A few weeks ago, I wrote an email to conservative AM radio talk show host Michael Graham for his comments on Islam. He had said that we were at war with Islam, that Islam because of the actions of extremists should be labeled a terror organization. He likened this rationale to the Boyscouts of America, if two boyscouts were suicide bombers than the BSA would consequently be a terror organization. Obviously this logic is flawed, but over the past few weeks his premise, that we are at war with Islam, still bothers me and just may be true.
I've had my problems with the Church since my mom started taking me when I was in middle school. We went to Presbyterian church for a few years before it became tiresome to show up every Sunday and the message didn't hit very hard. Was I to believe that human beings are born sinners and that by supernatural forces Jesus died for my sins thus absolving human beings from their inherent troubled nature? Every sunday was a play from the Jesus Christ rule book, while there were often mentions of church members ongoing missionary and humanitarian efforts in Africa, the rest of the time was spent on how to get to Heaven, how not to goto hell, how we should let go and put our faith in god. How long has religion, spirituality, been about avoiding hell at all costs and not about a personal relationship with god? This has to be the most basic premise of religion, one that seems to have been avoided, or not examined very deeply, who/what is god. Without having a concrete understanding of what we believe to be God, it seems difficult to have faith in anything else that we are simply supposed to 'have faith' in. God; omnipotent, omniscient, bondless.
This is difficult to come to terms with. There is one undeniable, regardless of god, evolution, nature, etc. human beings have the unique ability to reason and express reason, our brains are built to cognize environmental stimuli and this information is processed to allow us to walk, to see, to build vast capitlist empires, to engineer bridges that span the seas, to travel to distant planets. Our greatest faith, is our faith in ourselves, in our ability to take advantage of our mental abilities and put them to use. I've been a student of science and philosophy for almost eight years now, my day to day job is to apply my knowledge of physical phenomena to useful application. My mind like everyone elses function by means of reason. Science has taught me verifiability, philosophy to analyze belief, history to look at our past,and anthropology to determine how we as a species got to where we are today. In the end I have every reason to dismiss the traditional faith based conception of god as the man in the sky, constantly imposing judgement on me and placing me on the scale of postmortem destination. I've had to ask myself for a long time, why do you still believe in god? you have every reason not to, yet you cling, faith defies reasonability and has effectively placed itself above questioning.
My definition of god is not the grand master smiling to you from the sky. God, I believe, is that which is outside of human beings ability to cognize in the brain. Many philosophers spoke of seeing objects. but not knowing if we were actually seeing what was actually there. Does the world actually exist as we interpret it, I think that is beyond our ability to cognize, we are only able to understand the world and function in it as far as we see it through our eyes, but pragmatically this is all that matters. In pursuit of truth, what we can't see seems to be the higher truth, the truth we are oblivious to, limited by our biological construction.
Why do I call this beyond human capability of reason and brain function God? That's a good question, why reason that this is my definition of god rather than just call it what I see it as, reality outside of our cognitive ability. It never had to be "god", but why maintain that I believe in god if I really don't in the traditional sense, perhaps it's a social conditioning to be weary of atheism.
As I was researching/writing my previous thoughts down on religious fundamentalism in the sphere of sexual contraceptives, the more I read the more I was surrounded by lack of fundamentalism by self described fundamentalists. http://www.columbia.edu/~sfw2003/journal/2005/08/religion-always-finishes-second-but
I think it was only natural that I stumbled onto a book last week, that I hope will answer a lot of questions of my own 'faith' or at least affirm what has been stewing in the back of my mind for the past few years. I read an article on www.huffingtonpost.com the other week by author Sam Harris, a Stanford philosophy graduate now working on a neuroscience doctorate. I ran out to by his book, "The End of Faith: Religion, Terrorism, The end of Reason".
Three chapters into Harris' book and looking back on my life, I am convinced that it is a product of social conditioning that leads us to religion. I was brought up in the South, Jacksonville, Florida isn't the deep south, but it has its own part as a breeding ground for conservatism and souther baptists. Being Christian and believing in God was something that gets instilled in kids from the day they are born. My family was never deeply religious, my mother and her mother did not turn to God (although my Mom shares the same critical attitude and disillusion with organized religion that I do) until my grandfather died, a man from the Billy Graham organization visting alongside the rest of the family. Elementary school kids ask you what Church you goto, it's almost a given that you goto church. Highschool and middle school all the cool kids goto 'Young Life', a Christian youth group, a group that is well... more of a group to find hot girls,boyfriends, and go on ski trips than it is to worship god. If you were atheist you were most likely that weird kid that didn't talk much in the back of the room, a product of the hot topic phenomenom, or you were the dirty old school punk rock kid with the "A" for anarchy drawn in white-out on your backpack. Everything in the south devolves into a stereotype, either you believe in god, or... you're somewhere on the fringe of adolescent society.
Fundamentalism is bred from social conditioning and family tradition. Conviction to that degree requires literal interpretation to be drilled into your head. Literal interpretation that is only if we think about it, literal for purposes of hate and bigotry, other more unacceptable passages conveniently skipped over. The danger Harris says, is that we as a society, especially that of religious moderates have been led to believe that it is taboo to criticize the religious belief of others. This comes from our high minded Constitutional first amendment giving everyone, or rather, recognizing our freedom of free speech, excercise of religion, and freedom of expression. This constitutional right was written to protect religious persecution, the unwritten acknowledgement that religion dictated a foundation of morals and ethical structure that would guide our society. Belief that the Constitution is not a living document, one in which interpretation is (not) subject to the evolution of society like Biblical literalism is dangerous for the rights of American citizens and global status quo. The constitution is a document to preserve our rights, not systematically deny them, I would hope that people remember this.
If I told you that Oregon was a state on the east coast, disease was caused by bad humours in the body, or that the Earth moves on a plane of ether in the galaxy, your brain would automatically critically analyze my statements and assert that I was incorrect. My statements were not conjecture, they were simply not true. Alternatively discussion in the realm of religion does not reach this point of discourse, some part of our minds in having been conditioned suspends critical analysis of religious statements. We see this all the time on the floor of the Senate, Congress, and from the President. Religion is the final word in every argument. Harris sees this as a free pass, and I'm incline to believe him, as religion has largely supplanted itself in the American consciousness and has survived better than a roach during a nuclear storm. Religion is kept afloat by the belief that it provides a sense of community, a foundation of morality, spiritual experience that cannot be gotten from anywhere else; it has avoided widespread criticism by pushing religious violence and war to human conditions of greed and self interest. I think as students of a wide range of study we can see this is simply untrue in both cases. Ethics and morals are products of secularism and humanism and have functioned as such probably from the emergence of our race. Relegious wars? I think we can easily categorize the Crusades, Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, Sudan, Northern Ireland, Serbia/Bosnia, and the United States/War on Terror....aka Struggle against Religious Extremists, into the wars of religion category.
So are we at war with Islam? I think the larger issue is that we are at an ideological crossroads, we are struggling with religious fundamentalism on all fronts. On the American Christian front we are struggling with Christian fundamentalists trying to assert more influence to divert our country far more conservative than it already is. The Bible is literally interpreted to provide ethical basis for attacking abortion, gay marriage, contraceptive use, stem cell research, and a host of other issues. Though the Bible is not literally interpreted to provide a basis of acceptability for slavery, stoning adulterers, killing those who sway you from god or to false idols. Our absolution of these beliefs is a product of secular belief and as Harris says, scriptural ignorance, most people who are religious and consider themselves moderates(not fundamentalist) have taken the good parts of religious texts putting themselves in the strange position of not being true to their faith (which god says in many books to take his word as presented in the bible to be truth and to be followed to a T) or their reasonable mind. We don't stone children or women, we don't keep slaves, these sorts of things in modern day America are totally unacceptable and unethical. Thank secularism for seeing that killing off people that indiscriminantly is probably not the best way to have a functioning society. Effectively people have the same situation as myself, we have taken aspects of religion as a framework for our secular livelihood, yet in our secular application we remain devoted to the idea of god. It that vein we must wonder why we don't apply rational scrutiny to relgious beliefs, if fundamentalists have already made so many concessions to their own 'literal' interpretations of the bible, are they still fundamentalists? How is it that perfectly rationale people even become fundamentalist, from science and history we have the facts, the bible wasn't written by god(this is obvious, why would an omniscient, omnipotent being write a book in the first place?), it is written in far too many writing styles to be the product of one pie in the sky man. If anything, the Bible was written by man, and at the farthest stretch, their writing was divinely inspired by god; even still man is imperfect and subject to interpretation and thus cannot be directly the word of god. Religious tradition is also an area of contention as there are few religions if any on this planet that are completely of their own. Christian religion at its heart is an amalgation of religious and secular/pagan tradition that it has processed to its own benefit and growth. The 'truths' that you learn about the 10 commandments in church is after examination not as clear cut as the church would like you to believe, religious scholars to this day are at odds trying to reconcile the multiple appearances of the 10 commandments in the Bible, which are... quite different from one another. Even Jesus himself is disturbingly similar to the Shakyamunk Buddha, egyptian god Horus (the similarities which are... if only by coincidence is too close to immediately dispel), Mithra of Persia, krishna of india, but this is all neither here nor there. http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm
What we as people in the modern world must be conscious of is that religious fundamentalism has trumped science. Many will tell you that the President's approach to say Stem Cell research is ethical and in everyone's best interest. I believe this is the correct approach as well, but not to the degree that he and others are sidestepping science. Many have advocated that they would be willing to accept abortion if presented with scientific facts. The truth is that the scientific facts exist, it is debate on "human-ness" that needs to be debated, but the conversation has been stifled by religious fundamentalists and the half and half religiousity of religious moderates. To be very blunt, there will be no adequate conversation about the ethical-ness of abortion until we abandon the notion of a soul, for when we bring the idea of a soul into the conversation that is the end of the conversation. It is true that science does not have all the answers, everything that we as scientists can hope to do is put up theory and conjecture, because like insulation within the realm of the reasonability of our cognitive brain functions, we can only prove factuality to such a degree, to be cliche, there is no absolute truth. This is where science is flexible though, science is pragmatic and is always able to adjust, if we one day find more reason to believe that electricity isn't the product of the moving potentials of electrons than with adequate evidence we can embrace a new understanding of the world. The foundation of science is progressiveness, when we embrace religious fundamentalism, this is at its root and impediment to progressive thinking. For religions in all of its spouting of truth, has no answers. Religion is at best a method (a foundationless method) of critique that proposes no answers aside from faith in the almighty.
What the suspension of reason in religious conversation has done is a paved way for violence. In the United States the limits of religious fundamentalism and extremism is set by our legal system. A legal system, which I would argue has more of a foundation in the Sumarian code of Hammurabi than it does the 10 commandments. It has been made clear by the law that freedom of expression does not include excercising a literal interpretation of religious texts that gives you freedom to endanger the lives and welfare of others. We may see the occasional abortion clinc bomber and scores of church goers bringing their five year old children in front of football stadiums on sundays with signs saying "AIDS is the only cure for homosexuality", but that is about the worst we see. This is because to some degree our secular humanism has created an ethic that regulates through law, religious extremism. Religious moderates myself included have been accepting of other religions, and why not? Unless your local jewish rabbi or student of the Koran is threatening to blow up your house, there is nothing that compels you to impose your faith. But it is also the truth that we accepting individuals, who ascribe to our Bibles, Torahs, Korans, look at non-believers and those of other faiths and smile, cringing at the fact that our religion damns them to hell. This is a strange nuance of society, we must interact for our livelihoods, yet spiritually there is such a divide that it is amazing that anything gets done. Islam like Christianity has much in it that applauds martyrdom. Unlike in American however, Islamic extremists and their followers find it acceptable to take their own lives in a suicide bombing. This is dangerous as we are fighting a war in Iraq, trying to systematically eliminate our opposition with secular weapons. Islam is so uncriticized in terms of possible interpretation that I fear for the future of our global society, where the only future I envision is more religious moderate Muslims making the conversion to fundamentalism and joining the extremist cause. When fighting the extremist wing of the second largest religion on the planet, one has to be weary of an unending source of struggle.
Global progress depends on our re-embracing of reason. Without it, our progress in the sciences, in diplomacy, etc. are stymied. I find it unoptimistic that only 20% of Americans believe in evolution as the source of our existence. Truth be told, evolution may not be the end all origin of species, but at least it has a foundation of proof. I find it difficult to believe that my origin is directly from God, the timeless being stopping into discrete time to make me in god's image. Me, a descendent of Adam and Eve, who were forced to cover their bodies, not for protection from the weather and environment but because they ate an apple for a snake. This is coming from a society that believes God's birthing from clam shells and throwing lightning bolts is silly. I have yet to completely let go of my belief in god, but if God does exist he has quite the sense of humor. The only way that I can rationalize god is that he gave us powerful minds that would change our physical environments, change them to the point where natural evolution has been trumped by our ingenuity to change our environments and not ourselves. If got does exist he unleashed opposing beliefs and religions upon the human race for the purpose of population control. He knew that we would eventually triumph over disease, take sex as a pleasurable recreational activity, the only way to effectively have a reliable means of population control is to let us kill each other by means of the unreasonable.
