THOUGHTS ON RELIGION
Religion seems to have become one again a major source for structuring Americans' perception of the world around them. In our history we have periodically entered phases of evangelical zeal where we seem to abandon all reason and reach out for magical answers to important questions. It seems that Jonathan Edwards never really died. He's still out there ranting about his angry God. One difference in this reformation and others is that more of the world is involved, or at least because of better communication we are aware of similar trends in other nations. Right now the Middle East is where the most similar pattern of fundamentalism rages. In truth, there is not much real difference between the intolerance developing in this country and the intolerance exhibited by the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other Islamic nations. Hill-billy Christians are not much different from the Taliban, just more cowardly. Both are sources for most of the evil in the world today.
Contrary to what the religionists would have us believe, religion is not the reason for human action; religion is simply used to justify and defend actions taken for entirely different reasons, usually reasons connected with selfish or nefarious motives.
The Middle East has always been a region of intense emotion and hatred, mixed with some tendency toward supernatural explanations , but primarily a region of hate. Over the centuries this hatred has congealed into three main conceptual systems, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These systems of hatred, incarnated into religion, have been the Middle East's primary export to the Western world. Periodically this imported religion as support systems for hatred rises to dominance in our thinking and we enter another reformation phase where intolerance reigns. Unscrupulous politicians, such as those in control in Washington now, exploit this hatred for their own purposes and we find hatred being promulgated from the government above and our own human weaknesses from below. Thus, what we face in America today is the far right using the simple minded fanaticism of hilll-billy Christians to foster their anti-humane causes.
There is absolutely nothing positive about hill-billy Christianity. Fantasies of burning people who see life differently arise not from a concern for their eternal well-being, as they claim, but from sheer hatred. Thus, hill-billy Christians default everybody to hell. Only by becoming one of them and easing their fears can one escape their wrath.
Like the Puritans of old, hill-billy Christians thrive on opposition. Once the Puritans arrived in the new world and could practice their religion without opposition (the Indians didn't care), they fell apart. After all, their driving force was hatred. Similarly, hill-billy Christians today perceive themselves as persecuted and thrive on this perception. Just listen to their sermons and conversations. To oppose hill-billy Christian simple mindedness is merely to reinforce their solidarity. The best way of dealing with this paranoid cult is to buck up those who know better so that they can practice a religion not based on a theology of hatred.
I suspect that one of the difficulties some have with accepting evolutionary theory is the inability to comprehend the immensity of time involved in evolutionary change. A billion years is an immense length of time; fifteen billion years is fifteen times as long. This is a period of time entirely beyond our ability to take in.
Contrary to what the religionists would have us believe, religion is not the reason for human action; religion is simply used to justify and defend actions taken for entirely different reasons, usually reasons connected with selfish or nefarious motives.
The Middle East has always been a region of intense emotion and hatred, mixed with some tendency toward supernatural explanations , but primarily a region of hate. Over the centuries this hatred has congealed into three main conceptual systems, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These systems of hatred, incarnated into religion, have been the Middle East's primary export to the Western world. Periodically this imported religion as support systems for hatred rises to dominance in our thinking and we enter another reformation phase where intolerance reigns. Unscrupulous politicians, such as those in control in Washington now, exploit this hatred for their own purposes and we find hatred being promulgated from the government above and our own human weaknesses from below. Thus, what we face in America today is the far right using the simple minded fanaticism of hilll-billy Christians to foster their anti-humane causes.
There is absolutely nothing positive about hill-billy Christianity. Fantasies of burning people who see life differently arise not from a concern for their eternal well-being, as they claim, but from sheer hatred. Thus, hill-billy Christians default everybody to hell. Only by becoming one of them and easing their fears can one escape their wrath.
Like the Puritans of old, hill-billy Christians thrive on opposition. Once the Puritans arrived in the new world and could practice their religion without opposition (the Indians didn't care), they fell apart. After all, their driving force was hatred. Similarly, hill-billy Christians today perceive themselves as persecuted and thrive on this perception. Just listen to their sermons and conversations. To oppose hill-billy Christian simple mindedness is merely to reinforce their solidarity. The best way of dealing with this paranoid cult is to buck up those who know better so that they can practice a religion not based on a theology of hatred.
I suspect that one of the difficulties some have with accepting evolutionary theory is the inability to comprehend the immensity of time involved in evolutionary change. A billion years is an immense length of time; fifteen billion years is fifteen times as long. This is a period of time entirely beyond our ability to take in.
posted by Jerry at 7:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home