Religion, AFP, and the unfortunate interface between religious people and me

[awmperry]

That old religion debate came up on AFP again. I think I've just managed to offend everyone who's ever been religious... again.

On Jan 22, 5:58 pm, [...]wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:03:23 -0800 (PST), Torak
> >On Jan 20, 8:26 pm, [...] wrote:
> >> On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:15:06 -0800 (PST), Torak
>
> >> >You know what? At least without religion, they'd need to make up
> >> >better excuses.
>
> >> Err, I guess you are too young to know about things such as the 2nd
> >> world war, the Hungarian spring, the Spain civil war... us european
> >> have a _very_ large experience of intolerance to chose from, but
>
> >Yup. And a lot of it's been religious or racial. The Huguenots,
> >Northern Ireland, the Holocaust... If you're arguing that religion was
> >a pretext rather than the actual reason I'll agree wholeheartedly, but
> >that doesn't make religion any better.
>
> And as usual in such a case, you're answering to another thread... I
> never said that religious wars didn't exist. I said, and I will keep
> on saying, that history proves that we don't need religion to go to
> war. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of wars are not relogious but

And I'll keep on saying that, whatever the true reasons for war (and I'm still not convinced that a lot of them aren't "we haven't shot anyone in a while"), without religion they'd have to make up better excuses. As it is, just about any conflict can be justified by saying "The voices in my head say we have to kill the unbelievers/infidels/heathens/French!"

> based on ethnic quibbles, on fighting over riches, on deciding the we
> don't hold enough land, etc. You're pretending that religions are by
> nature intolerant.
> This, of course, is
> a) not true
> b) an insult to quite a few people onfroup who just _happen_ to belong
> to a religion and whom you've just told were intolerant..._nice_ open,
> tolerant outlook!

No. It's very true, for certain values of religion. And it's an insult to religions and those who follow them blindly, while AFP tends, I find, to amass people who, if they follow religions at all, are likely to do so after having a good long think about it and deciding which bits are wisest forgotten.

Most religions, by their very nature, are intolerant. And the listings of "this is sinful, people who do this are evil", that's just the beginning. Then you get people who find bits of text they can coopt to fit their own intolerances (like those Westboro folks). And, since religion is largely in the mind of the believer, for them, their religion is defined by its intolerances. Does Fred Phelps preach the Golden Rule and say "Love thy neighbour, oh and we think being gay is probably a bit naughty"? No, he says "God hates fags". That's their website, for heaven's sake - that's the defining feature of their little corner of religion.

And if you think I keep returning to that... gentleman... a bit too often, it's just because he and his cronies are such a good example.

Or the guy Omid Djalili refers to as "Moslem nutcase with a hook, at Finsbury Park" - whose name I still can't remember - fine, Islam is an intrinsically tolerant religion. Unless you let people with their own nasty little motives look at the book and take bits out of context and twist them a bit and whaddya know, there are bits on fatwas and jihads and stonings. Maybe they're in the Koran for real, maybe they're not: I don't pretend to know. But a lot of the people who do pretend to know only know because that's what they've been told, and anything passed down vocally has been parsed and filtered a couple of times already. Remember what I said, religion is in the mind of the believer?

I'm not going to slam judaism, mainly because I don't know enough about it. As I understand it, the Torah is basically the Old Testament, so without the "let's be nice" bits that came with the New Testament, but I'm the first to admit that my knowledge of the Torah is sketchy at best.

But I will happily slam the OT, by simply asking this: why should I have to kill everyone who works in Tesco so I can go and buy a pint of milk on a Sunday? Because that, it seems to me, is intolerant.

But no! Of course they don't need to be put to death, because that passage is clearly outdated and irrelevant to modern life (and if it isn't, my poly-cotton shirt is going to cause me some bother come Judgement Day). So is the pork thing, and I can't see any reason to discriminate against anyone just because they happen to prefer people with the same dangly bits.

And that's the problem, you see. However many examples of tolerance you can quote from these pick-and-mix religions, there are just as many examples of intolerance to be found. Some are more observed than others, but you can be sure that every intolerance has its adherents. And sooner or later, every intolerance has its army, and every intolerance has its pretexts.

Pakistan and India. Big country, huge country. Nukes on both sides. And both want the comfy sofa in Kashmir. Sure, there's space for two, but it's so much more fun to cite religion and lob artillery at one another.

Israel and Palestine. (Hoo boy, there's a discussion I don't want to kick-start again.) That's not about religion, that's about lebensraum, but religion and intolerance go pretty much hand in hand there.

Catholics and Protestants. They're the same religion, but one's the angry cousin that gets annoyed that you forgot to tuck your shirt in. They've had their share of wars - Ireland, Vassy, Nantes, St Bartholemew's Day... Oh, and that Spanish civil war? Sure, I'm not old enough to remember it, but I certainly remember my history lessons. And at least one of the factions was distinctly secular, and at least another of the factions was distinctly Catholic, and I'm pretty sure the Basque Catholics waded in there somewhere as well.

The Crusades. The Jihads. The Milites Christi. The Thirty Years' War. Sunni and Shia. Iran and Iraq. Thuggee. The Holocaust. The Inquisition (which nobody saw coming). The Mormon War. Christians vs Lions. The BHI. The Nation of Islam. The KKK. White Aryan whatnot.

If there's nothing inherently intolerant about religion, then there's damn sure a lot of delusional people out there[1]. With, y'know, guns.

So if there's anyone who's religious who feels offended, why? If you're not intolerant, and your denomination isn't intolerant, and you can't do anything about those associated groups that are intolerant, then I'm not getting at you. Of course, if you've got a sneaking suspicion that there are bits of your faith that you'd rather not examine too closely...

Oh yes... my point. My point is that, of course, not all wars and conflicts are about religion. Not even all conflicts about religion are really *about* religion. But a lot of them are, and a lot of those that aren't are helped along by the odd "Onwards, lads, for God and country!" - and so, one way or another, even disregarding the completely non-religious conflicts, religion has a lot to answer for.


> >> somehow some people tend only to talk about religious intolerance... I
> >> gather colonization was, to your eyes, not a form of intolerance,
> >> right?
> >Colonisation in itself, no.

Again, it's rather poor form to snip a significant piece of text without marking it. But I suppose then you'd have had nothing to be outraged about.

> Right, I see... no need to keep on talking then, as I _do_ hold that
> invading people, taking their land and riches and, optionally
> enslave/exterminate them is as intolerant as can be, but we probably
> have an entirely different definition of intolerance...

Different definitions of colonisation, clearly; I use it in the sense of "going somewhere and building a colony", which doesn't seem too far-fetched. If the conquistadors had settled for colonisation - nice little villas with a sea view, perhaps, learning the local language, and so on - then nobody would have minded. Thing is, they - like you - confused colonisation with conquest.


[1] - This, to be fair, is a theory that I haven't yet discarded.

Yeah, so I've probably alienated and offended every religious person on the planet. The ironic thing is, I suspect there may well be a god. But I don't think he cares in the slightest what I think of him. Come on - if you were omnipotent, would you care that the lady in the till at the supermarket overcharged you by 40 pence? Of course not. (Unless you decided to get some smiting practice in, but I guess if you're omniscient you're pretty bored with daytime TV anyway.)

Comments

giving offense

[sunshinepeachy.livejournal.com]

The offense, I suspect, is less about you not being a fan of religion, and more about you seeming to blame it for everything and the kitchen sink.

The thing that gets people all offendy is this feeling that you are ignoring reality in order to get your hate on. About religion. Which thus far your reasoning in the newsgroup would be to blame religion for.

Sure, religion has a lot to answer for. No question. And if you said it like that, even the most religious of people would agree.