The problem with religion

[In response to a friend's post on Facebook]

You seem to suggest that the people who believe in God recognize that religion is root of human troubles, so they should give up and go home. As if to say, There is no God, so knock off this silly religion business. It’s causing nothing but trouble.  That’s not going to work unless you first convert them to atheism. I don’t think that will be easy.

You say that religion is the problem, the source of all the world’s divisiveness and horror. I say no, we call that good vs. evil. Sin is a word that comes to mind. Delusion works. My favorite word is prelest, which is Russian. [http://goo.gl/IE6zm]. That people use what is beautiful as a means to ugliness does not change the essence of the thing, is my point.

I’m not sure how a Christian posting a video supporting gay rights winds up getting a lecture on how religion is the problem for gays, except that nobody ever expects the Spanish Irony, I mean Inquisition. The very fact that this video has gone viral, that so many people honor its message of love and tolerance, completely contradicts your premise. You think only atheists care? And of course the church has always been the place where the struggle between good and evil is most profound. Where else would you expect evil to go looking for a fight?

It seems to me that telling religious people that religion is stupid makes exactly as much sense as trying that argument on an atheist, and demanding their immediate baptism. You could try killing the religion out of them. Didn’t work in Russia, hasn’t worked in China. Especially since throughout history even people who got their throats slashed by thugs believed in something they thought was worth dying for. And generally, it was just they wanted the right to pray.

You think only religion kills people in defense of its belief system? The Soviets killed millions of Christians in the name of atheism. Many people say the KGB is still alive and well, and stories of atheist evil still filter out of the “former” USSR. You think it’s easy being Christian, or anything except  Communist, in China today? What’s the penalty for being religious in North Korea?

I’m not demeaning your opinion by likening it to those of people who’ve committed atrocities; you have a right to your opinion on its own merits. But you brought up history, and took it back pretty far, not giving much credence to modern efforts to reform parochial thinking. So I will point out that the Bolsheviks had plenty of gripes about the history of religion when they revolted in 1917, and defiled every church they could find. And if Christians have, under delusion, killed for their beliefs, millions have also died for them. Getting thrown the lions will really ruin your day. … OK, bad joke.

So here’s my idea: Instead of telling people religion is stupid, let’s have a country with freedom to practice religion or not. And say that the government doesn’t get to decide what the religions are or mess with them. We’re probably going to have to keep reminding them about that, because religious people are going to get elected and get all judgmental on us. And if it happens, we can sue, or we can find a really smart college kid and send him to the state house to set their f—kin’ clocks.

And people who believe in God but aren’t trying to control other people will point him out and say Cool. … +1! … Like! … I predict a long hard climb toward enlightenment, tolerance, and peace. Progress, not perfection.

In a nutshell, the place to make and enforce laws is government. You can tell the government to stay out of religion and make it enforceable, because the government doesn’t have to stay out of government. The government can’t make a law against the church meddling in politics without breaking the law against meddling in religion. At best, it’s a pretty good suggestion.

A Senseless War …

Continuing this thread on Facebook …

I’ve never been a fan of revisionary, retroactive justifications for war.  War is bad, and unintended good side effects may be a consolation, but not justification.  And if it wasn’t a reason to attack, it’s not a reason to stay.

Our species seems to be addicted to war and to the absurd concept that it solves problems. I guess if someone attacks you, there’s little choice but self defense. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have very little to do with that.

There are more girls in school, and more girls in the ground too. We did not attack Afghanistan so the girls could go to school. Or so that the Corps of Engineers could improve their infrastructure. Which is also a good thing, I suppose. We attacked to kill Taliban. Now we’re broke and we’ve lost a lost of good people, and it’s time to rethink the plan.

The plight of girls and women in Afghanistan is terrible, but not even a little bit unique. If schools for abused and exploited girls is a reason for war, our next target is China.

There are schools on Native American reservations too. Ask them how they like the Great Republic, overall.

Bush stated his reasons for attacking. Historians will figure out what they were, even if we’ve lost track. But they’re no longer valid, are they? And I’m not saying the countries we Shock and Awe shouldn’t have schools, hospitals, roads, mosques, homes, irrigation, power, broadband, better cemeteries, whatever they want. Least we can do. I’m just saying we shouldn’t make war on their country to give them those things.

I’m not sure Moore has the answers. I damn sure don’t. The Taliban needed killing. But this is a BushCheney failcluster from the words, “bring ‘em on.” (I know, that was Irag, but same difference.) The Taliban aren’t dead, the girls aren’t safe. And there’s little hope they ever will be, without a different approach.

Afghanistan needs real, sane government.  So do we.  America should be the change we want to see in the world, or sit down and shut the f—k up.

I suspect that if we traveled to Afghanistan and asked the girls how they enjoy school, they might say it would have been better to help them have school without making war on their country. They might remind us of what all children know:

War Is Evil.

 

Fragments

I have been thinking about something for a couple of days. Just a little thing. I think I heard it in a podcast or on PBS, but Google can’t find it. Anyway, here it is:

“Fragments are the only way that life makes sense.”

Hmm. Restated, it says:

Life only makes sense in fragments.

Fragments make sense of life.

Life is made of fragments? … Life is fragmentary?

It’s true. We are the experiences we’ve had and the conditioning to which we’ve been subjected. And there’s nothing whole or continuous about that stuff.

Your mother at the sewing machine, working through the evening to get something ready for you.

A rainbow trout held to the light, returning light; fishing with your Dad.

Your little brother at Halloween, Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“And time is the matter before us, or memory and what it makes of a man and leaves of him as it gathers up the chips of wood and broken glass that time will always make of life.” [My novel in process.]

If memory and hence life is fragments, bit of broken things, then why do we write story the way we do? Why try to make life fit a continuum, and form narratives into long, smooth arcs of experience and time? Why pretend that all the pieces fit, and insist on proving to the reader that they do?

To be true to life, shouldn’t story be fragmentary too? Of course, good story is fragments. It’s just really hard to see one’s own work that way, or to believe it’s possible, when writing a first novel.

another writer matter

A writer reminder, but not openoffice.org writer this time.

Windows Live Writer is a fantastic tool for blogging. It’s easy to set up with a Blogger blog or WordPress.

It does everything you’ll need to do in Blogger except insert a jump break. (That’s where you want the post to stop on the main page of the blog and give the reader a link to read more.) And I usually post my longer things, then return and add the jump break in a day or two anyway.

You can set up Windows Live Writer to handle multiple blogs, and it can insert any kind of media you need. And additional cool plug-ins can be downloaded from Microsoft to customize the program.

It’s free, like me.

Metaphor by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

So feel free to mimeograph it for all your friends, if that’s what you like to do.

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go round and round

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

-Hafez, poet (1315-1390)

That’s kinda sweet. It came in my Word-a-Day email this morning. I looked at it and thought that for Hafez, that’s a little weak. Hafez was a powerful poet.

Then I thought, Training wheels? On what?

Does anybody how there know what they were putting training wheels on for kids in the 14th century? Frequently enough that it made its way into the idiomatic lexicon of a Persian poet in Shiraz?

I think somebody got a little too free with their translation there, is my point.