Dan Linford started a Facebook discussion with this reminder, which he gave me permission to quote:
Here is your daily reminder that the following two statements are not consistent with each other and that I can imagine no reason for holding both to be true other than prejudice:
1. Religions are more about their official doctrines or statements in their holy books than what the adherents actually believe;
2. The reason religion is worth criticizing is the danger posed by its adherents in virtue of their belief in holy books.
The first statement is not just inconsistent with the second, it also doesn’t make much sense on its own. Religions are about both – official doctrines and what adherents believe – as well as other things – rituals, practices, communalism, the sacred, tradition, the ancestors. meaning, mattering – many things. Also, [what the adherents actually believe] isn’t really an item, because who knows what “they” believe, because it will vary between people and also within people – our beliefs shift slightly from moment to moment, so it’s hopeless trying to treat [what the adherents actually believe] as a specifiable thing.
But the second one, if reworded a little, is actually something I think. I commented to say so:
It’s not that I think or say that everyone believes what’s in the holy books. It’s that I think what’s in the holy books is in them, and that it represents a standing threat and danger, and that therefore it’s worth trying to pull or coax more & more people away from thinking of them as holy books, to reduce the danger they represent.
I agree with Dan that it’s silly to assume or say that all believers of X religion believe everything in the holy book of X. But it’s at least equally silly to assume that no believers of X religion believe anything in the holy book of X. It is pretty fair to think that some believers do take at least some parts of their holy books very seriously indeed – witness that guy I blogged about a few days ago, who plans to prevent his daughter from getting an education because Titus 2.
I gotta say, I hate holy books. I wish they didn’t exist. I wish they were an idea that had never occurred to anyone. I don’t hate special books, treasured books, admired books, but I think holy books are one of humanity’s worst ideas.
That’s a good way of putting it. For example, let’s say you consider yourself to be a moderate Christian. You don’t think queer people are bad people, and you don’t think Democrats are communists. Fair enough. However, you’ve still been condition to see sexuality, gender, and politics in a certain way. Kinda like with anyone with any sort of privilege: white people, men, cisgender people, straight people, able-bodied people, etc. You may not have anything personally against people of color, trans people, queer people, etc. But you’ve still been conditioned to view marginalized groups as somehow less than human.
Yeah… I’m far more interested in calling out the people who’ll call genocide moral if it’s commanded or carried out by their god (I’m especially worried if they combine this willingness to justify the unjustifiable if they also believe that their god speaks to them or to their elected officials) than those who just think that the baby Jesus watches over them wherever they go.
I’m still creeped out by the people who think baby Jesus is watching them (suddenly have an image of a poster in my mind – tiny baby in a wooden crib, staring unblinkingly out of the image; “Baby Jesus is Watching.”) and I definitely think it’s bad to hold any book up as infallible, or as all the necessary proof of the things that it claims, but I’m definitely more concerned about one group than the other.
But the Sophisticated Theology™ that we’re always told we’re ignorant about is tied up with the “official doctrines or statements in their holy books.” We’re not supposed to reject their favorite pet deity until we’ve read Rev. B. Utthead on the Leprosy of Houses (Lev 14:35), ad infinitum ad nauseum. Or is that just another example of theist double-talk?
I’m all in favour of tearing down their holy books until they are just ‘books’. ‘Holy’ gives this veil of immutability, immunity from criticism. Ordinary books can be criticised and disputed.
Holy anything, really.
Well, I’d give a caveat that a great deal of modern, conservative, US Christianity seems to fly directly in the face of what’s actually in the holy book. It takes a pretty amazing amount of misreading to convince yourself that the New Testament somehow wants us to treat immigrants as lesser beings, or that America is somehow God’s Special Place, or that Democracy has its forerunner in biblical teaching.
Being ignorant about what’s in the holy books is an entirely separate matter from assuming that the holy books contain all of what the adherents believe, which all adherents believe, and nothing else.
If you’re going to criticize a religious belief, you’d better understand the belief. You had also better make sure that what you’re criticizing is the belief, and not the people you assume hold it, because they may actually not.
Agree. When you freeze a set of statements about the nature and meaning of existence in place and assert that they are beyond question, you’re saying they’re beyond improvement.
Human knowledge is never beyond improvement. God’s might be (if God existed), but wouldn’t you know it– God always insists on speaking through humans, meaning that God’s knowledge is indistinguishable from human knowledge.
Gretchen #7:
If a person declares themself a Muslim, are we “assuming” to infer that they believe the teachings of Islam as laid out in the Qur’an and Hadith?
These people can’t have it both ways. When they claim to be following the teachings of the holy books of Islam (which is what it means to say one is Muslim), they can’t complain when we infer that they are following the teachings of the holy books of Islam.