Everything [about religion] is right until it's wrong...

"Everything is right until it's wrong," says one character in the film "Hemingway's Garden of Eden." He then adds "You'll know when it's wrong." The lines were lifted from Ernest Hemingway's allegedly autobiographical novel published a quarter century after his death.

It made me think of my history with religion.

When I was very young, everything seemed right with religion. "Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so..." are the lyrics we sang almost every week in Sunday school, assuring us that Jesus loved us and that he would protect us. My parents were so certain that this was true, that their love for Jesus was somewhat overwhelming.

For me, religion was right until it was wrong and I knew when it started to go wrong and continued to go wrong for me.

I usually say my religious skepticism began when I was 12, but I can't remember exactly when it started.  I may have been younger.  I remember asking questions in Sunday school that no one could answer, such as, "Why are there no dinosaurs in the Bible?" And when my parents decided our family would read a chapter of the Bible every day before dinner, starting with chapter 1 of Genesis, I was horrified by much of what I read. The God of the Bible certainly didn't seem like he was worthy of praise and worship, only of fear.  And when we arrived at the end of Revelation, we started over so I had to read those horrendous and violent stories again.

After hearing the Hemingway quote, I decided to make a list of what seemed/was/is right with religion and then what I learned is wrong with it.  The list will not be immediately complete, as I will think of new things to add to it over time.

I would be glad to hear your two-cents worth of right and wrong things about religion (religion in general or any specific religion) in the comment section ---and if I agree, I will add them to my lists.

WHAT SEEMED/WAS/IS RIGHT ABOUT RELIGION?

For some people, religion is a comfort.

For some, religion provides a sense of belonging.

Some religious institutions do selfless charitable work, without requiring that recipients listen to sermons or accept their religious philosophies before receiving help.

Many members of religious congregations help each other in times of need.  When my sister was dying of cancer, members of her church drove her to appointments, made meals for her family, shopped and ran other errands when her family was unable to do everything.  I'm sure church members prayed with her, too. I personally think that prayer does no good but, most likely, my sister was comforted by their efforts.

Religion seems to help some people stay out of prison, overcome drug or alcohol abuse, etc.  An equally intense secular program might do as well, but the added incentive of heaven or fear of hell, probably helps. The life of an addict and the effects addiction has on family members and other victims, are probably worse than the negative effects of religion.

Religions teach right and wrong. In general they teach good values, unless they go overboard and expect perfection or use extreme views in hateful ways (such as Fred Phelps.)

Many religious people volunteer time/money for good works ---but so do many non-religious people. (If one disregards money donated directly to religious institutions, atheists actually donate more to charity than religious people.)


WHAT SEEMED/WAS/IS WRONG ABOUT RELIGION?

For some people, religion is a crutch which allows them to remain dependent, emotionally disabled, or childlike.

Some religious charitable institutions require recipients to listen to sermons or accept its religious philosophy before receiving help, thus the services provided are self-serving, not selfless acts of kindness.

Some religions instill debilitating shame and guilt on its members.

Some religions set moral standards almost no one can achieve and if one is so caught up in preaching against sin, some sins become almost irresistible. (Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, are you listening?)

Almost everyone believes his/her religion is the one true religion. They cannot all be right, but they can all be wrong.

Many religious leaders claim and want their congregations to believe that they are in possession of the whole truth ---yet no one is in possession of the whole truth about anything, especially religious concepts that cannot be proven.

Religion divides us ---pits one religion or one sect against another.  A perfect example is the frequent fights that erupt in the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher between factions of monks fighting over territory within the churches.

Religious people tend to dislike, hate and/or have animosity toward those who disagree with them. Just read the crank mail received by the Freedom From Religion Foundation ---most of it from so-called "good Christians" ---you know, those people who are supposed to love their neighbors and enemies. Many non-believers or people of minority religions have reason to fear all those "good Christians." Students (and their family members) have been threatened and/or attacked physically or verbally after blowing the whistle on proselytising teachers, for example.

Religion can turn people into snobs.  They truly believe they are superior to others who have different beliefs or no religious beliefs at all. On the other hand, I know some atheists who look down their noses at religious people, too. It's the tribe instinct for mankind to do this, whether it be by supporting a sports team or a core belief.

Religion makes some people downright mean. Example: Fred Phelps.

Religion makes some people dangerous. Examples: Muslim terrorists, those who blow up abortion clinics, crusaders, Jim Jones.

Religious leaders have hidden the bad acts of some of its religion's leaders/members in order to keep up the appearance or reputation of the church and/or to hold onto its power.  (The Catholic Church's many sins include corruption in the Papacy, suppression of pedophile priests and abuse in Magdalene homes for women.) This shows that the religion's reputation and power are more important than the welfare of its members.

The Catholic church has threatened to excommunicate members who take a pro-choice stance on abortion. Apparently pedophile sex is not enough for priests to be excommunicated. In Brazil an entire medical team was excommunicated after performing an abortion on an 80-lb. nine-year-old who was pregnant with her stepfather's twins. Because of her age and size she was not expected to survive the pregnancy. Apparently rape of a nine-year-old stepdaughter is not worthy of excommunication.

Religion has been an underlying cause in countless wars. I can name very few wars that have not had religion as, at least in part, one of its causes. There is a theory that wars fought over land eventually end when one side takes definitive control over the property in question.  But religious wars (or any war based on a difference in ideology) never end.

Religion makes people do good in hopes of gaining a ticket to heaven, instead of doing good for goodness sake.

Religions teach myth and superstition as truth, thus blurring the lines between truth and fiction, between belief and rational thought. This results in poor reasoning abilities.

Religion causes wishful thinking which gives false hopes and results in unhappiness when those hopes are dashed.  Our dreams need to be based on reasonable expectations and the knowledge that dreams are usually fulfilled after much hard work and not the result of prayer.

Religious zealots think they can put their religious beliefs above all else, above the laws of their country or community and even above compassion.

Many reconstructionist Christians want to return to Biblical laws ---laws that would permit executions for homosexuality, abortion, or adultery.  Some even advocate public stoning as the preferred method of execution.  This sounds so much like radical Islam ---a religion that Christian zealots hate. (Is it true that we become what we hate?)

Religion seems to be obsessed with other people's sex lives. Sex is sinful before, after, or outside of marriage.  It is sinful with a same-sex partner. It is sinful if it is used as recreation rather than procreation. It is sinful to lust, even if only in one's heart, not in actual acts.

Karen Armstrong argues that in their terror of sex and hatred of women, theologians developed and propagated "the Christian sexual neurosis," an unholy trinity of women, sex, and sin that became identified with Christianity. Christian women have been forced to accept certain prescribed traditional stereotypical roles, as virgins, martyrs, witches, wives and mothers. Even though the women's movement of the 1970s and thereafter has overcome some of this, the Pat Robertson's of the world continue to rant against feminists.

Re: the above statements on sex ---it seems that many highly-religious people are simply jealous of anyone having more or better sex than they are.

In some religions, women are required to cover their hair, bodies and/or faces. I can't help but believe it is not to protect them from lustful men but to punish them for being perceived temptresses.  Islam considers that rape is not a sin on the part of a male, only on the part of the "temptress" female and is actually her just punishment for whatever sins she is perceived to have committed.

Many of the most outspoken of religious people are the worst hypocrites. Examples: Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, George Rekers to name only a few.

Some religious zealots blame all disasters on groups they dislike.  Pat Robertson is a master at this.  According to him, almost every disaster (earthquake, tsunami, 9/11) has been caused by God's retribution against homosexuals, abortionists, feminists, liberals, the ACLU, atheists, Hindus, and/or Muslims.  I wonder why God killed so many "innocent Christians" in natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina instead of warning them (as he allegedly did Noah) to get the hell out of New Orleans.

Most of the highly-religious people I know personally have little sense of humor.  What a shame that they can't have much fun.

---------------------------
This will be an ongoing project.  I will be adding more to this post as time permits.

I repeat: I would love to hear your input about right and wrong things about religion (religion in general or any specific religion) in the comment section ---and if I agree, I will add them to my lists.

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 4

TWAIN, MARK

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

American author,

journalist, humorist

(1835-1910)

Many quotations have been attributed to Twain that came from other sources. If you find I have wrongly attributed a quotation to Twain, please leave a comment or email me at mythoughtsarefree@gmail.com. Thank you.

• “Such is the human race. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.” (Christian Science)

• “Temperate temperance is best. Intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance, while temperate temperance helps it in its fight against intemperate intemperance. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “To eat is human, to digest divine.”

• “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.~ (Innocents Abroad)

• “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” (Mark Twain, a Biography)

• “Virtue has never been as respectable as money.” (Innocents Abroad)

• “Water taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.”

• “We get our morals from books. I didn’t get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books ---theoretically at least.” (Remarks at the Opening of the Mark Twain Library)

• “Whatever the Church damns is saved; whatever it opposes prospers ---like anti-slavery and evolution.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “What’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885)

• “When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

Read more about Mark Twain & his religious skepticism at the end of:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 1

Find more quotations at the above post and these:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 2

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 3

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 5

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 1

TWAIN, MARK

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

American author,

journalist, humorist

(1835-1910)

*Read more about Mark Twain and his religious skepticism at the bottom of this post.

Many quotations have been attributed to Twain that came from other sources. If you find I have wrongly attributed a quotation to Twain, please leave a comment or email me at mythoughtsarefree@gmail.com. Thank you.

• “Adam was but human ---this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.” (Notebook, 1867)

• “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” (The Mysterious Stranger)

• “All I care to know is that a man is a human being ---that is enough for me; he can’t be much worse.” (Concerning the Jews)

• “All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer and to conceal valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, if, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries, it can profit him to know that the bottom half is rotten.” (note written November 11, 1908, Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” (Following the Equator, 1897)

• “Be good and you will be lonesome.” (Following the Equator, 1897)

• "The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind."

• [The Bible] “is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” (Letters From the Earth)

• “A Christian mother’s first duty is to soil her child’s mind, and she does not neglect it.”

• “Christianity does not convert the Hindus, because our Bible miracles are not so large as theirs.”

• “Christians are all insane.”

• “Church ain’t a circumstance to a circus.” (Tom Sawyer, A Play)

• “The Church here rests under the usual charge ---an obstructor and fighter of progress; until progress arrives, then she takes the credit.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Dreamed all bad foreigners went to German heaven, couldn’t speak the language, and wished they'd gone to the other place.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “The English are mentioned in the Bible: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.” (What Is Man? 1906)

• “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “Get your facts first...then you can distort ’em as much as you please.” (Quoted by Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Shining Sea)

• “Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885)

Find more quotations here:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 2

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 3

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 4

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 5

Mark Twain grew up in a religious society, but he was a life-long religious skeptic. His wife agreed to marry him with his promise that he would attend church and become a good Christian, but as their marriage progressed, Livy became more skeptical while Twain was unable to accept the hypocrisy of religion. Twain attended church and was a good friend of several ministers including Twichell who became his best friend, despite Twain's skepticism. He wrote often about religion and made many religious references in his works. Many of these are tongue in cheek. Many of his writings mirror previous writings on religion by Robert G Ingersoll. Twain was writing for the masses and most of his readers were Christian. His writing was his livelihood, so he (fueled by Livy's censorship) was reluctant to offend.

In his later life, he directed that some of his religious writings be published 100 years after his death. He said that only dead men can tell the absolute truth. His only surviving child Clara (1874-1962) opposed publication of these works in the 1930's. Later, she decided to publish Letters From the Earth and other writings 50 years after her father's death. She explained her change of heart by saying, "Mark Twain belonged to the world." By 1960 she believed that public opinion had become more tolerant.

Clara died a few years later at age 88. Clara's only child Nina (1910-1966) had no children. Thus there were no direct descendants of Twain's after her death.

After I wrote the above, I found the following comments on Twain's religious skepticism by writer and Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin (April 1997):

"Clemens tells us that his first schoolteacher told him that if he prayed sincerely, his prayers would be answered. When young Sam Clemens prayed and his prayers didn't get answered, doubt began to set in. Indeed, later in life he would atribute to that early experience his conviction that Christianity and all religions are 'lies and swindles.' His mother and other members of his family sampled a variety of religious denominations during his youth, perhaps giving him further reason to doubt any one sect's assertions of its superiority over another. His first trip to Europe helped hone his skepticism about the contributions the Catholic church had made to civilization (imposing cathedrals did not, in Twain's view, justify the suffering imposed in the name of religion in European history). And when he married into the Langdon family, and learned the story of his father-in-law's founding of a new church in Elmira when his old congregation refused to condemn slavery, Twain must have recalled with some confusion the sermons he had heard in church throughout his childhood asserting that slavery was a system ordained by God. "Twain was not particularly unconventional during his youth. Indeed it was not until he was in his 30s that he began writing pieces that challenged norms widely accepted by those around him."

More of Fishkin's comments on Mark Twain can be found HERE.

IS AMERICA A CHRISTIAN NATION?

This post is part of a nationwide

  Blog Against Theocracy 

event taking place April 10-12, 2009

Visit the link above to visit posts from other bloggers.

The Godless Constitution:

The Case Against Religious Correctness

by

Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore (1996)

Excerpts (in green) from Chapter One: 

Is America A Christian Nation?

“Since before the founding of the United States, European colonists in North America were arguing about the role of religion in public and political life.... The nations’ founders, both in writing the Constitution and in defending it in the ratification debates, sought to separate the operations of government from any claims that human beings can know and follow divine direction in reaching policy decisions...”

“While many at the birth of America advocated a Christian politics, the principal architects of our national government envisioned a godless Constitution and a godless politics. One would never know this, however, by listening to the Christian right today, which has an utterly different take on the American past... The rhetoric of the Christian right repeatedly calls for a return to America’s lost Christianhood, as shaped by the founding fathers.”

“America’s original founding as a Christian state is central to the Christian right’s conspiratorial theory of American history. The Dallas Baptist minister who delivered the benediction at the Republican National Convention in 1984 insists ‘that there is no such thing as separation of church and state. It is merely the figment of the imagination of infidels.’ The founder and president of the religious right’s Rutherford Institute writes that ‘it’s of little surprise then that... the entire Constitution was written to promote a Christian order’... James Dobson [Focus on the Family] distributes... a set of history lesson that seeks to show that ‘the concept of a secular state was virtually non-existent in 1776, as well as in 1787, when the Constitution was written, and no less so when the Bill of Rights was adopted’...”

“This reading of the minds of the men who wrote the godless Constitution is wrong.”

“The principal framers of the American political system wanted no religious parties in national politics. They crafted a constitutional order that intended to make a person’s religious convictions, or his lack of religious convictions, irrelevant in judging the value of his political opinion or in assessing his qualifications to hold political office.... So successful were the drafters of the Constitution in defining government in secular terms that one of the most powerful criticisms of the Constitution when ratified and for succeeding decades was that it was indifferent to Christianity and God. It was denounced by many as a godless document, which is precisely what it is.”

Excerpts (in green) from Chapter Two:
The Godless Constitution

“’The Constitution was designed to perpetrate a Christian order,’ the Christian right’s Focus on the Family informs us. That’s not what happened in 1787. God and Christianity are nowhere to be found in the American Constitution... The U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, is a godless document. It’s utter neglect of religion was no oversight...”

“While passionately debated in the new nation, the ‘no religious test’ [for public office] clause elicited... little discussion at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention...”

It should be noted than Catholics and Jews fought in the Revolutionary War, yet they were among the religious groups, along with Quakers (because of their pacifist and anti-salvery stances) many wanted to exclude from holding office in the new nation. Some worried that if a Catholic were allowed to become president, that the Pope could be elected. The following passage seems so antiquated, biased, and vindictive, that we should all be glad religious tests were not added to our Constitution:

“An anticonstitutional article written for the New York Daily Advertiser ... January [1788] and widely distributed within days in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts papers pulled no punches about the social repercussions of Article 6 No religious tests admitted to national lawmaking: ‘1st. Quakers, who will make blacks saucy, and at the same time deprive us of the means of defense --- 2dly. Mahometans, who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity ---3dly. Deists, abominable wretches ---4th. Negroes, the seed of Cain ---5thly. Beggars, who when set on horseback will ride to the devil ---6thly. Jews etc. etc.’ Not quite finished with the last, the newspaper writer feared that since the Constitution stupidly gave command of the whole militia to the president, ‘should he hereafter be a Jew, our dear posterity may be ordered to rebuild Jerusalem.”

“In Federalist No.10 [The Federalist Papers written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, 1787-1788] Madison argues that zealous pursuit of religious opinions, far from leading men to ‘cooperate for their common good,’ causes them to hate each other and disposes them ‘to vex and oppress each other.’”

“When Benjamin Franklin, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, urged the delegates to open their sessions with prayers, a request cited often today by the religious right, the delegates... voted to adjourn for the day rather than discuss Franklin’s suggestion. The matter was never brought up again.”

“The political convictions of the men who struggled to ratify a godless Constitution were not products of personal godlessness... Many of the men... stayed aloof from dogmatic forms of Christian faith, but most of them believed in a God...”

“...While the idea of a godless constitution clearly incorporated certain secular ideals, important and forceful justifications for such a secular document lay in religious thought. No one in American experience has cared more about religion than Roger Williams. And virtually no one in American experience has fashioned a stronger argument for a godless politics....”

The next few chapters go into detail of Roger Williams' thoughts on government and the Founding Fathers reasons for writing our secular Constitution.

This book was extremely informative and easy to read. I recommend it highly.

While I read the 1996 version, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness, the updated version of the book is The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State.

Find my other two posts for the 2009 Blog Against Theocracy:

        CHURCH STATE SEPARATION QUIZ

        AMERICAN LEADERS' THOUGHTS ON RELIGION

You may also find this earlier post interesting: God in the White House

MORALITY

ASIMOV, ISAAC, Russian-born American biochemist and author (1920-1992):

• “It seems to me that it’s insulting to human beings to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being... I have a conscience. It doesn’t depend on religion.”

BIERCE, AMBROSE, American journalist (1842-1914):

• “Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.”

• “Moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.”



THOMSON, ANDY, American psychiatrist, author of Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

• "Morality is doing what is right regardless of what we are told. Religious dogma is doing what we are told no matter what is right." (from video presentation Why We Believe in Gods)