Belief and Bigotry

Once again, those who do not believe, as Mr. Carson does, are accused of religious bigotry. I have personally spent a lot of time navigating these waters the past few years. I first came to understand that I no longer felt connected to the faith I was raised in. Then I had to learn to steer through a new understanding where my lack of faith did not become a new faith of narrow mind or intolerance.

The world is sick with religious bigotry. I see it in my community among those battling Hassidic Jews over land and water rights. Principled civil arguments have sometimes been couched in bitter language. On a national stage, leading liberals, some of whom I greatly admire, have marginalized a billion Muslims, into the narrow confines of the evil other. Their arguments assume the primacy of religion over human aspiration. In the world they see religion is not manipulated. It manipulates. They see decades of oppression under brutal dictatorships, at the root, as a failure of religion rather than a willful manipulation of the most primal part of the human condition. In their arguments they ignore a millennium of abuse by people of all faiths.

 Just as Stalin represented an extreme perversion of Communism, Hussein, Qadaffi, Al Quada, the Ayatollahs in Iran, and ISIS all represent radical perversions of Islam. Their governing principle is fascist hegemony. Any ideology or theology around that is purely for the consumption of the masses. One need look no further for the proof of this manipulation than to Google search images of Iran in the 1960's.

 For me, I find I often need to separate my lack of faith from the way I see and understand others who come to the world with different beliefs. Since summer I’ve spent enjoyable moments in a Muslim neighborhood in Queens watching fathers and mothers in the joyful immersion of their families. In recent weeks I've shared equally warm moments with the Hasidim on the Heritage trail. I struggle to honor both faiths while holding an absolute commitment that their beliefs are contrary to most everything I stand for. This is especially true in the diminution of women that both Islam and Judaism share.

Christian fundamentalists, it seems to me, deserve no more or no less respect. We are all entitled to our belief. But if I choose not to accept the subjugation of women as a central tenet of some religions, then I can also find exception with Christians who isolate Leviticus from the love of Christ to justify their fearful bigotry.

None of the monotheistic faiths get a pass on science. The biblical stories of creation, though powerful as allegory, perch at a base of knowledge substantially below that of science. To still believe the earth is 6000 years old, or that dinosaurs roamed the earth with primitive man is at this point just militant foolishness. I read an extended portion of the remarks Carson first made on the pyramids. To be sure in the totality of his comments he was not spewing complete lunacy to the graduates he was addressing. But that part about the pyramids was loo-loo-loo-loopy nuts. You want to tell me that homosexuality is a choice because people "go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay", than I'm going to call you a homophobic bigot. An argument that a stance in favor of rights is religious bigotry, or somehow occupies the same ethical space, is not worthy of response. Carson's claim that "secular progressives are ridiculing" his faith may be good politics for his followers, but I doubt that will give him much of an escape route with the general public. He's entitled to believe, but there are a lot of secular people now and there numbers are growing. Not all of them are progressives, so good luck with that.

Post script…

I have heard powerful argument which suggests that biblical stories, taken metaphorically, or as allegory, need not be an impediment to pure belief in an almighty being. This argument would suggest that you can set all of that aside, Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah and the whale, the transgressions of war, the maintenance of slaves, and still believe in an all-knowing and beneficent God. It is a good argument, at least for me one I can wrap my head around. But in the end it falls flat for me. This is not to doubt that belief or its power, but here I merely mean to say that it does not enter my logic in a way that counters what I believe through my understanding of science. We live on a little dot in a barely measureable universe that has been evolving for nearly 15 billion years. While other life may exist in the cosmos, advanced civilizations as we see on earth are at minimum rare, and that to me is awesome enough.