Talking on Yabberz

I spend quite a lot of time chatting with people on the Yabberz site. Some of the things that come up deserve to be saved here ..

About Religion and Nationalism ...

I don't think I depart widely from the accepted definition of "religion". Your beliefs about trees don't really qualify. To my mind, the cultural connection is key, as is the ritual nature and the idea that religious beliefs "explain" a broad swath of human experience. The big issue I have with "religious" people is that they regard the issue as closed. There are those who believe as they do and those who don't. Religions tend to impose explicit or implicit penalties on "unbelievers", ranging from shunning to charges of treason.

The problem is that this also freezes the definition of religion itself, so that, for example, the religion of Nationalism (responsible for the wars of the 20th century) is not recognized as such. Nationalism is all about culture and figuring out who is "us" and who is "them". The reason that the vast military buildup in America (to protect "us" from "them") is unquestioned because Americanism is a religion.

In America, supposedly one of the most "religious" countries in the world, Americanism (American exceptionalism) is broadly accepted and instilled along with mother's milk. In the 50's "Christianity" was grafted on to Americanism ("In God We Trust"). Right now, Trump is working on the assumption that it is not possible to be an American if you are a Muslim.

This is all pretty dangerous stuff. It seems to me to be more accurate, more tolerant and less harmful to think of our world view as a point along the way rather than a citadel on a hill.

Atheism as a Religion

Richard Dawkins has made a career out of debunking "theism". In my view, this is a huge mistake, or, if you like a "dead-end" way. Dawkins tends to attack "straw men" who supposedly believe things that he (Dawkins) regards as false, ridiculous or harmful.

His "path" is not just unbelief. His books are intended to be the Gospel of unbelief. He has an agenda, which includes treating religious indoctrination of children as "child abuse".

"Original Teachings" of Buddha

From what little I know of the Buddha, he seems to me to have been a tireless seeker, not happy with the easy answers or even the questions of the day.

Unlike with Jesus, a lot of his life was recorded with a fair degree of accuracy. You can get to know this guy with much more confidence than you can with Jesus.

As with Jesus, I think a great deal is lost when translating the questions these men were asking into modern times. If the questions no longer make sense, the answers become less relevant (to say the least).

In Buddha's case, it seems that he was preoccupied with escaping the wheel of reincarnation. This is a "problem" that no longer makes sense. I see his "solution", such as the eightfold path, as something that should be demoted from "divine insight" to a "traveller's tale".

Like all of us, he was on a road through the Jungle, not really knowing what he was seeking, but determined to struggle onward. I think he discovered answers to questions he hardly articulated, such as "what is it to be human?" and "why does being human curse us to unhappy lives?"

We can learn a lot from what he figured out along the way, but the key lesson is to keep struggling onward.

For me, that means finding better questions. "Religions" seem to universally consist of wrong answers to meaningless questions.

What is "Religion"?

My impression is that perhaps "religion" itself is a "Western" concept. Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Confucianism (if I may be allowed to attach "ism" to them) all seem to be better characterized by the term "way" or "path". The "religious" metaphor seems to be about something static and eternally true. It's about something "found", so that there is no reason to continue seeking. For example, the "Gospel" is supposed to be an eternally true message and our job is just to understand it, accept it and build a little fort around ourselves to prevent further insight.

At one point or another, I have personally followed the "way" of agnosticism, atheism, Christianity, Taoism, Skepticism and (at present) Zen. There is no reason to suspect that something else is "up the road, ahead".

What has never changed for me is that I see everyone is a "seeker" climbing different paths on the same mountain. To me, it seems that some are hopelessly lost, but I always think "There but for the grace of [whoever] go I". We are all in this together.