Hi John, Started yesterday to respond to your post. Couldn't get it right, deleted that and started again. The great thing about writing is how it forces you to focus your thoughts, and sometimes what you start out writing about turns into something different, so you start again, but then you see that's not right either, so...
This subject, I think, goes right to the heart of everything we've been debating about with the MoQ lately. That's too much stuff to put in one post, though, so I'll focus on one thing. Why do I lie to the fundamentalists and why do I think it's ok to do that? There's nothing I can see wrong with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any of the others as a body of thought. Lots of beautiful things in them. I was married to a Catholic, for instance, for many years, and never had particular problems with that. If we spent Christmas at his folks, I attended the midnight Mass with everybody else. To be fair, though, I fell into the same category as the anthropologists Pirsig decries in Lila. I was merely an objective observer. The holy water didn't burn my skin. There are differences between sects, though, and not all Christians are christian. Modern Catholics (I'm not talking about the Dark Ages here) take a live and let live attitude. This could be because they are the big boys on the block and don't have anything left to prove. Sure, the Pope says stuff once in a while, but it seems like a lot of American Catholics maintain their faith in spite this rather than because of it. He probably gets a little frustrated, but I think Popes are careful what they say these days. The tail wags the dog. Some of the newer Protestant-type religions seem to be something else entirely. Some are right on the edge of being a fanatical terrorist group. To be fair, that doesn't mean everybody. There are lots of nice people attending these services every week; but, something is fundamentally different about the underlying attitude, and if you're kind of turned that way anyhow, it gets reinforced in these places. Evangelicals know they are right and see it as their duty to save you. If you're not with me, you're against me. The Bible is literally true, every single word, and if you don't believe it then you are evil and I have no respect for you. Evil in the world must be exterminated at all costs. It is my duty. I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if there are cases of Catholics murdering an abortion doctor such as a fundamentalist did last year. Can't remember, but I definitely haven't heard of them flying planes into buildings or blowing up FBI offices. Now I'm just the "objective anthropologist" when it comes to these things, so I could be totally wrong, but when your church repeatedly hammers you with "shoulds" and "oughts" and makes blanket condemning remarks about others from the pulpit every Sunday, it's not religion anymore. It's something else. Mary - The most important thing you will ever make is a realization. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Carl Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Platt's Pure Critique of Pantheism Hi Mary, I'm interested in your question, > When you live down here you quickly learn to cater to religious people. You > sort of pander like a sycophant. It's the safest way. I've been prayed > over, invited to "pack the pew" night, looked at askance, and maligned at > various times over the years enough to know it's best just to not bring it > up at all, and if you get backed into a corner, just smile sweetly and lie, > lie, lie your way out of it. Why is this so? > one of my favorite questions, why. But I'm not sure in this case which "why" you are seeking. Why do they invite you and seek group conformity so hard? That's not hard to understand, it's a common enough phenomena in group formation, the attempt to convert the outsider to "the way". There's a self-perpetuating system to social groups that's easy to comprehend in an intellectual way. Woo hoo! Intellect can be such fun! Or do you wonder why you react the way you do? Deflecting rather than confronting or trying to convert them to your view, even though they are in the majority? Straighten that out for me and I'll do my best to answer your query. I'm sort of curious as to how you notice lying. Does it bother you to lie? Do you see morality as existing separate from religion and how do you define for yourself what is good and not good? In my family I have this one uncle who makes a big deal about being an atheist. When I was a teenager, I sent his daughter, my cousin Beth a poster of Robert Plant that I bought at a Led Zeppelin concert and he threw it away! I was highly offended. I wondered where an atheist gets off all moralistic? Maybe because they recognize that without values life would be dangerously chaotic and so those he "feels" are important are all the more fundamental to his ego. I know he feels it incumbent to send my mom, his sister, links and articles about the logic and benefit of atheism. I'm pretty sure she sends him links and articles about the logic and benefit of Christianity. So they dialogue this way. This morning, I stopped by her house and she mentioned uncle Bob, and that she'd gotten so fed up with Bob's needling and hurtful rejection of her God, that she prayed for permission to just give up on him. That is, unless the Lord sent her a clear sign, she'd just have nothing to do with him anymore. As soon as she got up off the floor the phone rang and it was her brother Bob calling who said, Hey sis, I just wanted to call and let you know how much I love you. My ma slammed the phone down and cursed, Damn, now i'm gonna have to put up with that atheist son of bitch forever, because of God. So I think in the main, it's a good idea to stay an atheist because God makes you do stuff you really don't want to do. Take care, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
