I'm not sure I can finish The God Delusion. Or rather, I'm not sure I feel like finishing it. Dawkins begins with the premise that the only sensible position on the existence of God is agnosticism, because although science cannot yet prove whether or not there is a God, we should be able to prove it someday. Then he proceeds to write an entire book attempting to prove, scientifically, that there is no God.
Why spend an entire book proving something that can't be proven? Why spend that much effort trying to deny comfort to the faithful? I think he spends far too much effort in the wrong direction, which is why I prefer the efforts of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Dan Savage, Greg Epstein and Penn Jillette. The point is not that everyone needs to disbelieve in God. Faith is faith--it defies logic and it defies science. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
I could vote for someone who believes in fairies, for example. However, if that person insists that the fairies talk to him, and he does what the fairies tell him, that's a different story. It's one thing to believe in God if God, to you, is a benevolent force in the universe that may answer prayers, or if you believe that God is love. It's another thing to believe that the Bible (whichever bible you follow) is the word of God and must be taken literally, or if you believe (as George W. Bush asserts) that God acts through you and that gives you the right to start wars.
It is the laws of God, not the existence of God, that we should argue against. Belief in God is fine insofar as it brings comfort to people in distress or a useful metaphor for teaching children right from wrong. God becomes dangerous when people use God for dangerous things. When one's world view is limited by a belief in God, that is bad. The same can be said for money, however, and I don't see Dawkins arguing against the existence of money. Money exists; perhaps God does to. Neither is the problem. People are the problem, and people can be the solution.
Likewise I see nothing wrong with studying sacred texts. In fact I find them incredibly useful much of the time. I find it unlikely that any problem I might face has never been faced before by any human, or in fact by many people. So I often find it helpful to consult the writings of the past to see how those problems have been solved before. Sometimes I find wisdom in literature, or in talking to an older person, or in reading history (or more likely, watching a documentary on TV.) But the Torah, the Talmud, and the other Jewish sacred texts were written for precisely this reason, and so I often find wisdom there. I don't take any of this literally. I don't believe any of these texts were written or dictated by a deity. But where I find wisdom and useful advice, I use it.
Of course it's essential to take all of this in context. The dating world changed drastically between the time my mother was dating and my own teen years, so it would have been foolish for me to do exactly what my mother did when she was young. But this doesn't mean I couldn't learn from her: of course I could. I just had to consider her stories in their own context and discuss with her how the things she learned from her experience applied to my own situation. I suppose it's a bit harder to do with the Torah since I can't sit down with its writers, but I can take the stories in the Torah in their context and find useful lessons in them.
The stories only become dangerous when one suggests that women can't run their own lives or gay people can't get married because of them.
I guess what I'm saying is that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. God is okay, for those who find comfort in the concept. And texts are harmless, in and of themselves, just as matches are harmless as long as they remain on the shelf. Careless reading is as dangerous as playing with matches, and that is where our arguments with the faithful lie. Believe in God if you wish. It's believing in the Bible that I would fight against.
So why did Dawkins waste his time?
Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Meetings 2 and 3: Reform and Reconstructionist
I'm actually not going to go into my meeting with the Reform Rabbi for several reasons the main one being that we mostly talked about our own congregation and my feelings about it. That's private.
However, I had a very interesting meeting with the local Reconstructionist Rabbi that I'm happy to blog about. Plus, I've got to get busy because I just scheduled a meeting with the Humanist Rabbi for THIS AFTERNOON so I've got to get done with the background info before my journey takes another turn.
I learned a lot about Reconstructionism, namely that:
1) Reconstructionists reject the notion of "Chosenness." I like that. If I'm a Humanist, how can I say that some people are chosen by God as special? Reconstructionists, if I understand correctly, believe that we, as Jews, have chosen special responsibilities (mitzvoth, or commandments) toward God.
2) They believe that the scriptures were written by people. This is essential to me for two reasons. First, since I no longer believe in God, it's hard to embrace the whole given-by-God thing. And second, the most important thing to me about religion is being able to question the text. It's what I love to do and it's also where I think the wisdom in our heritage lies. (More on that later.) My favorite quote from the founder of Reconstructionism, Mordechai Kaplan is, "Tradition gets a vote, not a veto." That sounds sensible to me.
3) On the vote, not a veto score, Reconstructionists study and discuss when they want to make change. The basic idea (again, as I understand it--I'm hardly an expert) is that decisions about religious practice can't be made in a vacuum. If you're part of a religious community, then those decisions should be made with the community. So Reconstructionists go through a process where they discuss things like "What does prayer mean?" They hear all the voices in the congregation, and they study the voices of the past through scripture and commentary. Then they hopefully come to a consensus about what to do in their community.
This all appeals to me. I like the deep questioning, and the basic tenets seem to align with my beliefs (as all the Rabbis kept telling me they would.) However, the Reconstructionist congregation near me is tiny. Really tiny. I went to a service and there were about 15 people there. Three of them were with me. This has pluses and minuses for my purposes. It's not the vibrant community I'm looking for, but could it be?
One thing that's very appealing about this congregation is that because they can only afford to have the Rabbi lead services once a month, they have lay leaders who lead the rest of the time. I could be trained as a lay leader and do pretty much whatever I want (within reason, of course, but since the whole studying/questioning thing is right up my alley, whatever I want should fit in just fine.) And if I could attract a significant number of Humanistic Jews to the congregation, we could be our own community-within-a-community.
I promised more about the wisdom of Jewish tradition. What I think is great about Judaism is that there has never really been one text. Sure, there's the Torah, but even that contradicts itself. And in addition to the Torah, we've always had priests, rabbis, Writings, Prophets, and the Talmud. Jews are supposed to study in chevrutah--with a partner. So while we hold certain texts as sacred, and some believe they come directly from God, there has never been a notion that one human can understand these texts perfectly. We've always argued about them. And there are reams and reams of paper, parchment, and memory recording these arguments. We even record the arguments of the people who lose. And we still revere these people as wise, even when the tradition turns away from their arguments. Jews have always had a living relationship with the text.
What's even better about Progressive Jews is that we can choose what do do with this information. When we study, we can decide whether the passage we're studying still has relevance or is out of date. Or if it's MORE relevant than it used to be, like when a student said that this quote:
“You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.”
Leviticus: 19:14
shows us that we shouldn't bully people on the internet. Even if the person doesn't know it's you, it still hurts their feelings. See? Religion is good when it leads to that! But religion is bad when it causes people to oppress gay people and throw stones at little girls on their way to school. Progressive Jews get to decide what we stand for, and we can apply common sense and modern values to what we read. We can even learn from science that while homosexual behavior might be unnatural for me, because I'm straight, it's very natural if you're gay. And if you love someone and want to make a family with that person, you should have the legal protection of marriage. Sure, the people who wrote the Torah thought differently, but they were people recording the wisdom of their time. Some of it is still wise. Some of it seems really foolish now.
It's wise to study history, to feel connected to a people with a long story, and to learn from the past. It's foolish to live in the past and to ignore the present.
However, I had a very interesting meeting with the local Reconstructionist Rabbi that I'm happy to blog about. Plus, I've got to get busy because I just scheduled a meeting with the Humanist Rabbi for THIS AFTERNOON so I've got to get done with the background info before my journey takes another turn.
I learned a lot about Reconstructionism, namely that:
1) Reconstructionists reject the notion of "Chosenness." I like that. If I'm a Humanist, how can I say that some people are chosen by God as special? Reconstructionists, if I understand correctly, believe that we, as Jews, have chosen special responsibilities (mitzvoth, or commandments) toward God.
2) They believe that the scriptures were written by people. This is essential to me for two reasons. First, since I no longer believe in God, it's hard to embrace the whole given-by-God thing. And second, the most important thing to me about religion is being able to question the text. It's what I love to do and it's also where I think the wisdom in our heritage lies. (More on that later.) My favorite quote from the founder of Reconstructionism, Mordechai Kaplan is, "Tradition gets a vote, not a veto." That sounds sensible to me.
3) On the vote, not a veto score, Reconstructionists study and discuss when they want to make change. The basic idea (again, as I understand it--I'm hardly an expert) is that decisions about religious practice can't be made in a vacuum. If you're part of a religious community, then those decisions should be made with the community. So Reconstructionists go through a process where they discuss things like "What does prayer mean?" They hear all the voices in the congregation, and they study the voices of the past through scripture and commentary. Then they hopefully come to a consensus about what to do in their community.
This all appeals to me. I like the deep questioning, and the basic tenets seem to align with my beliefs (as all the Rabbis kept telling me they would.) However, the Reconstructionist congregation near me is tiny. Really tiny. I went to a service and there were about 15 people there. Three of them were with me. This has pluses and minuses for my purposes. It's not the vibrant community I'm looking for, but could it be?
One thing that's very appealing about this congregation is that because they can only afford to have the Rabbi lead services once a month, they have lay leaders who lead the rest of the time. I could be trained as a lay leader and do pretty much whatever I want (within reason, of course, but since the whole studying/questioning thing is right up my alley, whatever I want should fit in just fine.) And if I could attract a significant number of Humanistic Jews to the congregation, we could be our own community-within-a-community.
I promised more about the wisdom of Jewish tradition. What I think is great about Judaism is that there has never really been one text. Sure, there's the Torah, but even that contradicts itself. And in addition to the Torah, we've always had priests, rabbis, Writings, Prophets, and the Talmud. Jews are supposed to study in chevrutah--with a partner. So while we hold certain texts as sacred, and some believe they come directly from God, there has never been a notion that one human can understand these texts perfectly. We've always argued about them. And there are reams and reams of paper, parchment, and memory recording these arguments. We even record the arguments of the people who lose. And we still revere these people as wise, even when the tradition turns away from their arguments. Jews have always had a living relationship with the text.
What's even better about Progressive Jews is that we can choose what do do with this information. When we study, we can decide whether the passage we're studying still has relevance or is out of date. Or if it's MORE relevant than it used to be, like when a student said that this quote:
“You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.”
Leviticus: 19:14
shows us that we shouldn't bully people on the internet. Even if the person doesn't know it's you, it still hurts their feelings. See? Religion is good when it leads to that! But religion is bad when it causes people to oppress gay people and throw stones at little girls on their way to school. Progressive Jews get to decide what we stand for, and we can apply common sense and modern values to what we read. We can even learn from science that while homosexual behavior might be unnatural for me, because I'm straight, it's very natural if you're gay. And if you love someone and want to make a family with that person, you should have the legal protection of marriage. Sure, the people who wrote the Torah thought differently, but they were people recording the wisdom of their time. Some of it is still wise. Some of it seems really foolish now.
It's wise to study history, to feel connected to a people with a long story, and to learn from the past. It's foolish to live in the past and to ignore the present.
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