Author: Nameless Heathen

I was reading this blog entry with some bemusement. The author’s point is that superficial adherence to part of a religious practice, especially trendy parts (e.g. Madonna’s participation in Kabbalah but not Judaism) is unlikely to cause useful gain. He believes that real gain requires real discipline and commitment ( likely to a “real” religion you were raised in) and that the worst course of all is picking and choosing bits and pieces of many religions.

He later mellows some of this with stuff about the possibility that God is just the cosmos, and being religious means being good in “real life.”

This makes me wonder:

What is the typical believer’s perception of the useful end of religious practice? Peace of mind in the face of travail? Immortality? Self discipline? The acceptance of others? Personal gain? Is there a typical view? Do fundamentalist practitioners believe that their behavior is what is most likely to achieve the goal most important to them? For instance, does the abortion clinic protester looking for peace of mind get serenity while (or after) screaming at the evil-doers? Does the death penalty advocate believe his own immortality is more likely if others are killed? Are they all just showing off for their peers? Looking for customers? Is fervent belief in a 6000 year earth age a mark of self discipline?

I have my own opinions, but I wonder what believers would say (if they thought about it) and to what degree they would agree on the relative priority of benefits.

I tend to agree with the blogger in some respects. Commitment and depth are valuable. I also prefer people who live their religions in a kind, tolerant and consistent way. But I disagree with the assumption that the test of a worthwhile path is found only in deep tradition, and that people shouldn’t pick and choose. By that measure, only the oldest religion would be worthwhile.

A bigger disagreement I have is the assumption that individuals are somehow unqualified to judge part of a religion without adopting the whole thing.

I remember long ago visiting a retired Catholic priest to ask him to translate some old family letters. He began asking about my churchgoing, and when I told him “I don’t agree with the Church” he replied “Who are you to question the Church?”

I was offended at the very question. How could anyone doubt my right to make choices?

Much of this blog struck me the same way.

My premise is that I can trust myself more than I can trust your dogma and much more than I trust your judgment of me.

I believe the only test that can be applied to spiritual/mental/religious behavior is:

What’s the goal?

and:

Is what I’m doing working?

Who can say that growth of any trend follower is less real because they picked out what felt right to them?

About a week ago I heard an interesting NPR article on stem cell news. They were discussing some recent discoveries/observations regarding what had previously been considered a scientific scandal. If you recall, a few years ago (in 2004) South Korean scientists claimed to have cloned a human embryo, and derived stem cells from the clone. That particular claim quickly turned out to have been faked, and they people responsible resigned in disgrace, but now scientists from Harvard working with cells obtained from the Koreans are now suggesting that they (the Koreans) were the first to produce embryonic stem cells using only egg cells. That process is called parthenogenesis, and it’s been possible for simpler animals (including vertebrates like frogs) for a long time. The Harvard guys had problems getting heard, because nobody wanted to consider anything to do with the South Korean data.

I think all of this is ironic in so many ways. First that the South Koreans did something historic, and may not have realized it because they were too busy faking data. Second that it was scientifically unfashionable to mention anything to do with them. Thirdly, and from my point of view most importantly is that this is one more step in the direction of making fundamentalist’s position even less logically tenable. The moral argument is that stem cell research harms embryo’s. That position got pretty weak earlier when it became possible to remove a cell from a blastocyst without harming it and form cloned stem cells, but the fundies recovered by asking “How can you be sure the embryo won’t be harmed in any way?”. If a human ovum can develop into an embryo without conception, how will the fundamentalists manage to define the beginning of life in such a way as to prevent research? When will the “soul” tiptoe into the petri dish? How will the lunatics know to attack living people to save the unborn? It’s almost, but not quite as good as being able to derive embryonic stem cells from adult stem cells.

As an aside, I see at least one site using human parthenogenesis as the explanation for the “virgin birth” of Jesus. This makes me chuckle, but I’ll have to think through why.