Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
I’ve had it with religion
Listen. Like a spiritual biorhythm, I get a yen every few years to be more Jewish. It’s an odd urge which my family tolerates and I accede to with little resistance. With what’s happening in the Middle East, however, I don’t think my inner Jew will dare make an appearance . . . not for some time, anyway.
Some background is in order. My parents raised me to be a bacon-wrapped shrimp lovin’ kid. I come from long lines of apostates on both sides of the tree. My father’s dad relished pissing off the rabbi by keeping his grocery store (across the street from the synagogue) open on the Sabbath, and my father’s philosophy, as best I can tell, requires only a belief in predestination. On my mom’s side, being Jewish meant (A) hosting a riotous Seder every year and (B) nurturing an abiding hatred for the Catholics. (My grandmother kept bringing up the Inquisition. Can you believe that?) No one talked much about God.
Being a Jewish kid in California in the 60s and 70s meant
- Never forget the Holocaust.
- Our people have been persecuted for centuries. It’s not likely to stop any time soon.
- Support Israel. Save your quarters, plant a tree.
- Marry a Jewish girl.
- Hold on there, sonny! It’s been 30 seconds, and we haven’t reminded you of the Holocaust!
So . . . forgive me if I step on your spiritual toes, but at least you know I’ve been a partial heathen for many years now.
I’ve kvetched about this in the past, but it has been a while. Blue Gal’s post today reopened the wound. A quote from Gershom Gorenberg, via Blue Gal, via Right Web’s Culture, Religion, Apocalypse, and Middle East Foreign Policy:
Gershom Gorenberg points out that for Christian Zionists, Jews are actors in a play where the final curtain forces them to either convert to Christianity or die in a blaze of fire sent by God.
Enough all ready. ENOUGH. I’m tired of the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims. I’m tired of apocalyptic thinking, and in fact I think we need to recognize it for what it is: lunatic thinking, the waking fever dreams of psychopaths. Jewish Manifest Destiny is bullshit. The Book of Revelations is bullshit. ENOUGH.
I’m not saying all religion is crap. Not by a long shot. Where all religions shine is in their ethical teachings, and in that, there are riches to be found in all of the old religions. I know that a lot of you, like Blue Gal and Shelbi, consider yourselves religious Christians, but I think you try to follow the ethical teachings of Jesus and have shunned the 21st Century abomination that is American Marketplace Christianity. Similarly, I think I can be ethically Jewish without embracing an Old Testament God who wants to see his Chosen People blast the hell out of their Muslim neighbors.
Here’s a story for you. I may have told it before, and if so, I’m sorry to repeat myself.
During my last Jewish phase, my son’s stubborn atheism disturbed me. He was six at the time, and I couldn’t understand how a six-year-old could be certain of God’s nonexistence while at the same time believe in the reality of the Harry Potter universe. I mean, if you’re going to accept one form of magic, why not believe in all of them?
I kvetched to my rabbi. “My six-year-old is an atheist,” I said, and he replied, “And this is a problem?”
His point: what really matters in religion is not a set of empty beliefs but a collection of ethical teachings. You don’t have to embrace God to absorb the ethics. Ultimately, all that really matters is that we try to be the best people we can be, to ourselves and to each other, and you don’t need God for that.
Indeed (me talking now, not my rabbi), isn’t it more mature to practice the Golden Rule if you do it because you know in your heart it’s the right way to live, rather than for fear of God’s wrath? And if we could do that, take the ethics to heart and toss out the mythology, wouldn’t the world be a better place?
As I mentioned over at Blue Gal’s blog today, AKA The Panty Place, I used to think of myself as an agnostic Jew, but lately I think of myself as a cowardly atheist. Somehow, I have to reconcile this new atheism with a stubborn belief in God.
Here’s my question. If what God wants, REALLY wants, is for us to be good to one another and love one another (and if that isn’t what he wants, then WTF?), wouldn’t he also want us to jettison a mythology responsible for so much suffering, waste, and death? Wouldn’t he want us to be ethical atheists?
D.
Edited to add: Here’s an interesting diary at Kos which addresses much the same issue: Moralities. Good stuff.
I’m with you, Doug. I’ve always tried to live by the golden rule because I believe it’s the right thing to do, not because I’m afraid some bearded guy / many-armed elephant / squid in a spaceship will get me if I don’t. It seems to me like the devout types – of all faiths – doing all the yelling (and shooting) these days have forgotten the whole “Do unto others” thing.
I really don’t care what other people believe, as long as they don’t think it gives them the right to impose their own beliefs on the rest of us. Or, you know, blow ’em up for thinking differently.
I tend to think the same as you, Doug (though I suppose, technically, I’m an agnostic Protestant). I think it’s a grand idea, but I guess “Do unto others” by itself wouldn’t translate well to a hymnal full of songs that could be sung in rotation as an offering plate was being passed. Seriously, what’s the deal with scaring people into behaving? What kind of life is that?
Thanks for the linky love and more importantly, the unique and well-written viewpoint. Lucid, m’dear, lucid.
Yep, count me in. I think that the rules and ethics and what not of all the major religions boil down to two simple points.
Be good. Play nice.
It’s not that hard and nowhere in there does it say that everyone else is gonna burn but you. That you’re better than some other poor guy simply because he wears a different hat or kneels on Wednesday instead of Sunday. Or whatever. All this hullabaloo makes no sense to me, I just try to be good and play nice. So far, I’ve done all right. 🙂
Thanks, folks. I appreciate the support.
Now, for you lurkers: this is NOT AmericaBlog. It’s OKAY to disagree with me 😉
I’m in a strange place spiritually just now. After many years of questionning, I’ve come to terms with a belief in God. But now I wonder whether He or She really thinks about us in the way that we assume S/He thinks about us. I guess my current thinking is along the lines of how I’d view a pet goldfish – I’ll set him up in the tank, provide the necessities of life, but after that I’m not doing much in the way of interfering in his little fishy life. It may entertain me for awhile to watch him swim around, heck it may even entertain me to tap the glass or toss in another fish just to check his reaction, but as for really interfering – nope, doesn’t happen. Our interactions are at a remove. And it’s not that I don’t care, really, it’s that I don’t care in the way I imagine the fish might wish that I cared. The fish may think it was by particular design that the other fish I tossed in turned out to be its sole mate (couldn’t resist), but really it didn’t mean much to me one way or the other – it was just something to do one day.
So I dunno – even my analogy assumes a sort of benevolent intent on God’s part for humans, but maybe our assumptions for what S/He wants are completely beside the point. I come back again and again to thinking that if God encompasses all that I think that God does, it’s truly beyond the comprehension of man to understand (it “passeth understanding”) – it’s too much, it’s everything, it connects every person and every action in ways we can’t imagine, it makes everything wondrous, it makes everything sublime, it’s all men and all women through all time being reflections of God’s image (mere reflections, not even approaching the original), it’s all evil and it’s all goodness.
Given that, it’s hard for me to imagine that if God encompasses not just what concerns us so much here on Earth, but also infinite galaxies and innumerable parallel universes – why, with all of that to play with, would the particular hopes and desires of men who will come and go in what to God is less than the blink of an eye mean anything of any importance to Him (or Her)?
I tell people that I got my ethics and morals from all the Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, and Robert Heinlein I read as a kid. My dad was a rabid atheist while I was growing up and my mom was busy being a new age style hippie, so there was a constant battle between magical thinking and concrete operations. My brother and I were left to our own devices as far as beliefs in god or anything else. Though if you mentioned god to my dad, you had to be prepared for a lengthy, heated dicussion about the difference between faith and facts and no emotions were to be dispolayed or you lost. So when you quoted the rabbi, “His point: what really matters in religion is not a set of empty beliefs but a collection of ethical teachings. You don’t have to embrace God to absorb the ethics. Ultimately, all that really matters is that we try to be the best people we can be, to ourselves and to each other, and you don’t need God for that.”, it really resonated for me and I wish I’d had someone like him around when I was trying to balance out my mom’s out-there retreats and my dad hard science and proof philosophy.
Now that I’m working hospice, all bets are off.
I tend to think there’s a whole lot going on in the background that we aren’t privvy to, but I am unwilling to buy into any religious theory.
Ditto what tambo said. Be good. Play nice.
“Religion divides, Spirituality unites.”
Okay, Doug.
You are wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s categorically impossible to live a moral life without the fear of hellfire to keep you in line.
(how does one make a tongue-in-cheek smilie?)
If Heaven is stuffed with all those self righteous variant of Christians that tell you you’ll only get there if you become a self rightous Christian yourself, I’ll so prefer Hell. I suppose it’s full of hot gays. 😀
Why am I not surprised that most of my readers are heathens like me?
I’m reminded of an old Steve Martin routine. He dies and meets St. Peter at the gates. Says Steve to St. Peter: “What? You’re kidding me, this stuff is all real? In college they said this was all bullshit!”
Then St. Peter tells him that he has taken the Lord’s name in vain way too many times.
“How many?”
“Twelve thousand, three hundred-and-fifty-two times,” says St. Peter, or something like that.
“Twelve thousand, three hundred-and-fifty-two times?” says Steve. “Jesus Chr — oh.”
Hee hee . . .
Let me quote Honest Abe: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion. …”
Perhaps we should form our own
cultchurch. The Church of Balls.Ethics without God is good, but I don’t see a problem of ethics with God, either. I think I’m in the minority here, though 🙂
Ethics with God is perfectly fine. It’s the God without ethics people I have a problem with.
Crystal, I was hoping you’d comment. You’re about the best-read Catholic I know (since I doubt my ex-Seminary pal Mike still reads the blog). Here’s my question: how does the addition of God improve religion as a positive force for change?
sxK: me too.