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Aug. 5th, 2008 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI had an interesting conversation with NJS the other day about religion, that allowed me to talk out some of the things that had been percolating in my head.
I understand why people want some of the things they do from religion, like a sense of community or an acknowledgment that there is more to reality than the things we can describe and define with science and reason. I just keep stalling out when I look at any *specific* religion, because all of them seem to require acceptance of several things that seem not just improbable to me (that I could deal with) but seem downright *wrong* or totally unfounded and unbelievable (like assertions that there's an all-powerful god who is also just and loving, in any sense that those words can mean to humans, or that after we die at some point we get our bodies back again, or that when people die they go someplace really, really nice, and we get to see them again later). But I can understand the longing.
Hence, I'm becoming a great deal less prone to scoff as much as I used to when I was younger, less forgiving, and more callow, at people who effectively invent their own religion by picking and choosing elements they like from past beliefs and melding them with new 'traditions' to create some sort of elemental recognition of nature and the forces that work on all of us, for good or ill. I might even find, some day, that I'm inclined to do the same.
I'm still a bit impatient with those who insist that such things are 'rediscovered' historic truths, but even that I may stop grumping at, in time.
I understand why people want some of the things they do from religion, like a sense of community or an acknowledgment that there is more to reality than the things we can describe and define with science and reason. I just keep stalling out when I look at any *specific* religion, because all of them seem to require acceptance of several things that seem not just improbable to me (that I could deal with) but seem downright *wrong* or totally unfounded and unbelievable (like assertions that there's an all-powerful god who is also just and loving, in any sense that those words can mean to humans, or that after we die at some point we get our bodies back again, or that when people die they go someplace really, really nice, and we get to see them again later). But I can understand the longing.
Hence, I'm becoming a great deal less prone to scoff as much as I used to when I was younger, less forgiving, and more callow, at people who effectively invent their own religion by picking and choosing elements they like from past beliefs and melding them with new 'traditions' to create some sort of elemental recognition of nature and the forces that work on all of us, for good or ill. I might even find, some day, that I'm inclined to do the same.
I'm still a bit impatient with those who insist that such things are 'rediscovered' historic truths, but even that I may stop grumping at, in time.
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traditions
Date: 2008-08-06 07:24 am (UTC)I guess if you are rejecting a religion which claims to represent eternal truths, people feel more comfortable with the idea that they are re-discovering the "old ways" rather than coming out and saying "here's one I cooked up last Monday in my garage" (obviously, Hubbard had no problem with that!)
Many religions push the idea that humanity is imperfect, a collection of worthless sinners; and if you have been indoctrinated in that idea since childhood, it may also be hard to stand up and assert that your new concept of religion is yours, is original, and is good. Hence people use "the old ways" as a cover
Many religions begin with fundamental contradictions and as their followers bodge on more ad hoc house rules to deal with local issues, they get worse.
A few years back, I think in the New York Times, Mario Cuomo suggested that, religion aside, there were some basic commonsense ethical rules that were simply necessary for people to get along. He made sense but many religious leaders jumped on him like a bunch of IP lawyers to assert the superiority of their brand of basic morality.
Of course religion is about more than morality and community - it is about explaining how you stand in relation to the universe, particularly the bits of it we don't understand.
Re: traditions
Date: 2008-08-06 04:39 pm (UTC)One of my university lecturers, a dear old chap of whom I was very fond*, pointed out that, throughout a good deal of history, any time an Englishman (he was lecturing on Tudor and Stuart history) wished to put forward an innovation in political or social practice, he buried it in assertions of antiquity, so as to make it defensible. :-) I think Bahlman's First Law** (as I like to call it) can be applied fairly widely. :-)
* And who pointed me towards William Laud (the chap in the icon) when I wanted to write my undergraduate thesis on the English Civil War.
** Not to be confused with what I like to call Bahlman's Second Law, that one can draw a fairly strong conclusion about the amount of public adherence to a law or regulation by the number of times it has to be reissued, re-promulgated, or reinforced. For example, I've always taken the constant reiteration in 18th century army orderly books that "camp followers are not to be allowed to use the army's wagons for transport" as an indication that the women of the camp pretty regularly ignored it. :-)