6:58 a.m. - 2005-03-04
the r-word
If you aren't me, you might not have much interest in this particular entry, (presupposing, of course, that you have any interest in any of them) because it involves religion.
I was raised by mom to believe, by dad to doubt. Mom taught me charity, compassion and social responsibility, dad taught me to work hard and keep my word and not depend on others when I ought to be doing things for myself. Except for the choice to follow a set of laws laid down by a dead foreigner, their differences are mostly a matter of degree, it seems. Dad's philosophy is one of self-reliance, honour and responsible choices for oneself, but mom's ideology reaches further, touching the lives of many, and seeing that it isn't enough to take care of our own needs, or even the needs of our families. She acts as though the fate of the world rests on our ability to have compassion and love for strangers as well as friends. She doesn't believe that we're all here by some kind of cosmic fluke, or that our existence is limited to less than a century in these frail physical bodies, or that it's enough to go to church on sunday and do whatever you like for the rest your week.
In all of that, I agree, and for years have chosen to follow the same faith as her (which, incidentally, does not involve church on sundays.) My recent problem is more about the way religion is presented (my own and others), and about our tendency (need?) to anthropomorphize something that I'm not convinced the human mind is meant to comprehend. Seriously. The average person isn't clear what happens when you flick a light switch, but they imagine they understand a force so potent it could create a whole universe? And don't get me started on Creation/Evolution. Darwin may have got a few things wrong, but it's inarguable that species evolve, and reasonable to hypothesize that humans did too, despite lacking some of the evidence necessary to prove it.
I think for me it's often a case of semantics, though for others it's a life-and-death battle of imposing wills. How can "we" (and by we, I'm not talking about myself) choose both to describe "God" as inscrutable, omniscient, omnipotent, unknowable, blah blah blah, and then go on to say that we "know" about "His Will"? (side note; how many original religious texts were written in English? That's right, none. I'm not talking theses here, I'm talking Bibles, Qur'an's, Kitab'i'Aqdases, that sort of thing. Right. Let's look at the Qur'an. Original text and language isn't referring to "God" as male, (or female) but as Divine, and the language provides for such a need. Human ignorance and pride (male ignorance and pride?) as well as prevailing social structures, lead us to accept that, with translation, this become "He", masculine and potent, because English lacks the necessary pronoun for divinity. If this were a Matriarchy, "God" would be female.) But I digress... and in any case, I don't think there's any sense in looking at the divine as being in any way human, especially in assigning petty human emotions. Is it reasonable to expect something older than we can conceive of, (indeed, timeless) to give in to jealousy, anger, and retribution? If that's the kind of thing you want to subscribe to, that's fine, but please leave me out of it.
The problem (or one of them) (I think) arises in our need to understand and label everything in our world, whether we fully understand it or not, and of necessity we do it in terms we are familiar with, rather than than accepting there are things we just don't know. (yet?) Take quantum theory; we describe subatomic particles in terms of "spin", "rotation", while at the same time asserting that these are waves - sure. Spinning waves. Why not just admit we have no idea what electrons do, and continue to study them until we do understand it? We seem to know that we can find position or velocity of an electron, but not both, but I have yet to read a plausible explanation of why - that doesn't keep me from believing in electrons, or in wanting to know why, but it's something I'm willing to take on "faith" - that there is a reason, even if I don't know it.
Er. I'm getting horribly sidetracked.
Next entry will be about something pointless, mundane, or possibly prurient, ok? Good.
