Sympathy toward unusual Religious Practice

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Mon Oct 22, 2012, 10:18 AM - Edit history (3)

(This post is not about the truth or falsity of any religious doctrine, but rather about the place of of religion in society)

Had dinner with friends and talked about Billy Graham tacitly endorsing the idea of giving a man he believes to be a heretic and cultist control of our nuclear arsenal. Hard to picture giving the nuclear launch codes to a Scientologist.

And, since I'm an atheist, the usual points were made about how I don't fault Mormonism for being false, as such, because all religions are. (In my opinion. I don't mean this post to be about whether there's a god.)

And, being raised Catholic, I usually have a high tolerance for weird ritual and trappings. I have attended Latin masses where hardly anyone in the audience knew what was being said, and in that context you can really see how odd it all is—pretty much the same to me as a religious service in Arabic.

But I do have a degree of respect and considerable tolerance for Catholicism and Judaism and Islam that I do not have for Mormonism.

It isn't that Mormonism is false, it is that it is not ancient, and that makes all the difference.

I go to mass, or watch the folks gathering around a mosque, or go to a friend's son's bar mitzvah and it all seems like something from the dawn of civilization. "Why are you acting like people did thousands of years ago? ...wearing robes and chanting and singing in dead tongues?"

And they say, "We are following an ancient cultural tradition. It is a connection with our community going back more than a thousand years. My great-great-great-great-great grandfather spoke these words on this day."

Okay, not my thing but I understand it. It is primitive because it is ancient, and it is a connection to antiquity and that's fine... why not? People dress up like Ben Franklin on the 4th of July.

But when somebody starts laying down a rap about the Thetans and chanting in some bizarre tongue I do not respect the vast historical sweep of their tradition and how it helps people self-define their place on the planet and find meaning in their lives.

I think, "On no... a Scientologist."

A science fiction writer decided, in the mid-20th century, to create a science-fictiony religion as something to publish in science fiction magazines.

The general tolerance one has for ancient ethnic/cultural/philosophical tradition (assuming it isn't too harmful) doesn't apply to something somebody made up recently to make a buck.

We look at a traditional practice and say, "Perhaps in a very primitive society it all made sense." But Scientology did not make sense in the 1950s. We cannot shrug and say, "This is the continuance of a tradition that made sense back in the 1950s, and has since grown to a cultural significance greater than the mere truth of falsity of the thing."

And all of that goes for Mormonism. It's recent and local origins do not make it less likely to be true, but it makes the idea of respecting it on par with respecting Scientology.

If somebody believes the garden of Eden was in Iraq that is passive acceptance of genuinely ancient tradition, with origins pre-dating even writing.

If somebody believes that Adam and Eve lived in Missouri (as Mitt Romney believes) that is weird for the sake of weird. It cannot be interpreted as ancient metaphor. I wasn't much less weird when first written than it is today... it was an aberration in its own time. It's not an explanation of the cosmic mystery of how Americans came to be. It is not the product of an era when nobody knew better.

It is just some stuff that a guy made up, not all that long ago.

It makes a difference.

Islam and Christianity and Judaism are deeply intertwined with great cultures informed by religious tradition. I don't have to believe to appreciate the art and philosophy and the good things some people did within a cultural tradition.

Take Islam... it isn't literally ancient but a thousand plus years is a lot. And over that time the culture informed by Islam did some stuff everybody respects. It was, in its day, in some ways a more sophisticated culture than Europe had. You don't have to believe that man shares the Earth with a race of Djinn to value things about Islamic culture.

The cultural tradition of Mormonism, on the other hand, doesn't have highlights like algebra. It has its short and sordid history. (I don't find Proposition 8 to be akin to algebra.)

What if your neighbor made up a new religion today and started wearing robes and telling people that World of Warcraft is real. Would you respect it because it is a religion? (Beyond the basic respect we have for whatever a person thinks, which is minimal.)

At some point there is an indistinct line, and for me Mormonism is on the Scientology side of the line.