Contrariwise, Again (Or: Silly Obama!)
Dear People Who Consult Their Faith and The Church When Making Moral Judgements,Leave politics to the educated and sane. Don’t agree? Have an opinon? Let’s talk. Thank you.
- Nathan Thomas Roberts
It’s too bad all the uneducated and insane believers of the world, like CS Lewis and Malcom Muggeridge and Mohandas Gandhi and the Dalai Lama and Moses Maimonides and Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Barack Obama (who has said that religion has helped define his values and beliefs), haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Roberts.
I watch a lot of these sorts of self-assured statements made here on Tumblr, where most are, like me, atheists (and many of the rest are anti-religion pantheists or deists). Despite being an atheist, however, I have no disdain for religions, organized or otherwise; in fact, I tend to admire them a great deal. I think people forget that the majority of humanity’s existential wisdom over the millennia has been codified in religions, which at the end of the day are some of the most time-tested systems of thought in existence; they are practically applied philosophy with very advanced moral codes, whatever their other corruptions.
Indeed, while political trends gather and dissipate, religions endure; endurance is not an argument for truth, but it is an argument for utility. In other words, while snidely confident materialists have mocked the religious impulse and its manifestations for several thousand years, many billions of people have found moral coherence, existential direction, familial structure, codes of behavior, and more within said manifestations. What would Mr. Roberts say to the families of the murder victims who presently rely on a Christian paradigm of forgiveness to overcome their rage?
I know that I would never forgive, never accept, never heal; as an atheist, I feel that the slaughter of a loved on has no possibility of redemption, and death has no consolation. Unless you begin the comfortable slide into mysticism, you will likely agree. For billions of humans, many of whom are not less sane or educated than we are, religion has permitted happiness in the face of crushing circumstance, has provided a psychological and moral model of strength.
(Of course, none of them had Wikipedia or the Internet to revolutionize their thinking; it’s very probable that we’re all much wiser than they, and unlike the youth of all past eras, when we remake the world in our image, revolting against all inconvenient strictures and deriding our forbears as superstitious zealots, a truly free and open utopia will come into being.).
I can’t wait, although I often wonder and am rarely answered: on what is your non-religious morality based? The most commonly proffered answers are incoherent; there are some excellent answers, but I am always interested to see if it is possible to frame a basis for morality on a mass scale in language that will sustain and persuade the masses of the planet (whom we respect, right?).
Update: I shouldn’t have been so snarky to Mr. Roberts, and I apologize for it.
Notes from others: