Massive rant ahead

[theatokos]

I've been having a long and interesting discussion about religion with a distant cousin. I make no claims to have any of the answers, though I do spend damn near all my waking hours engaged in religious thinking in some capacity or another. What's KILLING me is his inability to reason, while all the time trying to convince me that he's too logical and I'm too emotional. Now, I am very emotional: I get passionate, yes, sir. But in my engagement with him I've been very even handed, perhaps too even. But his refusal to understand that in the world of religion X *and* Y need to be considered not incompatible Truths but simultaneous truths, has me coming off as emotional to him. It's not out of some namby-pamby love-fest that I say this. It's because after practicing and studying religions and spending time with people who believe differently than I do, to assume that only Jesus is THE God is to basically tell 4.5 billion other people to fuck off and die. It's not saying Jesus is MY God, but Jesus is THE God. I know the vast majority of Christians don't see it that way, but that's how it is.

I have spend considerable time in Jewish communities and developing friendships with both cultural and religious Jews (which doesn't make me an expert, merely informed to some degree), I have never ever had a Jew tell me that their God was THE God and boy I'd be a lot better off if I argreed. If I want to join their party, many would welcome me (many would not, since I'm not ethnically Jewish), but the Jewish people are content to worship their god and go on their merry way. They don't need to convince the rest of the world of their religious superiority. I would love to know if the Jewish world sees their God as THE God, or merely as THEIR God - that's a huge difference.

I'm really fed up with the mainstream idea that logic means there can only be one big-T Truth. I fear that modern Western schooling has ruined the brains of generations who were taught to find Right Answers - there can be only One! - rather than to develop arguments and think critically. Unless you are in the hard sciences, there is rarely One Answer. I think this is why academics are stereotyped as elitists: because it's very difficult to talk with people for whom there is only One Right Answer. If I had to talk with people like my cousin (who's a Nice Guy) regularly I think my head would explode. This is why people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin give America/politics/conservatives/Christianity such a bad name, because they don't reason. At all. Cuz reasoning and arguing is some Lefty Agenda out to confuse the Average Joe. Of course it confuses the Average Joe - because they went to school where there was only one right answer!! (Excuse me while I go stab out my eyes in the corner.)

I'm starting to wonder if there isn't some religious causation here. In the Protestant Christian world (which makes up the vast majority of America) there is one sacred text - the Bible. It is entirely correct. It is The Right Answer. Everything must be squared with it. There is One God. The Bible says X, so X it is. There is no tradition of critical engagement. No tradition of wrestling or questioning. No understanding that the Bible is a sacred text that grew up in certain times and places and is relevant to certain people. One billion Hindus grew up in a different time, place and culture with different sacred texts? Well, fuck them. They're Wrong. How mind-bogglingly ignorant and arrogant is it that?? Oh, says my cousin, truth is truth. Gahhhhh! Religion is not a hard science! The same rules do not apply as when we determine, say, that the earth rotates around sun.

I wonder too if perhaps (stereotypically) more Jews go into academia because of their tradition with engaging with texts. The Jewish tradition has a long and rich tradition of arguing and engaging with their sacred texts and teachers - Midrash and Talmud come immediately to mind. Perhaps there is less of a need for One Right Answer, and therefore the world of academia, where it's not about Right Answers but more about better and worse arguments, comes more naturally?*

I don't know. All I know right now is that mainstream reasoning seems to be dying a slow, disgraced death. Many people considered themselves religiously well educated if they made it through 5 years of Sunday school. It makes me want to hide under the bed and weep. Or just hole up with other people who can think, like the elitist I am.

*hraffntinna and msmidge please smack me upside the head if I'm full of shit.

Comments

This may get long...

[amyura.livejournal.com]

....because you brought up several points about which I have either opinions or perspective, or both....

First up, your point about western schooling and the hard sciences. I don't think all of western schooling DOES teach that there's only one answer. I think that the average American elementary-to-secondary "education" (if you can call it that) does, but I think that can be traced back to the founding of universal public education and the need for a cheap labor source to teach in those schools-- single women who could read and had done 1-2 years of "teachers college" were the norm; they were underpaid; their working conditions were stringent but still far better than factory or farm work. But the lack of respect for the teaching profession and the lack of investment in recruiting, training and retaining excellent teachers has resulted in a lot of less-than-qualified individuals going into teaching, and teaching from scripts where there IS only one right answer.

Also, as someone with a graduate degree in one of the "hard sciences" (although I know a lot of people don't think of math as one of them), beyond the 200 level in college, there's no one right answer either. In math and physics, you can prove or derive things more than one way, you consider cases and explore possibilities, and you postulate theories. There's a beauty and an art to problem solving that often results in long discussions about the relative merits of various approaches. In chemistry, there's usually more than one way to perform an organic synthesis.

I think it's telling that a lot of the wingnuts (for lack of a better word) are the same people who REJECT math and science as "not of God." At best, many often abridge the mathematical and scientific cannon to exclude areas they don't understand or that seem to conflict with what the Bible says. I think that it's BECAUSE the hard sciences start from the premise that there may be another way of looking at things that so many religious fundamentalists have a problem with them.

With regard to Judaism, I'm coming at it from the same place you are and have come to many of the same conclusions. I'll add a few things but I know you have several LJ-friends who are frum who can fill in our blanks.

I'm pretty sure traditional Judaism does believe that there is only one God and that God is IT-- but that non-Jews aren't bound by the same laws as Jews. In order to be considered righteous, Gentiles need only to adhere to the seven laws of Noah, which are fairly universal principles of decent, moral behavior, rather than the 613 mitzvot. I would imagine that more liberal Jewish denominations take an even more liberal approach to non-Jews.

As a liberal intellectual Christian myself, I've always admired the Jewish tradition of literacy. In Christianity, there's a long tradition of keeping the masses uninformed. Clergy in many denominations are called "pastors," leaving the congregation as the figurative "sheep." Until Vatican II, Catholic Masses were said in Latin with the celebrant's back to the congregation. The reformation was noteworthy because it made the Bible more accessible to the masses, but there was an accompanying message that nothing else needed to be studied. Compare that to the bar mitzvah ceremony, where a child becomes and adult by READING.

[seaivy.livejournal.com]

If you did a degree in theology you did read critical Protestant theologians didn't you? They led the way in a critical interpretation of Scripture and did pioneering work in expanding the role of consciousness in theology.

Maybe "Conservative Evangelicals" have a single minded view
but in the '60's Protestants did some of the leading work in avant guard thinking.

There are also several theologians and writers who seek to take their Christian belief and have a greater understanding by studying other traditions, particularly Yoga, Tao and Zen.
Surely you have met some of these writers.

[eelsalad.livejournal.com]

In the Protestant Christian world (which makes up the vast majority of America) there is one sacred text - the Bible. It is entirely correct. It is The Right Answer.

Actually, that depends on which Protestant Christian church you check out. I was raised in the Methodist church, which uses the Wesleyan Quadrilateral:

* Scripture - the Holy Bible (Old and New Testaments)
* Tradition - the two millennia history of the Christian Church
* Reason - rational thinking and sensible interpretation
* Experience - a Christian's personal and communal journey in Christ

Each member of the church is expected to use those four things when coming to theological conclusions. Methodists are big on the personal relationship with God, and while different Methodist congregations have different views, a great many of them emphatically do not hold the Bible to be the inerrant word of God.

And I'm pretty sure they're not the only Protestants who see it that way. The whole inerrant Bible thing is a fundamentalist Protestant thing, not a Protestant thing.