Arkady
President
I find faith in the supernatural to be vaguely silly, but it doesn't lower someone in my eyes too much. Humans are inherently irrational, and although I believe we have a moral obligation to try to keep that irrationality in check, I accept that we'll often fail and fall into superstitions, magical thinking, phobias, and religious faith. So, if someone believes the stories of the Bible are true, absent any evidence, I see it as a weakness, but not a particularly damning one. Chances are such a person was aggressively indoctrinated into that faith by the people he most trusted at an age when he was too young to reason, and it's a simple fact of human nature that only a small minority of people who were brainwashed that way will recover as they get old enough to think for themselves.
What makes it harder not to look down on Jews, Muslims, and Christians, though, is their reaction to that faith. Even if one believed, against all reason, that the stories told in the Old Testament were true, the clear moral imperative would be to oppose Yahweh, not to worship him. As Robert Ingersoll writes (echoing a similar sentiment from Mark Twain), "The portrait is substantially that of a man -- if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one, perhaps, would desire to associate with now that Nero and Caligula are dead. In the Old Testament, his acts expose his vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly. It is perhaps the most damning biography that exists in print anywhere." What kind of a person could worship such a monster?
If I met someone who thought Bram Stoke'rs story of Dracula was real -- including all the supernatural material -- I'd chuckle a bit at such naivite. But if I met someone who thought Bran Stoker's story of Dracula was real, and responded to that by dedicating his life to the worship of Dracula, I wouldn't want to turn my back on him, much less leave him with my children. Imagining the existence of a super-powered monster like Yahweh is goofy, but imaging that and then worshiping the monstrosity is atrocious.
For those who have read the Old Testament, it should be clear enough what we are talking about when we refer to it as a damning biography. But for those who haven't gotten around to reading it, yet, here's just a short summary of Yahweh's behavior. Right near the start, he damns every person who will ever live to torment as punishment for our most distant ancestors eating some fruit he told them not to eat. Later, he drowns nearly every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet, down to the youngest of newborn infants, because he's not pleased with how his creation is turning out. In similar incidents, later, he murders the entire populations of two cities... then, as an added murderous flourish, kills the wife of one of his own patriarchs for the "crime" of having looked over her shoulder. In Egypt, he sends his spirit on a door-to-door killing spree, slaughtering children in order to make some sort of point to a Pharaoh who was only being stubborn because Yahweh had used his magic powers to harden the man's heart. Even his own favorites aren't safe from his cruel and capricious behavior. Moses, who led Yahweh's pet tribe through the hardships of the desert for 40 long years, trying to reach the Promised Land, is not permitted to reach the Promised Land because Yahweh is miffed at him for some obscure moment of supposedly not having put enough trust in Him. Then there's a genocidal campaign against the prior inhabitants of the Promised Land, ordered and supported by Yahweh. And all along the story Yahweh is ordering people to be killed in jealous rages, while setting up rules that require death for misdeeds as minor as being a headstrong kid who talks back to his parents.
Again, I ask, how could anyone worship such a being? If the story of the Old Testament was true, all moral people would be obligated to defy and resist the tyranny of that evil deity to the best of our abilities. Worshiping him would be like worshiping Hitler or Stalin --at best, an act of cowardice in the face of terrifying power. It is possible to pity such people, just as we pity many who "Heil Hitlered" their way through the Nazi era because they lacked the moral fortitude to stand up to the Nazis, and found it safer to align themselves with such a powerful evil. But it's impossible to respect them.
To be clear, I'm sure there are other religions, too, that are filled with similar horrors. But the only religions I know well are those of the Old Testament, so I won't try to guess whether Hinduists, Taoists, Zoroastrians, etc., are revealing themselves to be contemptible through their faith. I have some familiarity with Buddhism. I reject many of its basic moral premises (like the striving to eliminate desire), and its superstitions, but from what I've seen being a Buddhist does not involve behavior as reprehensible as worshiping a mass murderer like Yahweh.
Also to be clear, my contempt for the "People of the Book" doesn't extend to those who reject all the evil parts -- taking them as symbolic stories to convey some specific point, rather than an actual recounting of the behavior of their deity. I view such people as simply trying to cling to a bit of the brainwashing of their youths, for sentimental reasons, while growing beyond it morally. They're a bit like someone who clings to the Confederate Flag, because he was indoctrinated into that kind of "Southern Pride" when he was a child and doesn't want to push it away entirely, but who rejects the racism that the Confederate Flag was originally tied up with. I wish such people could move beyond their ugly historical legacies entirely, but I realize that merely embracing some symbols with ugly historical ties, like the Confederate Flag or the Bible, doesn't necessarily mean the person has a dark soul. It's possible for a good person to compartmentalize the symbol from those negative aspects in his mind.
What makes it harder not to look down on Jews, Muslims, and Christians, though, is their reaction to that faith. Even if one believed, against all reason, that the stories told in the Old Testament were true, the clear moral imperative would be to oppose Yahweh, not to worship him. As Robert Ingersoll writes (echoing a similar sentiment from Mark Twain), "The portrait is substantially that of a man -- if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one, perhaps, would desire to associate with now that Nero and Caligula are dead. In the Old Testament, his acts expose his vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly. It is perhaps the most damning biography that exists in print anywhere." What kind of a person could worship such a monster?
If I met someone who thought Bram Stoke'rs story of Dracula was real -- including all the supernatural material -- I'd chuckle a bit at such naivite. But if I met someone who thought Bran Stoker's story of Dracula was real, and responded to that by dedicating his life to the worship of Dracula, I wouldn't want to turn my back on him, much less leave him with my children. Imagining the existence of a super-powered monster like Yahweh is goofy, but imaging that and then worshiping the monstrosity is atrocious.
For those who have read the Old Testament, it should be clear enough what we are talking about when we refer to it as a damning biography. But for those who haven't gotten around to reading it, yet, here's just a short summary of Yahweh's behavior. Right near the start, he damns every person who will ever live to torment as punishment for our most distant ancestors eating some fruit he told them not to eat. Later, he drowns nearly every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet, down to the youngest of newborn infants, because he's not pleased with how his creation is turning out. In similar incidents, later, he murders the entire populations of two cities... then, as an added murderous flourish, kills the wife of one of his own patriarchs for the "crime" of having looked over her shoulder. In Egypt, he sends his spirit on a door-to-door killing spree, slaughtering children in order to make some sort of point to a Pharaoh who was only being stubborn because Yahweh had used his magic powers to harden the man's heart. Even his own favorites aren't safe from his cruel and capricious behavior. Moses, who led Yahweh's pet tribe through the hardships of the desert for 40 long years, trying to reach the Promised Land, is not permitted to reach the Promised Land because Yahweh is miffed at him for some obscure moment of supposedly not having put enough trust in Him. Then there's a genocidal campaign against the prior inhabitants of the Promised Land, ordered and supported by Yahweh. And all along the story Yahweh is ordering people to be killed in jealous rages, while setting up rules that require death for misdeeds as minor as being a headstrong kid who talks back to his parents.
Again, I ask, how could anyone worship such a being? If the story of the Old Testament was true, all moral people would be obligated to defy and resist the tyranny of that evil deity to the best of our abilities. Worshiping him would be like worshiping Hitler or Stalin --at best, an act of cowardice in the face of terrifying power. It is possible to pity such people, just as we pity many who "Heil Hitlered" their way through the Nazi era because they lacked the moral fortitude to stand up to the Nazis, and found it safer to align themselves with such a powerful evil. But it's impossible to respect them.
To be clear, I'm sure there are other religions, too, that are filled with similar horrors. But the only religions I know well are those of the Old Testament, so I won't try to guess whether Hinduists, Taoists, Zoroastrians, etc., are revealing themselves to be contemptible through their faith. I have some familiarity with Buddhism. I reject many of its basic moral premises (like the striving to eliminate desire), and its superstitions, but from what I've seen being a Buddhist does not involve behavior as reprehensible as worshiping a mass murderer like Yahweh.
Also to be clear, my contempt for the "People of the Book" doesn't extend to those who reject all the evil parts -- taking them as symbolic stories to convey some specific point, rather than an actual recounting of the behavior of their deity. I view such people as simply trying to cling to a bit of the brainwashing of their youths, for sentimental reasons, while growing beyond it morally. They're a bit like someone who clings to the Confederate Flag, because he was indoctrinated into that kind of "Southern Pride" when he was a child and doesn't want to push it away entirely, but who rejects the racism that the Confederate Flag was originally tied up with. I wish such people could move beyond their ugly historical legacies entirely, but I realize that merely embracing some symbols with ugly historical ties, like the Confederate Flag or the Bible, doesn't necessarily mean the person has a dark soul. It's possible for a good person to compartmentalize the symbol from those negative aspects in his mind.
If you abuse it,that is your problem. I choose to live by the Commandments, most of the time,as they make sense!
