And is the doctrine of heaven and hell, to which believers and non-believers are, respectively, assigned, one of those things you have "experienced to be true"? This article is an example of what Sam Harris calls the nonsense of religious moderation, the numinal equivalent of the settled belief there is a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in one’s backyard. To invite others to start digging with you is only to ask them to share in your game of make-believe.
Religion, in fact, is [i:824dbc8bb6]about[/i:824dbc8bb6] beliefs that are either right or wrong. I cannot simultaneously believe that an eternal life of throwing my crown at Jesus’ feet awaits me AND that I will spend the rest of eternity enjoying the attentions of 72 ever-virginal young women under the stern and watchful eye of Allah.
One could argue that it’s all about the metaphor — that these are but ways of speaking about the truth of an never-dying consciousness, and that this immortality is what gives all of our lives dignity, and encourages us to treat other human beings with respect. But, in fact, these beliefs are what encourage us to kill our other-believing neighbours to keep them from corrupting our children, thereby endangering the little ones’ souls.
Moreover, we only possess the "evidence" of revelation for the literal narratives, the stories of division, exclusion, and every form of demarcation of the faithful from the non-faithful. To abstract a pure ethical principle of hope and dialogue from these stories is to strip them of historical and meaningful content and turn them into overexplanations of the mystery of everyday human relations. You don’t need religious patter to justify empathy, tact, diplomacy, negotiation, and (when necessary) self-defense.
dunadan
Apr 14 2006
05:27 pm
And is the doctrine of heaven and hell, to which believers and non-believers are, respectively, assigned, one of those things you have "experienced to be true"? This article is an example of what Sam Harris calls the nonsense of religious moderation, the numinal equivalent of the settled belief there is a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in one’s backyard. To invite others to start digging with you is only to ask them to share in your game of make-believe.
Religion, in fact, is [i:824dbc8bb6]about[/i:824dbc8bb6] beliefs that are either right or wrong. I cannot simultaneously believe that an eternal life of throwing my crown at Jesus’ feet awaits me AND that I will spend the rest of eternity enjoying the attentions of 72 ever-virginal young women under the stern and watchful eye of Allah.
One could argue that it’s all about the metaphor — that these are but ways of speaking about the truth of an never-dying consciousness, and that this immortality is what gives all of our lives dignity, and encourages us to treat other human beings with respect. But, in fact, these beliefs are what encourage us to kill our other-believing neighbours to keep them from corrupting our children, thereby endangering the little ones’ souls.
Moreover, we only possess the "evidence" of revelation for the literal narratives, the stories of division, exclusion, and every form of demarcation of the faithful from the non-faithful. To abstract a pure ethical principle of hope and dialogue from these stories is to strip them of historical and meaningful content and turn them into overexplanations of the mystery of everyday human relations. You don’t need religious patter to justify empathy, tact, diplomacy, negotiation, and (when necessary) self-defense.