The following is a response to the Dissections from an Orthodox Jewish client of Janet’s. He left this on a private LiveJournal entry, so I can’t really link it (and actually couldn’t even see it at first), but I figured I should respond here as well as there, since it addresses some things I’ve been meaning to clarify or discuss.
Here’s what he wrote:
A Gentle Reproach
How shall I say this in a gentle way? After all, Josh’s own fiancée is reading this. (Perhaps she could bring it to his attention?)
[Movin' On Up]
In the cited post, Josh (legitimately) attacks a stupid cartoon by — What’s his name? Dick Chick? Chick with a Dick? Oh, right — Jack Chick.
I want to correct some of the fallacies of that post, without being agressive.
It’s sad that Josh extrapolates from the Fundamentalist Christianity of Chick, and makes generalizations about all religion. See, he’s almost as ignorant of religions as Chick is of scientists and non-fundamendalists. In the a previous post of his, he made broad statements about “religious people who are fucking stupid”, and backed it up by quoting some retarded statement by Chick. I really think he’s unaware that there are many different kinds of religion, and many of them are neither fundamentalist, nor based on blind faith, nor even obsessed with theology.
Plenty of Orthodox Jews, for example, are very committed to their religion, but hardly ever talk about God. There are other concepts, such as ritual or law, or study of legal texts, which are far more important to them than pondering what God may or may not be. And I recently posted a comment on a blog, in which I demonstrated that the Rabbis of the Talmud didn’t believe in an afterlife. (The moron who owns that blog deleted my comment, presumably because he felt it was threatening to his whole worldview.)
There exist religions which are basically systems of law and ritual, with associated “ideational content”, which is not necessarily meant to be taken as literal truth. There are people who accept a religion because “it works” for them, i.e. it creates a fulfilling life, or an ethical life. Religion is not opposed to science, because one can easily follow the practices of a religion, and work within the system of its Sacred Myths and other ideational content, but fully believe in the latest scientific research. Maybe this doesn’t work if you’re a right-wing evangelical American Protestant with a shit-eating grin, but it works for many other religions.
When I first started making these Dissections back in 2002 (wow, over six years), I’ll admit that I’d extrapolate Chick’s beliefs as representative of Christianity as a whole, or even religion as a whole. But hey, I was nineteen. Eventually, I recognized what I was doing, and even went back and corrected such references in the earlier Tracts. I’ve made it a point since then to ensure that I’m being moderately clear about the fact that I’m referring specifically to fundamentalists and not to all Christians or members of all religions as a whole.
However, I consider nothing beyond reproach (*), and there are more general beliefs and concepts that it’s impossible to criticize without criticizing religion or belief in a broader respect. As, for instance, when I point out that God’s behavior in the Bible casts him in a villainous light in the book: It’s hard for me to do this while referring specifically to fundamentalists, because there are many who aren’t fundamentalist who believe that God’s actions are always just and moral, for some reason. As though being the biggest and most intelligent person on the playground gives you the right to be cruel to everyone else.
((*) There’s this weird sentiment today, particularly in America, that religious belief is somehow beyond reproach. Like, as soon as you question or make fun of it, you’re somehow crossing some societally-acceptable line, unlike with other philosophies people subscribe to like economic policy or general cultural attitudes. I don’t really support this, in part because I constantly question everything, and etc various other reasons.)
These things aren’t so much a problem if you view the Bible — as you point out — as an inspirational work that teaches lessons and general guidelines through metaphor and parable. However, if you’re going to take it literally, as some do, then the Biblical God as a real entity who actually did these terrible things is tremendously immoral. “Mysterious ways” or no, we can only experience God and his actions to the extent that boundaries on our perception allow, and if this is how he presents himself to us, knowing that we can identify right and wrong and good and evil, then there’s something really wrong somewhere.
But now I’m getting too far into tangential specifics. In any event, I refer specifically to fundamentalists as much as possible, and hope that the sentiment remains clear when I’m making fun of the ludicrous things Chick espouses. I don’t by any means think that all Christians hate science, or that there are no people with religious beliefs who agree with the theory of evolution. In fact, there are a number of people of faith who comment here who are able to recognize that I’m not extrapolating Jack’s beliefs as representational of Christianity or religion as a whole, so I’d think I’m doing an all right job at making the distinction.
But this is all beside the point. The point of these Dissections, often above all else (save for the most recent one, because I was frustrated and a little off my game and more ranty than anything), is a kind of harsh and brutal humor at the expense of anything within the Tracts that I find deserving of mockery. Sure, I’d love to be able to actually get through to fundamentalists and convince them to at least consider my perspective. But given the rarity of success, without any kind of humor or entertainment/information value, my incessant ranting attempts at being convincing would be a boring monotone that would eventually be the same kind of pathetic and depressing as a man in the 1970s spending six years trying to punch down the Berlin Wall with his bare hands.
I can’t quite seem to find the “religious people who are fucking stupid” quote anywhere on my site or in a Google search, but I’m pretty sure that such sentiments expressed are more about the religious people who are fucking stupid than religious people as a whole.
In any event, I’m well aware of the gamut of religion and belief that exists among the many varied peoples of the world. But I’m no expert, and I’m always curious about and interested in the specifics.
“Hey, guys, here’s what Christianity is: Every Sunday, Christians get together and spit into cheesecloths for an hour. They sing to get their phlegm going. When they’re finished, they go down into the basement of the church in order to bury the cheesecloths. This is called the Holy Sacrament! During the Feast of All Saints, they dig up the cheesecloths and lay them out on the altar to feed the saints. Jesus was a man with a magical beard. He’d use it to tickle the sick, and their laughter would make them better. (This is the origin of the phrase “laughter is the best medicine.”) The pope keeps Jesus’s beard under his tall hat, and that’s what gives him control of the church. (Now print this out a thousand times and give this to all your friends so that they can know the TRUTH about Christianity!)”
No. No. Not at all! Fundies like Chick are Protestant, and hate the pope. They often don’t even like ritual, and think that it’s stupid.
You seem to have missed the fact that the bit about spitting into cheesecloths was an intentional misrepresentation — for humor purposes (a.k.a. a joke) — of Christianity done in precisely the same way Chick misrepresented the theory of evolution. There would be no use in specifying a particular type of Christianity, because that wasn’t the point. The point was to illustrate how wrong Chick was via a parodic and ridiculous misinterpretation of a relatively well-known religion.
It’s way too big a number, and I think many of them have this fear that if they stop and realize that the Bible was written back when the primary counting system for most people was “fingers” and (for the advanced mathematicians) “toes”, and the idea of “millions” was completely unfathomable a concept since “thousands” seemed itself practically infinite, or if they even approach questioning their Holy Doctrine at all, they’ll go to hell.
Not true. There was quite advanced mathematics in Mesopotamia at the time the Bible was written, and even much earlier.
I’m well aware that advanced mathematics existed. It’s just that… well, let me put it this way: Is everyone in the world Stephen Hawking just because Stephen Hawking is very intelligent? Just because there are intelligent mathematicians during any given point in time doesn’t mean that all people are mathematicians. And in general, people two thousand years ago were substantially less educated and less knowledgeable about the workings of the world, and there were a greater number of illiterate and innumerate people than there are today. Anyway, the bit about “for advanced mathematicians” was exaggeration for humor purposes.
Point is, as far as most were concerned, “thousands” seemed a good enough guess for the age of the planet as any other number. I mean, there are also some other influences thrown in there, like humans’ tendency to be unable to imagine a point in time before their existence, which can easily be translated to something that can be thought about humanity as a whole, but people were far less “experts” back then on the functioning of the observable world than we are today. And we’re still a pretty ignorant and idiotic bunch.
And you still didn’t really refute the fact that — particularly in light of all the evidence we’ve since gathered — six thousand years is almost certainly inaccurate (unless God’s playing some hilarious joke on everyone, in which case he’s kind of a jerk; also, in that case, it’s equally possible he created everything last Monday and made it seem like it’s all much older), and it’s rather stupid to cling to it as a definite and literal Born-On date for the universe.
I’m sure Josh is perfectly intellegent, just ignorant of this issue. And of course you realize that I have no interest in converting him to anything. I just think that he were a bit more informed, he would be a bit more tolerant.
He can still laugh at ignorant American fundamentalist Protestants, though.
It’s not that I’m intolerant — go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe. Believe in God, believe in Satan, believe in Jesus, be Jewish (Orthodox or otherwise), be a Gnostic, an Agnostic, an Atheist, a Buddhist, believe that there’s one holy moose somewhere in the remotest part of Canada that can only be killed with a gunshot and that once it dies the universe will end with it. Just don’t be evangelical about it, is my primary concern. Particularly, keep faith out of the law books for the general public (but feel free to abide by your own faith-based laws as an individual or as a group), and out of general government. And don’t think that because you (not you, specifically, but the general “you”) have a belief system, it somehow makes you the authority on morality, especially the morality of people other than yourself. (I’m working on a couple essays about this concept, but they’re not finished yet.)
And, I guess more pertinent to this discussion, just because someone takes their beliefs seriously, or the idea of belief in general seriously, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to or that I should be expected to. If you do believe in that moose, I’m probably going to mock you for it, whether you take it seriously or not.
Jabberwock
