Back on Track
It's high time this blog got back on track and stopped being merely atheist satire.
Jewgirl to the rescue!
I've alluded to this distinction a number of times through comments and now, it's time to actually adress it.
Religion and theism are different.
Correct me if I'm wrong Seth, but much of your dislike of Judaism has to do with:
- a bad Hebrew school experience (I know it happens...)
- parental pressure
As I have mentioned a number of times, I am atheist and Jewish. Just because I am Jewish doesn't make me a theist or otherwise. Even if religion may "brainwash" kids to believe in God so they can discern right from wrong, this doesn't mean that all denominations expect you to believe in God. Sure, it's much more difficult to be an Orthodox athiest than a Reform athiest as I've heard from some of my Orthodox friends, but nonetheless could still be within the realm of possibility (quite a small possibility).
My main point is: religion is self-defined and always should be. It's fine to follow the teachings of another, but only after you have struggled with the ideas and concepts yourself and have questioned. I know that some of us on this blog have said that kids don't question religion & God enough, but this is an unfair accusation. Extremists (i.e. atheists & theists) tend to be more vocal in general about their opinions whereas the people in the middle don't seem to discuss their own opinions as frequently. Assuming that these middle people don't have opinions though is positively absurd, just as assuming all athiests believe the same things is absurd. Anyone who is not constantly changing their own opinions of theism is not open-minded enough to consider alternative options.
I think I may have digressed quite a bit, but in any case, try not to exclusively associate religion & theism. It's often not entirely valid.
posted by Anonymous @ Friday, March 03, 2006
19 Comments:
What we all want to know is, how much of the media and banks do you control personally, and how many Palestinian boys have you ever killed ?
What in the world does that have to do with anything?
You make a good point Maddy. A religious ceremony might change your perspective on the religion. But I don't agree that kids aren't mature enough. Kids develop maturity at different rates. the line between religion and theism is very very thin, but it is there. Thanks for the first non-carnival post in a while.
No matter what religion may have done for you, people can question their beliefs about life without it.
Well, it sure has killed a lot of people.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that six million Jews were killed just because they were bad people.
Fine. Now justify the Inquisition's religious aspects.
Now that's just not true. Ferdinand and Isabelle founded the Spanish Inquisition to suppress heresy. They were upset that Spain was not religiously unified. They tortured and killed people because of religious reasons. The Crusades were launched to recapture Jerusalem for Christianity.
The Bible says to kill blasphemers. The Koran says to kill blasphemers. Muslim children being raised in the Middle East are being taught that it is okay to harm non-Muslims because the Koran says so.
Yes, some people merely use religion as an excuse for violence. But if children are raised to believe that their religion is the absolute truth, and taught the accompanying zealousy --which they are-- then for them, religion is the cause. Little children in Nazi Germany did not hate Jews because Jews weren't Aryan. They hated Jews because the adults told them that Jews were bad.
First off, it's unhealthy in a rational world. Second, parents around the world indoctrinate their children with religious values at a young age, and effectively turn off young minds from other viewpoints.
Naturally there are exceptions, but this is what happens to millions upon millions of children. If your parents teach you - even passively - at a young age that a particular viewpoint is better than others, kids will grow up believing it.
By definition, unsupported belief is irrational.
Yes, I was a theist until I actually started paying attention to what they were telling me at Hebrew School.
I don't disapprove of influence. I disapprove of parent's and authority figures abusing their influence. Like I've said before, if a child is taught something by their parents when s/he is young and impressionable, it will stick. Hence, you are not Christian.
You tell me. Are your parents Jewish?
Seth. Religion is like sex, for lack of a better analogy while reading romeo and juliet.
Religion is a complex thing that no one person fully understands. it dictates your actions. It can kill you. It can cause you to hurt people. It can fuck you over(no pun intended). It can also give you life. A new perspective on things. help you deal with loss. And many other things. It's all about how you use or abuse its power.
Just a little question...
If you follow a religion, which is based on a text which says it is the word of God, how are you qualified to "interpret" those words?
Are you really allowed to judge the word of God?
If you are, that suggests your intellect is equal to (or even greater than) God's.
But surely that can't be the case, as there would then be no need to follow his word. And perhaps, he might follow yours...
All very good points Simon. But the interpretation argument is that God says this. He must mean this, because God likes to do things that say that he might have an opinion to say this. Everyone says they are right. That's where the controversy is. It isn't that people think they are as intellignet as god so they must be able to interpret the bible. People think that God has a certain style, so each thing he does should be interpreted to fit that style. Peopel think they understand God.
Sure, you may be making your own choices now, but you wouldn't be making the same choices if your parents were Muslim.
…what? I just used that as an example of another religion. You wouldn't be making the same choices if you were Christian or Hindu either.
Parental influence and whatnot. Maybe you'd have been just as into Christianity. But now you'll never know.
Good point about choice. The choices we make are limited or effected by the "programming" we receive from birth.
For example, when we got a kitten, my son and my girlfriend enjoyed making him chase his tail by waving it in his face. He started chewing the end of it. Now, years later, when he cleans his tail he chews it, making the fir into a spike so he looks like some kind of cat-scorpion.
This got me to thinking - we've managed to program our cat into doing something he wouldn't naturally have done. And even though we no-longer wave his tail in front of his face, he continues with this habit. Perhaps he thinks it's "right" to do it.
Human morals are the same, I believe. I had no morals when I was born. They were programmed into me. If I was brought up to believe (in isolation), killing other humans is a good thing, and I was given a sophisticated enough reasoning behind this, I'm not sure I wouldn't now be a murderer.
This is why people can behave to very different sets of morals, both thinking they are "in the right".
So when you say you choose to remain Jewish, that choice is only made under the influence of heavy "programming".
Do I chose not to murder? Or is it that I have been programmed to believe murder is wrong?
Culture is basically programming. And people become very attached to their culture - like my cat is to chewing the end of his tail.
I think choice or freewill is our human ability to reprogam ourselves, which comes from our great ability to adapt.
However, I don't think reprogramming is easy and sometimes requires a desperate situation to drive us to rethink or reinvent ourselves. In the same way that a dramatic change in our environment (pre-civilisation) would force us to change our habits and invent a new way of surviving.
As a screenwriter, I know a common structure for a drama is to have a character (hero) who starts with one set of values, who is then forced to re-examine those values by a dramatic event, leading him to change (usually for the better), whereby he can overcome the enemy/obstacle.
Everytime we go to the movies, we're watching people reprogram themselves - often with the help of others who can show the hero another way of thinking.
Imagine you're born - Enil Adam 1.0. Nature's pre-programming encourages you to cry when you're hungry, tired or uncomfortable.
This version of your human software is very very basic.
Rapidly, updates are added and we learn to walk, connect spoken sounds to objects, know shapes and colours as things, hold things, manipulate things...
So now you're Enil Adam 1,089,657.98 (updates arrive somewhat quicker than with Windows XP).
But you're still only at basic operating level.
You learn hurting other things is not always a good idea when 1) big people shout or smack you or 2) they hurt you back.
And on and on as gradually our whole value system is built with new patches to our programming added every day.
The human mind starts off very easy to program and gradually becomes less easy as it approaches adulthood, at which point it becomes virtually fixed.
This makes sense - if our operating sytem on our computers changed dramatically every day, they'd be virtually useless.
So... freewill, to a certain extent, is an illusion - because our desires and emotions are effected by our programming.
But there are other forces at work too - our natural instincts (the pre-programmed stuff), a sub-group of which is our ability to adapt to overcome a threat.
I imagine our minds not as one computer, but as many hundreds of computers, each designed to deal with different areas of living, talking to each other and controlling each other.
eg: if someone were to attack your child, the part of your mind which has been programmed to believe its wrong to hurt another will probably be over-ridden by the part which contains the natural instinct to protect your off-spring.
The combined effect of the parts of our brain in constant communication and negotiation is what I think consciousness, or our feeling of freewill, may be.
I wasn't gonna read any comments before commentin', but Francois' just busted me up! LMAO! DOH!
But seriously Enil, I completely agree with your sentiment and statements.
Theism is a belief in gods. Regardless of that particular belief, anyone can believe something religiously, fervently and with an ardor that is scary in its ability to obscure non-supportive information.
While I know from personal experience that one can certainly be too wishywashy in acting on their ideas, I also know that it makes more sense to give serious consideration to any major decisions before you make them. After a lot of practice doing so, the decision making process does speed up quite a bit.
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