In this day and age of televangelists, the rising power of the Religious Right, and the encroaching theocracy of our government, I find the attitudes of people like Richard Dawkins refreshing. Frustrated, angry, and exasperated, but refreshing nevertheless. Dawkins' recent book - The God Delusion - has recently made its way into my pile of things-to-read, and I find most of what he has to say edifying.
Dawkins focuses - at least thus far - primarily on science and its increasingly persistent conflict with religion. He quotes Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way'. (Dawkins 32-33)
I have to say, I love that - "My god is a little god." It so encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Religious Right and everything that is right with faiths like Buddhism.
The right first: the idea of a "little god," a personal god, who exists within and for the person, the idea of the internal "little god" within each of us who possesses the possibilities of divinity and enlightenment - this idea is wonderful. It smacks of joy and self-promotion and gentleness and oneness with the self and the world.
The wrong: this, I find, manifests in the term I have used - the Religious Right. The branch of society that is both politically Right (conservative) and convinced of its Right-ness (righteousness). It is self-congratulatory. It believes that its "little god" is one that it knows, thoroughly and completely, a "little god" that serves those who follow it like a slavish monkey. A "little god" who has nothing better to do than rain fire and brimstone down on the [insert ethnic/social/religious minority/gender here]. A "little god" whose omnipotence and omniscience is entirely wasted on the dregs of humanity who are both self-serving and narrow-minded.
(Let me be clear for one moment in saying that I do not think all conservatives or religious people are a part of the Religious Right. That epithet I reserve for the very worst of the worst.)
What is wrong, I would like to know, with appreciating the beauty and grandeur that is our universe? Why must we compartmentalize it? Force it into our little creationist box and insist that it is only 6,000 years old and that it was made by invisible hands in 6 days? Why can't it be millions of years old? Isn't that much more impressive?
But we must rely upon The Truth.
Fine. I'm all for truth. But my truth and yours, Religious Right, are two very different things.
But, oh, yes, your Truth is sacred and I mustn't touch it. I'll defile it.
Bullsh*t. Dawkins has a quote for this, too:
A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts - the non-religious included - is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other. (Dawkins 42)
Yup. And if I dare to violate that bubble of sanctity, then I am a heretic, a heathen, a monster. I become a violator of the sacred, a profaner of the great All that is religion. I am an ignoramus who needs must be saved.
Let it be. Or, to borrow a familiar term, Amen. I know. Sacrilege.
I do believe that religious belief should be respected. But I also believe that my lack thereof is also deserving of respect. As is my choice to wear cotton or leather or a purple polyester shirt. Or my decision to be vegetarian. Or to study Shakespeare. Yet those things are not nearly so offensive to most people as my atheism. How dare I not believe in god!
The anger that comes through - and which I recognize even as I type it - is also prevalent in Dawkins' book, and I can see how he's ruffled a good many feathers. For instance, an amazon search of "God Delusion" brings up Dawkins' book, one that seems similar, and eight books that attack atheism (7 of those 8 are direct responses to Dawkins - I'm jealous of the fact that the man has managed to make so much of an impact). And that's just the first page. But while perhaps a published author should refrain from too much vitriol, I completely understand. Having been raised Catholic, I understand the frustration of a man struggling to make sense of what seems to him to be entirely delusional.
I remember being sent to the corner for insisting that god was not something I could draw (I was 6, and I still believed in god). I remember being told I was going to hell for any number of things, most of which I can't even recall. I remember the insistence that I was a "bad Catholic" because I didn't give a hoot about the Apostles' Creed, about First Holy Communion, or about First Reconciliation (Confession. I lied to the priest.).
I blame my mother. No. I thank my mother. Not because she raised me to be atheist. My mother is a Catholic. Sort of. At any rate, she's a practicing Christian. But she had a button. It was big and pink and glittery and it read "Trust in God. She will provide." I asked why it said "She" (I think I was four or five). My mother explained to me that because god wasn't human, it was silly of us to think of god as either male or female. I thought that was a pretty good point. My first grade religion teacher did not.
And that was the beginning. I learned to distrust everything I learned in school (Catholic school). I learned to question everything they told me. And I learned that such questioning wasn't fondly looked upon. In high school Morality class, my Catholic hero was Martin Luther.
Dawkins, in his book, uses a scale, 1-7, with 1 standing for absolute belief in a god or gods and 7 an absolute belief that there aren't any. Dawkins says he's a 6. I'd probably fall at a 5.5.
I like the idea of deity. Not of the Judeo-Christian god (whom, as Dawkins points out, is really rather self-contradictory, vindictive, and downright sadistic), but of some kind of otherness, a divinity or quasi-divinity that sets us in motion, gives us some kind of as-yet-indeterminable largeness. Whatever it is that draws us toward one another, cements friends, lovers, families together. Maybe it is chemistry. But it's not yet one that we can even begin to understand.
Do I think there is a god or gods out there, controlling our lives? No. And I don't like the thought at all. I want to be the one in charge of my destiny. No three hags with strings for me, thank you very much. My thread, my scissors. Back off, Fate-ladies. I want to take responsibility for my own successes... but also for my own failures. I made myself. You didn't make me. No god made me.
I am the only god - terribly flawed and awesomely human as I am - I need. I am that I am.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.
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