On Religious Reverence
Several months ago -- I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if I found out it was over a year ago -- an incident occurred that really bothered me. It "stuck in my craw" as an old-timer might say, to the extent that even now I am overflowing with things I want to say about it.
My then roommate asked me if I believe in God. It was an out-of-the-blue question with no context or segue. When I explained that I am an agnostic (a concept which she confused with atheism -- a common mistake, albeit one a bit surprising coming from a philosophy major) she demanded to know why I don't believe in God. And bam, just like that, we're off to the races, and oh my dear friends and readers, I so, so don't mean that in a good way.
Let me be clear: I have nothing against, and in fact greatly enjoy a good theological discussion. By a "good theological discussion," I mean one in which two or more people discuss their religious and spiritual differences with open minds and a goal of greater mutual understanding. The problem is that so few theological debates take this route. Oh, to be sure, nearly every theological debater claims that this is their goal, and I have no doubt that many if not most of these people truly believe in their own good intentions. But good debate employs logic, something with which faith, by its very nature, is ultimately incompatible. This leaves agnostics and atheists in a ridiculously hypocritical no-win scenario: Back off, and the believer lords it over you that you have "lost" the debate. Pursue your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and somehow you are branded as the intolerant one -- even though it is usually the believer who has set out to "prove" how wrong her opponent is, while agnostics and atheists (save for a relatively few antitheist extremists) usually tend to keep their opinions to themselves unless asked. There is reason to preach the Word of God, but little reason to preach that there is no word at all.
This was certainly the case in the discussion between me and my roommate. Oh, I tried to warn her. I told her that I don't like volunteering my beliefs on such matters, but if asked, I will state my beliefs and the reasons for them. I told her that I respect her religious beliefs, but not to the extent that I will pretend to agree with them, and this leads me to my main point, an examination of what it means to respect a person's religious beliefs.
To truly respect a thing -- whether that thing is a friend, or a nation, or an idea, or a religion -- is to embrace its positive aspects, but also be willing to acknowledge its flaws. Embrace without such acknowledgment is not respect -- it's reverence. Reverence is not necessarily a bad thing; revere your blessings, revere your values, heck, even revere your God if that's your cup of tea. But once you revere not your God but the religion surrounding it, you've missed the point. Reverence of religion as an institution in its own right, rather than as a pathway to God or enlightenment, far, far too often leads to either an abundance or a dearth of tolerance.
On the one hand, you have the all-too familiar social enemy of religious extremism that results from revering one's own religion at the expense of all other views. The religious right who preach that Democrats are the bane of the nation and who declare homosexuals to have an evil agenda are every bit as dangerous, just as much a blight on humanity, as the Islamic jihadists who fly planes into buildings and praise Allah with cries of "death to Israel."
But there is another extreme too, one that is more pervasive in our culture and almost as dangerous as intolerance: too much tolerance. We live in a P.C. world in which the one type of extremism that is accepted is extremist relativism, in which the mainstream's reaction to intolerance is to preach that all religious views are equally valid -- save, perhaps, for the absence of religion (as evidenced by Gallup's recent poll on popular attitudes toward atheists). What's wrong with such a tolerant attitude? Not a thing. The problems start when we surpass tolerance and delve into blind acceptance. The value of a religious faith -- like any other idea, and perhaps more than most -- can be truly appraised only when it has been challenged, and can be considered valid and valued only when it has met such challenges and emerged with evidence that its benefits outweigh its flaws. I'm not arguing that a religion's tenets have to be proven, I'm merely returning to my earlier argument that if one's religious beliefs can't be discussed with an open mind, they perhaps shouldn't be discussed at all.
My then roommate asked me if I believe in God. It was an out-of-the-blue question with no context or segue. When I explained that I am an agnostic (a concept which she confused with atheism -- a common mistake, albeit one a bit surprising coming from a philosophy major) she demanded to know why I don't believe in God. And bam, just like that, we're off to the races, and oh my dear friends and readers, I so, so don't mean that in a good way.
Let me be clear: I have nothing against, and in fact greatly enjoy a good theological discussion. By a "good theological discussion," I mean one in which two or more people discuss their religious and spiritual differences with open minds and a goal of greater mutual understanding. The problem is that so few theological debates take this route. Oh, to be sure, nearly every theological debater claims that this is their goal, and I have no doubt that many if not most of these people truly believe in their own good intentions. But good debate employs logic, something with which faith, by its very nature, is ultimately incompatible. This leaves agnostics and atheists in a ridiculously hypocritical no-win scenario: Back off, and the believer lords it over you that you have "lost" the debate. Pursue your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and somehow you are branded as the intolerant one -- even though it is usually the believer who has set out to "prove" how wrong her opponent is, while agnostics and atheists (save for a relatively few antitheist extremists) usually tend to keep their opinions to themselves unless asked. There is reason to preach the Word of God, but little reason to preach that there is no word at all.
This was certainly the case in the discussion between me and my roommate. Oh, I tried to warn her. I told her that I don't like volunteering my beliefs on such matters, but if asked, I will state my beliefs and the reasons for them. I told her that I respect her religious beliefs, but not to the extent that I will pretend to agree with them, and this leads me to my main point, an examination of what it means to respect a person's religious beliefs.
To truly respect a thing -- whether that thing is a friend, or a nation, or an idea, or a religion -- is to embrace its positive aspects, but also be willing to acknowledge its flaws. Embrace without such acknowledgment is not respect -- it's reverence. Reverence is not necessarily a bad thing; revere your blessings, revere your values, heck, even revere your God if that's your cup of tea. But once you revere not your God but the religion surrounding it, you've missed the point. Reverence of religion as an institution in its own right, rather than as a pathway to God or enlightenment, far, far too often leads to either an abundance or a dearth of tolerance.
On the one hand, you have the all-too familiar social enemy of religious extremism that results from revering one's own religion at the expense of all other views. The religious right who preach that Democrats are the bane of the nation and who declare homosexuals to have an evil agenda are every bit as dangerous, just as much a blight on humanity, as the Islamic jihadists who fly planes into buildings and praise Allah with cries of "death to Israel."
But there is another extreme too, one that is more pervasive in our culture and almost as dangerous as intolerance: too much tolerance. We live in a P.C. world in which the one type of extremism that is accepted is extremist relativism, in which the mainstream's reaction to intolerance is to preach that all religious views are equally valid -- save, perhaps, for the absence of religion (as evidenced by Gallup's recent poll on popular attitudes toward atheists). What's wrong with such a tolerant attitude? Not a thing. The problems start when we surpass tolerance and delve into blind acceptance. The value of a religious faith -- like any other idea, and perhaps more than most -- can be truly appraised only when it has been challenged, and can be considered valid and valued only when it has met such challenges and emerged with evidence that its benefits outweigh its flaws. I'm not arguing that a religion's tenets have to be proven, I'm merely returning to my earlier argument that if one's religious beliefs can't be discussed with an open mind, they perhaps shouldn't be discussed at all.
posted by Movie Man at
10:22 PM
1 Comments:
I'd like to add a major point which I forgot. The problem with too much religious tolerance is that it too often translates into INtolerance of any sort of criticism. When people are labelled as intolerant or even evil simply because they express disagreement or disapproval of an aspect of a religion -- which is far too often the case -- then something is seriously wrong.
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