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Relijoolous? Religyoolous?
Oct. 11th, 2008 04:09 pmI grew up without religion.
Like, at all. As a kid I never quite grasped what all this church stuff my friends went to was about. I figured it was like some kind of weird extended book club, where you went to discuss the stories in your religious book of choice, much like our Great Books class at school where we’d discuss edifying stories, what they said about the characters, etc.. It was only in high school that I really started to pick up on the fact that people seemed to literally believe this stuff.
It is hard to explain where I’m coming from with that, and there seems to be a gap that can’t be closed between me and those who grew up religious. But let me tell you something right now: Bill Maher’s Religulous has a premise that explains my point of view in a way I myself always have trouble articulating.*
Well, no, actually, I can articulate it all right, it’s just hard to have a conversation about it, because my view tends to hurt people’s feelings. Not that I mean to hurt them, but it comes out that way because unless you are atheist, I am basically telling you that your beliefs are silly simply by not believing them.
I once wrote a post explaining it in terms of the South Park Scientology episode. You know how weird you found the description of what Scientologists Actually Believe? Yeah, that’s how everyone’s religion sounds to me. Scientology is easier to pick on because it hasn’t established a long history and a huge institution. But Maher says something I’ve tried to explain for years—that the old religions are just as wacky, only they’re old,, so a lot of nonsense has managed to accrue around it that lends it some sort of weight. But it’s still quite silly.**
He also makes a damn good point about the past—these religions were explanations back when we didn’t have explanations. Why people want to cling to these explanations when they turn out to be wrong is beyond me. My favorite illustration of this was his discussion toward the end with the guy giving him the tour of Dome of the Rock.*** The man is talking about how the rock came from heaven, and thus it is god’s rock, which leads to the following exchange:
BILL: But does it matter that we now know what a meteor is?
MUSLIM: IT IS THE ROCK OF GOD.
(I don’t think it’s actually a meteor, but that is beside the point.)
Bill’s interview tactics were weird. On the one hand, he was willing to engage anyone in an honest, intelligent discussion, which is difficult with a topic people are so ready to take offense in—not everyone wanted to take him up on it. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly impartial. It was nice to have someone straight out ask, “Why do you believe this obvious bullshit?”, but he did interrupt a lot and turn it into a more heated argument. I think I’d have preferred him to stay cooler. He had a few straw man arguments too, mostly tossed in as cuts to stock footage to show “examples” of what people were talking about.
Overall, though damn was it refreshing to hear that point of view expressed. I definitely recommend seeing this movie. If you are a skeptic, you’ll laugh your ass off. If you aren’t, it’ll at least show you where we’re coming from. Either way, it’ll give you something to think about.
And, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jill_calico noted, soundtrack kicked ass, too. Doobie Brothers, Gnarls Barkley, Talking Heads, and the Bangles all in one place? Sign me up.
*Unlike Bill, I will say that I am an atheist, because I do not believe in any god right now. If you show me evidence—and by evidence I mean actual evidence, not “this is too complicated to be random” or “one has only to look at the beauty of a sunset to realize there is a god”—there’s a god, I’ll change, but I see no reason to at this point.
**Now, if you want to say you follow a religion because the stories resonate with you, that they’re symbolic, or the messages are something you agree with, or that it gives you a moral code, that’s fine. But please don’t tell me It Really Happened, because it sounds the same as saying Scientology really happened, or Norse myths really happened.
***For those of you who need a refresher—Dome of the Rock is built on the place in Jerusalem where Mohammed ascended to heaven. The Muslims built a fantastically beautiful mosque around this big old rock. This is a problem because it’s also one of the holiest sites in the Jewish religion. Oh, God/Yahweh/Allah, you practical jokester, you.
Like, at all. As a kid I never quite grasped what all this church stuff my friends went to was about. I figured it was like some kind of weird extended book club, where you went to discuss the stories in your religious book of choice, much like our Great Books class at school where we’d discuss edifying stories, what they said about the characters, etc.. It was only in high school that I really started to pick up on the fact that people seemed to literally believe this stuff.
It is hard to explain where I’m coming from with that, and there seems to be a gap that can’t be closed between me and those who grew up religious. But let me tell you something right now: Bill Maher’s Religulous has a premise that explains my point of view in a way I myself always have trouble articulating.*
Well, no, actually, I can articulate it all right, it’s just hard to have a conversation about it, because my view tends to hurt people’s feelings. Not that I mean to hurt them, but it comes out that way because unless you are atheist, I am basically telling you that your beliefs are silly simply by not believing them.
I once wrote a post explaining it in terms of the South Park Scientology episode. You know how weird you found the description of what Scientologists Actually Believe? Yeah, that’s how everyone’s religion sounds to me. Scientology is easier to pick on because it hasn’t established a long history and a huge institution. But Maher says something I’ve tried to explain for years—that the old religions are just as wacky, only they’re old,, so a lot of nonsense has managed to accrue around it that lends it some sort of weight. But it’s still quite silly.**
He also makes a damn good point about the past—these religions were explanations back when we didn’t have explanations. Why people want to cling to these explanations when they turn out to be wrong is beyond me. My favorite illustration of this was his discussion toward the end with the guy giving him the tour of Dome of the Rock.*** The man is talking about how the rock came from heaven, and thus it is god’s rock, which leads to the following exchange:
BILL: But does it matter that we now know what a meteor is?
MUSLIM: IT IS THE ROCK OF GOD.
(I don’t think it’s actually a meteor, but that is beside the point.)
Bill’s interview tactics were weird. On the one hand, he was willing to engage anyone in an honest, intelligent discussion, which is difficult with a topic people are so ready to take offense in—not everyone wanted to take him up on it. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly impartial. It was nice to have someone straight out ask, “Why do you believe this obvious bullshit?”, but he did interrupt a lot and turn it into a more heated argument. I think I’d have preferred him to stay cooler. He had a few straw man arguments too, mostly tossed in as cuts to stock footage to show “examples” of what people were talking about.
Overall, though damn was it refreshing to hear that point of view expressed. I definitely recommend seeing this movie. If you are a skeptic, you’ll laugh your ass off. If you aren’t, it’ll at least show you where we’re coming from. Either way, it’ll give you something to think about.
And, as
jill_calico noted, soundtrack kicked ass, too. Doobie Brothers, Gnarls Barkley, Talking Heads, and the Bangles all in one place? Sign me up.*Unlike Bill, I will say that I am an atheist, because I do not believe in any god right now. If you show me evidence—and by evidence I mean actual evidence, not “this is too complicated to be random” or “one has only to look at the beauty of a sunset to realize there is a god”—there’s a god, I’ll change, but I see no reason to at this point.
**Now, if you want to say you follow a religion because the stories resonate with you, that they’re symbolic, or the messages are something you agree with, or that it gives you a moral code, that’s fine. But please don’t tell me It Really Happened, because it sounds the same as saying Scientology really happened, or Norse myths really happened.
***For those of you who need a refresher—Dome of the Rock is built on the place in Jerusalem where Mohammed ascended to heaven. The Muslims built a fantastically beautiful mosque around this big old rock. This is a problem because it’s also one of the holiest sites in the Jewish religion. Oh, God/Yahweh/Allah, you practical jokester, you.
