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A manifesto...
Jun. 3rd, 2008 12:44 amI wrote this in response to a political argument I'm having on another journal, but I liked it, so I'm posting it here.
One of the big points that I’ve been trying to make is that what people treat as religious traditions change. And they change a lot more quickly than most people realize, even within Christianity. Mormonism was nothing but a lunatic talking literally into his hat 170 years ago; it’s now considered the first emergent world religion of the modern era. Until Vatican II, if you were a Catholic, you were committing a mortal sin if you ate meat on Fridays. Nowadays, not so much. Religion isn’t a very stable basis for a society: it only works as long as everyone agrees what the tenets of that religion is. The minute people start disagreeing, you get have the bloody, wretched religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. (I don’t know if the Thirty Years’ War is much taught these days, but it comprised a succession of religious wars that devastated huge swaths of Europe for decades. And if you don’t think that can happen in the modern era, just as the Shah of Iran.)
The problem with basing a society wholly on a religion, or on a tradition, is that religions and traditions, quite frequently, in fact, get it dead wrong. It was the tradition in this country for centuries that married women couldn’t own property, that blacks were inferior, that Jews were lesser people. These traditions were rejected because they are morally reprehensible. The tyranny of the majority is a very real thing, and no one should be denied their rights because the majority isn’t ready to cede back to them that which the majority took away. There are whole groups of people in this country who don’t want things to change not because they truly believe that the changes are wrong, but because it will mean that their particular status is no longer specially enshrined by law.
I like to think of it as a refining process: the dross of the ancient world is being burnt off. The traditions that make this country great: that all people are created equal, that we each are born with our inalienable rights, and that no man can tell us what to think or to believe, these will always prevail. We keep what is good and we toss the rest. We’re now just arguing over what those things are, and if someone is going to tell me that something is morally wrong, they’d better have a much more coherent argument than “Because the Bible and my grandmother told me so.”
I have a strong code of belief that I do my best to live up to. I do not always succeed: I am only human, but I never stop trying. I believe that humans have a responsibility to behave ethically: that a person has no right to take that which does not belong to him or her, whether it’s a stick of gum or a human life. I believe that it is a duty to take responsibility for that which is promised, whether it’s a promise to return a phone call, or a promise to care for newly-born child. I believe that all humans have an obligation to help their fellow man, where and when they are able, not because of an external Divinity, but because of an innate, shared humanity; an understanding that we’re all in this together.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, human is where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
One of the big points that I’ve been trying to make is that what people treat as religious traditions change. And they change a lot more quickly than most people realize, even within Christianity. Mormonism was nothing but a lunatic talking literally into his hat 170 years ago; it’s now considered the first emergent world religion of the modern era. Until Vatican II, if you were a Catholic, you were committing a mortal sin if you ate meat on Fridays. Nowadays, not so much. Religion isn’t a very stable basis for a society: it only works as long as everyone agrees what the tenets of that religion is. The minute people start disagreeing, you get have the bloody, wretched religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. (I don’t know if the Thirty Years’ War is much taught these days, but it comprised a succession of religious wars that devastated huge swaths of Europe for decades. And if you don’t think that can happen in the modern era, just as the Shah of Iran.)
The problem with basing a society wholly on a religion, or on a tradition, is that religions and traditions, quite frequently, in fact, get it dead wrong. It was the tradition in this country for centuries that married women couldn’t own property, that blacks were inferior, that Jews were lesser people. These traditions were rejected because they are morally reprehensible. The tyranny of the majority is a very real thing, and no one should be denied their rights because the majority isn’t ready to cede back to them that which the majority took away. There are whole groups of people in this country who don’t want things to change not because they truly believe that the changes are wrong, but because it will mean that their particular status is no longer specially enshrined by law.
I like to think of it as a refining process: the dross of the ancient world is being burnt off. The traditions that make this country great: that all people are created equal, that we each are born with our inalienable rights, and that no man can tell us what to think or to believe, these will always prevail. We keep what is good and we toss the rest. We’re now just arguing over what those things are, and if someone is going to tell me that something is morally wrong, they’d better have a much more coherent argument than “Because the Bible and my grandmother told me so.”
I have a strong code of belief that I do my best to live up to. I do not always succeed: I am only human, but I never stop trying. I believe that humans have a responsibility to behave ethically: that a person has no right to take that which does not belong to him or her, whether it’s a stick of gum or a human life. I believe that it is a duty to take responsibility for that which is promised, whether it’s a promise to return a phone call, or a promise to care for newly-born child. I believe that all humans have an obligation to help their fellow man, where and when they are able, not because of an external Divinity, but because of an innate, shared humanity; an understanding that we’re all in this together.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, human is where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
