Anti-Religious Zealotry
Or, to be more accurate: “anti-religious and/or anti-spiritual zealotry.” But that’s kind of long…
Here are some signs. The person…
1. Is on a kind of personal crusade to put an end to religion.
2. Associates religion with its most dogmatic, intolerant, aggressively outspoken, ignorant and even violent manifestations and sees religion as pretty much the primary source of evil and immorality in the world.
3. Overlooks or minimizes its positive aspects such as religion’s involvement in social justice movements around the world – helping to end apartheid in South Africa, its role in Poland’s Solidarity movement, Gandhi and MLK, to name a few from recent decades; the way that religion helps millions of people lead more positive and productive day-to-day lives; and the fact that, as you move toward the progressive end of the religious spectrum (also the eastern…), dogmatism tapers off to the point where I’m not really sure what atheism has left to argue against. For example, Buddhism’s Eightfold Path focuses on how to live in the here and now, and not by way of telling people how to live through references to authority, but by offering a set of practices that people can put to the test in their own experience. And consider that today there are Christians who view Jesus as an entirely human teacher.
4. The person responds to anyone using words or phrases from the religion and spirituality lexicon with predictable rant-monologues, internally if not in speech or writing, figuring that he/she already knows where anyone who would use such words must be coming from.
Notice…
1. That this is a highly reactive, proselytizing mentality that resembles religious zealotry.
2. A lot of folks with this outlook were brought up in highly dogmatic religious environments.
3. Yet some people raised in the same sorts of environments become non-crusading atheists, agnostics or religious progressives.
4. To spend a lifetime reacting against a dogmatic upbringing is to be permanently controlled by it.
_______
Thanks to Editors Meg Torbert and Anne Downey of "University of New Hampshire Magazine" for the write up of Original Faith in the fall 2008 issue.
Here are some signs. The person…
1. Is on a kind of personal crusade to put an end to religion.
2. Associates religion with its most dogmatic, intolerant, aggressively outspoken, ignorant and even violent manifestations and sees religion as pretty much the primary source of evil and immorality in the world.
3. Overlooks or minimizes its positive aspects such as religion’s involvement in social justice movements around the world – helping to end apartheid in South Africa, its role in Poland’s Solidarity movement, Gandhi and MLK, to name a few from recent decades; the way that religion helps millions of people lead more positive and productive day-to-day lives; and the fact that, as you move toward the progressive end of the religious spectrum (also the eastern…), dogmatism tapers off to the point where I’m not really sure what atheism has left to argue against. For example, Buddhism’s Eightfold Path focuses on how to live in the here and now, and not by way of telling people how to live through references to authority, but by offering a set of practices that people can put to the test in their own experience. And consider that today there are Christians who view Jesus as an entirely human teacher.
4. The person responds to anyone using words or phrases from the religion and spirituality lexicon with predictable rant-monologues, internally if not in speech or writing, figuring that he/she already knows where anyone who would use such words must be coming from.
Notice…
1. That this is a highly reactive, proselytizing mentality that resembles religious zealotry.
2. A lot of folks with this outlook were brought up in highly dogmatic religious environments.
3. Yet some people raised in the same sorts of environments become non-crusading atheists, agnostics or religious progressives.
4. To spend a lifetime reacting against a dogmatic upbringing is to be permanently controlled by it.
_______
Thanks to Editors Meg Torbert and Anne Downey of "University of New Hampshire Magazine" for the write up of Original Faith in the fall 2008 issue.
Posted by Paul at 7:52 PM Permalink
20 Comments:
I know from your book that you regard religious progressiveness is the answer: a kind of devout loving middle ground to which all right-thinking people should be able to subscribe.
What’s happened in other advanced societies – the UK is the one I know at first hand, but I don’t think it’s unique – is that atheists and religionists let one another be. Things said about others’ beliefs under the aegis of free speech may upset the victims, but (apart from certain Muslims) these don’t rise to the bait.
You say “To spend a lifetime reacting against a dogmatic upbringing is to be permanently controlled by it.” Are you implying that religious dogmatism is no longer an active force in American society? Is it merely something that used to happen in childhood, and that they should get over it?
The American Civil War was (I understand) the result of a failure to accommodate opposing views. It’s only the referee who can stop a fight and by definition he has to be neutral. Why defend the dogmatic religionists against the dogmatic atheists?
VINCENT: That's true. In my lifetime, American political and religious discourse in the media/public forums has become increasingly divisive, with less real listening to others’ points of view – less room for meeting of the minds. I’d date this trend from the rise of the religious far right in politics.
Here I was referring not so much to the social phenomenon as to high levels of reactivity or "knee-jerk reactions" that can occur in individual nonbelievers as well as believers.
Wonderful post. I think people can turn anti-religion into a religion itself. I know for myself I took a long, hard look at the kick-back I was allowing myself to have against religion after having walked out of it several years ago. I had to ask myself if I wanted to adopt a new religion of anti-religion and make a conscious decision to both let go of my hurt, and also embrace, and stand on, the common ground.
CRYSTAL: I know the kind of thing, and scary is the right word. You have the sense that under the right conditions, some of these folks could turn to violence.
SERENITY: Thanks, and good for you. Hearing others’ experiences sometimes makes me feel like I was the accidental recipient of a religious upbringing that was, in an odd way, just right for me. I was “raised Catholic” but my parents basically went through the motions for the sake of my grandparents and my environment wasn’t restrictive. Nothing really for me to react against.
Lennon imagines a "brotherhood of man" that would be possible without the religious divisions that breed hatred, war, and intolerance.
Would I choose that world, if I had the power?
Sadly, yes, I would.
Some of them can even crossover without blinking an eye..like Saul/Paul.
As your resident Agnostic all I can come up with is the I Don't Know..there is certainly more to Life than meets the eye.
I just want a fair accounting of why people believe what they believe. As an analytical person I need to be vigilant about keeping an open mind because it's much less work to just jump on a bandwagon.
Oh sure Televangelists make it irresistable to whitewash the whole lot but they should remain objects for my pity and not my scorn...were it not for the fact that they ruin so many lives.
Before you invoke your don't mistake religion for spirituality retort let me state for the record that I don't. The problem is that most people don't spend enough time separating the two and that's why the wheels come off the cart all the time.
Getting in touch with your inner self..the part of the brain that we call the soul where all the magic happens..D'OH! I shouldn't use the word magic either, sorry, you know what I mean. Thoughts don't come out of thin air they are electro-chemical...and before I dig my hole any deeper let me say that I treasure your gentle, thoughtful ponderings and appreciate what you do.
My story is not unlike yours, in that my parents for the most part kept their religion to themselves, and I was allowed to find my own way. In school, in the '80s, other people told me about their ways, and I told them about mine.
At which point I became a pariah. I was the target of violence on two occasions. The first time two older boys beat me while telling me that God hated me. The second time they came with two others, and while three held me the fourth kicked me, and said he would not stop kicking me until I prayed to Jesus.
But that can be written off, whether you say it was just kids, or if you say they were just the tiny extremist minority, just like other beatings I took because I was merely smaller than the other guy, and beatings I gave to others for despicable reasons. But what really stings me to this day is the never ending river of condescension I've had to endure for more than twenty years. The closest I can come to describe it is the story of how white doctors in the 1850s described the urge that slaves felt to runaway from their masters as a form of mental illness, as if they were just too stupid to realize how good they had it down on the plantation... your post stings me in this way, just a bit.
Rightly, or wrongly, I *feel* as though I am an oppressed minority. I've read where congressmen, senators and a president have said my lack of faith makes it impossible for me to be a good citizen. That as a second class citizen I should be thankful to the majority for only oppressing me slightly. This in a land where the only atheist to ever achieve high office, that we know of, had to do so by hiding 'in the closet.' As I have hidden at times, out fear of losing jobs and friendships and my skin, until I finally got tired of losing my dignity.
In your responses to other commenters you've said some commendable things. But any effort to step between angry factions and call for greater understanding is doomed from the start if it's predicated on the belief that one side is merely being childish.
Even if the charge is often true.
PS: After reading this over, I want to apologize to you for the tone. It's harsher than I meant it to be. And yet I can't change a single word of it. This is me. Perhaps a touch more rabid than I had hoped.
I think the problem isn’t organized religion - or business or government - but, all too often, the states of mind of the people who own and operate them.
DONN: Saul and Paul – that’s a great reference point for a discussion like this. I’m only posting on anti-religious zealotry because it’s commented on less often than religious zealotry and definitely not to minimize the latter.
I know what you mean about “demanding a fair accounting” for beliefs and being analytical. For myself, I apply that chiefly to my own thinking and, more sparingly, to people who want to engage in critical discussions. But if they show signs of not wanting to, in my experience it’s useless.
A good approach I think is to question ideas rather than attack people. Seems like you use this approach often on your own blog in combination with humor.
“Beware reductionism,” as Caesar said to Hamlet on the Ides of March, unless it was somebody else to Brutus on a different date. Anyway, thoughts, experience, consciousness, are not electro-chemical activity, however based upon it. That’s why we don’t say “A penny for your electro-chemical activities…” And while you’re made of atoms, you’re not nothing but atoms, which is why your wife doesn’t go, “Donn, get your atoms over here” when she’s mad at you.
Qualitatively new and distinct phenomena emerge from their foundations on simpler phenomena; this is why we’re capable of occasionally getting up off our atoms to mow the lawn.
TRUCKER BOMB: The kind of experience you had in school would have given anyone something to react against...
And absolutely nothing to apologize for - I admire your candor and also can understand where you’re coming from. Also, let me be clear that my idea in posting on this subject was to balance out discussion of the much more frequently raised topic of far-right religious zealotry. I certainly don't mean to suggest that antireligious zealotry is a bigger problem.
I think the larger issue is reactivity – how and why things “get to us,” provoke us, cause knee jerk reactions and rants that we may have tendencies to repeat over and over again to ourselves.
Seems to me that pretty much everyone has issues like that, if not in relation to religion, than to other things.
If only all religions were alike.
Unfortunately, some religions have, as a part of their doctrine, the command to spread their creed by various means.
And therein lies the problem. If I go to a (church/mosque/temple) and ask about their beliefs, I have opened the dialogue and we can discuss and debate.
If they come to me, I have the right to refuse dialogue. On the basis that I have already examined their brand of belief. And when they continue to persue the issue, when they condemn me for a bad person on the basis of my refusal, I get shirty.
When they further, attempt to change law and intefere in government because they believe they have a holy right to do so, I get shirty and feel I have to actively oppose them.
If only, by the word "religion" we were only talking about diverse belief systems and rituals that let others get on with theirs.
I found that the Catholics I've met are much more likely to be moderate in their approach to belief and to the beliefs of others than the protestants I was raised around. They were absolutely iconoclasic and had no qualms about ruining someone who didn't share their views. They felt it was their religious obligation to do so if they could. Vicious, but they don't understand it that way.
It’s funny how that works with scripture. There are indeed New Testament verses that say to go out and convert people. But there are so many verses saying so many other things with equal directness and force that are by no means equally emphasized – and not just by Christianity as a whole, but from one denomination to another.
Seems to me it’s important for adherents of any body of scripture to be cognizant of why they emphasize the verses that they emphasize…
It's that old absolute power problem again, no religion is free of the stain. Even Buddhists killed native shamans in early days.
He spoke out against following the law for law's sake -- religious or otherwise.
He spoke for a truth that lies in all of us, in spite of our human conditions of doubt, spite, fear, and malignancy.
If you pick up a version of the Bible with highlighted red text for the words of Jesus, one comes to the conclusion that Jesus was one of many trying to express the same things Paul expresses in his blog, and the same thing we are all seeking in these times (by design, and in fulfilling prophecies).
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism... they all have great things to say and good means by which to live -- yet if we forget the fundamentals (ha ha to the fundamentalists) of "Love God," and "Love your neighbor as yourself," ....
We miss the point entirely, and wind up enthralled with semantics.
I was not able to believe that everyone who didn't believe the things this church taught was going to hell. I asked about Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Buddha and I was told they were all going to hell. I could not believe or trust the church from that day forth.
God would have to be cruel and ignorant to place human beings in the circumstances that built their beliefs and then to punish them for being exactly what he made them.
I was punished by human beings for being born with brown eyes, but that's how I was made.
I admire the good acts done by organized religion, but I now lack the ability to trust their wisdom. I have been controlled by this, as you put it, because I am now an outsider and I very much want to be accepted and loved and allowed to be different -to think differently.
The vast majority of us are merrily ensconced in the middle. The fanatical minority are out on the periphery.
According to the True Believer by Eric Hoffer, the true fanatic can switch over to the team on the polar end of the spectrum much easier than we could join either of them.
They thrive on the drama more than the actual cause...isn't that interesting?
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