Wednesday, October 27, 2004
optimism and faith...
I have had many discussion with people of all different spiritual understandings. I will often make it a point to discuss religion or god with people just to get a better understanding of how people relate to faith. I am an atheist, and while that is certainly not a problem for me, it seems to be a stumbling block for others in a big way. I have a few thoughts I would like to put down here about faith in general, inspired by the 2004 Boston Red Sox and the last two classes I attended in my Women & Religion class.
First, I certainly realize that a great percentage of people in this country have a spiritual connection to any of a variety of faiths. It doesn't really matter to me if it's Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc. While I fully support everyone's right to self-determination of religious principles, I really don't care which ones people choose. If it matters at all, it is most interesting to see who backs up words of faith with actions of a believer. The answer? Pitifully few, and most of the ones who actually act as they belief are such fundamentalists that they aren't much fun anyway. Lest you start to think I am leaving myself out here, I realize I don't behave or act in any noble or ethical way, but then, I never professed to. I keep coming back to the idea that this world would be so much easier for so many people if religion would just dump this hypocritical approach to ethics, but that ship probably sailed thousands of years ago.
But back to the main point here. Faith in general fascinates me. There is no comparable issue I can analyze it against, and without a comparative object, there is no context through which I can digest this issue. For all the talk of faith as it applies to the Red Sox, or in more Springsteenian terms of faith and redemption, that simply does not compare to a group of people wandering the Earth believing that the savior is just around the corner, ready to reward some and punish most. That kind of idealism baffles me. For one thing, it denigrates all of us. Human beings are capable of rational thought (though some of the more fundamentalist ones may have left this skill behind...see Israel, the middle East, or Washington, DC) and are fully capable of judging an action on its own merits. The danger seems to come when people begin to use the phrase "means to an end" to justify actions that are supposedly negative to begin with.
There is more to say, but perhaps my own views can be summed up as such; For every spiritualist or theist, even those of you claiming to be agnostic (the least sensical of all deity-centered belief structures...but that is another topic for another day) there comes the nexus between faith and belief. The world may not be completely verifiable (let's leave Satre waiting for a better day than this!!!) or even quantitative in every way, and there wil lalways be the unexplainable. However, that does not change the fundamental reality of this world as it applies to the senses and to being human in an imperfect world. Though, on second thought, perhaps this is the perfect world. Perhaps it is we who are imperfect. Maybe we could even take one percent of the energy used to have and spread unjustified faith and use that to work towards a world where everyone has enough to eat, clean water to drink, a clean house to live in, and basic medical care. Oh wait, maybe if we wait and believe, god will take care of it. After all, the rapture is just around the corner. Take it away George!
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First, I certainly realize that a great percentage of people in this country have a spiritual connection to any of a variety of faiths. It doesn't really matter to me if it's Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc. While I fully support everyone's right to self-determination of religious principles, I really don't care which ones people choose. If it matters at all, it is most interesting to see who backs up words of faith with actions of a believer. The answer? Pitifully few, and most of the ones who actually act as they belief are such fundamentalists that they aren't much fun anyway. Lest you start to think I am leaving myself out here, I realize I don't behave or act in any noble or ethical way, but then, I never professed to. I keep coming back to the idea that this world would be so much easier for so many people if religion would just dump this hypocritical approach to ethics, but that ship probably sailed thousands of years ago.
But back to the main point here. Faith in general fascinates me. There is no comparable issue I can analyze it against, and without a comparative object, there is no context through which I can digest this issue. For all the talk of faith as it applies to the Red Sox, or in more Springsteenian terms of faith and redemption, that simply does not compare to a group of people wandering the Earth believing that the savior is just around the corner, ready to reward some and punish most. That kind of idealism baffles me. For one thing, it denigrates all of us. Human beings are capable of rational thought (though some of the more fundamentalist ones may have left this skill behind...see Israel, the middle East, or Washington, DC) and are fully capable of judging an action on its own merits. The danger seems to come when people begin to use the phrase "means to an end" to justify actions that are supposedly negative to begin with.
There is more to say, but perhaps my own views can be summed up as such; For every spiritualist or theist, even those of you claiming to be agnostic (the least sensical of all deity-centered belief structures...but that is another topic for another day) there comes the nexus between faith and belief. The world may not be completely verifiable (let's leave Satre waiting for a better day than this!!!) or even quantitative in every way, and there wil lalways be the unexplainable. However, that does not change the fundamental reality of this world as it applies to the senses and to being human in an imperfect world. Though, on second thought, perhaps this is the perfect world. Perhaps it is we who are imperfect. Maybe we could even take one percent of the energy used to have and spread unjustified faith and use that to work towards a world where everyone has enough to eat, clean water to drink, a clean house to live in, and basic medical care. Oh wait, maybe if we wait and believe, god will take care of it. After all, the rapture is just around the corner. Take it away George!
cf
