OPINION & EDITORIAL
Religion aside, faith perseveres
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Also by Gerald Cox:
- I'll take a female president, just not her (December 3, 2007)
- Religion aside, faith perseveres (November 26, 2007)
- Want Big Ten sports? Get a dish (November 19, 2007)
- Civil rights movement needs 'Black-In' (November 12, 2007)
Related Stories:
- A delicate topic (November 26, 2007)
- Beckstrom wrong on religious case (September 20, 2005)
- Exploring the issues: Religion - Your responses (November 30, 2007)
- Faith invites unity on campus (November 29, 2007)
- Religion, morality should be separated (December 5, 2007)
by Gerald Cox
Monday, November 26, 2007
Many would say that there are few topics on this campus and
in this city more maligned than religion. Madison, the quintessential Midwest
bastion of the left, offers a number of traditional challenges to those who
profess a faith in the divine. A large and left-leaning university campus
offers the traditional challenge of the intelligentsia's aversion to the
divine. Even more revealing, Madison is home to the Freedom From Religion
Foundation, the self-proclaimed "largest group of atheists and agnostics in North
America." It would seem, then, that God and all derivatives thereof are mostly
unwelcome in Madison. Madison, one would say, is an atheist.
And why not? When we as students consider the absurdity that
is organized religion, what do we think of? Do we consider an image of love and
kindness, or do we consider the image propagated by its critics? Does organized
religion evoke an image of organized hatred and violence, or of organized
giving and care? Of opulent expenditures on palatial facilities, or of
investment in host communities?
Religion confounds; it defies the Darwinian demand for
utility. Its detractors see waste and opulence, as was exemplified by one of my
fellow writers' undereducated attack on the building of Madison's very own mega-church,
Blackhawk Church. Its adherents see worth and love — after all, a church of
Blackhawk's size serving a community of Madison's size needs facilities that
are commensurate with its needs. And who is to begrudge a group of private
citizens that right? An undertaking of such innocuousness would hardly be worth
mentioning in the construction-crazed city of Madison, but this undertaking was
done by religious observers. Cue the skeptic.
So why the vitriolic response to the building of a mega-church,
or the idea of organized religion in general? Perhaps it is because Madison has
constructed an image of religion that is opposed to its progressive spirit. It
would seem that when one says "Islam," Madison thinks of violence, of an eerie World
Trade Center-sized gap in the New York skyline. When Madison considers
Christianity, it thinks of obstinate resistance to scientific progress. When
Madison considers "Hebrew Bible," "Old Testament" or "Quran," it thinks of
anachronistic rules that governed societies from millennia long past. When
Madison considers Sikhism, it gets slightly perplexed, and confuses it with a
host of other religions.
The Madison image of religion is increasingly becoming one
of Crusades, of extremism and terror. Madison thinks of Islam's failure to
pacify the Middle East, of Christianity's failure to provide for its lesbian,
bisexual, gay or transgender members. We no longer consider the humanitarian
contributions of Christianity and Islam: its adherents' efforts on the
abolition of slavery, the improvement of the human condition vis-à-vis the Salvation
Army, the Red Cross or local churches' community involvement. Instead, we focus
upon organized religion's many foibles and idiosyncrasies, for they are glaring
indeed. Priests and altar boys, lawsuits and abuse, violence and misogyny,
President Bush and the conservative vote — it's just too much.
The mistake inherent in Madison's supposed animosity toward
religion is its focus on "religion" and its disregard of "faith." Faith, as I
see it, demands, at its most base, a loving relationship with the Divine and
the earthly. Faith, as I practice it, evinces itself in a respect and love for
the Created as well as the Divine. Faith, as I believe it, rebuffs the violence
of terrorism, the obstinate obstruction of life-improving scientific progress
and anachronistic misogyny.
I admit to having been a rebellious and stubborn child — by
doing things like working on the Sabbath, a stonable offense. I have listened
to women preach, proclaim their faith, sing and teach in my church building — a
practice ostensibly prohibited by Paul in Corinthians. I am a Darwinian
anomaly; I bask in the stark uselessness of religious practice, devoting much
of my life, time, and meager expenses to its observance. I call Christmas
"Christmas."
I suppose that would make me religious, but I'd just as soon
avoid such a classification, for the aforementioned societal perceptions of
religion. I've read both parts of the Bible, and I'm pretty horrified by that
Old Testament part, too.
In the face of all the terrible consequences that a
misguided belief in religion has brought, I would assume you'd be surprised at
my faith. I am too. In light of all the apparent foibles inherent in my faith,
I keep believing. And while I doubt that one life lived in faith to the best of
one's ability will change the rather justified negative opinion of "religion,"
I'll keep believing.
Sometimes I can't help but believe it myself. That, despite it all, I still have faith in something incredibly improbable and eternally compelling.
Gerald Cox (gcox@badgerherald.com)
is a senior majoring in economics.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 3:16am):
"When we as students consider the absurdity that is organized religion, what do we think of?"
Irrationality and intellectual dishonesty. Whether religion is arguably a force for good doesn't make it true. It's a celebration of self-deception and delusion.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 8:06am):
Idiotarian @ 3:16am drooled: "Whether religion is arguably a force for good doesn't make it true. It's a celebration of self-deception and delusion."
As opposed to atheistic Marxism, whose "rational" force brought the world 100s of millions of innocent corpses (and counting).
The evidence clearly demonstrates that the 20th century's bloodiest mass murderers-- Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Honneker, Mussolini, Caeucescu, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, il Sung, Mugabe, Mengistu, Castro, Che, PFLP, PKK, FMLN, FARC, IRA, ETA, Red Army faction, Shining Path, Rachel Carson, etc., ad nauseum-- were all inspired by atheistic Marxism.
100 million corpses don't lie. Show us that "intellectual honesty" and own it, atheists.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 9:41am):
But if there is a God, then atheism is self-delusion. Who's to say Christians and Jews aren't ultimately right on this issue?
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 10:13am):
Er, what god?
'Faith' implies an absence of logic and reason.
This, folks, is why I'm an atheist - because illogicity is something I cannot stand for, and religion arguably does more harm than good by deluding people with falsehoods.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 11:22am):
good article, Gerald
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 11:25am):
well written article
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 12:04pm):
8:06 - Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaucescu, Mugabe, PFLP, PKK, IRA, and ETA were or are Christian individuals or organizations.
Get your history right.
-an atheist who is intensely pissed at your lack of historical knowledge and your failed attempt to justify your prejudices against atheism
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 1:09pm):
"Faith, as I see it, demands, at its most base, a loving relationship with the Divine and the earthly."
All that high-handed rhetorical set up, just to beg the question in favor of God's existence? Faith, in its dialectical opposition to reason, is utterly worthless as a methodology for determining truth. The object of faith is simply selected, whether it exists or not--indeed, whether it is logically possible or not! Until you demonstrate the existence of the object of your faith, it means absolutely nothing to any reasonable person.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 1:11pm):
12:04pm is historically wrong.
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Honneker, Mussolini, Caeucescu, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, il Sung, Mugabe, Mengistu, Castro, Che, PFLP, PKK, FMLN, FARC, IRA, ETA, Red Army faction, Shining Path, Rachel Carson, etc., ad nauseum were ALL inspired by atheistic Marxism-- not Christianity.
Own it, beeyotch.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 1:23pm):
Is 12:04pm irrationally pissed (or intellectually dishonest) about the murderous, atheistic motivations of Lenin, Stalin, Honneker, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, il Sung, Mengistu, Castro, Che, FMLN, FARC, Red Army faction, Shining Path and Rachel Carson?
Was Marx a Bible thumping Christian?
Dr. John Ray has exhaustively demonstrated that Hitler was a Marxist.
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id9.html
The IRA and ETA were both atheistic Marxists (read their manifestos).
The rest of them were also socialists of one Marxist flavor or another.
That's one big steaming pile of corpses your dogs left in history's living room. Own it.
Melissa Nauertz (November 26, 2007 @ 1:44pm):
Mad atheists I see, that seems to be the trend...
great article
But as there is hypocracy in religion, there is hypocrisy in everything. The hypocritcal aspect that goes with organized religion has been my main hardship when the question of "what to define myself as" arises. I've chosen to just go with believer. A believer that knows that the human race is not the almighty ruler and that there is something, much much bigger than the "logical and rational" side can comprehend.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 4:05pm):
8:06am's reasoning:
1. Marxism is atheistic.
2. Marxism inspired certain atrocities [let's assume this extremely contentious claim, for the sake of demonstrating your inability to argue validly].
3. Atheism is responsible for Marxist-inspired atrocities.
Compare to:
1. Hitler belongs to the set of ice cream eaters.
2. Hitler inspired certain atrocities.
3. Ice cream eating is responsible for Hitler-inspired atrocities.
A delightfully absurd conclusion got by the exact same reasoning! I suspect that somebody has problems understanding the basic notions of set theory.
Of course the point you responded to was that "Whether religion is arguably a force for good doesn't make it true. It's a celebration of self-deception and delusion." But somehow your ill-conceived diatribe against Marxism completely ignored anything related to this point.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 4:41pm):
1:11pm is talking out of his ass again, using the same C&P'ed list for the past week (save for Rachel Carson, your addition of her to your list is almost funny. Almost.) to help prep his ego for a Democratic presidential win.
We can debate for hours about whether or not such and so was truly a Marxist or merely alluded to it to gain power, and whether or not the CATHOLIC IRA was atheistic. But atheism has nothing to do with how many people they killed, in fact, most reputable political scientists (unlike the ones you cite) would claim that enforced atheism was a tool to install themselves into a god-like image.
And we could easily make the claim that followers of Organized Religion of any shade are responsible for yet more deaths. How many indigenous have been killed in the Americas? How many have been killed in the Middle East and Israel over religion? Africa? Asia? Ireland? Or the Spanish Inquisition? The Crusades? Or America's own involvement in stamping out godless Marxists and Muslims? Or any other number of massacres, wars, and policies pushing a Christian agenda propogated by the US and her allies? Tlatelolco 1968, Chile 1973, Spanish Civil War, El Mozote, the countless Iraqis and Cubans hurt by economic sanctions, Bishop Romero...
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 5:12pm):
4:05pm is a very poor logician.
Naturally, those grotesque mental contortions are founded upon errors of logic (and lies of omission) for their "proof."
Afterall, atheism fundamentally informed Marxism (not the other way around). And Marx's followers (Mao, Pol Pot, et.al.) weren't motivated by an ice cream fetish.
1. Atheism fundamentally informs Marxism.
2. Marxism inspired mass murder and genocide among his followers.
3. Atheism is responsible for Marxist-inspired mass murder.
Compare to:
1. Ice cream did not inform Marxism.
2. Marxism inspired mass murder and genocide among his followers.
3. Ice cream eating atheists also chase wild geese around flaming strawmen.
Try as they may, atheists can't deny the atheistic motivations which animated Marxist villains.
/reductio ad idiotum
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 5:33pm):
4:41pm whined: "How many indigenous have been killed in the Americas?"
Don't know (neither do you). Ask the germs that killed American aboriginals (pre-germ theory). I do know many more folks around the globe are enriched by our Western technology and culture.
Fascinating how atheistic Marxists (like their Islamo-fascist allies) obsess over ancient grievances, just to mask their shame and guilt over present day atrocities.
You'd think they'd get lockjaw from gnawing the carpet and muttering to themselves.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 5:41pm):
"Who's to say Christians and Jews aren't ultimately right on this issue?"
Yay, Christians and Jews agree that Jesus is God. I was starting to feel sad that the chosen ones were bound to eternal damnation.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 6:31pm):
"Atheism fundamentally informs Marxism"
How do you arrive at THAT idiotic opinion?
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 6:51pm):
Thank you 4:05pm, well put. 8:06am's comment was so absurd I was having trouble forming words to use in response.
Anonymous (November 26, 2007 @ 7:31pm):
"Fundamentally informed" is a ridiculously vague phrase. Atheism also "fundamentally informs" most of modern analytic philosophy, yet I haven't seen the folks on the 5th floor of HC White murdering anyone.
Anonymous (November 27, 2007 @ 7:17am):
Confronted with the assertion "atheism fundamentally informed Marxism" idiotarian @ 6:31 drooled: "How do you arrive at THAT idiotic opinion?"
First, I asked the Dalai Lama. Then, I read the idiotic Marx himself.
In his doctoral thesis, Marx proclaims in no uncertain terms that "in the country of reason" the existence of God cannot have any meaning.
"Take paper money to a country in which this use of paper money is not known, and everyone will laugh at your subjective representation. Go with your gods to a country in which other gods are worshipped, and you will be shown that you are the victim of fancies and abstractions. And rightly. Anyone who had brought a migrant god to the ancient Greeks, would have found the proof of the non-existence of this god, because it did not exist for the Greeks. What is the case in a certain country for certain foreign gods, takes place for god in general in the country of reason: it is an area in which his existence ceases..."
[K. Marx, Frammento dell'appendice della dissertazione dottorale, in A. Sabetti, Sulla fondazione del materialismo storico, Florence 1962, p. 415]
Anonymous (November 27, 2007 @ 11:03am):
Marxism relies, in a far deeper fashion than it does on atheism, on the work of the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. While Marx's writings on atheism are comparatively thin, his writings on Smith and Ricardo would fill a bookshelf. Are these poor practitioners of the dismal science also to blame for whatever atrocities have been committed while invoking Marx's name?
Anonymous (November 28, 2007 @ 10:13am):
11:03am cited Adam Smith and David Ricardo
Somehow I don't think Mao considered Marx's economic theories-- so much as their atheistic imperatives-- when he drove the Dalai Lama into exiled and "disappeared" ~1M Tibetan Buddhists.
And the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields are memorialized by Buddhists for obvious reason. (Well, obvious to anyone but a delusional Marxist apologists.)
Own it, atheistic Marxists.
Corey Sheahan (November 28, 2007 @ 11:40pm):
Hey 10:13am,
Marxism is, first and foremost, an economic theory (you know, all that stuff about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). That's a fact. Marx didn't primarily advocate an overthrow of religious institutions, he advocated an overthrow of the state to institute a governmental and economic system which gave control of production to the proletariat. That's Marxism. The atheism of Marx was of secondary importance.
Also, consider the following:
All crows are birds. Does that make all birds crows?
If all Marxists are atheists, does that mean that all atheists are Marxists?
Anonymous (December 1, 2007 @ 10:06am):
Corey @ 11:40pm drooled: "The atheism of Marx was of secondary importance."
Secondary? Except to his bloody followers (and their victims)--- atheism made all the difference in the world.
Birds aren't moral actors.
Own it.
Anonymous (December 6, 2007 @ 7:04pm):
I love God.
God loves me.
I love you.
God loves you. (even if you don't love or believe in him)
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