Posted by Editormum on 18 March 2004 in
News Commentary |
∞
In 2004, a blogger named “Atheist Historian” posted a scathing indictment of religion—all religion—and its propensity to foster fear and foment hysteria in adherents. This was at the time of the flowering bamboo uproar in India, with people convinced that famine was eminent and that millions would die because the bamboo plants were in flower—something that happens only once every 50 years or so. Atheist Historian used the rampant hysteria as a springboard for expressing his scorn for all religions and the people who allow themselves to be duped by them. I wrote the following in answer to Atheist Historian’s post, but I think the theme is valid no matter the time or circumstance.
I’m a Christian, so I’m going to focus on Christianity, as that’s the religion I have the most experience with. However, I have a solid grounding in Judaism, and slight knowledge of Islam. None of these religions promote mindless subservience to superstition. They do encourage active faith.
The true Christian is not some mindless moron who lets superstitious fears gain a hold over him so that he cannot act in a way to stave off or combat bad things that may happen. The true Christian does not grovel about asking God to take the bad things away. The true Christian, faced with something frightening or horrible, turns to God and says, “God, this is awful; please help. If you want to make it go away, great. If not, I am going to assume that you want me to learn how to handle this awful thing. Help me have the wisdom to know what to do, and the strength to do it.”
And then the true Christian gets up off his knees and goes and does something about the horrible thing. He may keep on praying, but he does it on the move—working hard, but constantly in tune with God, asking for continued strength, help, direction, wisdom, etc.
The true Christian, seeing the flowering bamboo, would say, “God, you know we believe that the bamboo flowering is a portent of famine and destruction. If this is true, then please help us know what to do to avert the coming disaster, or to lessen its effects. If this is not true, then show us visibly that is is a lie, in such a way that we cannot mistake the message.”
Then the true Christian would organise a programme of food and resource stockpiling to assure that people would not have to face famine unprepared. He would organise a pest-control squad to combat mice, rats, and any other vermin which might despoil the food sources and bring disease. And the true Christian would let others know of the fears and needs of his community, so that they could offer assistance and resources as well.
That’s true Christianity. True Christianity has on work gloves and snake-boots. It wades in and attacks problems while relying on God for strength to persevere through whatever difficulties may occur. True Christianity stands courageously (not fearlessly) in the face of danger and says, “I can conquer this through God’s strength.” True Christianity recognizes that God gave us all brains and He didn’t intend them as mere stuffing to keeps our heads round. He expects us to use them to solve the problems that life presents us. But He is there to offer wisdom, strength, and help when we ask Him for them.
Okay, that’s what I think of as the true Christian. Now, where does superstition come in? Because, obviously and demonstrably, there are many people who believe that they are Christians who are, nevertheless, paralysed by superstitions and who may often be found, as Atheist Historian put it, “on his knees, groveling and ‘praying’ to his imaginary god to please come and make the bad things go away.”
And Atheist Historian is right in his assessment that this sort of religious behaviour is “…dehumanizing. It takes away strength, individuality, and resourcefulness…. reduces people to helpless, mindless sheep who can only whine and cry like children, begging some higher power to help them and protect them, instead of working actively to deal with the problem on their own.”
The problem is that religion is not just presented to the intelligent person who has mental capacity able to look past the fears and doubts and conquer them to do what is right. Religion is very much for every person, no matter their intellectual or psychological capacity. Thus, religious beliefs are often watered down, taken out of context, and misunderstood by the very people who hope to be helped by the religion. And that is where superstition comes in.
Take this flowering bamboo thing, for instance. While the intelligent among the people would have noticed the obvious cause and effect—when the bamboo flowers, it attracts vermin which devastate the crops and stored foodstuffs and bring disease, leading to famine, illness, and deaths—the less mentally capable would simply have said, “Well, the bamboo flowered last spring, and here we are all sick and starving. There’s a connexion there.” And then when it happened again, that observation would be repeated, until eventually it became a cultural truism that the flowering of the bamboo meant certain death and destruction.
Where you run into trouble is when the less educated and mentally alert are able to overpower the intelligent thinkers, thereby preventing them from taking rational steps to prevent disaster. And we have to look objectively at history and realise that until the Sixteenth Century, the uneducated masses outnumbered the educated immensely.
It really was not until the mid-Nineteenth Century that mass literacy began to be seen as valuable, and the reforms needed to achieve mass literacy were not fully functional until the early Twentieth Century. Sadly, most of those reforms took place only in Westernized nations like America, Canada, England, France, and Germany.
So you end up with a great mass of superstitions: if you spill salt, something terrible will happen unless you toss a pinch over your left shoulder; a black cat crossing your path means death will soon follow…. Any person of any culture can name at least a hundred different superstitions that have taken deep, deep root in his culture.
Now, the educated person can look at the spilling of salt and say, “They used to think it a harbinger of doom because salt was so expensive and valuable. But just because I was clumsy at table doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to have bad luck all day. And what good is tossing a pinch over my shoulder, anyway…that’s just more waste.” And they clean up the spill and go on with their happy lives.
But the uneducated person sees the spilling of salt and is paralysed by fear: “Oh, no! Terrible things will happen! I’ve been told so all my life! And Uncle Joe spilled salt and got run over by a bus that very same day, so it must be true. Quick, gimme a pinch to toss over my shoulder!”
True religion, true faith, removes a person from the tyranny of fear and allows the person to live in peace. It’s only those who cannot relinquish their faith in superstitions who end up as slaves to a religion that feeds the fires of their fears and causes them even more mental and spiritual torture.
That is what Christianity’s great goal was—that is what the Christian concept of “grace” is all about. We do not have to live in fear (of death, of sin, of the consequences of sin) because all has been taken care of. We are given power to conquer evil and bad happenings through our faith in God, and God does not see our sinfulness, only our faith in Him. Even though we are not perfect, even though our faith does not preclude our making more mistakes in life, God still cares about us and will help us as we seek to improve ourselves and conquer evil in the world.
Grace is all about the conquering of fear. And the feeling of liberation and freedom that one feels the first time he doesn’t toss a pinch of spilt salt over his shoulder and makes it through a whole day without a bad happening is true freedom and liberation. And it’s exhilarating and empowering beyond words.
Tags: Christianity, culture, faith, fear, grace, Philosophy, Religion, superstition
Superstition or Religion? Where Does the Person of True Faith Stand?
In 2004, a blogger named “Atheist Historian” posted a scathing indictment of religion—all religion—and its propensity to foster fear and foment hysteria in adherents. This was at the time of the flowering bamboo uproar in India, with people convinced that famine was eminent and that millions would die because the bamboo plants were in flower—something that happens only once every 50 years or so. Atheist Historian used the rampant hysteria as a springboard for expressing his scorn for all religions and the people who allow themselves to be duped by them. I wrote the following in answer to Atheist Historian’s post, but I think the theme is valid no matter the time or circumstance.
I’m a Christian, so I’m going to focus on Christianity, as that’s the religion I have the most experience with. However, I have a solid grounding in Judaism, and slight knowledge of Islam. None of these religions promote mindless subservience to superstition. They do encourage active faith.
The true Christian is not some mindless moron who lets superstitious fears gain a hold over him so that he cannot act in a way to stave off or combat bad things that may happen. The true Christian does not grovel about asking God to take the bad things away. The true Christian, faced with something frightening or horrible, turns to God and says, “God, this is awful; please help. If you want to make it go away, great. If not, I am going to assume that you want me to learn how to handle this awful thing. Help me have the wisdom to know what to do, and the strength to do it.”
And then the true Christian gets up off his knees and goes and does something about the horrible thing. He may keep on praying, but he does it on the move—working hard, but constantly in tune with God, asking for continued strength, help, direction, wisdom, etc.
The true Christian, seeing the flowering bamboo, would say, “God, you know we believe that the bamboo flowering is a portent of famine and destruction. If this is true, then please help us know what to do to avert the coming disaster, or to lessen its effects. If this is not true, then show us visibly that is is a lie, in such a way that we cannot mistake the message.”
Then the true Christian would organise a programme of food and resource stockpiling to assure that people would not have to face famine unprepared. He would organise a pest-control squad to combat mice, rats, and any other vermin which might despoil the food sources and bring disease. And the true Christian would let others know of the fears and needs of his community, so that they could offer assistance and resources as well.
That’s true Christianity. True Christianity has on work gloves and snake-boots. It wades in and attacks problems while relying on God for strength to persevere through whatever difficulties may occur. True Christianity stands courageously (not fearlessly) in the face of danger and says, “I can conquer this through God’s strength.” True Christianity recognizes that God gave us all brains and He didn’t intend them as mere stuffing to keeps our heads round. He expects us to use them to solve the problems that life presents us. But He is there to offer wisdom, strength, and help when we ask Him for them.
Okay, that’s what I think of as the true Christian. Now, where does superstition come in? Because, obviously and demonstrably, there are many people who believe that they are Christians who are, nevertheless, paralysed by superstitions and who may often be found, as Atheist Historian put it, “on his knees, groveling and ‘praying’ to his imaginary god to please come and make the bad things go away.”
And Atheist Historian is right in his assessment that this sort of religious behaviour is “…dehumanizing. It takes away strength, individuality, and resourcefulness…. reduces people to helpless, mindless sheep who can only whine and cry like children, begging some higher power to help them and protect them, instead of working actively to deal with the problem on their own.”
The problem is that religion is not just presented to the intelligent person who has mental capacity able to look past the fears and doubts and conquer them to do what is right. Religion is very much for every person, no matter their intellectual or psychological capacity. Thus, religious beliefs are often watered down, taken out of context, and misunderstood by the very people who hope to be helped by the religion. And that is where superstition comes in.
Take this flowering bamboo thing, for instance. While the intelligent among the people would have noticed the obvious cause and effect—when the bamboo flowers, it attracts vermin which devastate the crops and stored foodstuffs and bring disease, leading to famine, illness, and deaths—the less mentally capable would simply have said, “Well, the bamboo flowered last spring, and here we are all sick and starving. There’s a connexion there.” And then when it happened again, that observation would be repeated, until eventually it became a cultural truism that the flowering of the bamboo meant certain death and destruction.
Where you run into trouble is when the less educated and mentally alert are able to overpower the intelligent thinkers, thereby preventing them from taking rational steps to prevent disaster. And we have to look objectively at history and realise that until the Sixteenth Century, the uneducated masses outnumbered the educated immensely.
It really was not until the mid-Nineteenth Century that mass literacy began to be seen as valuable, and the reforms needed to achieve mass literacy were not fully functional until the early Twentieth Century. Sadly, most of those reforms took place only in Westernized nations like America, Canada, England, France, and Germany.
So you end up with a great mass of superstitions: if you spill salt, something terrible will happen unless you toss a pinch over your left shoulder; a black cat crossing your path means death will soon follow…. Any person of any culture can name at least a hundred different superstitions that have taken deep, deep root in his culture.
Now, the educated person can look at the spilling of salt and say, “They used to think it a harbinger of doom because salt was so expensive and valuable. But just because I was clumsy at table doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to have bad luck all day. And what good is tossing a pinch over my shoulder, anyway…that’s just more waste.” And they clean up the spill and go on with their happy lives.
But the uneducated person sees the spilling of salt and is paralysed by fear: “Oh, no! Terrible things will happen! I’ve been told so all my life! And Uncle Joe spilled salt and got run over by a bus that very same day, so it must be true. Quick, gimme a pinch to toss over my shoulder!”
True religion, true faith, removes a person from the tyranny of fear and allows the person to live in peace. It’s only those who cannot relinquish their faith in superstitions who end up as slaves to a religion that feeds the fires of their fears and causes them even more mental and spiritual torture.
That is what Christianity’s great goal was—that is what the Christian concept of “grace” is all about. We do not have to live in fear (of death, of sin, of the consequences of sin) because all has been taken care of. We are given power to conquer evil and bad happenings through our faith in God, and God does not see our sinfulness, only our faith in Him. Even though we are not perfect, even though our faith does not preclude our making more mistakes in life, God still cares about us and will help us as we seek to improve ourselves and conquer evil in the world.
Grace is all about the conquering of fear. And the feeling of liberation and freedom that one feels the first time he doesn’t toss a pinch of spilt salt over his shoulder and makes it through a whole day without a bad happening is true freedom and liberation. And it’s exhilarating and empowering beyond words.
Tags: Christianity, culture, faith, fear, grace, Philosophy, Religion, superstition