Thursday of the week will be devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes of course from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day." In Norse mythology, Thor (from Old Norse Þórr) was a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility. [Characterization from Wikipedia.]Some basic religious beliefs seem unobjectionable enough. To believe, for example, that if people pray for you your chances thereby improve for overcoming cancer or for making your house payment wouldn't seem to cause a problem for anyone. Your doctor will almost surely nod and tell you it can't hurt to pray and have prayers said for you. So go ahead. And we won't object either. If it makes you feel better, where's the harm?
We considered having this feature on Wednesdays, or "Woden's Day," but liked Thor's connotations better. Woden or Wodan...was a major deity of Anglo-Saxon and Continental Germanic polytheism. Old English had the noun wōþ "song, sound," corresponding to Old Norse óðr, which has the meaning "fury." The 11th century German chronicler Adam of Bremen, described Wodan, id est furor, "Wodan, that is, the furious."
That last is a bit too much like the Old Testament god Jehovah for our refined tastes.
Of course, if the belief leads you to ignore your doctor's advice as unnecessary, or if it leads you to stop trying to put together funds for your house payment, you may worsen your situation. Insights like that led to the homily, "God helps those who help themselves."
The key here seems to be not to believe 100% something for which you don't (and can't) have good evidence. If you do believe it 100%, you box yourself out from other, more reliable options. Believe it just enough to make yourself (and your friends) feel better in spirit, but don't put any more stock in it than that.
Note that you can often make your friends feel better just by pretending to believe something.
I'm taking a religious belief to be a belief for which there is not enough evidence to substantiate that it is true or even probably true. That is, you have to "take it on faith" to take it at all. Otherwise, don't believe it.
What about beliefs for which there is sufficient evidence to substantiate that they aren't true, or probably aren't? Of course, you shouldn't believe such things, it isn't reasonable.
But people do believe such things. The earth is 6,000 years old. God created the species in their present form. The Bible prescribes how we should live today.
It isn't necessarily be objectionable for people to believe them anyway, if they don't adversely affect anyone else. But they do. Children of people who believe such things are disadvantaged, certainly in terms of education and very likely in terms of social and economic opportunity. That parents believe such things and indoctrinate their children in them is tragic and a travesty.
That voters believe such things can, and routinely does, affect others adversely also. They vote for the wrong candidates, they put wrong-headed restrictions on what schools can teach, who can get married, who will be permitted to serve, and so on.
One religious belief that is particularly objectionable is the belief that your religion is the only true one. An article in today's newspaper recounted Islamists blowing up some more ancient shrines in Timbuktu. (You can read about it in, for example, The Telegraph.)
Of course, if you don't act on the belief that your religious belief is the only true one (apparently not a possibility for "Islamists"), then maybe it's not so objectionable. Again, unless you have children, or vote (to name only two activities adversely affected).
Unfortunately, religious beliefs come in packaged assortments—usually in pre-packaged assortments, assembled by others for your consumption, complete with reinforcers to make them stick. If you backslide, you will receive extra punishment in hell. People who renounce our religion should be stoned to death.
If you're frightened by such beliefs, you're all the more likely to buy into the beliefs that accompany them—if you can't safely leave that belief system and become free to believe things for which there is good evidence.
Blind faith is not limited to religion.
ReplyDeleteHumans, by nature, are followers and routinely follow leaders: political, military, religious, learned etc. Often times there is no choice who must be followed. But when there is a choice, all too many follow for reasons other than rational: some follow individuals their parents followed; some follow the majority (safety in numbers); some follow charismatic individuals; some follow individuals whom they perceive to possess knowledge in areas they don’t; etc.
Few follow based upon truth, the objective analysis of the evidence. Hence most follow with blind faith.
Faith is neither good nor bad. One can put faith in oneself and take the time to figure out the truth for one's self - God helps those who help themselves - or better yet (and easier) one can let some else figure out the truth and then put faith in him. If you choose this latter route, to put faith in someone else, the trick is to choose wisely who to follow.
Jim, thanks for your sage accompaniment to my first entry for "Thor's Day." Among other things, it points out (implicitly) that I defined "religious belief" way too generally, not mentioning, as one possibility, that the belief has something or other to do with things supernatural. I forgave myself that because of the fact that other kinds of 100% belief are also described as "religious," albeit metaphorically. For example, I believe in myself religiously.
DeleteBut such kinds of "blind faith" can be useful, as you remind us.
Even blind faith in life after death (for example) enables some people, who might otherwise despair, to keep themselves together and "keep on trucking." Or, alternatively, it can give them the courage to just kill themselves to escape the present hell and go directly to rescue in heaven. Unless they also believe that suicide is a mortal sin, with punishments that might make the present hell seem fairly tolerable.
As I know you already know well, casuistry in the service of rescuing oneself from the paradoxes of religious fantasy opens Pandora's Box and releases all manner of absurdities. Christopher Buckley's memoir about his parents taught me the term "half-gainer" to label that sort of "thinking."
Can I just say thank you for the reprint. I missed the first printing but found your mission statement very interesting, and it went well with my coffee. That's always a good sign.(smile)
ReplyDeleteThanks, good Ed, for validating my decision to "reprint"!
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