Ideology Matters
This Houston Chronicle article is fantastic. To summarize, what are the most toxic ideas in religion?
-Violence in the name of God
"If you disagree with me, I will kill you" is hardly an attitude that promotes respect or intelligent debate.
-Follow Our Rules or Else
This can be thought of as the promise of, "as long as you're a member, follow our rules, and contribute financially you can have a direct experience of God." This is personality stunting and leads to all sorts of repression.
-My Religion is Right
No one religion has a corner on "rightness". What works for me may or may not work for you. You can be both loyal to your own religion and also accepting of other religions.
-Converting Others to Your Religion
The idea that missionary work is embedded in power is correct. It's also a loaded message because it means, "we think we're correct and by extension of the idea we think your ideas are wrong and that you should change".
-A Tribal View of God
This can be best described as "our God is the only true God and our religion is the only true religion." This hardly promotes open-mindedness.
One of the reasons I'm not a "good Catholic" anymore is because I really hated the attitude of "we have THE corner on religion" and the wide-spread belief of "Buddhism isn't a religion, it's just a way of life". It's not really something I think was meant to be taught but ideas that are widespread today. Many of these ideas are why LDS/Mormonism didn't work for me either. Besides, who really wants to wear funny underwear or exclude loved ones from a 'wedding'? I also really like coffee, tea, and wine. All the simple pleasures of life. I don't drink to excess, by the way.
I know some things I write on here could be considered critical of the LDS Church. To clarify, I'm critical of all religions that think it's OK to restrict personal freedoms, that think it's OK to say that one group of people are more special than another group merely because of race, sex, sexual preference, or personal aspirations. I'm critical of religions that strongly insist on enforcing gender roles, because I think choosing a lifestyle/occupation is vastly different than only having one lifestyle/occupation to choose from. The LDS Church is one religion I'm familiar with that has these problems, so I comment on them.
I don't think mormons are necessarily bad people, but I think their religion is a bad influence on society in general. I also think that well-intentioned mormons do stupid things because of their religion. It doesn't mean that I don't respect their choice of religion, or think that they are bad people.
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4 comments:
Wow. You bring to mind a quote by my grandfather who was supposed to have once said; "I never met a mormon I didn't like, but collectively they are a menace to society." I'm not sure if he ever actually said that.
One thing you touched on has always bothered me with religion. How can there be all of these different churches with different ideas? There's a different one on every corner with different ideas. How can they all be right, and the other guy wrong? When it comes right down to it, religion is possibly the thing that divides people more than it untites them.
It's people who get it wrong.
Great post.
One of the things that bothers me the most about overly religious people is the idea that they need to get everyone around them to be just as religious. This need is shown in missionary service, but can easily be seen in your own neighborhood from friends seemingly innocent comments or questions they use to pry and determine how righteous you are. I beleive this need cross's the bounds of any single religion. I was once that person although I have seen the errors of my ways.
To each his/her/its own.
/paranoidfr33k
My theory is that most churches end up teaching (pretty much) the same lessons on how to be a good person. The implementation of those lessons differ depending on the religion.
I used to date a fellow who freaked out about Buddhism. He said it was "devil worship" and that it wasn't anywhere near as cool as Christianity (ok, I'm exaggerating). That relationship didn't last very long after that.
I think it's OK to be overly religious as long as you don't try to impose that your zeal and/or religion is a requirement for "being a good ________". I think it's possible to be deeply religious and yet also open-minded.
As a fellow "not good Catholic" I have to agree with your reasoning, for mine is pretty close to the same. I don't like how the Catholic church has taught us over the centuries that if you're not Catholic, you're not good enough. I am Catholic, I think because I have always been Catholic and so has the majority of my family, but I do not agree with a lot of the things they teach.
If you read the Bible, it does not include things like promoting distain towards other religions, at least not in the New Testament. When you have that distain, you end up dividing the world rather than uniting it, which is not the aim of God (at least I doubt that it is)
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