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The Gaffer's Philosophy;
Part 23: On Ethics and Spirituality:
Religious True Believers:
October 7, 2002:
In my philosophy, Part 21, I got into a discussion of political
true believers. Now, I want to continue that with a discussion
of religious true believers. At this time, most of us think we
are religious. Many of us belong to some kind of denominational
group and occasionally attend a religious service. We get married
by clergy. We have our youngsters baptized and send them to catechism
of some kind. We are, to some extent, true believers. I submit,
that is because we have not really thought about it at all.
This lack of introspective interest makes us very vulnerable. We leave the door open for the extreme religious fundamentalists to work their evil on us. I believe it is important to differentiate between the extremist and us more ordinary true believers. The truth is, most of us are true believers because we are just intellectually lazy. We simply do not want the struggle of thinking about it. In this sense, we are no different that the political true believers.
The religious extremists are quite different than us lazy folks. They have nothing but religion and power on their minds. Here, I am talking about the fundamentalist true believers who are making serious attempts to destroy our civilization. They would like a regression to a primitive form of religious savagery. Read this carefully and think it through. This phenomena is not limited to Muslim fundamentalists. Our own Christian fundamentalist also want a regression to savagery. This is not a joke. Take the time to read what they write and listen carefully to what they are saying. I have.
Yes, pretend you are shocked. I do put Christian an Muslim fundamentalists in the same bag. It is time to end the pretense that there is some essential difference between a Muslim fanatic and any other religious fanatic. American fanatics are not different! The American extremists do not currently commit murder, but they support right-to-lifers who do commit murder. Historically we need only go back to Salem for the more savage and violent Christian fundamentalist behavior. That is not very long ago.
Currently, the Christian fanatics continue to advocate the regression of civilization. All of these primitive religious fanatics are alike in this respect. Each sect wants to lead a regression to a primitive static world where they and their disciples are in power and nothing changes. The only difference is in who they would have in charge. There is no spirituality in that, only power lust.
None of them are civilized. The Christian primitives confuse civilization with things and pretend to be civilized. The Muslim primitives make no pretense at all. Either one will viciously attack and attempt to change or destroy anyone who is different than they are. They must do this. There philosophies are so fragile that they must be absolute. Anything less gives the lie to what they are. Religious fanatics, wherever you find them, are not moral, they are grossly immoral.
These fanatics want to impose a very primitive concept of God on all of us, regardless of our cultural and ethnic background. Here is the God they want us to worship, with them, of course, as intermediaries. They offer a father figure patriarch God who is interested in and meddles in the affairs of men. He maintains a idyllic forever-after for us somewhere out there, making us immortal. Out of this childish image of God and heaven come the rules they would impose on us. First and foremost is faith. We are not allowed to think about our spirituality. We must accept this nonsense completely on faith. The way we achieve our immortal forever-after is by blindly agreeing with some extreme fundamentalist and following his directions.
The next rule is about women. Women were created to be the servants of men. As befits their nature, they have rather simple responsibilities. They are to be retorts for the production of children and they are to maintain the man's home. Of course, physical intimacy is nasty dirty stuff. It's only purpose is for procreation. No pleasure whatever is to be derived from it, especially by women.
Let's be clear on this. All religious fanatics want to freeze the universe in a primitive state. They refuse to acknowledge that change is natural and inevitable, that we grow and learn. There are always new truths to examine and embrace as we evolve. This religious resistance to evolution and new ideas is historical. It goes back to the Hebrews who murdered Jesus and beyond. Ridiculous as it is, religious fanatics always have and always must deny change. They must always insist that their truths of yesterday are absolute. Change gives the lie to that so they resist it.
Let's look at facts, recent and past. What is the butchery and infanticide in Ireland about? What is going on in Bosnia? Must I even mention Israel and Palestine? All of this insanity has one basis. Religious fanaticism resulting in extreme intolerance and murder. Even now, after history has given the lie to them, most American religious fundamentalists would argue that the sacking of Constantinople and the burning of the world's greatest library were the justified acts of decent religious people acting against infidels. They would self righteously justify wanton murder, pillage, and rape.
I must insist that, religious fanatics are not what we need. What we need is an ethics of civilization. As a people, we continue to confuse civilization with wealth and things when it is really about behavior and ethics. At this time, we have more wealth than ever before in the history of man, but we are less civilized than an American farmer of the 1770 era. We have not progressed. We have degenerated. This degeneration had been preceded by our loss of a religious grounding and ethics.
Here is our dilemma. Our previous religious concepts served us well and provided our spiritual grounding for many generations. However, the concepts were initially put forth as absolute truths. This made them impervious to challenge but also made any adoption of new truths impossible. Now there have been developments in human understanding which tend to undermine these historical ideas of divinity and spirituality.
For example, the notion of an all powerful patriarch god meddling in the lives of individuals must be discarded out of hand by any thinking person who bothers to examine it. It is untenable to the point of begging ridicule. Likewise, the notion of an eternal afterlife in some idyllic heaven out there somewhere is ridiculous on the face of it. This weakening of our spiritual base is causing severe emotional strain in us which, in turn, causes some of us to behave very badly. Change has become imperative if our culture is to survive.
The solution to this will not come from a regression to primitive fundamentalist notions. If that were valid, we would never have degenerated. We degenerated precisely because those notions will not stand the light of honest examination. Still, there are a great number of loud mouthed blustering buffoons proclaiming the one and only truth. Our ethic must come from a better source than that.
I would like to see us move on, but we cannot move on until
we supersede these primitive religious philosophies. If we are
not to degenerate into savagery, we must find some rational tenable
alternative to this nonsense. I expect to continue to develop
this in my next essay.
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