Post-Modern Religion(?): Some Follow Up Thoughts

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July 19, 2014 by srbaldauf

Last week, Kyle talked about religion. You can read it here if you missed it, but I thought he did an excellent job with a touchy subject. Now I’m here to mess it all up.

I’ve bounced around the idea for this post since we started the blog, but a follow up to Kyle seems like the perfect time. Religion is one of those things that people don’t like to talk about (kind of like politics–whoops). And reasonably so. Religion and faith is an intensely personal thing and it’s very difficult to discuss it without someone feeling like they are being personally attacked.

But I want to talk about it. At the end, most of us won’t agree and that’s okay. The point of debate is to search for a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Not to agree on a common answer. I’ve had a complicated relationship with religion and it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time debating internally over the years. So I’m going to lay out some of my views. I encourage you to bring your views into the comments. The usual rules though–no attacking people. Keep it civilized.

“Obviously.” -The Internet

I was baptized Catholic. I was probably six when we switched to a Lutheran Church (ELCA), which is where I was brought up “religiously”. And it was great for a number of years. Our church, and particularly our pastor, were wonderful. But then I hit the late teenage years.

Like a lot of teenagers, I drifted away from religion. I was less and less involved. More importantly, at least to me at the time, I didn’t feel “it”. I didn’t feel connected. I sat there in church and felt a growing distance–separate from it all. By the time I went to college, it had turned into a resentment.

I was a hard-headed, strong-willed, opinionated college student. And like most college students, I hated the hypocrisy that I saw everywhere. How could people think that going to church once a week and going through the motions made them a good person? Why were so many “good” Christians so intolerant? And the conflicts with science didn’t help.

I have a very scientific mind. I tend to dissociate myself and try to be analytical. There are, of course, limitations to how far that goes in the mind of a twenty year-old, especially when it comes to self-analysis. Things culminated with me deciding that I was atheist and eventually leaving my family in the church parking lot to walk home on christmas eve. (Not my finest moment. Like I said–hard-headed). I was angry at the institution of religion and decided that things would be better off without it.

As I’ve gotten older, my stance on religion has moderated. My ability to be analytic is less clouded by teenage angst. I still think about religion fairly frequently, and I think my views have shifted quite a bit–certainly since my college days.

So that’s my background. What follows are some of my views now. I’m sure these will continue to evolve as I get older and mature. Hopefully it can spur some reasonable discussion. First:

Faith Is An Amazing Thing

I don’t know that I ever really turned on the concept of faith. I think I found it to be foolish or naive when I was a teenager. But I’ve probably come the farthest on this topic.

Faith can be incredibly powerful. It does great thing. It gives people hope. I have immense respect for the ability that people have their faith in something larger than themselves. And I think it plays a crucial role for a lot of people. Some things are just too large to handle on your own. If religion and faith can provide support and relief, than more power too it.

I do still think that faith can be naive at times. I’ll get into that a little more later. But I can certainly appreciate the power that faith holds.

I Don’t Consider Religion Legitimate If It Doesn’t Put Compassion First

Kyle kind of touched on this as well, so I won’t spend too much time on it. But I think that most religions around the world are based on compassion. I also think it’s something that gets overlooked or overshadowed too often in religion.

In my mind compassion and empathy are intertwined–you need to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. When we get into things like gay marriage or contraceptive access, it seems like compassion and empathy get dropped by too many people in favor of condemnation. I’m not saying that you can’t argue against these or other topics with your religious views (although Kyle did a nice job bringing up some of the constitutional reasons why you maybe shouldn’t be able too from a legal perspective). But some of the uglier, ridiculously ignorant quotes on these issues show an utter failure of compassion. Cough, Westboro Baptists, cough.

Basically, if being compassionate and empathic isn’t your first step, you’re going to have a very difficult time convincing me that your religious views should carry any weight. I guess I’d rather be condemned than buy into the hatred.

Won’t do it.

Religion And Science Are Not Mutually Exclusive

This one really bothers me. There is nothing that says that science and religion are incompatible. I think our pastor growing up actually did a great job of summing it up, saying that the Bible says that God did all of these things, but it doesn’t say how he did it.

There’s absolutely no reason that evolution couldn’t be the process through which species were created. There’s nothing to say that the “seven day” timeframe for creating the world is the same as seven days for us. (Theory of relativity!)

On the flip side, I don’t think science has the right to say that there are no higher powers. I don’t think there are. I think humans are pattern-seeking, terrible at probability and the concept of randomness especially at large scales, and that they most likely created religions as a social-construct to explain things and to provide a societal framework. But I can NOT say that there is proof there isn’t a god. To say otherwise is frankly unscientific. There’s a lot we can’t explain.

But the base of this problem,the entrenchment against science, isn’t about the science itself, but seems to be about suppressing critical thinking. Critical thinking isn’t exactly conducive to blind faith. But if you think about something critically and come out the other side, I don’t see how that wouldn’t strength your faith.

The scientific denial has lead to other problems as well–climate change. It really bothers me when people argue that God created everything and he wouldn’t let things get fucked up. First, I’m pretty sure you can find a number of passages about humans being the caretakers of the Earth. Second, this is just wrong. People used to use the same argument against the possibility of extinction.

Agreed! But it does!

The idea was that everything was on an equilibrium, so things would shift back the other way, and that since God created all the animals, he wouldn’t let them go extinct. We can pretty definitively say that was wrong. For those that thing the dinosaurs are a hoax, what about the passenger pigeon? We can and are fucking up the planet. And I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly what God intended.

“I Don’t Care What You Believe, As Long As You Believe”

Alright, mostly I just love this quote from Serenity.

Which apparently lacks a gif. Fail, internet. (If you haven’t watch Firefly, it probably ranks around #6 on things we will hound you about needing to watch. Vlogbrothers is obviously #1).

I like the sentiment–about needing to buy into something larger than yourself, about the need for faith in something. It’s also something I struggle with from time to time. I’m not particularly troubled by it and I could probably list off a few things that I believe in, but I don’t know if there’s anything that reaches the level that this quote is getting at.

Well, maybe that Martha is just the worst.

Luckily, I still have this:

It Shouldn’t Matter What You Believe 

This is the most important thing. I do think that there’s right and wrong. I think that compassion towards others needs to be the guiding light in deciding right and wrong. I think that a religion that wants to condemn people because their belief or faith is incorrect is fundamentally flawed. So just try to live your best life possible. Try to help other people. Try to embrace your better natures and to stamp out those that aren’t helping yourself or others.

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote in regards to religion–one that I think perfectly sums up my position. (I’d call it post-modern religion but I’m probably misusing post-modern and then Brett will yell at me). Feel free to leave your comments. Please remember that my intentions were not to offend anyone or attack them, I just wanted to add my two-cents to the debate.

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

Found my Matt Smith one, Kyle. You can have your sign-off back.