Margaret Rhatican refered to the snake in genesis as the devil, using information from her new testament. It is important to keep seperate the original texts and stories with which we are currently dealing and the way they were interpreted and used later. In Genesis, the snake is not the devil, it is merely temptation. Those are seperate. While temptation was later associated with the devil, the devil was not invented until much later when they needed him to counter other religions like the Roman religion. thus the devils Pseidon "pitchfork" and Pan-like fawn horns and feet. Well, with that image of him at least.

Religion is a tangled web of imagery and political statements. Remember to deal with the imediate text at hand.

The effects of damning.

"Atheism is a form of hiding, hiding from god, from judgment, from prayer"...
This comment was made in class, and on first hearing it I bristled and thought up a hasty retort. "Atheism isn't hiding from god- my reasons for not believing in him have nothing to do with fearing his judgment"... but then I realized that to scrutinize a religion so deeply in class, to pick it apart, to look at it as a social instead of a divine entity, may be just as hard and bristling for a Christian as that comment was for me. So I held my tongue.

Attacking a person’s belief is one of the most effective ways to anger them. At least for me, it puts me on the defensive faster than any other insult. I believe that this is because, generally, people want their beliefs to be relatively stable and secure. No matter how liberal, it is natural to want to be certain of one’s self image, world image and moral values, all of which are deeply affected by religious beliefs. When you say that someone’s beliefs are invalid, or as happened in class, simply a form of cowardice, you call into question the entire way they live their lives, and effectively tell them that their beliefs make them inferior.

I do not intend to focus this post toward that one class comment. My discussion is based largely on my experiences in middle school when a large group of Christians discovered I was an atheist, and began to bully me. They passed me a test they had made quizzing me on “how did the world begin, check one”, and “what happens after you die, a, b or c?” They kicked my chair as they passed and told me I was going to hell. Obviously I was very upset, and my mother and I discussed why they were doing this, why they cared so much that I didn’t believe what they believed. What we decided was this. Their beliefs, how they interpreted the bible, was that only a Christian was a good person, and thus only a Christian should be happy and have good things happen to them. I was very happy, had recently been given the lead in the school musical and me, the sinful atheist, got better grades than they the Christians. I didn’t have to say anything to be questioning their religion; my very happiness went against the rules of who’s allowed to be happy and who’s supposed to be wallowing in sin. I hoped that this petty, childish behavior was just a middle school thing, that once I became a “grown up”, stuff like that would never happen again. Boy was I wrong. The world today is filled with exactly the same nonsense. Too many religions hold the belief that all other religions are wrong and its members damned. That’s a very dangerous belief because it leaves you vulnerable to contradiction every time you see someone of another faith getting something good. If your beliefs are true and god punishes non-believers, shouldn’t they be hit by lightning instead of winning the Nobel Prize? Why did that happen? So many people go around telling people that they’re damned, the damned people turn around and say, “We’re not damned, you are!” Then the entire world starts damning people in a “fire ze missiles” kind of way and everyone gets damned. And no one is happy when their damned.

Response to Daniel Fulton

"I would interpret commercial software as parallelling more formal "book" religion, our religion in boxes. Formal religions often intentionally denounce each other and are "incompatible." There adherence to rules and accepted practice make them slower to change. There is no strong modern parallel to "open source religion." Religious communities exist, but very few consciously work to dynamically change to suit the religious needs of their adherents. What would be necessary for a consciously dynamic religion?"


I thought that this computer metaphor was an excellent parallel, especially about the traditional "book religions" purposefully canceling each other out. I would briefly like to address the question of open source religions. Back home in minneapolis, I sang in the choir of Plymouth Congregational Church for two years. While at first I went to church each sunday suspicious of the congregation and paranoid that they would try to convert me, I quickly realized that this was a flexible and open minded religious community, accepting of other religious beliefs and aware of the fantastical and metaphorical quality of the christian religious texts. They emphasized the unity of world religions and the importance of embracing all beliefs, whether christian, jewish, hindu, atheist, agnostic or wicca. I know that many religions are expanding their views to "comfortably provide religion to the modern educated, open minded individual". They have changed their rules to fit the needs of the consumer and to collaborate with neighboring religions. I think this fits the qualities of an "open source religion".

In todays discussion of "What is Religion", one of the ideas was that religion provides comfort and security and that it explains natural phenomena. By believing that there is "someone up there" watching and taking care of you, one can be certain that everything happens for a reason. Both bad things and good things are earned by the recipiant, so as long as you know and abide by the rules, you can control whether good things or bad things happen to you. The ancient greeks and Romans are perfect examples, offering sacrifices to particular gods when they want something, and blaming someone for offending a god if something bad happens to them. Its a very comfortable way to see the world, to know where everything came from. But that cant be all that religion is, a desire to manipulate a higher power and thus control one's destiny. Though I am an atheist, I am very spiritual, and the connection I feel with my beliefs cannot simply be explained as guidelines to get "good things" instead of bad. With my beliefs comes a sense of fulfulment and wonder that doesn't lie in the security is gives me but rather the unknowns it leaves me to answer.
It seems likely to me that in the earliest days of religion, it's sole purpse was to reassure the believer that they were in control of their fate, that the world wasnt a vehicle of random chance. Evolutionarily, this makes sense-a hunter will be more fearless after performing rituals, the confidence his certaintly gives him will attract a mate. However, today, the evolutionary advantages have become irrevolent, and left the brain with the structures which desire religion, leaving our more complex brains to develope huge societal structures around the originally simple idea of surety. Like Henig's example in "Why Do We Believe", religion is like breasts. Desiring large, full breasts has a definite evolutionary advantage, but that desire has been expanded to be used in unnecesary and unrelated areas such as selling beer. Thus has religion moved away from its original evolutionary motives and been developed into something widespread and incredibly complex. Our brain doesn't even know why it wants it anymore. Like a man watching a beer commercial, it only knows that it looks mighty fine.