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SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense ~which you should read immediately, even if you’ve read it before. when we’re studying a text, we don’t pass over it with our eyes once & call that reading~
Big religious debate on twitter yesterday, and I managed to keep my big mouth shut. Although I believe in God, I’m tired of the conversation. I’m especially tired of believers and non-believers alike confusing institutions with the ideals ~or truths, if you will~ that started them.
I wouldn’t have brought it up at all, but the same thing is happening in lots of areas of our thinking.
The behavior of the church is no more an argument against the existence of God than the behavior of the schools is an argument against the existence of science. Same is true for government and democracy.
Nor is the unearned authority ~tradition~ of the church, government, or schools to be taken as evidence of God, democracy, or education. ~or anything at all for that matter~
Government, people, is BAD. So is religion. So is schooling. Society, God, and education, however, ROCK. The enemy is orthodoxy.
But that means MY orthodoxy as well as the other guy’s. Institutions are the enemy. We need to take my good friend Elton’s advice: stop arguing about angels in trees and burn down the mission.
No comment on the fact that the guy gets taken away at the end….
NOTE: Apparently it’s Elton John Week here at Taylor the Teacher. I don’t do things like this on purpose. I’m sure it’s a sign of my UNPROFESSIONALISM as a blogger that I don’t PLAN better & keep these things from happening. ~at least I’ve started using the toilet~
2 responses so far ↓
1 Clay Burell // May 1, 2008 at 6:52 am
The behavior of the church is the last argument we need to deny the existence of any known deity (key word: known).
The only argument we need for a known and knowable God is: evidence. A Book saying God wrote the book is no evidence.
A reverence toward existence, a call to create beauty and do good? That’s holy.
A “my God is true and other religions are false”? That’s divisive, uncritical, arrogant, and a great recipe for war.
Live in Asia - lovely, Taoist and Buddhist Asia - for a while, and you’ll be amazed to realize deep in the bones that there’s a good reason no Buddhists and Taoists are murdering abortionists, hijacking airplanes and flying them into cities, or trying to blow up either the Dome of the Rock or a bus-full of Israelis. It’s this: Buddhists and Taoists are humble enough not to claim they know anything about the origins or creator of the universe.
So they don’t fight about it.
The Mystery, and relationship to it? That’s beautiful. The claim to know the secrets of that Mystery, and the Words that Mystery speaks, and it’s Top Ten Rules (there are actually 622 “Thou Shalt Nots,” though most Christians haven’t read the Torah and so don’t know that) - that’s a claim needing a lot of evidence, or else to me, it’s arrogant.
And I hate to say it, but it’s a bit silly, too.
The medieval Christian mystics were deeper. They knew the Divine was ineffable. So they kept silent and experienced it.
Today we’ve got evangelists and born-agains shoving their views on everybody. It’s a true decline.
Clay Burell’s last blog post..For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging
2 Taylor // May 1, 2008 at 7:57 am
I agree, it is a decline. And expecting people to “believe” at the point of a sword, gun, or airplane-turned bomb is a ridiculous misunderstanding of what belief really is.
The terrorist and evil acts you mentioned, in my opinion, do not originate from faith, but from fear. Fear that the believer might be wrong, fear i might go to hell, fear some “heathen” cynic or scientist or Buddhist, or Muslim or whatever might say something that tempts the “believer” into doubt.
I once sat in on a prayer session in which a girl asked for prayer for protection against the intellecutal assault of her biology class trying to trick her into believing in evolution.
that, o my brothers, is NOT faith. It’s fear.
I hope, clay, that I made my position re: believers expecting others to believe was clear when i said, ” Nor is the unearned authority ~tradition~ of the church, government, or schools to be taken as evidence of God, democracy, or education. ~or anything at all for that matter~
I respect your beliefs, even if i don’t agree. It’s clear you’ve thought them through.
Taylor’s last blog post..Burn Down the Mission
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