Lost Continent Words

Dawkins and Tolerance

(in response to a comment from Myk)

I'm not sure that I've ever been a Christian. I was baptized as an Episcopalian to satisfy my Preacher Grandfather, and served as an acolyte in my youth for the same reason. But once my grandfather got too sick to really preach any more, my obligation was reduced to XMAS eve with my grandmother (on the other side). But even in all this, I'm not sure that I ever really believed it (apart from when I was too young to interpret reality or have my own opinions).

My mother (like most Preacher's Kids) had stopped being a Christian by the time I was old enough to have an opinion. My father is as moderate a Christian as possible believing (a paraphrase) that "there are good lessons in what Christ had to say, but it really doesn't matter whether he ever actually existed".

But I certainly had an opportunity to believe, and I'm not sure why it missed me. My grandfather was the best preacher I've seen, with an incredible gift for language. Though I don't remember much of the content (I think he stopped preaching when I was 10 or 11? My memory for anything beyond yesterday is poor and even that is a little hazy.), I remember each week sitting on the altar as an acolyte and looking forward to the sermon, to hear what he'd have to say, and how many other regular church goers can say that?

But then I got see what happened outside of church, and it was really my first experience with Appearance vs. Reality. I started to see all these people who said and did one thing on Sunday and then ignored it all the other 6 days of the week, when it actually mattered. I saw the kind and decent and loving members of my grandfather's former church force him out because he had taken a leave of absence to be with my grandmother who was dying of cancer, in a stunning act of Christian charity.

And then there was my grandfather himself. He was a great man, but he was not a nice man. I might even be tempted to say that he was a great man, but not a very *good* man. And I got a small fraction of what my mother and her siblings experienced, as dozens of people would tell me how much they respected him and how great he was and how lucky I was to have a grandfather like him and then I'd go to visit and he'd sit by himself in his room or yell at me for playing with stuffed animals in his house (at age 7). My public grandfather was a great man, but I really only knew him as well as the other people who heard him speak, because in private he wasn't there.

I loved the music, but pretty quickly I figured out that is wasn't the Holy Spirit that moved me, but the music itself, which came from a long experience of secular music.

And it didn't make sense. As I got into science and logic and all the other elements of the devil's toolbox it just didn't make any sense at all. There's some magical guy who lives up in space and listens to everyone's prayers and secret thoughts and then he punishes some and rewards others, but not based upon their works but according to his secret plan so it just coincidentally looks like random chance.

And his son was sent to earth to be born from a virgin in Bethlehem which fulfills the Old Testament prophecy of the messiah decendent of David who will come to save the Hebrew people from the Assyrians even though the Assyrians as an empire collapsed 400 years or so before he came and instead it was the Romans who he would lead armies against and vanquish, even though he eventually was crucified and they ruled for another 300 years.

(Micah 5:2-9, and it took me about 7 minutes to look up and Old Testament prophecy that is completely wrong. This was the first one I came to.)

It just doesn't make sense. In my teen years (likely when we discussed it) I was open to the concept of "divinity", which is to say a creator of the universe, but one who is not really involved in daily life. And I was starting to get into Buddhism and Zen and some of the other paths I've followed. And more than anything back then I believed in tolerance. That it is essential for people to learn to live together and accept each others ideas that "all paths lead to God" and all that happy liberal religious pluralism dream.

But the more I see, the less I become comfortable with that. The more people I see killed over disputes about ancient literature, the less I believe that we can all just get along. I just don't see it as tenable for the majority of the world to believe clearly insane things that are completely out of touch with everyday reality. I think its dangerous for believers and non-believers alike and will be *the* source of humanity's destruction if we can't move past it. As Sam Harris says, it is now possible for someone to simulataneously have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon and still actually believe he'll receive the 72 virgins. It is absolutely terrifying and to blame it on anything *but* these outdated and ridiculous beliefs associated with religion (mainstream and radical) is both dishonest and cowardly.

But what to do? Have I become a raving atheist? Certainly not, and I don't think the state of the world is helped by ruining every thanksgiving dinner from here on or yelling at people when they wish me Merry Christmas. If anything this is a memetic change, one of the human race evolving toward a new understanding, and as such it will take place slowly. All I can do is challenge ideas and discuss things honestly.

Personally I still consider myself a Zen Agnostic. I've found the techniques of Zen to be useful to relating honestly and sanely with the world, but I don't really care if Buddha existed and don't much care about reincarnation or the Pure Land. I believe in divinity to the degree that the universe seems to make sense and have a natural pattern to it. This doesn't have to have a supernatural cause, it could just be the laws of physics and biology doing what they do, and being a product of them they make sense to me. But the universe is filled with plenty of wonder and magic, without having to pretend you know where it came from, and that some guy more than a 1000 years ago who couldn't even program a VCR was enough smarter than you to know the answers.

So that's a bit longer than perhaps you were looking for Myk, but that's how I see it. And I like Dawkins book and what it has to say (I actually finished it last week and need to update my all consuming list), but then he was "preaching to the choir" to use a wholly innappropriate cliche. I only hope more people read it who don't agree and use the opportunity to honestly assess their understanding of reality. That's all I can ask.

(And Happy almost new year by the way.)

Posted by ktismael at March 19, 2007 12:58 PM