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"You upset the grace of living when you lie."
— Tim Hardin
A collection of diverse thoughts and musings on religion, atheism and related topics, in no particular order.
2003-05-25
There are many myths which legitimise religion, but two in particular stand out as enormously false and damaging. Considering that these old chestnuts are often deliberately cultivated by religious leaders, they should perhaps be called lies rather than myths.
On the contrary, neither the ethical domain nor the aesthetic is, or should be, ruled by religion. These are human concerns, and they are better served without obligatory reference to some unsubstantiated unreality.
You know the old saying, "Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.". This is often said about religion. In response, I ask, "Where's the baby? What baby?"
There is nothing positive about religion which cannot be had without religion, and generally had better without religion, better because uncluttered by the mythological nonsense which religion requires us to swallow. All pursuits make more sense without supernatural religion, because they then can be rooted in the real world. Even mythology is better without religious belief, because myths can be studied, understood in their historical and social context, and appreciated without falling into the dangerous trap of mistaking them for literal truth.
In the filthy waters of religious obscurantism, there is no baby to be saved.
The religious believer refuses to draw the distinction between fantasy and reality. He or she is like a moviegoer who, upon leaving the screening of a "Harry Potter" movie or some such fantasy entertainment, continues to act as if what they saw on the silver screen were real; or like a viewer of the "X-Files" who absorbs that television show as if it were a documentary or an exposé of actual events.
The non-believer, on the other hand, is capable of suspending disbelief for the duration of the entertainment, for the sheer pleasure (or catharsis) of being momentarily lost in another world, but has the good sense to return to reality when the show is over.
Religious belief systems and theories of racial superiority have much in common. Both religion and racism are relics of humanity's tribal past. Both are false and dangerous, and should be abandoned. Why they are both still with us is a complex question, but their survival has a lot to do with bad habit and political expediency.
There is also similarity in the appropriate way in which the law should respond to each. Freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, is essential: it would be impossible—and ludicrous—to legislate against an individual's belief in "God", and similarly absurd to legislate against an individual's personal conviction that whites are superior to blacks or vice versa. However, we must limit the affects of such convictions on others. In the case of racism, it is appropriate that racial discrimination in employment, housing and other areas of public life be forbidden by law. Similarly, religion must remain in the private sphere, with strict church/state separation and secular public institutions.
Although children are credulous, they are born with no particular beliefs. Thus, every child is born a non-believer -- without belief in "God"—and should be allowed the right to remain so. When parents impose their mythological beliefs on their children, and pass those beliefs off as necessary, absolute, incontrovertible truth, they are practicing a form of intellectual child abuse which can be every bit as damaging as physical or sexual abuse, and may be worse, especially if those beliefs involve cruel concepts such as eternal damnation. This is one of the reasons why removing religious indoctrination from public schools is of the highest importance.
The fundamentalist Christian or orthodox Jew who rejects and shuns a gay son or a lesbian daughter is only a notch or two above the traditionalist Muslim or Hindu father who has his daughter beaten or even assassinated because she somehow "dishonoured" the family (usually by daring to exercise a little personal freedom).
If religious dogma is incompatible with basic freedoms such as the right to control one's own body in matters of sexuality and reproduction, then it is the religion that must change, not the freedoms. And if the religion is too rigid to change, it must be abandoned. It is unacceptable that a person's rights be jeopardized by the imposition of a moral code whose ultimate basis is mythological. Tradition and "faith" are no excuse.
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