Ta-boo-hoo

Religion and politics. The two topics that we can’t discuss if we expect to get along with each other. Paradoxically, we can’t truly cooperate unless we do talk about these quasi-taboo subjects.

For my friend who likes “operational definitions”, this is the vocabulary I use when discussing these issues:

Religion-social (political) belief (spiritual) systems consisting of a vocabulary, a set of paradigms, and interpretations that can be shared and communicated among separate individuals. As a social construct, religion is used to coerce people to behave themselves.

Politics-the efforts of individuals to cooperate with other individuals. This can be as small a group of two or as large as everyone on earth (and beyond if it comes to that).

Spiritual-that which is beyond rational understanding. It is always purely subjective. It includes God concepts. Often that which is beyond rational understanding becomes rational as we learn more. Then the concept shifts from the spiritual realm to the political realm. Sometimes a rational discovery leads to more questions instead of answers. These questions can go in the spiritual column until answers are found. Science has taken many concepts out of the spiritual realm into the political realm. It has probably added just as many.

For instance primitive people when exposed to technology they didn’t understand, put this technology into the spiritual column. (cargo cults) Modern humans, when faced with information they don’t understand will 1. try to understand it 2. dismiss it altogether 3. or like the cargo cultists, put it in the spiritual column.

Religion is particularly troublesome because it combines subjective beliefs with politics in ways that are often destructive. Some people like Bill Maher (an individual who expresses a narrow perspective), ridicules religious beliefs, devalues these beliefs, and focuses on the negative about religious beliefs. I take it he thinks that religion should be disposed of altogether because it makes us worse instead of better. Lots of people have suggested this theory for a long time without much widespread success. Religious ideas wouldn’t survive if they didn’t serve some very important need in human beings.

Empirical thinking is a relatively new to us humans. For westerners anyway, it dates from only as far back as 17th century Enlightenment. Sometimes I wonder what thought was like for people before the Age of Reason. I doubt issues like the literal truth of religious beliefs came up very often, because it wouldn’t have made a difference in the way these individuals used their religious paradigms. After Enlightenment things were different. The truth of empirical data began to intrude into the commonly accepted truth of religion. Whereas previously people cooperated (or didn’t cooperate) on the basis of religious paradigms, Enlightenment provided another way. This new way was seen as a threat to the old paradigm. The whole structure of society could crumble under the scrutiny of the ever growing accumulation of empirical data.

I have never believed in taking away a person’s beliefs or ego defenses without having something to offer to take it’s place. Our beliefs are essential to life. We can’t function without beliefs. It’s scary when these beliefs are attacked. It is comforting to find beliefs that give life structure and meaning. Facts, empirical data, are tough. They can be denied and resisted, but they win out when people are bombarded enough. When facts conflict with beliefs that are important to people, they get scared. They have to change their world view to accommodate this new information. This is hard for some people. Eventually, religion found ways to give up the flat earth for a sphere. Religion learned to accommodate some facts, but in a one-to-one battle, the facts against religious myth, religion lost every time.

I wonder if that is why it is so important to some people that their religious beliefs be the same as empirical fact? The risk is that these important religious paradigms have no power against the almighty fact. To keep the myths alive as viable paradigms to modern people, the myths had to be seen as factual as well. People dig their heels in instead of adopting new paradigms and different beliefs. Mainly, I think people literalize myth, not to convince others that they are right, but to convince themselves that their beliefs and world views are worth believing. For many people, secularists and religious alike, there either is no spiritual truth or spiritual truth has taken a backseat to empirical data. Beliefs have become worthless unless they are factual. There is power in having faith in a fact, even an unprovable fact. Faith in spiritual truth is felt to be faith in nothing at all.

I see a tug-of-war between the skeptics like Bill Maher and religious literalists. From my perspective these groups are more alike than different. They are versions of the same thing. Skeptics often have very flawed reasoning because they are prejudiced against so many ideas that they don’t understand. Unless a person is willing to be open to the possibility of truth of an idea (no matter how outlandish it might seem) , they will not be able to understand it well enough to honestly argue against it.The literalists do the same thing in reverse. They are unwilling to accept the limitations of their beliefs by considering the possibility that they may not have it right themselves.

To me, both groups come across as arrogant and smug, lacking humility and openness to others. The skeptics throw out the baby with the bath water. When they devalue religion, they concurrently toss out spirituality. And the religious do the same thing. They cut God’s balls off by confining him to rational limits. By focusing on the literalness that can’t be substantiated, they, too, ignore the spiritual realm where God properly presides. Both the skeptics and the religious ignore the major part of what it is to be human. Our spiritual aspects.

I believe in God. Primarily I think of God with my traditional language of Protestant (Baptists don’t think of themselves as Protestant) Baptist Christian augmented with other ideas that make sense to me. In fact, I should say that I know there is God. I can’t tell you about him (that’s just a word, “him”). As I’ve learned more about how those different from me think about spiritual matters, I have learned that my inability to talk about God is probably a good indicator that I’m on the right track. Our Jewish tradition says that the name of God should not be spoken. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. God is beyond language and reason. The simplest way to put it in Christian language is God is love.

I don’t think people take those three words very seriously. Or they’d be nicer to each other. It does beg the question, “What is love?”. It’s hard to say that, too. All I can say about that is if you are able to get your own ego out of other egos, get rid of your projections and introjections, (sorry about the Freudian words, but I’m in a hurry and they were the first ones I thought of), when you realize that you are alone and separate and that every one else is alone and separate, too, there is love. It’s about connection and separation at the same time. That’s as good as I can do. Sorry. But that much I have confidence in. I’ve got to go.

I’ll end with some profound words as sung by The Grateful Dead:


... if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who’s to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.


Next: I'll get to the relatives and the political church sooner or later.