sozobe wrote:I don't think religious people are all ridiculous. That seems obvious enough as to be axiomatic, to me.
I agree. Chumly was wrong to take it out on the
people who believe. He would have had a much stronger case if he had asked if all
beliefs are ridiculous -- which I think is what he probably meant.
Sozobe wrote:The ones who don't think this way -- who think it's all literally true and that everyone should believe this literal truth, and put some effort into making that happen -- are the ones that bother me. That's Uri Geller saying no, really, I'm bending the spoons, don't you believe me, it's TRUE! I don't like either one.
Well, but that's what believing means: to think that what you read in this book is true. I agree that people who believe the Bible and the Koran are true are scary. But they are scary precisely because they take their holy books seriously. The Abrahamic god described in the Bible and the Koran is the scariest, most murderous, most pathetic character in all fiction. By joining the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic religion, one professes that the Bible or the Q'uran is in some sense true, and the god they describe in some sense good. And that's a scary and ridiculous thing in itself, given the nature of the god worshipped. Once you say you're a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim, then, you are locked into two undesirable choices. You can believe the stuff in those books and become the kind of person who endorses suicide bombing. Or you can be a good, helpful person by being hypocritical about believing in your holy scripture.
Sozobe wrote:The vast majority of religious people I know are not like that, though. It's a personal thing, for them. I see no problem there, and think that entering their personal space and calling them ridiculous is just another version of the people I refer to in the preceding paragraph.
Again, I agree that most people who nominally believe in the Abrahamic God are not ridiculous. But that's because they ignore so much of the book that they say is holy to them. Because they deliberately misinterpret other parts of the "holy" text to tease out the opposite of its message. For example, I admire the civil rights movement, and know that it derived much of its spiritual power from a theologically liberal protestant Christianity. But as a matter of Bible interpretation, Martin Luther King was just plain wrong. There is no way a rational person can read the Bible as anything other than a Pro-Slavery book.
Sozobe wrote:Do you think all literary fiction is "ridiculous"? It's not true, after all. Or does it serve a purpose of some kind?
Oh, I'm not saying the Bible is a bad read. Large parts of it entertain me, just as Peter Pan entertained me in my childhood, and American Psycho entertained me in my late teens.
But if a group of people started up religions worshipping Captain Hook and Patrick Bateman, I would find that both ridiculous and scary. And my opinion would improve only a little if theologically liberal Hookists and Batemanists emerged later in the religion's history. If they asserted that Hook and Bateman are really good guys who pursued the opposite of the ends that the holy books clearly described them to pursue. I would consider the literalist Hookism dangerously foolish and the liberal Hookism harmlessly so. But I'd consider each denomination foolish.
