13 Years Ago Today: All in or All out

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 9, 2007.]

I have talked approvingly of what I understood to be Søren Kierkegaard’s view, on the question of belief in God, that it was nobler (as well as more accurate) to hang with one hand from one ledge of the narrow chasm of religious belief and with the other hand from the opposite ledge than to transfer either hand to join the other on the same ledge. Hanging precariously from both ledges symbolized doubt. Kierkegaard thought doubt nobler because it consigned the doubter to the perpetual angst of his uncertainty whether to believe or not to believe, since, as a matter of accuracy, the person could not be objectively sure which belief was right.

Ten Years Ago Today: All in or all out

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 9, 2007, not a word different, same image as then, but with an author’s note at the very end.]

I have talked approvingly of what I understood to be Kierkegaard’s view, on the question of belief in God, that it was nobler (as well as more accurate) to hang with one hand from one ledge of the narrow chasm of religious belief and with the other hand from the opposite ledge than to transfer either hand to join the other on the same ledge. Hanging precariously from both ledges symbolized doubt. Kierkegaard thought doubt nobler because it consigned the doubter to the perpetual angst of his uncertainty whether to believe or not to believe, since, as a matter of accuracy, the person could not be objectively sure which belief was right.

Thor's Day: The most insidious belief of all?

Some exit polling this week sought to gather data on how religious belief correlated to voting in the presidential election [excerpts from Sarah Posner's "Exit Polls on Religion"]:

In Florida...24% of the respondents were white evangelicals, and 78% of them voted for Romney....

Motomynd: Is there a case for religion? Unfortunately yes

[Without prior discussion and before I heard from Ken Marks on the subject, Motomynd submitted the first draft of his own answer whether there's a case for religion.]

Moristotle, in a comment on your article "A Declaration of Animal Rights," you quoted Genesis 1:26 and reported that the King James Bible’s translation and a number of parallel translations all expressed the sense that mankind was to have dominion over the rest of creation. I wonder whether the Hebrew word rada, which is apparently at the core of the original "dominion" concept, was mistranslated by all of them.
In the traditionally accepted translation—and conveniently the most useful to humankind–rada does mean to have dominion or power over all. In modern research there is apparently considerable question as to whether rada was supposed to imply power over or at the heart of.
    Not being a trained translator of Hebrew, I can't argue it one way or the other, but I know which translation feels like it makes the most sense. Those with power, adults for example, are supposed to look after those without power, children for example. That much is generally accepted: rampant child abuse, international trafficking of children for sex and alleged pedophilia cover-ups in the Catholic Church and at Penn State non-withstanding. And it has long been the way of many cultures to believe that since they have power they should look after victims in other countries who don’t have power: France helping a fledgling North American democracy win its freedom from England, for example. That way of thinking begat the United Nations, after all, and inspires the United States to spend as much on military might as the rest of the world combined.

So are we to believe that humanity has this duty to look after those who can’t help themselves, yet be supposed to brutally utilize animals, who are the most innocent and absolutely least able to help themselves? And are we to believe this because someone, somewhere, sometime, was allegedly inspired by some mythical being to have a thought, and that thought was at some future time allegedly to be perfectly translated to stone or paper or a slab of wood, then to be retranslated perfectly every time a village was destroyed or a culture was lost for a few hundred years?
    What if the person chiseling in the rock was left handed? What if the person doing the translating was dyslexic? Maybe dog really is our co-pilot, instead of just a family pet or a menu item in too many restaurants around the world.
    Some people love to accept long-held dogma on faith, but if you actually stop and think about it, how does it feel?

When we try to bring factual, accurate translation to ancient religious texts,  are we arguing a point as inconsequential as why don't light sabers cut each other in half in Star Wars battle scenes since they slice and dice everything else? What point is there in conducting a factual investigation of a possible mistranslation of some nearly prehistoric word that may be based in fantasy with as much scientific and historic proof as the tales of King Arthur or the legend of Bigfoot?
    If the world suffers a disaster and the only remnants of our time that survive are a VHS player and a Beta version of Star Wars…or Cinderella…think of the mistranslation that could create. Eons from now people could be choosing between the worship of Darth and Luke, or between fairy tale princess and wicked witch. It could be the horrors of "The Inquisition" all over again. Or Disneyworld in August. Either way it will be really bad news.

Take accurate records out of the equation and the facts can quickly get murky. Even with reams of newspaper and magazine print and thousands of hours of broadcast footage clearly stating that no one in Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, ten years later something like 30% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was involved in it. Can you even begin to imagine how twisted that tale could be after several thousand years if no one ever wrote it down?
    So, to answer the question you posed at the end of the cited comment: Is there a case for religion? Even for a street-level practical thinker such as myself, yes, there is a strong case for religion. Religion must exist so that people of power can shape it to their benefit and use it to help justify and achieve their goals, and so that people of little or no power can use it to rationalize their own way of living rather than making the effort to live better. Without religion how do people stomach the daily mini-atrocities they commit? Can you imagine the chaos if people actually had to take an honest look in the mirror and hold themselves accountable instead of being able to pass the buck on to some mysterious something?

In 1971, Ian Anderson, of the music group Jethro Tull, summed it up nicely in these three paragraphs of album notes preceding the lyrics to the song "Aqualung":

In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord of all the earth when it was suited to Man.
And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good.

    Do these paragraphs have the backing of any great religious thinker? No. Were they intended for any reason other than figuratively poking a stick in the eye of establishment thinking? Probably not. Did Ian Anderson himself even take them seriously? Maybe not. Do they have at least have more chance of being documented accurately than what some person or some mythical being allegedly said, or allegedly inspired some person to think thousands of years ago? Absolutely.

With a different roll of the dice our feature holiday meal might be the only fresh grasshopper we have found the past two days. Some believe that with another roll of the dice we could be the turkey on the table rather than the person sitting at the table with gleaming carving knife in hand. Yes, there is a case for religion, but less dogma and much more strong, logical and independent thought offers far greater hope for the future of humanity, animals and the world.

Ready for adult content?

A shell among many
collected at North Carolina's
Outer Banks in May

With impeccable timing, in view of this morning's post, a simple test presented itself in the morning Burlington Times-News—on the front page, too.
    The article at the bottom of the page features the photo shown to the right. Click on it to see it larger. What do you see?
    What you see is the test. Do you see a random pattern of colors and lines and textures? Or do you see a particular image intentionally placed?

The printed article is titled "Jesus in a seashell? Graham woman shows off image of Christ." On the web, it's titled "Sharing the light: Image in beachcombing find illuminates."
    When the shell collector's father first examined the shell, he thought there was a flame in the middle of it.
    He handed it to his wife (the collector's mother), who had just glanced at a picture of Jesus she keeps in the living room.

Her picture of Jesus
(detail)

She saw Jesus just as he is depicted in her picture, with a white robe and looking slightly toward the right in the center of the shell. She handed it back to her husband.
    "He looked again, and he saw it," she said.
    When she put her picture of Jesus beside the shell, the image seemed even clearer.
    "I guess you have to be a believer to see it," she said....
    It makes perfect sense to her that her husband first saw the flame of a candle inside the shell.
    "Any way you look at it, he's the light of the world," she said.

She doesn't seem to be ready for adult content.
    What about her husband?
    Depends on whether he was just being agreeable with his wife. Might be. After all, to her, he was the light of the world (going by "her husband's" textual proximity to "he's the light," at any rate)—a stellar spouse indeed. The world might be more agreeable by half with that sort of concord among spouses.
    And think of a world not only more peaceful but also more rational, in which the spouses being agreed with are the ones who are ready for adult content.

All in or All out

I have talked approvingly of what I understood to be Kierkegaard's view, on the question of belief in God, that it was nobler (as well as truer) to hang with one hand from one ledge of the narrow chasm of religious belief and with the other hand from the opposite ledge than to transfer either hand to join the other on the same ledge. Hanging precariously from both ledges symbolized doubt. Kierkegaard thought doubt nobler because it consigned the doubter to the perpetual angst of his uncertainty whether to believe or not to believe, since, as a matter of truth, the person could not be objectively sure which belief was right.

But I've now given up nobility. I've shifted the hand that was clinging to belief over to the other ledge and am now hanging with both hands from un- or non- or disbelief, and I feel ever so much better. And those who have done just the opposite—and cling to belief with both hands—feel better too, I assume.

I suppose that being either all in or all out of anything is more comfortable. A juror who just can't make up her mind whether the man accused of murder is guilty or not will be in agony over it. If deliberations go overnight, she might not be able to sleep. I used to agonize over whether or not to approve of the death penalty. I feel better now that I've come down unshakably against it. In general, humans find relief and feel better after they stop roiling and make up their minds!

On "the religious question" (which is essentially whether God exists and can be approached through some form of worship or prayer), believers who cling to their belief with both hands usually try to fortify their position by applying to a particular "holy scripture" which they accept as containing "the revealed Word of God." This could be The Torah, The New Testament, The Qur'an, The Book of Mormon, or whatever. A belief in a particular divine revelation, it seems to me, works this way in "fortifying" their fundamental belief: if the scripture in question is true, then of course God is...this or that, for The Book says so. But note the "if" regarding the scripture. No one can know objectively whether it's the "Word of God" or not. A noble doubter will cling to the two opposed ledges on that question.

I said that believers in God "try to fortify" their belief through application to a holy scripture. "Try" because of course such application is no real help at all. They still have to face Kierkegaard's question. The leap of faith has to be taken on the question whether there really was a revelation or not...

...just as the disbeliever takes his leap of faith that religion is false, that God (in the personal sense) does not exist, that Jesus was not the Son of God, that Muhammad was not a Messenger of God, that Joseph Smith's golden plates were an elaborate hoax motivated by greed and venality, that the various similarities of religious belief and practice around the world show, not that God has revealed Himself to peoples everywhere, but that evolved man tends to project the same gods everywhere, that most of those beliefs and practices flatter neither the assumed gods nor the actual men, and so on.

And, to be honest (which I hope I always am), I admit that I make an application myself to try to fortify my nonbelief. My application is to rationality, or common sense. Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens seem to me to make a very great deal more sense (in their books The Age of Reason, Why I Am Not a Christian, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great, respectively) than the "holy books" I'm familiar with. It seems ever so much more reasonable to me that religion is a childish fantasy than that it is a serious adult vision. But some of the things said in scripture are nevertheless apt:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. [The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 13:11]

I do have at least one remaining question. It has to do with the distinction between religion and spirituality. As a noble doubter, I felt that I could "be spiritual" even though I found it ridiculous to try to "be religious." The question is: Now that I've opted for being all out when it comes to religion, is spirituality still an option for me, and what does that mean?