Can't we all just get along ? Answer : yes, as long as we both agree not to tread on each other's toes.
People sometimes say that you can't pick and choose which bits of a religion you want to believe. That is complete nonsense. People do this all the time whether you think they can or not. There's a virtue in picking and choosing, and it demonstrates that religious followers are not all blindly unquestioning sheep. Theology would be completely unnecessary if everyone took their religious texts literally. There may be comfort in blind obedience to a set text, but there's no safety - for yourself or anyone else. It would indeed be an absolutely ghoulish world if people followed their religious books to the letter, so why on Earth are you trying to make people do this ? Fortunately, they don't - which, incidentally, also means that it's pointless to judge people by what their books say... And yet devout atheists continue to act as though all Christians - and by extension all theists - have this utterly ridiculous, uber-simplistic view of the world.
There was an appropo comment in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End
ReplyDeleteWhen Karellen is talking to Stormgren about Zeus and Thor.
Winchell Chung Do you remember the quote ? Most of my books are in Cardiff.
ReplyDeleteKarellen is the chief of the alien Overlords.
ReplyDeleteRikki Stormgren is the president of the United Nations.
Wainwright is the head of an anti-Overlord movement, on religious grounds.
From Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)
“You know why Wainwright and his type fear me, don’t you?” asked Karellen. His voice was sombre now, like a great organ rolling its notes from a high cathedral nave. “You will find men like him in all the world’s religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods.
Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No-one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor--but they have few followers now. The Wainwrights fear, too, that we know the truth about the origins of their faiths. How long, they wonder, have we been observing humanity? Have we watched Mohammed begin the Hegira, or Moses giving the Jews their laws? Do we know all that is false in the stories they believe?”
“And do you?” whispered Stormgren, half to himself.
“That, Rikki, is the fear that torments them, even though they will never admit it openly. Believe me, it gives us no pleasure to destroy men’s faiths, but all the world’s religions cannot be right--and they know it. Sooner or later man has to learn the truth: but that time is not yet."