I was cruising Paul Murphy’s site tonight, even briefly considering clicking the Paypal link to send Anna some birthday money (Hah! Hah! Laughed at myself for that thought, I’m pretty broke at the moment), when I noticed an extremely long quote in Paul’s nifty “Random Quote” block:
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
— Carl Sagan
Now, I ask you — is the above statement an accurate portrayal of the human condition? Carl Sagan was a well-known atheist, yet he was always apologetic about it, very rarely antagonistic. He was also quite sour on the political system. Does this statement make Carl Sagan an anti-religion, anti-politics bigot, or is that statement accurate?
When’s the last time you changed your mind about a political or religious issue and acknowledged that fact, rather than trying to hide it? What’s your take on science’s changeability vs. religion’s immutability, or politics’ stubbornness?
And perhaps most important of all, how often are major religions or major politicians willing to do a 180 on an issue?
I’ll go first!
I’ll go first, in response to my own posting.
“Hi, my name is Dory, and I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a fish.”
Wait, no, no… oh, yeah, right. As most readers know, I changed my opinion on religion radically about a year and a half ago. I decided I was done with organized religion. I abandoned it largely due to really intense, long-term rational thought and in-depth study on the topic over the course of about five years. It wasn’t mostly an emotional decision; it was, simply, weighing the facts and stories, evaluating claims based on available evidence, and then deciding modern-day Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Mohammedism, Catholicism, Judaism, and others bore no striking dissimilarities from similar religions thousands of years old, and long-dead.
I figured that, if I rejected them all, I’d just be considered a heretic by exactly one more religion than someone who embraced one 🙂
So, I was wrong in my religious opinions. And I may be wrong in them now! I don’t say there is or isn’t a God these days… who am I to come to such a decision on an unprovable assumption? However, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, I operate under the assumption that there will be no divine intervention in my fate today, and I need to do everything I can to get myself out of whatever scrapes I get myself into.
I’ve been wrong a lot, and gone down some dead-ends as I’ve gone on a kind of religious-discovery-thing over the last 18 months. It’s been harrowing, exciting, harassing, painful, fun, and enlightening at times. But it’s been worth the journey to me, to find out where I’m wrong, even in the initial assumptions I made in rejecting organized religion 18 months ago. And I’m certain I’m not done yet.
Now, on the political side, well, ten years ago I was a die-hard conservative Republican. Spend money on the military. Trickle-down economics. Small government, not big. Representative democracy. Down with Unions. Welfare sucks. Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps or get out. The best way to deal with an adversarial country is to bomb them. We’re a Christian nation, and if you don’t like that, live somewhere else.
Today, I’m not so sure, really. I’ve been on Welfare before — I think it’s a great program for helping people like we were get through some tough scrapes without starving to death or resorting to crime. Social programs, paid for by public taxes, for enhancing common welfare by improving the lot of the least fortunate or most disabled among us seems right, fair, and ultimately productive. I now think labor unions, although subject to abuse like most human endeavors, have their place in society, particularly in lower-paid professions where it’s necessary to guarantee fair and safe working conditions and compensation. I now prefer talking to bombing, wherever possible, when I clearly remember once doing a “happy dance” as a teenager when we bombed Muammar Quaddafi’s stronghold. And I realized that, while cultural Christianity (including Christians that other Christians don’t like to call Christians, like the Mormons and the Moonies) make up the majority of the U.S. population, it is nowhere near an overwhelmingly dominant culture; we have a lot of diversity of religious expression in this country, from Jews to Moslems to Hindis to Pagans to Eastern Orthodox to Naturalists to Brights… and it’s a wonderful thing to see that these diverse opinions are tolerated and encouraged.
What about you?
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Fortune…
I stole that quote off the Unix Fortune generator. I am always amazed how “right” science, religion, and politics always feel they are despite the number of times they are shown to be wrong. Take another quote from my site. “A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes”. The Greeks were SURE that everything from thunder to volcanos to love were the products of meddling gods. Now we call it mythology. Common sense prevailed. The same is true of scientist who thought the basic elements to be earth, wind, and fire. Or how about surgeons who practiced blood-letting and bleeding. I guess though, even with all that stubborness, common sense prevails and ideologies ARE changed. Eventually. I can say this. I have changed my position on so many views, having to eat crow or humble myself so many times in my life that I don’t care to count.
Theology
Well, the issue of religion is wrapped up in a single idea for me, that is one I have not backed off of yet. That idea is that religion is a way to try understand FACT. That’s right.. it does not boil down to belief or faith, even, but fact. And I’ll explain what I mean.
On Star Trek, sometimes, different aliens of different races believe totally that their Gods exist (I.E. Stovakor or the Prophets) but also recognize the idea that the other races gods do too.
Well, I always had a problem with that idea, and the idea that some in my family have.. the idea that “what you believe is good for you, and what I believe is good for me”.
The fact is, Christian theology is built on the Jewish idea that we worship the “one true God”, and that his Son is Jesus. It further purports that Jesus is the only real way to reach the “one true God”. This, of course, allows very little leway to believe that “Christianity is the ‘way to god’ for me, but maybe not the way for someone else.”
Now, that ideology is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, then Christ is the only way, and if it is incorrect, then he is not the way, because the entire belief system is set up on the idea that he is.. so ultimately the big idea comes down to whether or not that FACT is true. Some think it is not, I think it is, and could site reasons why, but won’t here because that is not my point.
Assuming that facts and not opinions are the overwhelming idea, and that I have decided that it is far more likely that Christianity is true than false, the whole idea of religion becomes more scientific. Instead of weighing down in Dogma, I have tried to approach it with a scientific (or exigetical as opposed to isogetical) eye. I do believe that every word of the Bible is true, but that there are passages and sections that lend themselves to multiple interpretation. There are also sections that do not.
I have tried to steep myself in as much knowledge as I can in the sections are not open to interpretation so I can better understand the ones that are open.
Insofar as the major points, I have changed very little in recent years, as I have increased my understanding of theology. There have been times I have decided that my previous understanding of doctrine was incorrect when approached at a certain angle, and I have changed as time has gone on. (Ex. I used to believe that Mary remained a virgin her whole life because I was raised Catholic. Knowing now what I do about James, I can no longer accept that)
Insofar as minor parts (or parts that affect theology less than others), I waiver all the time. There is a lot of poetry and symbolism in parts of the Bible, and one must be willing to reassess and change when necessary, as their understanding grows.
The point is, and I think many here would agree, all facts must be reexamined and questioned, and a faith that follows that idea will be closer to the truth.