Burning Z:
Just a few little questions I'd like to ask (and a couple of statements relating to your points), though I doubt you'll come back to answer them:
For you, sure, I’ll answer, since your questions are directed at me personally and do not reflect the topic at hand. I am finished with my commitment to the topic.
Oh, and ZeaLitY…dial back the tone a bit. If you’re right about something you don’t need to blow your stack, and if you’re wrong you never should. Easier said than done, but your mood is souring your message—and that’s coming from me, of all people.
Zeppy wrote:
I noticed that between your attacks on Islam and Christianity, you have never questioned or criticized Judaism. Is there something within the Jewish faith that piques your interest, demands your sympathy, or maybe even makes you...believe a little bit of it?
Judaism has come up on occasion here, usually in passing. As far as I know, only Radical Dreamer and myself have any personal connection to it, so it has effectively zero champions here.
Judaism shares many of the same failings as Christianity and Islam. There is the matter of religious faith itself, which you know I hold in contempt. Beyond that is a religion of customs, creeds, and conventions that oppress, even abuse, its adherents—especially women.
However, Judaism is much easier to tolerate than Christianity and Islam because it is not a proselytizing religion. That is the crucial distinction. Christianity and Islam, by design, preach a message of converting other people into the religious fold. Judaism doesn’t have that, and as a result you just don’t see many Jews going around harassing non-Jews and telling them how to live their lives. That spares the world a lot of trouble.
Indeed, the only victims in Judaism are Jewish children themselves, and only the ones who are raised into the strict branches of the religion. Judaism has three main branches, best described as progressive, conservative, and fundamentalist. The conservative branch still harbors some parochial ideas about women, racial minorities, and human behavior in general, but is on the road to modernization. The fundamentalist branch is totally crazy, just like all fundamentalism tends to be, and I feel very sorry for children raised into that tradition, but most other Jewish children are not damaged as the result of their religious upbringing.
As to your three questions:
1) No, there is nothing about Jewish faith that piques my interest. There are many facets of Jewish
culture that I find fascinating, but that is also true of Christianity and so forth.
2) No, there is nothing in Judaism that demands my sympathy. However, on the subject of religious sympathy, it is my Jewish upbringing that convinced me of the importance of tolerance. Only sixty years ago, nearly one-third of all the Jews in the world were murdered in the space of a few years. The message “never again” has personal meaning to me. As much as I detest religion, I have no choice but to tolerate the desire of religious people to practice their faith in peace and privacy. That doesn’t mean I have to respect them for it. Indeed, I think of religious faith as a mental illness, and I work hard to undermine religion’s grasp on outsiders and children. Even so, I would never want to destroy the lives of individual people who have deliberately chosen to be religious. That is a kind of sympathy, but it isn’t limited to Judaism. It merely comes from having an insider’s perspective on the Holocaust.
3) No, I do not subscribe to any of the religious aspects of Judaism. As with any cultural institution, Judaism has its share of good ideas and satisfying traditions, but I harbor no delusion that Judaism has something irreproducible to offer the world.
Religion is for the most part propagated virally, whether by preachers or parents, but is it not true that it is not so much because parents are told to spread their religion to their offspring, but rather because it comes naturally, like telling them how plants grow, how to eat their food and (eventually) where babies come from? Or is this subconscious education a symptom of the virus?
I disagree with you there. ZeaLitY or someone else who spent many years going to church might have more to offer, but I have been to enough church services in my time—always at the behest of well-meaning religious friends—to recognize the degree of overt indoctrination that occurs during worship. Indeed, I went to religious services of my own every Friday night as a kid, and while those services were not fundamentalist, I have gone back in later years to reread the prayer books we used, and I was astonished at the cult overtones and brainwashing contained in those pages. I never picked up on that side of it as a kid. Had I grown up to become a Jew, I would never have picked up on that side of it at all. That is simply how religion is.
To put it plainly: If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that most parents are not aware of deliberately trying to raise their children into religion. If so, then I think you are mistaken: Most parents
explicitly strive to raise their children into religion. They may not realize that they are brainwashing their children by doing so, just as they may not realize that they themselves have been brainwashed, but that does not cancel out the sincerity of their religious commitment, or their desire to pass a similar commitment on to their kids.
I have no idea what America is like. Atheism is a major "faith" here in Australia.
Those atheists for whom atheism is a faith are not understanding the basic premise of atheism, which is
no faith. In the spirit of concession, I think that few people are equipped intellectually to successfully defend their position on these questions of the divine, and that includes those who take an atheistic stance. However, atheism itself is not an institution. It is a state of mind. So is theism, for that matter, but the comparison breaks down because theists have institutions we call religion, whereas atheists have nothing of the sort. The label “theist” tells us something about what a person is, but the label “atheist” tells us something only about what a person is
not, and it is impossible to build an institution around that.
Therefore, any group or organization that claims to be working on behalf of an “atheistic” agenda is mistaken. They may be working on an
anti-religious agenda, or a
secular agenda, or a
humanist agenda, but not an atheistic one. There is no such thing as a religion or institution or faith of atheism, by definition, and the religionists who suggest otherwise are either blowing smoke or do not understand the premise of “no faith.”
But back to America, didn't many blacks, slaves and freemen, join the Church and other religious institutions because it gave them hope, a reason to live, and a feeling of brotherly equality? I am quite sure the original teachings of most religions did not teach racism
My command of Scripture is not as sophisticated as that of some Christians here, but I do recall Galatians 26-29, for which there is some commentary
here. If I am correct, this is an excellent Scriptural basis for your claim, inasmuch as you would be willing to accept Christianity as representative of “most religions,” as you put it. (Although, how you are able to be “quite sure” that “most religions” did not teach racism, is beyond me.)
Now, recall, what does religion do? It builds community by providing a framework for morals and customs. But what is the context of these morals and customs? Conflict, of course. Tribal conflict is as old as the tribes themselves, and many of those conflicts were racial or ethnic. There has never been an egalitarian time in human history; a handful of modern states are the closest we have come. Human history is brutal, and religion arose in the midst of that, inseparable from that, and even became a way of
validating that.
You place a lot of worth on the “original” teachings of religion, presumably because you believe the original teachings were inspired by god and are therefore more relevant than later interpretations, but I remind you that religion evolves anthropologically, with its teachings and thus its impact on society both changing over time, and thus, in questions of slavery and the like, what matters is not just the original teachings, but all the ones that came after.
Meaning?
Meaning that religion cannot be excused from its abuses simply because, at some point in the past, it might have been less abusive.
Therefore, it doesn’t really matter whether some of the earliest Christians were in favor slavery or not. Plenty of Christians throughout the ages were in favor of slavery, and their religion informed the practice of slavery. American history is testament enough.
I guess what we should ask is whether slavery owes much of its success to religion, and whether abolitionism owes the same.
The short answer is yes in both cases. Religious imagery and references informed and affirmed nearly all social norms, throughout history. Religion! The cause of, and solution to, so many of life’s problems. Hah.
The long answer is no more sympathetic to religion. Slavery benefited very much from religion, but abolitionism benefited only indirectly.
Religion’s role in slavery is straightforward. The reasons for slavery are nearly always either economic or tribal. In other words, slaves are taken either because their captors either need work to be done, or because they want to punish and exploit those specific people. Religion, as an engine of morality, provides the means to justify both kinds of slavery. What is a slave, after all, but someone who is the property of, and wholly subject to, another person? Religion is very good at providing people with the means to erect those kinds of interpersonal hierarchies.
Had religion not been around, people no doubt would probably still have found ways to justify slavery, but the blessings of the gods sure spared them a lot of troubled thinking. And, for that reason, religion probably prolonged slavery. I don’t think slavery would have lasted as long as it did were it not for religious precedent.
As for abolitionism, it is true that most of the abolitionists were religious. Many of these opposed slavery on the premise of “Jesus wouldn’t want that.” For as many as there were who used their faith to justify slavery, there were some who used their faith to oppose it. In America, churches comprised of sympathetic people provided aid and comfort to slaves, former slaves, nonwhites generally, and the cause of abolition at large. But that is irrelevant, because almost everybody was religious until very recently in history. The crooks and scallywags were religious too.
The genesis of abolitionism came not from a religious movement, but from the beginnings of the first
anti-religious movement—the Enlightenement. The cultural reformations and social progress achieved from the 1600s onward in Europe and America, were not the result of religion, but of greater efforts in the arts and sciences. High technology arose, philosophy advanced, mathematics and engineering leaped into a new age, and culture flourished everywhere. Conditions slowly—very slowly—improved. When all these ideas began floating around, the stranglehold held by Christianity began to slowly recede, causing reformation even within the various branches of Christianity. As more liberal attitudes arose, people began to perceive the humanity in their fellow slaves, and naturally began to question it. But whether their basis for these ethical judgment was directly religious or not, it is not religion itself that gave rise to abolitionism.
I’m sorry; that was all very rambling and unsubstantiated. Don’t take my word for any of it. Use it merely as a starting point for your own investigation.
I've read the His Dark Materials trilogy (I even made a thread about it here recently), but I haven't seen the movie yet, though I heard it was horrible. What is your view on the movie?
It was a very congested movie. Nearly the entire contents of the book were packed into that one film, which made it much too full, and that caused the quality of the film to suffer, yes. However, the upside to that is that everything is in there. The acting and effects are also great. The music is okay.
The movie was a lot for me to chew on, the first time around. However, I found that a second viewing really, really helped to clear it up.
If you’ve read the books, you’ll do fine with the movie. It’s a good story, and you should see it if you get the chance.
You really dislike Krispin, don't you?
Yes.
I have nothing else to add, except that I think for the first time I read one of your posts in its entirety.
The f-first time…?
The first time?!
The first time!!You’ve conversed with me all these years and you never even…
Pardon me; I need a minute.
