I've been reading Jonathan Haidt's illuminating, enjoyable and disconcerting book The Righteous Mind (Vintage Books, 2013), and in addition to thinking about morality, the book has prompted me to think again about religion.
Religion is more than mere assent to a set of doctrines (orthodoxy). It also encompasses a set of ritual acts and normative behaviors (orthopraxy). Some religions emphasize orthodoxy over orthopraxy, and some the opposite. In religions that emphasize orthodoxy, maintaining the right beliefs is central, and behaviors and rituals are allowed more leeway. Christian fundamentalism in the US exhibits this emphasis. Note particularly how many politicians and religious leaders have committed adultery, for instance, but have been brought back into the fold as full-fledged members because they espoused the correct beliefs. Furthermore, relatively speaking, the ritual practices of US Christian fundamentalists are pared down and more loosely structured.
Religions emphasizing orthopraxy care more about one's outward behaviors and performances than about an individual's beliefs. So long as the cohesion of the religious community is upheld, the internal wrestlings of belief and doubt are less important. Much of Islam, Catholicism and Eastern Religions fall under the orthopraxy rubric.
Now, of course, these are broad generalizations, but I think they are instructive. I was raised in an orthodoxy-style religion. Faith, or the designated set of beliefs, came first, and actions followed from that. I think that is why when I came out I had such a difficult time with religion. By accepting my homosexual nature, I was eschewing a portion of the orthodoxy. Pretty soon all the orthodoxy became questionable, and I had to leave. For years afterwards I looked around for a new orthodoxy to adhere to. But eventually I couldn't find an orthodoxy that fit me.
Had I been raised in a religion that emphasized orthopraxy, would my post-coming-out have been different?
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
11 June 2013
13 March 2013
The Liberating Power of Insignificance
Earth orbits a star that is one of 200-400 billion in the Milky Way galaxy. There are an estimated 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The universe has existed for over 13 billion years. The universe is expanding and increasing in entropy. It is predicted to eventually reach a state of ultimate entropy sometime after 10100 years in the future. Long before that, the Sun will expand to be a red giant star, and engulf the earth's orbit (approximately 5.4 billion years). Long before that, changes on the earth will cause all life to die out (approximately 2.3 billion years). Long before that, the human species is predicted to have died out (somewhere I read human beings are probably in the midlife of their existence). There may or may not be other sentient species to arise on Earth. It all depends on whether sentience is adaptive to changing environments. So in cosmic terms, as a species we are utterly insignificant, existing en toto for a very brief time in a very limited location.
Within this utterly insignificant species, an individual life is even more insignificant. I am one of 7 billion people on the planet. There have been billions before, and probably billions after me. I do not matter in history. I matter even less in the cosmic reach of the universe.
For some people, this would be a depressing thing to realize. I find it exhilarating. Born into religious fundamentalism, I was raised to think that my every thought and action was rife with horrifying, eternal significance. The way I spoke to another person, even the thoughts I didn't verbalize about him, could not only damn me for all eternity, but set off a chain reaction of human behaviors in others that could damn a whole slew of people. I could destroy lives for eternity through carelessness.
Please tell me how a seven-year-old child is supposed to carry this burden?
In light of such an upbringing, to discover I mean absolutely nothing in the universe is liberating. I don't have to worry so much about my actions, because whatever effects I have, they are extremely limited in time and in space. The cosmos will not be greatly affected when I fuck up.
This is the liberating power of insignificance.
Within this utterly insignificant species, an individual life is even more insignificant. I am one of 7 billion people on the planet. There have been billions before, and probably billions after me. I do not matter in history. I matter even less in the cosmic reach of the universe.
For some people, this would be a depressing thing to realize. I find it exhilarating. Born into religious fundamentalism, I was raised to think that my every thought and action was rife with horrifying, eternal significance. The way I spoke to another person, even the thoughts I didn't verbalize about him, could not only damn me for all eternity, but set off a chain reaction of human behaviors in others that could damn a whole slew of people. I could destroy lives for eternity through carelessness.
Please tell me how a seven-year-old child is supposed to carry this burden?
In light of such an upbringing, to discover I mean absolutely nothing in the universe is liberating. I don't have to worry so much about my actions, because whatever effects I have, they are extremely limited in time and in space. The cosmos will not be greatly affected when I fuck up.
This is the liberating power of insignificance.
16 August 2012
Violence and the Moral High Ground
Yesterday's shooting at the Family Research Council really disturbed me. Of course, we are still learning about the details of the incident and the perpetrator. But it highlights an issue that needs to be addressed in the LGBTQ community: the potential for violence.
FRC, and other organizations of their ilk are our mortal enemies. Of that there is no doubt. They will not rest until LGBTQ people disappear from society. As a former fundamentalist Christian, I understand their thinking. They cannot compromise; to do so is to risk hellfire. To achieve the world they long for, LGBTQ people must die or become straight. We must be wiped off the face of the earth.
Faced with such enemies, I find it easy to give into hate, and to wish the same fate upon them. Throw in a culture saturated with guns and violence, and the mix becomes toxic. I understand the frustration LGBTQ people feel, but we must not let that frustration get the better of us.
So let me be very plain here: we must resist and denounce violence. We must not inflict acts of violence upon our enemies, even if they inflict acts of violence upon us. I'm not saying you should not defend yourself when physically attacked in the streets. I am saying we must not go and shoot at the people who would happily kill us if they could.
Why? Well, for one very obvious reason, it's simply wrong. Just because Christians want to destroy LGBTQ people doesn't mean LGBTQ people ought to do the same. I think we can agree that just because Christians think something is right doesn't make it right. Killing people is wrong. Shooting at people is wrong.
Secondly, if the culture wars turn into shooting wars, we will lose. They outnumber us, and they have most of the guns. In terms of sheer attrition, the religious right can kill more of us.
Third, perpetrating acts of violence on Christians is exactly what they want. They love feeling persecuted, because it makes them feel holier. Using violence against them will not lead them to question their own acts or motives. They already believe they are perfectly right; shooting at them only confirms that belief in their minds.
Finally, we cannot let ourselves descend to their level. The only way we have of surviving the culture wars is to maintain the moral high ground. If the Christians are the only ones behaving odiously, in time the great middle (social, not geographical) of this country will come around to our side. If we descend to their level and end up behaving odiously as well, the rest of the country will not give a damn about our rights. The only way we have of surviving the culture wars is to appeal to the humanity of the rest of society. We cannot do that if our side perpetrates violence.
We have to have higher moral standards than the Christians, especially when it comes to treating our enemies like human beings. I won't say we have to love them, since the word "love" has devolved to signify mere affection. Rather, we have to give them more respect than they give us, to resist their ideas and their influence with rationality and appeals to the hearts of the larger public, and not visit the same harm upon them they would visit on us. We have to be stronger, more patient and better people. That's the only way we'll survive and thrive. Besides, it's the better way.
FRC, and other organizations of their ilk are our mortal enemies. Of that there is no doubt. They will not rest until LGBTQ people disappear from society. As a former fundamentalist Christian, I understand their thinking. They cannot compromise; to do so is to risk hellfire. To achieve the world they long for, LGBTQ people must die or become straight. We must be wiped off the face of the earth.
Faced with such enemies, I find it easy to give into hate, and to wish the same fate upon them. Throw in a culture saturated with guns and violence, and the mix becomes toxic. I understand the frustration LGBTQ people feel, but we must not let that frustration get the better of us.
So let me be very plain here: we must resist and denounce violence. We must not inflict acts of violence upon our enemies, even if they inflict acts of violence upon us. I'm not saying you should not defend yourself when physically attacked in the streets. I am saying we must not go and shoot at the people who would happily kill us if they could.
Why? Well, for one very obvious reason, it's simply wrong. Just because Christians want to destroy LGBTQ people doesn't mean LGBTQ people ought to do the same. I think we can agree that just because Christians think something is right doesn't make it right. Killing people is wrong. Shooting at people is wrong.
Secondly, if the culture wars turn into shooting wars, we will lose. They outnumber us, and they have most of the guns. In terms of sheer attrition, the religious right can kill more of us.
Third, perpetrating acts of violence on Christians is exactly what they want. They love feeling persecuted, because it makes them feel holier. Using violence against them will not lead them to question their own acts or motives. They already believe they are perfectly right; shooting at them only confirms that belief in their minds.
Finally, we cannot let ourselves descend to their level. The only way we have of surviving the culture wars is to maintain the moral high ground. If the Christians are the only ones behaving odiously, in time the great middle (social, not geographical) of this country will come around to our side. If we descend to their level and end up behaving odiously as well, the rest of the country will not give a damn about our rights. The only way we have of surviving the culture wars is to appeal to the humanity of the rest of society. We cannot do that if our side perpetrates violence.
We have to have higher moral standards than the Christians, especially when it comes to treating our enemies like human beings. I won't say we have to love them, since the word "love" has devolved to signify mere affection. Rather, we have to give them more respect than they give us, to resist their ideas and their influence with rationality and appeals to the hearts of the larger public, and not visit the same harm upon them they would visit on us. We have to be stronger, more patient and better people. That's the only way we'll survive and thrive. Besides, it's the better way.
02 December 2011
Two Faiths
A year ago I lost faith in faith. I made a formal admission to myself of agnosticism, and declared I would neither affirm nor deny the existence of God, an afterlife, a cosmic web of life, etc. My reasons were sound, but my emotional motivation came largely from my everyday reading of abuses of human beings done in the name of faith.
It has been noted that our language limits our thinking. In other words, whatever thoughts one thinks are confined by the structure and definitions found within that language. No language is perfect, so there are limitations on what we can think. Even English, with its absolutely huge vocabulary, doesn't have a word for everything. I say all that in order to propose this: I think where I have erred in the way I thought about "faith" was due to the fact that the word lacks sufficient definitional specificity. In other words, I've recently come to realize there are (at least) two kinds of faith.
One kind of faith, the faith I reacted to and rejected, is a faith of certainty. When one has this faith, regardless of what he believes, he believes it to be absolutely, unquestionably true, and that there is no unambiguity about it. In other words, a person with a certainty faith knows that his position is incontrovertible, and anyone who doesn't accept that position is at best deluded, and at worst evil and worthy of being stamped out. Whether it is faith in Christianity, Islam, market capitalism, communism, your sports team, your nation, whatever, the belief of this sort affords a certainty in one's own rightness, and the absolute wrongness of those who do not believe the same way. This faith implies a tribalism: those who agree with me about Christianity, market capitalism, Manchester United, or whatever, are part of my tribe; those who do not are not part of the tribe, and therefore not as worthy. This is a kind of faith, a faith of certainty.
The other kind of faith, the faith I forgot about, is a faith of ambiguity. This kind of faith recognizes that there are ultimate truths of Reality that we will never comprehend, and that not only is the world not divided into the dichromatic black and white that the people of certainty faith only see, it's full of gray, and beyond gray many hues, and thus quite probably colors we can't even see. That while we can count on the earth to spin a little longer, kittens to be cute, and politicians to lie, there is a whole universe out there we just cannot comprehend, and therefore make a part of our clockwork, routine world. This kind of faith rejects tribalism because it cannot be certain, and tribalism demands certainty. This kind of faith must necessarily prompt it's believer to dwell in uncertainty, in ambiguity, and in trust that the ultimate truths are vast, unknowable, and yet part of life. It is a faith of harmony, because if I have this kind of faith, regardless of my religion or philosophy, I cannot sit in judgement of anyone else, because I must first admit that I do not know it all, that faith in my case is as much about what I don't know as what I do know, and that certainty is a trap we set for ourselves to keep us divided from one another.
The faith of ambiguity says that life is a mystery, and that it is so vast, I simply do not have the time and energy to spare on tribalism, on being a jerk to others because of who they are or what they believe, and that I must be humble and tread lightly on the earth because I don't have certainty. Kindness and compassion are key to the faith of ambiguity, because when we have this faith we realize we are all caught in the uncertainty and we need compassion for our struggles, our ignorance and our imperfections.
This kind of faith I can believe in.
It has been noted that our language limits our thinking. In other words, whatever thoughts one thinks are confined by the structure and definitions found within that language. No language is perfect, so there are limitations on what we can think. Even English, with its absolutely huge vocabulary, doesn't have a word for everything. I say all that in order to propose this: I think where I have erred in the way I thought about "faith" was due to the fact that the word lacks sufficient definitional specificity. In other words, I've recently come to realize there are (at least) two kinds of faith.
One kind of faith, the faith I reacted to and rejected, is a faith of certainty. When one has this faith, regardless of what he believes, he believes it to be absolutely, unquestionably true, and that there is no unambiguity about it. In other words, a person with a certainty faith knows that his position is incontrovertible, and anyone who doesn't accept that position is at best deluded, and at worst evil and worthy of being stamped out. Whether it is faith in Christianity, Islam, market capitalism, communism, your sports team, your nation, whatever, the belief of this sort affords a certainty in one's own rightness, and the absolute wrongness of those who do not believe the same way. This faith implies a tribalism: those who agree with me about Christianity, market capitalism, Manchester United, or whatever, are part of my tribe; those who do not are not part of the tribe, and therefore not as worthy. This is a kind of faith, a faith of certainty.
The other kind of faith, the faith I forgot about, is a faith of ambiguity. This kind of faith recognizes that there are ultimate truths of Reality that we will never comprehend, and that not only is the world not divided into the dichromatic black and white that the people of certainty faith only see, it's full of gray, and beyond gray many hues, and thus quite probably colors we can't even see. That while we can count on the earth to spin a little longer, kittens to be cute, and politicians to lie, there is a whole universe out there we just cannot comprehend, and therefore make a part of our clockwork, routine world. This kind of faith rejects tribalism because it cannot be certain, and tribalism demands certainty. This kind of faith must necessarily prompt it's believer to dwell in uncertainty, in ambiguity, and in trust that the ultimate truths are vast, unknowable, and yet part of life. It is a faith of harmony, because if I have this kind of faith, regardless of my religion or philosophy, I cannot sit in judgement of anyone else, because I must first admit that I do not know it all, that faith in my case is as much about what I don't know as what I do know, and that certainty is a trap we set for ourselves to keep us divided from one another.
The faith of ambiguity says that life is a mystery, and that it is so vast, I simply do not have the time and energy to spare on tribalism, on being a jerk to others because of who they are or what they believe, and that I must be humble and tread lightly on the earth because I don't have certainty. Kindness and compassion are key to the faith of ambiguity, because when we have this faith we realize we are all caught in the uncertainty and we need compassion for our struggles, our ignorance and our imperfections.
This kind of faith I can believe in.
06 September 2011
Religion is Like a Penis
Religion is like a penis. It's fine if you have one. It's okay to be proud of it.
On the other hand, it is not okay to whip it out in public, and unless the other person is a gleefully consenting legal adult, you should never shove it down someone's throat.
[Paraphrase of something I read somewhere. Apologies for not being able to give proper credit.]
On the other hand, it is not okay to whip it out in public, and unless the other person is a gleefully consenting legal adult, you should never shove it down someone's throat.
[Paraphrase of something I read somewhere. Apologies for not being able to give proper credit.]
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