its past, in the conviction that our salvation lies not in the laws of the gods or saints of simpler times, but in what we haven’t discovered yet, what we’re currently in the act of reaching for. Our salvation lies beyond the suspicions and fears of those older times; it lies in making peace with the enemies of old, the ones who worshipped gods with different names and saw life from a different angle. It lies in striving for the sort of world that in the past was not even imagined, except by the laughed-at few: united, connected, unarmed and motivated by a spirit of cooperation rather than fear.
For this we need a world where church is separate from state. Any other world is a world hatched in private arrogance, symbolized by the neon sign of a church I go past all the time when I visit friends in Wisconsin, just off I-94 at the Baraboo exit: “Only Jesus Saves,” the sign says. The word “only” is unnerving, transforming the meaning that lights up the night from “we believe” to something far less, on the order of a childish taunt: “My dad makes more money than yours does!”
The lie I would like to sweep from the bin of media stereotypes is the one that supposes that family values and all other values, including those embodied in the word “God,” lie only on the church or private side of America’s historic dividing wall. Values cannot be contained by such a wall, and that is not its intent. The public side of the wall not only protects the values of the private sector, which would be devastated by its collapse, but is very much a source of value in its own right.
The highest value of all may simply be to embrace the evolving ecumenism of public life in a free society. In so doing, we open ourselves to the best of everything we are.
- - -
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
Very good article. When asked, I tend to tell people I am "Non-Condemnational" That confuses the zealot and goes over the head of those who think they know what I said. :)
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Dennis Diehl (66 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 55 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 11:31:58 AM
Particularly I like that expression "...the God at the edge of language" and this one: the "inconvenient Jesus" so obviously ignored in the triumph of clerical absolutisms, not the least of which was announced by the new Pope this week.
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James Brett (79 articles, 95 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 75 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 12:12:53 PM
(can I use that word?) to have Bob Koehler's brilliant discourses on the pages of OpEdNews.
I know it's not the point of his piece, but the older I get, the more negative a force organized religion seems to be in the world. I realize I don't have a single friend who belongs to a religion. I don't like being around those people. I suddenly find myself friends with atheists.
No atheist myself, I practice an intense form of meditation in a Zen Buddhist tradition. No Buddhist either, I don't have the time for or interest in doctrine, ritual or theology.
Some of us just like to walk the walk and leave talking the talk to others.
Didn't mean to digress from the theme of this elegant essay.
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Russ Wellen (58 articles, 1029 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 335 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 12:47:26 PM
One of Jesus's teachings is so inconvenient that you will never hear it pass through the lips of even the most liberal of Christians: "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." Acts 2:44,45. Whether from the Savior or the socialist, American Christianity has rejected the wisdom of economic equality.
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W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 259 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 2:11:08 PM
and as 'The Inconvenient Jesus' commenter rightfully said, even Jesus solidarises with the message. I dare to say that Jewish God inadvertenly solidarises too through a mysterious saying:
- You serve your God even by the malice of yours.
Tha would mean that you are not perfect and when you walk the walk you do many things, good and bad and some bad things can become good and vice- versa- the mystery of life.
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Mark Sashine (44 articles, 19 quicklinks, 228 diaries, 3265 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 2:15:18 PM
Thoughtful article. Religion of this world is simply: Humans creating "God" in their own image. Jesus Christ would never limit himself to a narrow minded consciousness of "God". And if a Christlike being walked this earth today he/she would be crucified all over again by the religious. Love is my only religion; the world is my family. Namaste.
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carl (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 124 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 3:50:44 PM
Amen, brother. I live on the buckle of the bible belt, Bob Jones University land, Greer (near Greenville), South Carolina. A couple of years ago I challenged the over fifty year practice of the printing and distribution of Christian calendars by the local public works commission. I won the battle and lost a host of "friends". I was called by the Mike Gallagher show and subjected to his sympathy in an interview. I won the debate by the way. My face was all over the TV screens for a couple of days and I got unfriendly anonymous mail, e-mails and phone calls. The letters to the editor page of the Greenville News was full of recrimination for the awful thing I had done. There were also, I must say, supportive letters. In the process my own evolution from timid apologic non-Christian to what you call an unabashed trans-believer was hastened and my own philosophy was honed and solidified.
A couple of months ago or so I was engaged in a conversation with a Bob Jones University graduate in which he was challenging the assumption that there could be morality without God. I said to him, "You know if I had been told by your God to go into a peaceful, unwarlike land and put to the sword every man, woman and child so that I could take that land from them because he, God had said I could have it, I would have told God that I would not do that because my moral compass was better than his. So what kind of Godlike morality are you talking about?"
I think that belief in Secular Humanism is on the increase as education and intelligence increases. At least I sincerely hope so. It needs to be if the fundamentalist minority who are now in charge of our fortunes is to be defeated. Thank you for your oped.
Sheila Jackson
Greer, South Carolina
by
Sheila Jackson (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 137 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 4:03:08 PM
For this we need a world where church is separate from state. Any other world is a world hatched in private arrogance, symbolized by the neon sign of a church I go past all the time when I visit friends in Wisconsin, just off I-94 at the Baraboo exit: "Only Jesus Saves," the sign says. The word "only" is unnerving, transforming the meaning that lights up the night from "we believe" to something far less, on the order of a childish taunt: "My dad makes more money than yours does!"
I want to begin by thanking you for a really good article on the biggest bee in my bonnet. I agree with the above quoted statement completely.
A nun first labeled me an atheist when I was in eighth grade. It was a Monday, and some Holy Day Of Obligation. Everyone was supposed to go to confession...it was mandatory. Well, I had just gone to church AND confession the day before, and I hadn't sinned...unless it's a sin to take a dump when the need arises. When I told her I hadn't sinned, she went stone cold crazy on me! She started ranting that I was an atheist and I was going to hell for it. Beyond that, she sent a note to the rector of the seminary where I had applied telling him of my evil. He was my godfather. Not only did it end the probability of my becoming a priest, it estranged me from him. I figured if he was going to take her word over mine, then he was really nothing to me at all.
Karma, while not instant, did come to her. A few years after I left that particular school, she wound up being committed to the Toledo Loony Bin. I couldn't help but laugh when I got that bit of news.
That incident is where my rebellion against the Catholic Church started. It culminated with me giving up Catholicism for lent when I turned eighteen. That's a story in itself.
I had a friend named Bob. I called him Bobbaloo to eliminate confusion. His girlfriend's sister was a lesbian. She had a falling out with her girlfriend, and killed herself. To say I was devastated is to put it mildly. I was completely disgusted and over with god. I cursed him through the entirety of her funeral. I walked out of that church, and turned my back on god. I tried to rekindle my Catholic devotion when I first got sober, but I realized almost immediately that I was trying to get water from a well that had run dry a LONG time ago.
I consider myself to be both moral and spiritual. I do not adhere to any particular religion, but I do follow a decidedly pagan (as in non-judeo-christian) spiritual path. While I'd really like to explore that path a little more completely, I don't have the money or inclination to get involved with some of the more "out there" new age types I have met in my explorations up to now.
We need to keep the wall up between church and state. A person's religious and spiritual life should be matters of private devotion devoid of public airing. History shows us again and again what happens when church and state mix. It's never a good thing for those labeled as heretical.
Just so you all know, any point of dogma in which you believe that is different from the "state" church is seen as heresy. Just ask any Gnostic you know.
What do you mean they are all gone? What do you mean they were all killed in nasty ways because they had dogmatic disagreement with the church of the state? Now how could that have happened?
Blessed be! Pappy
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Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 4:08:54 PM
Fine article, though in the neighborhood in which I grew up, Catholics and Jews formed an inseparable bond.
I am a believer in the sense of A. Einstein, and a bit more, but, I too deplore Dogma.
If we ever get another FDR, and I pray we do, but I see him not yet on our horizon, however, when we Reinforce Separation of Organized Religions and State, I pray we also organize a Separation of the Corporation and State, as well. Along with Corporate Religion we need to push far from Washington, the Military Industrial Medical Complex, or nationalize it as the second most evil structure on our planet.
God Bless all
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Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1216 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 4:51:05 PM
If the giant miltary indisturial complex is the second most destructive thing on earth, wel it must be organized reliogion is the first. Now that I've had time to think, that would be my first pick.
There is one truth and an infinate number of ways to express it. Like there are as many ways to pray as there are people. Who has a bring you own Dog/(as I call him now) church in a land that looks like a turkey?
by
Carolinanickel (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 9:01:31 PM
Hey, the 7 peals of thunder kept secret in Revelation 10 are Rock and Roll. You can find some of those words in Rev 22:10-11 which are basicly, "Let it be, live and let die." If the established Churched folowed those words then/or now, they would not be the 4th beast of Daniel 7. We all have seen their fruits. What do you like better the religous right or Rock and Roll?
I just woke up -- almost -- from a few hours hard sleep and I still can't really move around properly -- but there something deep inside me trying to get out -- like a bit of bad cabbage that's been rumbling around my stomach for a few hours.
I've had it up to my craw with this god and religion stuff. People have have trying to force feed me this insane crap for 50 or 60 years, and I've reached a point where I don't want to even think about it anymore. Take your Father Foobar, your Sister Supercilious, your Moses, and Jesus, and Mohhamad, and Buddha, and your sin and salvation and Hell and high water and your dogma and faith and catechisms and cataclysms lunatic howlings at the moon, and stick them all in your knapsack and hit the road, Jack!
I'm not only sick of people trying to tell me about some god, but them trying to tell me about ME! Any ideas you want to have about god is your affair, but it's between you and your ideas and has nothing to do with me! Walk through whatever dark forest of imaginings or inspiration or whatever you want to, but stop trying to drag me along. I've got my own places to go, on my own path. It's just that simple. At this point I'mn ot only fed up with god, but with people. All the people, talkng about god, and running around trying to steal everything for themselves and slaughtering each other. Screw it! When the fundies come for me? I'll fight them to the death, and if they kill me then good riddance to this loony bin called the world. In the meantime, I'm going to try to dance.
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Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 5:04:34 AM
I would argue that studying and applying the knowledge of people from the religious texts and associated history is very valuable. I would also argue that such studying cannot be considered as some scientific endeavor and surely cannot help in fortification of pro or contra. It is rather an exercise in admiration of the brilliancy of the human mind. That is, of course if you are not a worshipper, truly. If you truly are one ( only truly) you do not 'study' those sources- you drink from the wells. That's the difference, I would say.
I do not believe in God in any form. It does not make a matter easier, though:)
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Mark Sashine (44 articles, 19 quicklinks, 228 diaries, 3265 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 8:11:37 AM
would argue that studying and applying the knowledge of people from the religious texts and associated history is very valuable.
Up to a point, but only up to a point. There comes a time when you pretty much understand the mechanisms, and anything beyond that is annoying. It's interesting to hear tales from the kids about exploding or poisonous golf balls, the seemingly universal geezer living in the shack in the woods who shoot people with his shotgun, and how one will die from eating a green potato chip -- but that too, only up to a point.
Yes, people have "spiritual" stirrings, and tend to form beliefs -- about everything, including their 'spiritual' stirrings. And there are some neat ideas embedded within religion -- as well as some horrors. Like Tolkien, or other myths. And if someone writes "Frodo lives" on a rest room wall I'm not going to get too bothered -- but when when people start insistently telling me that it's all real and if I don't worship Frodo, or Gandalf, or Eru, then Sauron or Melkor will get me or I'll be eaten by a balrog -- then I start to get annoyed. Fairly tales are fine if it's understood they are fairy tales. When they try to pass laws saying I have to learn to speak elvish to prove I'm not an orc -- or they go to the senate and jeer someone telling the tale of Beowolf -- Then it's time to fight back.
It is rather an exercise in admiration of the brilliancy of the human mind. That
Or the possible extent of neurosis and genius of self-delusion. When I was a child woman from the church I attended and an old family friend told me that robins have red breasts because one of them brought water to Christ while on the cross and got blood on itself. This was told as if it was fact -- as if an explanation of flowers smelling to attract insect for pollination.
It was a lie, and more, it divided my mind into that was was supposed to be thought of real, and that which was not to be thought of at all and that each would be hidden from the other so one could pass from one mode to other and, in self-deception, never know the difference nor ask questions. Over the years I 'learned' that one may never question a thing which someone else believes if they believe it strongly enough that it might be called 'sacred' -- as thinking or sayng something about 'god' was 'god' itself.
Ah, yes -- the mind is indeed brilliant -- at denial. Shall we vote for Bush again? It's all made of the same cloth, after all.
I do not believe in God in any form. It does not make a matter easier, though:)
'Easy' has nothing to do with truth. This is especially so concerning truth about one's mind, beliefs, and desires. Pascal was judged to be a smart man, and yet 'Pascal's wager' is an absurdity -- an intellectual and psychic abomination, psychologically much akin to the defensive reaction of a fearful abused child or woman to the abuser; the proper action is to recognize that one is being abused and to take what opportunities may exist to escape, or tell, and get help from others. Such is the abuse from 'true believers', abused themselves and compelled to pass it on, and to normalize and justify it within their own perceptions.
“Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” they ask? The question itself is an absurdity -- and who of those asking can even properly define "supreme" or "being", even? Philosophers can and have grappeled with such words and concpets for centuries, with no resolution, and yet some idiot has the temerity to poll people on that? How many years do they have for my rather tentative answer? It's not easy either way -- but to ignore the difficulties is not actually 'easier' anymore than ignoring the wisps of smoke curling up from heating register, or that black patch of skin on one's shoulder. Perhaps it is nothing of import -- or -- then again...
Then again, perhaps Bush will just go away, or we won't get into another war. (Or the horse may talk (cf BBC Six Wives of Henry VIII). But for me, I am tired of being lied to, pressed to share fantasies, and denigrated because I do not "show proper respect" for the mental perambulations of those who believe in the Easter Bunny or like phantasmagorical entities. To have wonder or questions is one thing -- to start handing out half-assed answers as if they were free circus tickets quite another. Those who want respect from me should understand it's a two-way street -- and I'll be damned if I will allow Einstein, or anyone else, to be thrown up in my face.
by
Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 9:19:00 AM
sorry the bones are botherin ya blue. mine make me cranky too. however ineloquent and unwarranted.. i'll explain my post...
the religious/political debates.. are just so much tedious mental masturbatory noise. if these debates remained in that realm, i would take no notice, but the opines that argue the debates can manifest dangerous consequences in the physical realm, for even the uninvolved.....we can end up roadkill... i guess, i feel, it's just good manners to let someone know they're being approached frm behind, about to be bludgeoned.....
my eeyore comment/question (heads up) was directed to the author, and was broached ...well, because... the possibility never crosses most people's minds. especially most reared in the us, who have never studied history... who have no knowledge of what life under the specter of religious persecution could mean in the extreme, taking for granted the battles those who came before us fought.. even unto death..and why they took the pains they have to chain the beast upside down in his own cave of shadows.
although chained, he still has power to call to his children, ignorance & hatred... all round the world, and even here....... moldered rotting te deums again rise to join the gathering cacophony of screeching xianaziwarriors who make no secret of their intent. the 'history of intent' of the ancient is a known, and so what of the newer children of the beast? their loud incessant lies to the ignorant as to the "xtian" religious foundations of this country, and their sworn duty to see that it return to something it had never been, a theocracy under rule of their biblical law. their full frontal assault to override and subdue the secular; unduly influence government and its inhibiting legislation, open recruitment in the military to their cause, and manipulation of global media. their clear intent is evident in the indoctrination of their young, camps for jr warriors of christ; even to mindless distractions, video games in which they kill unbelievers in the streets for their god and his apocalyptic glory. i tend to take them at their word, and can't understand why others won't?
my end comment, somewhere Dante is laughing. Dante marks the path, as many before and since... he points the way, and has since a time when to speak it openly meant death.
of course that's what we all need to do in our own way... laugh in the beast's face, flip him upside down and use him as a ladder to climb out the pit he seeks us to keep us chained in. then, climb out into the light and dance.
blue, you're already dancing :)
by
k kelly (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 182 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 2:54:39 PM
Was just reading (on Raw Story) all the comments being said regarding the Hindo Prayer in the Senate, and how it was interupted by a Christian, who objected to it.
The comments were great to read, but it finally got around to the fact that most Christians believe America was founded on Christianity. Well, decided to google: Were founding fathers religious.
What I found was that NO, they were Masons for the most part, and Deists. They believed God was the creater, and then stepped back and butted out totally. They were not christian, did not believe in Jesus nor a bunch of crazy miracles. It states that know where in the founding fathers writing was jesus mentioned, nor any of the Christian teachings.
It was a good learning experience, and discounting the fact that WE did not Found America, it already was inhabited, the fact that America was founded on christianity is not true.
your article, and I do not mean to take away from it by mentioning other articles, just the timing was interesting.
You know whats interesting, its always said that 82% of Americas are Christian, and yet, I know a few, but mostly my friends are NOT. They are lying to us again. People are waking up. Those I know who are not religious are the nicest ones. They hate the war, any kind of killing, respect others, are much better all around caring people.
Peace and love
by
joyce (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 73 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 8:56:28 AM
Bobkolier, What do you suppose motivates who spew hatred for what others believe, or eat, or wear, or the color of their skins, or their languages and customs? I have met before in Illinois, when I helped ML King and JFK, they hated one for his race, the other for his religion. Why is that? I met them when I served in the military as well, they were always unhappy with what others said or did, or believed. See, these are the people who are most like the Bushites, the Hitler's, the Cheney, and the Stalin's, those filled with hatred that try to control, or do away with those how see what they cannot. The thoughts and desires of others make them livid. Aren't these the thought police, who run the dungeons, who see it as okay to slaughter Muslims, or Christians, or Jews, or Harri Krishna's, or people who eat mushrooms, or pasta and meat balls, or Gefilte-fisch and Matzo ball soup, or sour kraut, or lamb's heads, or tripe, or whites who marry blacks, or men who love other men, or women who love other women, or people who wear hoods, or white collars?
Years ago a beautiful Jewish girl came into a soda fountain we used to frequent. My cousin Rocco and I were having a sundae and admiring the beauty. One of the neighborhood toughs made a rather overt pass at her and she smacked him hard. He slapped her back. My cousin went over to break up the scene. And the tough guy said he didn't "...want no one who killed Jesus in our ice cream parlor." One thing led to another and my cousin, a Roman Catholic and the other fellow also Catholic went at it and my cousin beat the bejeepers out of the larger fellow who attacked the young lady. Three years later my cousin married her-a love like theirs even today after all these years, is hard to find.
My friends who do or do not believe none of us, try to proselytize each other or others, we don't give a hoot what others do or do not believe nor does their belief make us hostile unless it supports evil. Some people are intolerant of same gender romances; they want them all converted or dead. They attack them with looks words and violence, in livid, self-righteous anger, hostility, saying they will ruin the "sacrament of marriage." How their relationship would or could affect anyone else's is beyond me unless those people are very insecure in their masculinity. I don't care what others do in their bedrooms or churches as long as it isn't hostile to others. When I got out of the service Jane Fonda inspired Stone heads called us baby-killers. I joined because I was going to be drafted, and really never killed anyone. When I got home I began to protest the war, and people said to me "America, Love it or leave it!" My uniform and my speech combination offended them. No one asked the to listen to it. A guy said to me, indignantly, "All right, now I am mad. I don't want to hear another word out of you dago!" I told him then to plug up his ears or walk away, he took a swing, and I ducked and decked him, with a right hook. He was out for ten minutes. (Hey I threw a baseball in the upper 90's, my fist probably flew nearly as fast.)
So, look around, and see where the anger, the hostility is emanating from. It is coming from those who are unhappy not only with their own lives but with the lives of those who have nothing to do with them. THAT is exactly the mode of The Bushites, hatred and lack of tolerance for those who neither hate nor wish them harm, nor display intolerance for their belief as long as it poses no hostility to them. See it isn't believers, non-believers, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Italians, blacks, Homo-sexual's, or people who wear hoods or collars, which are the problem in our world, it is the people which object to the existence of any or all of them and who either want them to shut up or die, who are the problem-the people. No, it is who say, "Okay that's it, I don't have to listen to or read your crap... etc. etc." who are the problem. Hatred of people they do not even know for what those people believe or do not believe or what their skin color or eye shape or food or ethnicity or clothing is like, etc.
Jesus showed us in a number of ways that ethnicity was not the problem, nor was a way of life. Personally, I am agnostic about Jesus' Godhood, but not about his genius for what was just and tolerant. So, did Hillel and many others of different faiths. I grew up in a Jewish, Italian, Irish, Polish German neighborhood. Most of us got along well. We intermarried frequently (not that we each married frequently with everyone else) played on the same teams, lusted after and dated each others sisters an cousins, and married some of them. We ate at each other homes, each other's food, and mostly loved it all.
People, who are intolerant, as most men and women of goodness will instinctively know, ARE THE PROBLEM! They are the hidden Cheney's; the Hidden Bush's the hidden Adolph Hitler's.
which is the 1/2 the root of the problem, although not always manifested. The stronger the belief the more likely it will be a problem. The other half is thinking that others must believe as they do, or that that those who do not must knuckle under to them. That goes whether the belief is for or against god, or WMDs, or whatever. The root is being pushy, and not respecting others -- not whatever their beliefs happen to be but their right to believe or not believe as they choose, and not to be constantly pestered or treated patronizingly about it.
I'm not bothered by Jews -- I have never had a Jew try to convert me to Judaism. A few seem to think they are the 'chosen people' and better than I am on that score -- but they pretty much keep to themselves. But Christians -- god preserve me from Christians! The Muslims can be almost as bad, but ordinarily they too mind their own business unless they are extremists. BUt I can't count the number of time some Christian, of various denominations have tried to 'tell me the good news; or whatever -- tried to drag me to their church, told me I needed to start believing.
They go crazy: there was the woman who used to live across the street. Her son wanted to go to a church social thing for young people, and didn't have a ride there. I offered to give him a ride because he really wanted to go, and he needed to get out of the house. She said it was OK with her but I had to stay and attend the service. She was going to 'save' me. I went -- I was friends with the pastor anyway from a computer club. Service was a bit strange I thought, but OK -- that's how they wanted to do it. But the woman -- I offer a favor and right away she takes advantage, using my friendship for her son -- and she saw nothing wrong with that -- because GOD was on her side, and she was doing the work of the lord to save my soul!! We had had a brief discussion or two about religion, actually -- and she didn't know the Bible a tenth as well as I did -- yet she was ready to reveal the lord to me.
I've been lectured on theology by an 8 year old, passing on some crap she got from the preacher. "God knows you", she says, "but do you know God?".
I've had video tapes shoved into my hand about how the world used to covered by a crystal dome, which protected people from radiation, and that's why the old Biblical prophets lived hundereds of years -- and contantly told about God, tales told by an idiot.
People knocked on the door and wanted to preach to me. People leave fliers on the door knob or stuffed into under the door, or add to the junk mail.
ENOUGH ALREADY!!! SHUT UP!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!! (And leave the Hindu in the Senate alone too!)
That's the problem. It's God all day every day -- trying to take over the world. I go to a peace meeting and people insist on praying -- on 'leading a prayer', and everyone has to go along. I ran into a neighbor the other day and he starts ranting about how evil Muslims are and how HE was brought up with CHRISTIAN values (and this guy doesn't even go to church -- or know squat about Islam). We got the anti-semites hating the Jews, and the Jews hating people back, and killing people for their 'promised land' -- ethnically cleansing the Muslims -- and the Christians -- and even other Jews who don't agree with them politically. We got Muslims killing Jews, and other Muslims, and whoever lloks at them crooked. We got Buddhists and Hindus incinerating each other -- all in the name of religion.
Screw religion -- it becomes just another excuse for hating and killing and pushing people around, because it is, at it's root, irrational. And people don't know how to handle the irrational, and pretend it IS rational, which it never has been and never will be. Religion is like giving a drug to an addict; the non-addict -- those who have some mastery over mind, don't need psychotropic drugs, and those who do need them should not get them. If you can't invent a good religion on your own you certainly should not be trying to swallow anyone else's. Good religion has nothing to do with belief, no more than good art has anything to do with a paint-by-numbers kit.
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Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 2:11:52 PM
Hatred comes first and justification later. Arabs and Jews belong to the same ' Front- Asian' race and are cousins. In the ancient language I read Arab means '[the one who lives on this side of the river' and Hebrew means ' the one who lives on that side of the river'. But someone deliberately and with malice says that ' My God gave me this land' and that means no peace because obviously other Gods will never agree. As it was said long ago- if there is honey, flies will appear. Professor Pete is right- those unfortunate idiots who hate first hate and then invent the pretext.
It is interesting how different experiences come to the same conclusions. In the vehemently, hystericallly atheistic country like the one I was born in the Holy Christian books were discarded, thrown out, burned. But my father, a Jew, a total secular and a technical scientist to the bone would pick those up and bring them home and I knew the Bible, both Testaments, the names of the apostles and the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.
One of the big artists of my country said,'To love your country is to help honest people in it. All of them, no matter who they are. They are the country.'
We do that.
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Mark Sashine (44 articles, 19 quicklinks, 228 diaries, 3265 comments)
on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 2:41:20 PM
