When Religion does matter Part I
Background
Our founding fathers had a completely merited and two way
fear of religion and politics. They were familiar with atrocities such as the
inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, and the violence of the reformation and
counter-reformation; and they didn’t want to see that kind of violence in the
USA. They knew that at the root of such
violence comes from the influence that authoritarian, dogmatic, and corrupt
religion can have on politics. They knew the predilection of preachers,
ministers, and priests to engage in convenient, parsed, polemical and sometimes
corrupt interpretation of religion, in the pursuit of fame, power and
money. And they knew that such religious
demagoguery could lead to the rise of fanaticism, dogmatism and
authoritarianism. They also knew that
politics can exert a multiplying influence on the rise of such corruption if
religion is allowed to become a tool of politics. Thus Separation between church and state was
meant to protect the Church from the corrupting influence of political power
and politics from the violence of corrupt religion.
They weren’t wrong.
We see how religion is corrupted by politics, and how the corrupt use
politics to corrupt religion and intrude on people’s lives. Once we see this in terms of the moral issue
of “corruption” we have an incomplete framework for analysis, because we need a
yardstick to measure the corruption of religion or politics.
I’ll save a full discussion of this issue for another time,
but one measure of both the ideological and the potential for corruption is the
ease with which religious beliefs can be manipulated by the cynical and
ambitious. On that score literalist and
facile understandings of religion are the most vulnerable. Because the cynical
can understand religious beliefs and motivations and exploit them, even when
they don’t believe them themselves.
All modern religions have a level of understanding that says
“both
material truth and textual truth are true, if you think one contradicts the
other then you don’t really understand the material and are not truly
enlightened.” Priniciples such
as “right to life”, “the Trinity”, and various conflict between obvious norms of behavior and
religious texts, exist in all
religions. Really spiritual beings
manage to observe these conflicts and resolve them without being trapped into
insanity. Fundamentalists of all
religions tend to seem to ignore the fundamentals of textual interpretation and
never penetrate beyond surface meanings.
They seem to get locked into resolving conflicts between material
reality and religious text – by rejecting material reality. This happens largely because their teachers
are manipulating them. And it makes a point on which others can take advantage
of them.
An example of such a conflict is the mandate, felt by most
Moslems to protect the name and reputation of the Prophet. The result of this mandate is that Moslems
get tricked sometimes or miss the point of the mandate completely.
I’m not a Moslem so I won’t offer any literary suggestions
for those who would honor folks who stab, attack or blow up critics of the
prophet. But I can offer the suggestion that
if you feel that way someone is manipulating you. And the ease with which religious charlatans
and demagogues from within a religion can manipulate believers is directly
proportional to the maturity with which religion is interpreted and believed in. It doesn’t reflect well on Islam or modern
times that people can provoke wars, riots and authoritarian revolts by
deliberately creating a movie to criticize the Prophet Mohammed. You
are being played folks.
Continued: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/09/when-religion-matters-loony-toons.html
Continued: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/09/when-religion-matters-loony-toons.html
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