David Cain, a fan of my BS and proprietor of Raptitude, made the following comment on No Evidence for God is Evidence for No God which I liked so much I’m posting it here:
I think religion is a misfire. If you look at the principles behind religions, they seem to be mutual and they do make sense: forgiveness, nonattachment, nonjudgment, love your enemy, et cetera
But unfortunately, the troublesome human conditions of greed and prejudice that these teachings were designed to mitigate have hijacked the institutions that used to promote this message.
Discourses about which actions are wise and not-so-wise became warped into discussions about who is worthy and unworthy, which became warped into diatribes about who is good and who is evil. Christianity’s teaching have been mangled beyond recognition, while Buddhism seems to have stayed fairly true to its origins.
I guess my point is that the argument about God vs. No God is irrelevant when you consider the notion that the God the theists are arguing for is a complete misinterpretation anyway. The church made God into some sort of gigantic, meddlesome person in order to exert power over large groups of people. This cartoonish abomination is what most Christians seem to believe in, but I doubt it’s what, say, Jesus had in mind.
There is, unquestionably, a wise and intelligent line of thought at the heart of all the major religions, but to detect it you have to recognize the vast amounts of manipulation and distortion they’ve suffered from political sources, along with our own human weakness for needing to know things we don’t really know.
Thanks David!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is quite a compliment! Thanks Angus.
Wow – what a thoughtful and well-articulated note! Seems your intelligent writing attracts an intelligent readership.
My pleasure David—and I’ve been enjoying Raptitude.
cheers,
Angus