Religion a Determinant of Doucheness

Over the holiday weekend, I went to see Mongol and caught a glimpse of a new Bill Maher documentary. Its called Religulous and surprise! It's Bill Maher acting like a d!ck. The only thing that might save this movie, in a non-religious way, is the interviews with Andrew Newberg who is religion positive.

I really don't have anything against Bill Maher, but I hate it when people mock religion as though it only has destructive consequences. That and its cruel to attack something that is sacred to someone else and is a constructive force in their lives. I hope the movie at least says that not everything about organized religion and its followers are bad, because the trailer certainly doesn't.

I've written a lot about my stance on religion, and I'm thinking about getting a grad degree that deals with religion and peacebuilding. If someone says Jesus is their inspiration for feeding the poor, what's the problem? Assuming they're not doing something bastardish like cutting up chunks of Bible and adding to the soup, there should be no reason to attack belief in Jesus or any other faith tradition. And if someone is being an ass in the name of God, the concept of God deserves no more criticsm than the color shirt that person is wearing. God is incidental and unrelated to their behavior.

Religious beliefs (or absence of them) do not a douche bag make.

Also, Bill Maher can seem a little too self important for my taste. He carries himself as a moralist/political analyst first and then a comedian second and that's just a little disingenuous.

Anyway, I'm happy I got to use dirty words in the post. I won't do it too often.

Expelled: The Film Only Nazis Won't Like

I've seen the ads for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new documentary from Ben Stein about the suppression of ideas from "Big Science", and I am intrigued. I'm so inspired by the heated religious debate that I have to blog about it. Because, as you may have already guessed, I'm very pro-religion. Atheism I find a bit lonely.

Me personally, I'm not very good with science, so I can't say that I can justify, or not justify, any belief in the idea that man evolved from apes. But I can say, that no matter what science says about the origins of the human species, it will have no effect on my belief in God. I don't subscribe to any literal interpretation of any sacred text. I believe the Bible is divinely inspired but is not the actual Word of God. The author's used their reason to the best of their ability to communicate the message of God, but naturally fall short a bit because of their limited abilities. I think it is a living document, meaning interpretation is an active ongoing process. So when it comes to things like scientific explanations of the world, I do not fault any of the authors for less than accurate descriptions, nor do I feel that any new discoveries invalidate any of the stories. In short, my faith in God does not hinge on science, so science or scientific theories pose no threat.

That being said, I reject the idea that Ben Stein puts forward that intelligent design is being supressed and/or persecuted. Everyone wants to be persecuted so that they may legitimize themselves and solidify their positions. So minus 50 points for Ben Stein.

Of course intelligent design deserves a place in academia, but not necessarily in the science department. Anything that seeks to explain divine influences needs to be put into theological or philsophical studies. Even from a religious perspective, the idea that God can be studied scientifically is near blasphemy. His creations may be studied this way, but not his nature.

So should science be atheistic? No, of course not. Atheism is the rejection of God, and scientists should have the freedom to choose what will guide their research. However, I do think science should seek to be theistic neutral. It should neither reject nor accept the acceptance of God, but leave that up to other disciplines to figure out. Science cannot explain God and therefore should not seek to.

One of the more troubling things I find in an overview of the movie, is the idea that Darwinism (old school origin of species) is linked to Nazism and other various strands of evilness. If we banned everything that was used to justify evil deeds, we'd have nothing left, so bad Mr. Stein, very bad. Both science and religion have been warped and twisted in order justify violence and oppression, and I'm not tossing either of those out the window.

By the way, why are we so obsessed with comparing things to Hitler? Anything that's slightly bad, we say "You're a Nazi!". Come on...the Nazis were pretty bad. As Jon Stewart once said, "That guy worked too hard to be that evil for every Tom, Dick and Jane to be called Hitler."

Respeck!

So its been a while since I last posted. I had a really intense week last week due to the writing of a 20 page paper on Islam and Nonviolence. I had a great time writing it, but then again, it was a paper that was "due" and that's never fun. If I get good grade I'll post an excerpt or two.

So today's blog post comes to you courtesy of Daniel Pipes. He's in the Bernard Lewis-Sam Huntington school of thought, but he's good for blog inspiration.

Today I found a little thingie he wrote about some Islamic government officials pushing for an internation law that would make it illegal to trash talk people's religions. Now obviously, these officials want a law to protect Islam and not necessarily any other religion, but I think the idea of an international law protecting religion is a pretty okay idea.

A law as such shouldn't make it illegal for anyone to criticise a religion, but rather to extend laws against hate crimes to include violence against religious traditions (that is if it does not already do so) and to ensure that every religious community is being given their freedom. Now such a law may already exist, I don't feel like trolling through all the UN resolutions that have ever been passed.

Islam is completely compatible with this idea. Back in the day, Islamic societies were waaayy more progressive in preserving religious freedom for non-Muslims than the European societies were with minority faith traditions. To back up this claim, I'm going to give the link to one of the resources I used for my paper. It's a fairly extensive look at the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the best characterization that honors all parties involved.

To read Islam, Nonviolence, and Interfaith Relations by M. Mazzahim Mohideen, click on the link, then scroll all the way down to the last chapter of the collection and click on that. You'll be downloading it in a PDF format.

PS. I wore that sign for a part in a play. I was not wandering around DC wearing that and blending in with some of the crazies in front of the White House. No, just some theater crazies.

I'm a religious person, can someone else arrest me please?

Some guy in the UK, the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in fact, made a controversial statement last week about incorporating Sharia law into British law. I don't think I understand the controversy exactly, but from the little I know of exact Sharia principles, I don't see how any of those principles could be contradictory to British law. That is of course if we're taking a non-literal interpretation and recognizing that the law must serve the times that it is in. Since I am so ignorant of law type issues period, I'll avoid talking about the specifics and jump into the general implications.

Secular law and religious law, could the two exist side by side? Why not? Is it any different from the way religious institutions operate now? Religious marriage ceremonies are recognized by the state, in many western countries, so what about other ceremonies and customs etc?

I'm opening up the discussion to all my law-minded friends.

Blasphemy, blas-pher-you, blas for everybody!

This week I got to write a reaction paper to a fascinating book entitled When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball for my Religion and Peacebuilding class. I thought I'd share a little bit of that essay with you folks.

Looking at my own religious community, the American Christians, I have to say yes, religion is becoming evil. When I look at other communities, I want to say no, because I can easily point non-religious motivations that are creating conflicts but expressing themselves in religious language. It’s a bit of a double standard, but I have a tendency to harshly criticize what I am closest to. The problem isn’t within the nature of Christianity; its how societies have allowed religious expression to become so poisonous to the general public. Lucky for me, Kimball is a Baptist minister, and he applies the warning signs mainly to his own faith, as is to be expected.

Of the five warning signs that Kimball lists (1. Absolute truth Claims, 2. Blind Obedience, 3. Establishing the Ideal Time, 4. The End Justifies Any Means, and 5. Declaring Holy War), absolute truth claims are the most dangerous if only because it is the first step. In middle school and high school (such a loooong time ago, I know), I was a very active evangelical Christian, for many different reasons I won't go into.

I have since removed the evangelical label from my religious identification, not because I experienced any destructive blow to my faith in Christianity, but because I was becoming better friends with non-Christians and I felt that always looking at people as potential converts or even just believing that these people were on “the outside” was wrong and dehumanizing. Even just thinking that my non-Christian friends would not be allowed into heaven was a truly scary thought and it ceased to be my motivation to change them but rather to change myself. I even have a refrigerator magnet that sums up most of feelings towards contemporary American Christianity, “Please Jesus, save me from Your followers.”

Kimball uses a familiar phrase to highlight the problems of absolute truth claims: “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship”. I've heard that one a lot, and even used it quite a few times. I don’t really agree with that statement anymore in so much as I believe Christianity is a religion and a relationship, as are most other faiths. However, I’ve always thought it was a clever way to exempt Christianity from the debates over secularism and the general evils of religion that were usually posed by ardent atheists.

I agree with Kimball that the phrase also hints at a much deeper issue, the complete nullification of any other religion’s right to assert its own validity. In particular, I liked his quote, “I am convinced that it is possible to be a person of faith with integrity—a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist—and at the same time recognize that one’s own experience of God does not exhaust all possibilities” (9). I think it is fair for a religion to assert it has the best understanding of truth, as any company would describe their product as the best version of its kind in the market, but not the only way of understanding truth.

Be aware that I am not claiming the a belief in the existence of an absolute truth is dangerous, it is just the way people have chosen to express their exclusive access to this truth.

What do you guys think about absolute truth claims? Do you think you have it right and everyone else has got it wrong? Or is everyone wrong, and that's okay?

The title of this post is inspired by Eddie Izzard's bit about Pope-Man. Could be a whole series...with a lot of complaints. I swear I quote that man almost as much as Dr. Ahmed. Almost.