Moderate Religions
Posted on February 29th, 2008 by blue collar scientistWriterdd over on Skepchick, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers, has some remarks about non-fundamentalist religion:
In comments on another post a few weeks ago, I questioned the idea of criticizing Christians for “cherry picking the Bible” — that is, ignoring the parts they find abhorrent and clinging to the parts they find inspirational…. Ignoring parts of the Bible or Koran should not be ridiculed. It is a good thing that leads away from fanatical violence. We should be encouraging this type of behavior.
I agree, utterly and completely.
The fact is, sensible people will read parts of the Bible and correctly discern that it isn’t a science textbook. In a recent TV interview on the evolution wars, I said that a person reading the first four chapters of Genesis as a story that tells us about human nature - our curiosity, our response to authority, etc - has done a sensible thing. Not as sensible, perhaps, as studying psychology, but they’ve at least read the text and learned from it the things that I think the author was trying to teach. Somewhat more discerning people might read the same text and recognize that it is also a slap in the face to prevailing political and religious institutions in contemporary Babylon - and if so, they’ve done an excellent job of interpreting the text.
Readers who decide those chapters are an anatomy lesson and come to the conclusion that men have fewer ribs than women1 have made a fundamental error about the scope of the text. As have those who believe that it is a textbook for science and/or history. If someone reads the first four chapters of Genesis and still thinks that men and women have the same number of ribs, does it make them an infidel,2 or somehow not-really-Christian3?
Ummm, no, it makes them more sensible than their peers.
In doing the science/skepticism educational activities I’m neck-deep in, I have to communicate with forthrightly religious people all the time. The sensible ones, who lack fundamentalist impulses, have no difficulty grappling with the reality that is demonstrated by experiment. And lest we body-check them for nevertheless believing in god, let’s keep in mind that all but the superheroes among us believe something that isn’t true4.
Dialogues often develop between fundamentalists and less strident religionists in the class discussions that I lead, and my conclusion from these experiences is that I want more of the latter in my world. They are simply much less prone - no, let’s say, not prone at all - to condemning me to a violent end for “believing in” the Big Bang Theory, and shutting out everything I have to say simply because my beliefs aren’t the same as theirs. What’s disturbing about that is my “beliefs” are never aired - they just assume the person they are dealing with is a minion of Satan. As writerdd notes, there is a big gulf in social adjustment between these two populations.
And that is why I distinguish between religious extremists, and everyone else. (Well, that, and because the term marginalizes extremists.)
- This is a belief I have actually encountered in the wild. [↩]
- From the perspective of fundamentalist Christians. [↩]
- From the perspective of an atheist or adherent to another religion. [↩]
- That’s actually the most humbling thing about doing science - finding out that your view of reality is seriously messed up, over and over again. [↩]
Tags: bible, culture, education, extremism, interpretation, religion, science, skepchick, writerdd
February 29th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Yes, cherry-picking the parts of the Bible (or Koran, or whatever else) that aren’t rife with calls to arms is great.
BUT….
It’s hypocracy on the part of the believer. I don’t read my dinosaur book and say that I believe that every kind of dinosaur in there is real except for Brachytrachelopan. You can point to the picture and description of Brachytrachelopan and say, “Look! Brachytrachelopan!” Well, I’d just prefer to think it didn’t exist. But the rest of the book is fine.
*sigh*
February 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Zach, I don’t believe it is hypocrisy. (Although that IS what the fundamentalists would say, BTW.)
Just because you find inspiration in a book, doesn’t mean you have to believe it is literally true. I love Greek myths, and I think there are some interesting truths in those stories regarding the human condition. That doesn’t mean I think that the tales are literally or historically true.
There’s a big difference between studying something to learn facts (as in your dinosaur example) and studying something for inspiration. It’s when religious folks start looking for factual truth in their holy books that they get introuble and become fundamentalists.
I think when we as unbelievers call this hypocrisy, we are actually saying that we prefer the fundamentalist all-or-nothing attitude! That’s scary.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Fundamentalists make an error in categorizing the genre of their religious text. While most people recognize the difference between, say, a science textbook, an editorial, news reporting, poetry, novels, historical narrative, pornography, and satire, fundamentalists don’t. If the bible were a homogeneous work on a single topic then their approach would be justified, but it is pretty clear to everyone else that the bible is some kind of mix of those genres.
Someone who recognizes such differences isn’t being a hypocrite, they are just being perceptive about the material they are confronted with. Most non-fundamentalist Christians can easily explain why they don’t accept Noah’s Ark as literal truth - because they believe it is a myth. Criticizing them as hypocrites for coming to this realization makes little sense to me, especially because I agree with them.