Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:27 am
With that in mind, perhaps I'm going to stick my neck out and expand a little on my main bone of contention with many religions, and that is their lack of tolerance of other people's faith and the curious desire of some of their representatives to enlighten the unenlightened as to the error of their ways.Fist and Faith wrote:... I like to understand what others believe, and why. Partly curiosity, partly to avoid misunderstandings in the future, partly because it's part of my journey.
I hold no grudge against anyone for having beliefs, so long as they don't keep insisting they're the only ones worth having and that all society should live by them. Where I live is hardly the bible belt, but we seem to have a neverending trickle of people who have nothing better to do with their time than go knocking on doors spreading the good word, or stopping you in the street and trying to get you to pop along to the church.
A couple of years back I had the misfortune to get doorknocked by some absolute madman who (with I admit, a little nudge of encouragement in the right direction here and there) in very short time began earnestly telling me all about how the world got here. He did the whole "first of all there was nothing, then God made the Earth in six days and on the seventh day he rested" bit. "Let there be light" was definitely mentioned in there somwhere. I let him talk on a bit and then asked him if he'd researched planetary or stellar formation in any depth, started dismantling his claims, and his sole line of justification for what he was saying eventually proved to be little more than "Well, it's what it says in the book says and the book knows best".
As I felt inclined towards a good debate and was in one of those smartarse moods, I stood there for a good hour and discussed the basic principles and findings of cosmology, astronomy, planetary/stellar accretion theory and anthropology (it had degenerated into a debate on the likely validy of the Garden of Eden thing at this point) at... sorry, with this man, and he objected to pretty much everything I said on the grounds that what he'd been told couldn't possibly be wrong, it was just unquestionably right and that was all there was to it.
As much as I enjoyed the whole experience, I'm the sort of person who also happens to get rather annoyed that the village idiot feels they are prefectly entitled to come and knock at my door and wheel out the most appalling dark ages gibberish at me, on the grounds that they're doing God's work. Perhaps telling him this at the end of our conversation was a bit rude of me, but by then I was so exasperated with him I was past caring.
I always viewed faith as being a personal thing. Although I describe myself as being an athiest, I say so in the sense that I do not subscribe to any particular brand of religion. But if you ever need proof that you're part of something unique, a look at what we know about the universe around us should provide plenty if opportunity. Once you start to get a handle on the sheer distances involved and the scope of the thing, and see the sheer variety of stuff going on in it... well, that was my cosmic moment of wonder at it all if you like.
I don't know for sure how the universe got here, if the Big Bang was God's work or if it just happened/didn't happen. I don't profess to have the first idea if consciousness transcends mortality. But if you take the entirety of Creation and regard it as divine, then everything within it is by definition a part of that divinity. That seems an amazing enough possibility for me anyway, and with that in mind I do my best to lead an existence that doesn't bring pain to anyone and generally be a peaceable chap (except in debate).
And it makes me wonder why some of the more zealous among the religiously inclined feel that this means I'm off straight to hell because the book says so. And I really do consider it highly unlikely that what God thinks would be best right now would be for me to be put straight on all of this, that I should get down the church at the next available opportunity and that nothing else will stop my soul suffering eternal torment.
I find that my main stumbling block with many religions is that the people who came up with them had no idea that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and could easily surmise that all of creation is here for man's benefit. Indeed, it's not been that long in the scale of history when believing otherwise could get you in a lot of trouble indeed.
When you have no sense of scale and you believe the rest of the universe goes round the world you naturally make assumptions and come out with daft conclusions like "Well, God made the Earth and it seems to suit us very well... God must be like us." But we're too well informed these days for that kind of thinking...
Or are we ? The conventional religious view of God making man and man alone in his own image, Earth and humans being the highest priority on God's list and all that is so far out of date it's ridiculous, but it's a view held by a lot of people.
I'd say it was a childish view that seriously lacked a sense of perspective.
Well, I've gone on enough, but really that's what it stems from for me. I've been accused on many occasions by plenty of people of having a lack of tolerance for religion. I don't think that's quite true, I have a lack of tolerance for the inability of certain religious types to lighten up and stop having such a lack of tolerance for any other belief system.
And I know preaching to the converted lacks that element of challenge, but that's who I feel it should be aimed at. Those who need religious guidance invariably go and find it anyway. Those who peddle it on the street are no better than double glazing salesmen and some of them should learn to pay attention and stop viewing it as a challenge when the sign on someone's front door says "No Religion Please !"
Fairly certain.