I’ve been reading a bit of dingbat spiritualism (The Secret – I’m looking at you), and I’ve been wanting to write about why I think I’m more anti-spiritualist, than an atheist (or maybe agressive materialist would be the best way to describe it). But before I do that I have a rant I have to get out of the way first.
One weird feature of the left, probably going back to the 1960s, is a completely inexplicable view that Eastern religions are in some way better than Abrahamic religions. While this is less strong than it was, you can still see it, particularly in the way the Dalai Lama is treated.
Every major religion, every religion that has ever had any power, served the interests of the ruling class. Religions can and do justify existing power structures and give people reasons not to fight back. While most religions also have ideas that undermine those power structures, all major religions spend most of their time upholding existing power structures. If you like meditating then go for it, but don’t pretend it’s that different from saying the rosary.
Having got that out of the way, I should be able to get on to why I really hate religion sometime in the next few days.
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My completely off the cuff wild-assed guess is that people in the west like Eastern religions better because they are less familiar. That is, most people like the idea of spirituality, something greater than they are, survival after death, etc. At least, that’s my impression. I’d certainly arrange a pleasant and interesting afterlife for us all if I were able to do so. Anyway, so Westerners (yes, that includes New Zealanders) want a religion that they can believe in. But they know too much about the Abrahamic religions to be able to really get into them anymore. So they go to the Eastern religions hoping that one of them is the “right” one, the one that will fulfill their needs and give them hope without oppressing them. It’s not going to work, but since when did that stop anyone?
Slightly off topic, but Dianne’s comment reminds me that I met a guy once who is a professional player of various Indian and Middle Eastern instruments. He told me how one time he got hired to play at this Hindu temple in Texas. But when he got there, he discovered all of the people there were white. And as their worship service went on, it became apparent that the “Hinduism” they were practicing was just Christianity with “Krishna” instead of “Jesus.” They wanted all the exotic eastern spirituality without actually leaving their comfort zone.
More on topic, I’m not sure that religion has any special propensity to side with the ruling class. Religion does a good job of binding people together in pursuit of a way of life. So any religion that gets popular will be appropriated by people defending the status quo, but religion is also useful to groups with progressive or regressive agendas.
One weird feature of the left, probably going back to the 1960s, is a completely inexplicable view that Eastern religions are in some way better than Abrahamic religions.
I’m not sure that this fascination with “Eastern” religions is one you can ascribe to the left as a whole or exclusively to the left. But to the extent that it’s a view symptomatic of many folks in the West (as it were), I think you have to trace it’s roots back much farther than the 1960s. Specifically, you have to deal with Orientalist traditions that stretch back into centuries past. For example, from the Wikipedia entry on Orientalism:
“In the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers sometimes characterized aspects of Eastern cultures as superior to the Christian West. For example Voltaire promoted research into Zoroastrianism in the belief that it would support a rational Deism superior to Christianity.”
I’m not sure that it’s exactly that religion tends to support the ruling class by design, but I think that that’s often the effect regardless. So many religions focus on peace, serenity, acceptance, and forgiveness . . . which is great from a mental health standpoint, but not so good from a ‘changing the world’ standpoint.
Of course Liberation Theology tried to change all of that . . . which is part of why it’s been crushed mercilessly.
Figures.
See also:
Joe Hill’s ‘Starvation Army’ song.
” as their worship service went on, it became apparent that the “Hinduism” they were practicing was just Christianity with “Krishna” instead of “Jesus.” They wanted all the exotic eastern spirituality without actually leaving their comfort zone.”
Yeah. When I was in high school, my best friend and I tried to go to meditation services somewhere to check it out… same deal.
I think the political abuses of the eastern religions are invisible to most westerners. We know that Christianity was/is coopted to support slavery, colonialism, segregation, women’s oppression, homophobia, and so on. Most people seem to know so little about non-western history that they can’t see parallels…
::nods emphatically::
my issue with The Good Bookz (any of ’em – the Secretmadeup scroll, the Celestine Prophecy, the pickedover-and-chosen post-Luther&James bibles; not-remarkably, I’m ok with Judaism, which in its non-Orthodox incarnations tends to look pretty much like, uh, educating your kids well before sending them off into the world) is that they get taken too damn literally. Like, way, way way too damn literally – as in, let’s go on a Crusade and kill y’all! But my issue with religious and/or spiritual people is only ever whether or not their actions match up to their stated beliefs – whether or not they’re assholes in glass houses trying to burn Mary Magdalene alive, essentially.
“Western” culture (a hemisphere without a reason anymore to be named as such) has really really mixed up the idea of the Buddha [the former Prince under the tree sitting and navel gazing into Nirvana], and the image of the Rock God, a (post Kings of Rock’n’roll & Pop) Kurt Cobain blowing his brains out as it all just became too much. Death, which used to mean in teh Eastern Mysticism, “You get to learn whatcha did wrong and do it all again” has now become a narcissistic xtian nation’s “You have a daddy who loves you very much and a Mommy who never let daddy’s big godly dick into her; thus, if You refrain from teh sex until we burn you on a cross (nevermind how any more babies are going to get born), then you did nothing wrong and you get to ride off happily into the sunset.
Shit, what’s the Simpsons episode where Homer starts skipping church and ends up hanging out with God [I know that it’s actually in the slew of Simpsons DVDs I watched right after getting cut up, but I have no clue which season it fell into]? That visual image, of Homer (the storytelling Daddy) falling asleep and letting the house almost burn(s) down while he was just chillin’ with His Idea of God – instead of, y’know, Going to Talk To God with wifey and Flanders like he’s supposed to – that weird-ass reframing has (way too literally) flipped The Mirror onto Nature in America right now and made the yin/yang start staring inward at itself. Like, uh, a Picasso-y yin/yang with a brain on top, and a deep, deep fear of its reptile brain.
And uhm, general apologies go out here to non-America for our not having been able to stop the monkey prince in time. Hopefully we’ll do a better job of counting next year. (and less general apologies for all the sense I may well not be making).
Religion’s whole issue nowadays as I see it is that Some People [::looks, er, Bushward::] have assimilated the knowledge that they’re gaining inner strength from symbolism and community, while a whole lotta others – especially in these United states of Isolationism-over here – haven’t the slightest clue that “Plato’s cave” and “Pantheism” come from both the same linguistic and philosophical roots…and that “east meets Eden” already happened when Picasso started fucking with female faces n making ’em all look like screwy yin/yangs.
At least that’s how this particular Lefty chick reads the Chick-down-under’s vague “pet peeve” post…
Thank you, Maia. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this propositon stated so simply or so compellingly. The very odd idea that the Dalai Lama may be addressed without a blush as “Your Holiness” whereas Josef Ratzinger may not be so addressed without someone flying into a frenzy has puzzled and amused me for a long time.
Exotic (and/or mostly-made-up-by-myself, as most “pagan”) religions are probably attractive because it is easy to ignore or leave out the tough parts. Not to mention the morally unattractive parts.
I’m in moderation! the Moderation works!
(and yet still I ramble…)
[Just so you know, the moderation software automatically puts any post with more than three links in it, into moderation. –Amp]
Isn’t this a feature, not a bug?
I mean, if our end goal is ‘fewer people believing and acting on morally abhorrent beliefs’?
I think being pagan is kind of silly, but I’d rather deal with a silly crystal-gazer than a committed Christian who wants to legislate me out of existence any day. Heck, it’s the same reason I’d rather deal with a ‘bad’ Catholic than a ‘good’ one.
On religion in general:
I also see a relationship between “religion” a/k/a world view and the ruling class. But the relationship may be more complicated than suggested above. One person’s world view:
A. World views are inevitable. Any child with sufficient mental capacity will develop a world view as part of learning about the world.
B. A group of self-aware creatures that live together will tend to adopt world views with common elements.
C. These common elements – labeled “tribalism” or “Catholicism” or “Enlightenment” or “Communism” or “conservatism” or whatever – will tend to make the society more cohesive; members will be more willing to sacrifice on behalf of other members of the group. (Contrast the number of suicide bombers Saddam was able to muster to the number that Al Quida is able to muster, and you get some idea of the power of a common world view.) Groups that lack a common world view may lack the cohesion to withstand encroachment from groups that have a common world view; over time, only groups with some measure of common world view will endure.
D. Leaders will try to appeal to these common elements in an effort to motivate their groups.
While I share the view that a leader will tend to exploit “religion” to promote her own interests, I find this dynamic unavoidable. Any lasting group of people will form a “religion” of sorts, and will thus be susceptible to leadership/exploitation.
I strive to avoid abstractions and think in concrete terms as much as I can, but I suspect it’s a never-ending discipline. I cannot avoid having a world view. I can try to expunge my unexamined beliefs and theories as I discover them, but I can’t keep myself from substituting a new theory in its place.
Thus, even if rejection of world views would be the best solution, I think Myca identifies the second-best solution: embrace the least-harmful religion you can find. Historically, I think it’s nationalism.
Nationalism as proven to be a pretty compelling world view, and it has the advantage that it tells me that my enemies are people who live far away, and therefore I have few opportunities to give vent to my irrational hated of them. Nationalism is the US’s proposed substitute religion for Iraq: “You’re all Iraqis; you’re in this together!” It may not be perfect, but it seems more promising than simply trying to get Iraqis to abandon their religions entirely.
I strive to avoid abstractions and think in concrete terms as much as I can
I don’t really get this. Could you provide an example?
I knew as I was writing that that I should give an example….
Try this: I was (and remain, to some extent) fond of Enlightenment thought. I took it as a given that government derived its authority from the consent of the governed, and that we enter into a social contract with each other for the maintenance of our society. I was deeply disturbed when my girlfriend forced me to concede that this is merely a metaphor, and that guns had a lot to do with the rise of rulers. Enlightenment was my world view; guns hadn’t previously featured so highly in that view.
How’s that?
It was a joke, dude.
Actually, it was a joke and a Roy Blount reference. (Yankee illiterates!) In one of his books, a racist character is telling the (white) protagonist that blacks are dumber than whites, specifically, that unlike whites, they can’t engage in abstract thought. The protagonist deadpans “I don’t get it. Can you give me an example?”
Given how new this thread is, please be careful not to allow the topic to drift too far, folks.
* * *
I agree with Dianne’s comment (#1); the reason eastern, and “exotic” religious beliefs in general (see: Kaballah) are so attractive to lefties is that ignorance is bliss.
It’s hard for a lefty to be a Christian and not be challenged about it, at some level. When a friend of mine mentioned several weeks ago that she was giving up things for Lent, I was surprised that she was a Christian. “Yes, but I’m not the kind of Christian who hates gays or anything,” was her next sentence.
I hadn’t said a word about gays, or homophobia. But right-wing Christians are so predominant here in the USA, it doesn’t have to be said; the association between Christianity and regressive politics is so well-known it’s become implicit.
In contrast, even if there should be, there’s no such implicit association between less well-known religions and regressive politics. I can see how this would make Eastern and other less familiar religions seem attractive.
I pretty much dislike all large-scale organized religion, for the reasons that Maia says. But I’ve got nothing against small-scale religion (although I find the belief system bewildering). Many of my friends are religious, but they’re also very progressive, politically.
I think my thing is that I try to make a distinction between whether a belief system is (offensive shorthand ahead) evil or false.
Of course, as someone who believes in science, on one level, I sort of think that they’re all false, and evil in the sense that they encourage people to believe in faerie tales rather than the real world. On the other hand, I think it’s not unreasonable to make a distinction between religions that I think of as mostly harmless (though false and probably silly) and ones that I think of as actively harmful.
Paganism is false, but I don’t think it’s generally evil. I mean, it’s not telling us that women are inferior or that gay people are evil or enforcing monogamy or any of that stuff.
—Myca
personally I think it is because Abrahamic religions are seens as too hard and too restrictful. Even if you get past the cultural aspects of these religions and strip it to its bare bones, its still restrictive. There are clear answers to questions regarding things such as marriage, children, death, and hot buttons topics in these religions such as homosexuality.
Just to clarify something that may not have been quite clear. My points about religion upholding the interests of the ruling class are only about religions that rise to a position of power within society. Early Christians didn’t uphold the status quo . I don’t think spiritual beliefs must uphold the status quo (although I do have a problem with them, more on that soon), but I think a religious system only gains power if it can offer those in power something (generally subdued people and a justification of the way things are).
I would agree that reciting mantras while counting them on prayer beads is little different from counting Hail Marys and Glory Bes on the rosary. However, depending on the particular sort of meditation practice, it can be entirely different from saying the rosary.
For a specific example of an “eastern” meditation style, there’s shikantaza as taught/practiced in the Soto lineage of Zen Buddhism. I recommend a casual glance through wikipedia for a very general orientation before comparing apples to cast iron frying pans.
That said, I look forward to your critique of dingbat spiritualism.
the human soul is inexorably drawn to that mystical ‘truth’ to which we probably arrived from and will probably return to. early childhood thought
processes similar to the ones i experience today have shown me that the draw is inherent in my being. i would assume that all hominids are similarly
equipped. curious creatures, essentially, ones who have latently come to the penchant conclusion that these curiosities can be accounted for in matter-of-fact
ways. it’s actually a completely absurd idea. but, if you did have concrete answers, wouldn’t that make you powerful. so this train of thought you can
practically see evolving from human history. Eastern religions over west? Chocolate and vanilla. you’re still eating sugary sh*t.
Just as a clarification, when you’ve been saying pagan, you mean neopagan? My understand of the word pagan is that’s it’s anything not an Abrahamic religion. I’m not sure this statement
can be made. Unless my understanding of what the term paganism applies to is wrong.
I think you have the chain of events completely wrong. Christianity started as an offshoot of Judaism and the early followers of Christ were persecuted unmercifully. It was only once the religion gained in popularity and was eventually adopted by Constantine that it became the religion of the ruling class; then, it began to be forced on nonbelievers ( and you ended up with plenty of nominal believers who adopted the religion to avoid persecution.)
The same thing is true of Islam. The Prophet Muhammed had a bounty placed upon his head and had to flee to avoid being murdered by those who disagreed with him. As he gained followers, he gained influence, and thus power.
No religion starts off with millions of believers: a religion grows to become the religion of the masses and then the ruling class co-opts the religion in order to dominate the people.
This doesn’t prove that religion upholds the interests of the people in power. It does prove that those in power will use any advantage, including but not limited to religion, to maintain and spread their control.
Myca said:
Of course, as someone who believes in science, on one level, I sort of think that they’re all false,
As someone who has a BS in Biology and an MS in Biochemistry and spends 4 hours in church every week (2.25 hours of choir rehearsal, an hour’s service, and then various social and administrative activities and duties), I don’t see where the “of course” comes from here. Could you explain?
Actually, it seems to me that most major religions spend most of their time challenging existing power structures. You seem to be equating the use or co-opting of religious imagery and citations by the power structure to support of that power structure by a religion.
For example, here in the U.S. the major religions condemn capital punishment and war. They call for diversion of more money into social programs and education. They press for greater rights for illegal aliens.
Now, it’s true that some of them also press for restriction of abortion; but then, that’s consistent with an overall respect for life if you believe that human life begins at conception. It’s also true that some of them have an entirely different view about sanctioning homosexual sexual behavior than the left generally does; but then, there are also many others that support the left’s view. Once again, don’t confuse religion supporting for it’s own reason something that the power structure also supports with support for the power structure itself.
Generally, religions don’t adopt the positions of the power structure; power structures adopt the positions of religions.
Can I just stick an cultural note in here? Religion was not nearly so cut off from power structure, social structure, economics and the like in past eras as it has been in the current western world. I’m not really sure you can talk about their relationship to each other in such definite spheres, considering religion’s role in group cohesion and the like. The way the discussion is framed is very…Judeo/Christian western world 20-21c.
Wasn’t a big part of Christianity about group cohesion against the ruling culture of the time? So, doesn’t that mean it set up it’s own power/social structure to help define who is the group and who is other? When religions are set up/born/whathaveyou do they not set up the rules for social structure and ruling class? I don’t think it’s a one way street.
Also, I’d really like to know what makes a religion false?
Carnadosa Writes:
Isn’t every nascent religion, by definition, anti-“the ruling culture at the time”? It seems to me that by definition any new religion is going to be different from the old religion and thus will directly challenge the old religion either on purpose, or will eventually grow so large that it threatens the hegemony of the previous religion.
I know that today when we think of Christianity we think of the Catholic church and the protestants but there were so many different varieties of Christianity that arose in the first few centuries after Christ’s death it would make the fissions between the churches of today small by comparison.
Ron, I’ll explain for myself (I don’t mean to preëmpt Myca).
You say that (1) you have degrees in biology, and (2) you spend time in a church. Myca was talking about belief systems, though, not where you spend your time. I’ll assume that in addition to spending time in this church, you also endorse at least some of the propositions proclaimed therein as articles of faith, such as “The biological mother of Jesus did not have sex before he was born”, “When you die, you will not cease to exist, but rather, you will continue to exist”, “Several days after Jesus died, he came back to life”, etc. You endorse these beliefs, in spite of not having any evidence that they are true — and they are astounding, breathtaking claims. In your scientific training you learn to test and re-test the results of even a simple experiment until you are sure that what you’re seeing is real. This is merely common sense applied with rigor – the same common sense that says you should test-drive a car before you buy it, or check a rope for frays before you tie something important to it. Yet you willingly exchange this common sense for something else, when you endorse supernatural Christian beliefs. If I may presume to agree with Myca here, I would say that the scientific frame of mind is completely antithetical to this. If you agree with me (that science and religion conflict), then no problem – people often harbor contradictory opinions. But what irks me is when scientists say that there is no conflict or contradiction.
Well, I’ve blathered on without knowing much about what you really think, so I apologize if I’ve misunderstood you.
Not sure `meditation’ is a good example of religious practice: you can be athiest and meditate. In fact, I think a lot of repetitive craft (e.g. knitting) is a form of meditation, but it’s not practicing religion; it’s practicing craft, or maybe art. But it also can be a satisfying mental state, which is why people spend hours making stuff by hand. Weeding and other gardening chores might be another example. I’m not a much of a musician or dancer, but those performance based activities strike me as analogous or even coexistent with ecstatic prayer.
Yet, I suspect the benefits, such as calm, or living in the present moment, are similar, whether praying with a rosary, meditating, or knitting.
Call me a dingbat, but one thing I like about, say, Buddhism as opposed to Abrahamic religions is the relative lack of a savior. Not only do you have to actually do something in order to reach Enlightenment, but it is actually possible for one to reach Enlightenment on one’s own, without holy intercession. In Abrahamic religions, you are more likely to be taught that God or Jesus or some saint or martyr is in control of everything, that you are fundamentally flawed and that therefore you must ask for intercession in order to be saved. It’s the difference between “It’s in God’s hands” and “It’s in my hands”. So when you are saying your prayers, you are asking for some holy being to step in and in some way exert control over your life, whereas if you are saying mantras to meditate, you are using a tool to help you concentrate on improving your own self and experience.
I feel I should put in a caveat here: I’m neither Buddhist nor Christian and my entire experience with Buddhism is academic.
Well, yeah. That was kind of what I was trying to get at. It sets up it’s own social/political structure and then it serves it. There are splinters that are probably in part about who’s in charge and who should be in charge…and they go off and set up their own social/political structure.
Anglicans?
Carnadosa sez:
Yeah, I meant neopagan. ‘Pagan’ can mean anything non-Abrahamic (heck, originally it meant something like ‘bumpkin’ or ‘redneck’), but living in the SF Bay Area, I hear it most in reference to those who self-identify their religious affiliation as ‘pagan’, and not as a term of deprecation imposed from outside. YMMV, of course.
Sure! I basically believe that a scientific worldview, in terms of 1) the creation of the universe and life, 2) the development of the universe and life, 3) the continued operation of the universe, and 4) methods for discerning truth and falsehood, is generally correct, and where it conflicts with religious doctrine or methods, those doctrine or methods are untrue.
So: I believe in evolution, and believe that there is an essential conflict between evolution and Genesis. I believe in the scientific method of determining truth and believe that there is an essential conflict with faith-based methods. I believe in the heliocentric model of the universe and believe that there is an essential conflict with the geocentric model.
—Myca
Doh. That second quote was from RonF.
Ignorance is bliss.
I loath to subscribe reasons to individual’s faith, but I’ll do it in generalizations :).
I have found, as stated above, that many “Westerners” find non-Abrahamic religions ‘easy’ because they indeed don’t care the cultural baggage for them, as Ampersand and others above say.
I tell people I’m Christian and they immediate put the cultural-historical baggage of modern-day fundamentalism, inquisitions, religious wars, etc on top of that.
Tell someone I’m a Buddhist and they get this picture of a saintly Bhudda, peace, calm and tranquility.
Problem is, Asian history is pretty much as nasty when it comes to religious wars between Hindus, Confusionists, Buddhists and others. They’ve had their own massacres, fundamentalism, inquisitions, wars and the like. But as a Western culture we don’t carry that baggage with us.
sigh, I should have previewed my comment beforehand. So many grammar/spelling mistakes. Yikes.
I don’t understand what your saying. Do you mean that Henry ( why are there so many folks in England named “Henry”?) broke away from the church in Rome to found the Church of England that this act wasn’t anti the ruling culture?
If that is what you mean then I have to disagree. Henry’s reason for breaking away from the Roman Catholic church was so that he could seize more power for himself.
Jamila, what he means is that the Anglicans are somewhat unique in that usually religions are founded by poor people who don’t already have power. When they are founded by a wealthy person, it is generally a person who has abandoned their temporal power in favor of spiritual humility.
Whereas the Anglicans were founded by the King of England. Yes, he was revolting against one ruling culture (Rome), but he wasn’t doing it in the from-the-ground-up way that religions usually work. It was top-down.
This might be too off topic, and while I agree with Maia’s original premise that religion can often do great harm in societies it’s also been a place for great social justice.
If you think about the civil rights movement for example, the resources gained through black churches were imperative to their success.
Catholic social justice organizations (while notably on the fringe of catholicism) do quite a bit of good and actually work to challenge the status quo in real and meaningful ways.
While it certainly is true that major religions can serve the interests of the ruling class, it is also true that the communities and organizational ties formed in religious groups also create the potential to challenge the ruling class. Relgion, like all things can be used to unite people for social justice or it can be used to back up the status quo – all depends on the players.
I don’t notice Pat Robertson or Jack Van Impe doing any of these things. Or what’s his name, the purpose-driven life guy. Rick Warren? I notice them pressing for fewer rights for certain groups, railing against other religions (chiefly Islam), and prying money out of the government for “faith-based” programs.
Amp has already pointed out the cozy relationship between religion and the right-wing power structure in this country.
Oh, ok. Now I understand. Thanks for explaining that to me Robert.
Trey said upthread:
I think that’s sort of what I was trying to get at in my comment above – I kind of see Siddhartha leaving the castle as the same symbolic plot point as Jesus getting crucified. Both bucked the traditional authority of their time (whether that authority was One Daddy-King or the Many Powerful Priest-Daddies of pre-Jesus Judaism as has survived the ages). In my (secular existentialist, atheistic/pantheistic, “If there is some meaning in all this, then it’s not tied to any particular dude on any particular cloud”) worldview, I see Christianity (and Abrahamic religions as a whole, for that matter) and Buddhism as not actually so very different. In my overly-visual mind, the main difference is whether we’re following a guy who quit the princely life into his navel(-gazing)’s Joy&Peace, oror a carpenter’s son who quit the bow-to-Pharisees life into “the light” of the father.
Is it such a big difference at what point and by the fault of whom each Leader-son/god “dropped” his physical body in favor of a Life Of the Mind(& Heart & Love & Charity & whatnot)? Is Heaven in the Buddha’s navel? Is Nirvana in the ceiling of Jesus’ tomb? Well, uh…probably not. But we here in the west almost can’t help but think of some part of the world’s workings as at least a little bit anthropomorphized (who’s counting how many galaxies make it a “uni”verse? Did god set our planet on a turtle as the more-ancient-than-Socrates Greek philosophers posited, or did he/it/whatever paint it with a giant paintbrush of light from his solitude in the sky? Should Einstein have seen the invention of the atom bomb coming, or is it enough that he gave us the quantum threads of String Theory?)
Again, my guess is neither/nor/none, but I think we’ve made Eastern portrayals of “the” Buddha way too literal in the modern ‘west’ – he’s got such a big belly ’cause he’s lazy! -Not ’cause that’s the culture’s visual representation of happy/full belly/joy chakra (see: Teh Brain as “seat of the ‘soul'” v. ancient Egyptian burial rituals). Conversely, we’re so sure that Jesus had to be a skinny white guy – even though the geography doesn’t actually make much sense for that – because, uh, We’re All white, and clearly any good starving-himself-for-the-masses white boy god would have to be emaciated.
But, uh, didn’t Siddhartha sort of come out of (rebelled against) the tradition of self-flaggelating monks being seen as lighting The One True Path? In my (always overly visual) imagining of the world’s religions through a western “Christian” lens, I’d sort of call the Buddha the father, Jesus and his new testamant message the “son” (really I want to go with Sun, as in, say, Apollo god of truth and light, son of Zeus – who must really be ready for retirement by now, wouldn’t you think?). Oh yeah, and then we look to the Norse and make Odin quite literally the “tree of knowledge”/holy Ghost that the Big Daddy’s sitting under during all this navel gazing.
So if Ragnarok is Hell and Loki is Lucifer…does that make Bush jr. America’s Pan/pied piper? The funny lutey dude who means well but can’t help but lead us all into His Version of Oblivion, meaning, Meaninglessness?
Wait, what’s this thread about again? ;)
Lu:
I don’t notice Pat Robertson or Jack Van Impe doing any of these things. Or what’s his name, the purpose-driven life guy. Rick Warren? I notice them pressing for fewer rights for certain groups, railing against other religions (chiefly Islam), and prying money out of the government for “faith-based” programs.
Sure, there are some right-wing types who snuggle up to the power structure while they’re clutching the Cross. But the fact that they get a lot of ink and face time in the airwaves doesn’t make them representative of the majority of Christians. The media puts on what stories and people help them sell commercial time and space; providing accurate and representative information is a lower priority. Billy Graham has written a couple of pieces about his days as being the preacher to the powerful. IIRC, he figured out that while in some cases he was filling a real pastoral need, he was also being used to a certain extent.
Myca:
Well:
If I tried to explain to a Bronze Age sheep herder or hunter/gatherer current theories of evolution, cosmology, etc., by the time I boiled it down to concepts they could understand and they then tried to write them down, they would probably write something pretty close to Genesis. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the chronology of the two creation stories in Genesis coincide with the general order of the creation of the universe that cosmologists propose. Evolution? I think that God created the universe, and that natural selection and evolution are tools that He’s using to do so. So does the Pope, and although I don’t recognize his doctrinal authority the largest single group of Christians in the U.S. does. And it’s been a long time since anyone seriously held that the Bible requires belief in a geocentric view of the Universe.
As far as general supernatural stuff (such as the Virgin Birth); the Guy who makes the rules gets to break them.
disclaimer: i’m no fan of nor expert in religions.
uhhh, hard to believe this hasn’t come up yet on this blog, but i think one reason lefties in particular are down on abrahamic religions is that they are so darned patriarchal. if you believe in an all powerful life force that defines your daily rituals and morals, fine…but does this force have to be a man? a father no less? buddhism takes its morals from how personal actions affect other individual people and the community at large, not from an all-powerful man. hinduism has a pantheon of male and female gods to choose from. the only major role a woman plays in christianity is as a mother and a virgin…are those the only things we want women to respect/worship about women?
not only is christianity a tool of the power structure, it reflects the power structure that many lefties fight agaisnt.
I find it hard to look at Hinduism as non-patriarchal, but even if we do that, it is a religion which supported a caste system. I would see that as reflecting the kind of power structures that many lefties want to fight against.
You know, it always takes a religion thread to get me to side with RonF.
Funny, that.
Well…
Buddhism, from what I’ve seen, is about personal empowerment. Much of what Jesus taught was also about personal empowerment.
While I’m sure Buddhism could be turned towards upholding the government, we all know that Christianity was. But what’s interesting is how it was changed. Jesus’ message of “faith and love are powerful things that will transform you into something bigger” was turned into “you must follow this creed or you will be punished”. It was turned from an idea of finding power within yourself by following a righteous path to an idea of being powerless, unless you follow the righteous path, at which point, you’ll be allowed to avoid eternal torment.
I can’t speak for Eastern religions besides Buddhism, and I can’t even speak for Buddhism. But any religion that seeks empowerment of the self will be less well-suited for control than one that doesn’t.
Any religion based in authoritarianism probably can’t help but be co-opted by the powerful.
Most of Buddism can be explained as an acceptance of suffering on the part of others: i.e., well, it sure is too bad that sacked, looted, and burned their city, but life is suffering, blahdy blah blah.
The total passivity that makes it such a draw with disaffected westerners today was one of its major selling points with rutheless assholes 1,000 years ago.
If it’s appropriate to discuss in this thread, I would be interested in hearing more about what Maia, and others, think about “The Secret”.
To me, it sounds identical to the teachings of Landmark Education and EST.