Gay rights activists see the passage in 11 states of measures banning same sex marriage as a defeat, when they should view it as something of a minor victory.   Five years ago, nobody even talked about gay marriage, and now it’s being discussed openly and put to the vote.   These new measures are temporary at best, even if they do pass the inevitable legal challenges.   And if they’re struck down, there’s the possibility that the laws they were designed to strengthen will be struck down as well.

I’m not at all surprised that such measures passed in the states where they were on the ballot.   The majority of the voting public is uncomfortable with the idea of same sex marriage.   It’s new and different.   To them, it’s bad enough that we acknowledge sexuality at all.  Seeing homosexuality openly celebrated on nationwide TV is shocking.   Is it any surprise that people who were brought up to believe that sex is private and homosexuality is evil would be distressed by the idea of same sex marriage and want to prevent it?   This is more than an emotional issue.   It strikes at the core values that people have lived with for forty years or more. (Forty-plus being the largest voting block.)

I think that banning same sex marriage is an important step in the process of our society reevaluating its sexual mores.   We have to over react before we become rational.   More importantly, it will cause us to discuss fundamental principles that make up our Republic, chiefly among them the Constitutional protections against the tyranny of the majority.   This issue is not fundamentally different from laws that prevented interracial marriages, and in time–probably within my lifetime–same sex marriage will be commonplace.   That doesn’t help the thousands of same sex couples who want to get married now, I know, but that’s the way things happen in our society.   You don’t change a society by forcing people to accept things that are contrary to their fundamental value systems.   You do it by changing the fundamental values of the younger generations.   In a very real sense, it’s a war of attrition.

The debate won’t stop at same sex marriage between two people, by the way.   I already hear grumblings of threesomes, foursomes, and larger “group marriages” vying for equal rights.   To tell the truth, I don’t see where we could reasonably withhold the legal and civil benefits of marriage from such groups.   That will cause some serious social upheaval as the whole concept of a family unit is redefined.   Even that could happen in my lifetime.   If it does, I expect to see a fair number of same sex couples protesting against it.   Some things don’t change.

What do I hope?  I hope that God is a rational being. I hope that there is an after life where he and I can sit down over a couple of Heavenly Homebrews and discuss all the things I’ve learned, my successes and failures, joys and disappointments.  I hope that there is something beyond the century or less that I’m going to live here—somewhere else I can go and learn new things, to continue to grow, to strive, to become more than I am today.  I hope that God is not an all-powerful, perfect, all-seeing, all-knowing being, because such a being would be as bored as my former boss who spent his days playing Minesweeper and Solitaire, and even more boring to talk to.  I hope that God, too, is a fallible being who continues to grow and from whom I can learn lessons of love and loss, success and failure.  To believe that my life, my hopes, and desires are nothing more than the result of billions of years of random accidents and some simple chemical reactions is among the most depressing thoughts imaginable.  I want to believe that my life means something beyond whatever small mark I make in this world and on the minds and hearts of the people I’ve known.

I’m not the first person for whom a logical approach to faith has failed.  Nor am I by any stretch of the imagination the smartest.  At some point one recognizes that there isn’t enough objective information to reach a logical conclusion about the nature of God.  Reaching that point, one is left with the following options:

• Fully embrace God’s existence and the tenets of whatever religion strikes your fancy.  Some people seem quite happy with this solution.  Fundamentalists (of whatever religion) are able to separate their spiritual beliefs from their logical thought processes.
• Deny God’s existence entirely, proclaiming that the lack of positive proof is proof of His non-existence.  This requires a complete disconnect between logical reasoning and spiritual beliefs.  Real atheists are as illogical and inconsistent in their spiritual beliefs as any other type of fundamentalist.
• Give up entirely and put the whole question out of your mind.  This is the true agnostic.  Not only does he not know, he doesn’t care.  In all honesty, this is the only completely logical course of action given the available evidence.
• Except humans aren’t entirely rational.  Most of us keep searching.  We want to believe that there’s some meaning, but we can’t figure out exactly what it is.  So we build in our minds a picture of the being that we want God to be, and live our lives in a way that we hope will bring us closer to that being.  I honestly believe that this is how the majority of people treat religion, regardless of their expressed beliefs.

To me, spirituality consists of a search for Order, and an acceptance of my inability to fully grasp that Order.  Science, even practical science, is the search for that Order and, in my mind, The Creator.  Isn’t that what religion is all about?  The personal search for God and the acceptance that you probably can’t fully understand his/her/its true nature?

Or is religion really what I was taught as a boy?  Is it really all about rules, prohibitions, and required rituals?  If so, which rituals are correct?  Ask 100 people and get 100 different answers.  There’s a disconnect here that I can’t reconcile with any teachings with which I am familiar.  If there is a God who expects us to live a certain way, wouldn’t He make those rules abundantly clear to us, with no possibility of misinterpretation?  To do otherwise is stacking the deck against us, setting us up to fail.  Each religion teaches that it is the way, and yet if there is only one God, then only one of those religions can possibly be right.

However I might try, I can’t believe that The Creator would be so purposefully cruel as to give us free will and then expect us to follow a set of rules that is not clearly defined.  If that is in fact the nature of God, then I certainly don’t want to spend eternity in His presence!

And yet, if God is the kind and logical being that I hope He is, then the existence of free will and the lack of clearly defined rules should lead me to the extreme existentialist view:  nothing matters.  That, too, is a doctrine that I can’t embrace.

Continuing my rambling discussion of religion that I started here on October 28…

From my previous entries you might get the idea that I don’t believe in God, a Creator, or whatever name you wish to attach to The Divine.  Whereas it’s true that I don’t believe in the type of being that’s revered by any of the religions of which I am aware, I do believe in a Creator.  But I have no proof to back up that belief.  I recognize the possibility that this Earth, the life on it, and the vastness of the universe is all just the result of a huge explosion and random chance.  I choose to believe, however, that there is a plan that was set in motion by The Creator, identity unknown.  Call it a hypothesis based on observation.

What observations?  There appears to be an Order to things.  The Sun rises and sets in a predictable pattern for clearly explainable reasons.  Movements of other planetary bodies are similarly explainable.  Volcanoes and earthquakes, which not so many years ago were “explained” away as the wrath of gods, also are (partially) understood.  Our knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, and even chaotic systems like weather continue to reveal that these “mysteries” are actually quite understandable and subject to logical rules.  We don’t know all of the rules, but I believe that we know enough of the rules to say with some confidence that these are not just random events.  Given that, it seems highly unlikely to me that all of these logically consistent systems of rules could be the result of random chance.  I accept the possibility, but deny the probability.

Besides, I’m smart enough not to try proving a negative.  In one of my first computer science classes way back when, an instructor said that the statement “This program has no bugs” was, for all but the most trivial programs, impossible to prove.  Proving that there is no God would be similarly impossible.

An acquaintance once asked me if I wanted to live in a world where the majority of people acted as though God doesn’t exist.  At the time I conceded the point, but I frequently come back to ponder the question.  Implied in his question is that belief in God (or, more specifically, the thought of a reward or punishment in the afterlife) is what keeps people in line.  The assumption is that Man’s laws or established societal rules of behavior aren’t strong enough to motivate people; that if people don’t think they’re answerable to a higher power they’ll run amuck:  raping, pillaging, plundering, and in general making a mess of things.  But one only has to look at current events and religious wars through the centuries to see that a majority’s belief in God or religion doesn’t prevent people from doing bad things to each other.  At best, a belief in religion helps prevent people from doing evil to others who hold the same beliefs, but even that parallel is tenuous.

The question is phrased in such a way as to make an unbeliever look stupid either way he answers.  If he says, “No, I would not like to live in such a world,” then he has in effect admitted that a belief in God (and, by extension, whatever religion is currently being advocated) is necessary for a society to function.  If he answers “Yes, I would like to live in such a world,” then he is assumed to be an evil anarchist in need of saving (which could involve being put to death to save his immortal soul).

Belief in God or some other supernatural being is deeply ingrained in most societies.  Children are indoctrinated early on.  Even professed atheists and agnostics can be heard saying things like “God willing,” or “Heaven knows.”  It’s like the little kid who says, “I know there aren’t any monsters under the bed,”  but then snuggles in tight to prevent an uncovered arm or leg from being snatched in the middle of the night.  The number of spontaneous conversions by condemned prisoners and soldiers on the front lines is pretty astonishing, and I think would be impossible if some form of that belief hadn’t been ingrained at an early age.  Given that, I wonder if it’s even possible to have a society in which people don’t have a strong belief in God.  Certainly such a thing wouldn’t be possible on a large scale in the U.S.  It would take hundreds of years to remove those beliefs from a large part of the population.

I’m not saying that belief in God is a bad thing.  Nor am I saying that a majority belief in God is required to create an orderly society,  although due to the aforementioned deeply-ingrained beliefs that might be difficult to prove.  Certainly the government doesn’t have to be based on religion although many today are, either overtly or in subtle ways that reflect their history.  (Including the U.S. government, by the way, but that’s a topic for an entirely different series of postings.)

After years of pondering, my answer to the original question has become:  “I want to live in a society where people treat each other with respect and dignity, tend their own gardens, and are held accountable for transgressions against others.”  Unfortunately such a society doesn’t exist on a large scale, nor does it seem to have existed in recorded history. 

See October 28 and October 29

From time to time people try to drag me into religious discussions, and they aren’t satisfied with my standard “I choose not to discuss my religious beliefs” comment.  They’re left unsatisfied, because in my experience those types of people aren’t interested in my beliefs except as a way to either bolster their own, or to make me look stupid by ridiculing what I believe in.  How do I know this?  Because they use the same arguments I used when I was trying to do that.  But since I’ve gone this far here, I guess I might as well go all the way with it.

The Old Testament describes a jealous and vengeful God.  I want nothing to do with such a being.  The New Testament describes a more reasonable being, but there’s still that threat of eternal damnation hanging over my head.  To compound the problem there’s no real proof that either Testament (or any other “sacred” text for that matter) is the actual “Word of God.”  A God who would set me on this Earth without an instruction book and expect me to follow rules that I have no way of determining is a cruel jokester who doesn’t deserve my respect, much less my devotion.  If the only feedback I get is my final score, then I choose not to play the game.  If I had some way to determine the rules, things would be much different.  But until somebody can show me objective proof that God exists and evidence of the rules I’m supposed to follow, I’m quite happy to continue with the kind of life I’ve lead for the last 20 years, hoping to surround myself with others of similar disposition.

I have more to say on the subject, but it’ll have to wait until I sort out my thoughts a little better.

(Continuing yesterday‘s topic)

I approached my study of religion perhaps a little bit too logically.  After giving the Bible a quick read I attacked the religion section of the school library.  There is an astonishingly huge number of religious beliefs out there.  I read through many of them, perused a few others, and finally gave up.  I was looking for logic and all I found was superstition and bizarre rituals.  The best piece of information I came across during that study was Pascal’s Wager which, simply put, says (and here I’ll use Jeff Duntemann’s words from last May, because he summarizes it much better than I could have): Absent any rational proof of God’s existence, it makes sense to live as though God is really out there.  That’s a strikingly clear piece of logic for Pascal’s time when the only known religions of consequence were Catholicism and Judaism.  But given the plethora of “mainstream” religions these days it suffers from a serious flaw.  Bowing to the logic of living as though God exists, what kind of life should I lead?  To what belief structure must I subscribe in order to be well received in the afterlife, assuming that one exists?  Worse than having no answer, the question has way too many answers that cover quite a range of behaviors.  Faced with a question that appears to have no answer, I did the only logical thing.  I gave up trying to find the answer.

In his May 26 entry, Jeff says:

If God does exist, what would He want of us? Some people who embrace Pascal’s Wager profess faith in Jesus Christ to meet the wager (though I wonder if this could be considered genuine faith) while others simply pursue a life of gentleness, generosity, and love…and figure that any God who matches the template will be content with that.

That “life of gentleness, generosity, and love” is how I decided to live my life, but not out of concern with what might happen to me after I die, but because the people who live that kind of life are those whose company I value most.  The existence or not of God was and remains irrelevant in that regard.

I’ve heard it said that agnosticism is intellectual cowardice.  I ran across a quote one time, attributed to a religious figure, who said he had more respect for atheists than for agnostics because at least the atheist believed in something.  I’ve never understood that position.  That the existence of God is and has been such a hotly debated issue over the centuries means to me that there is no generally accepted observable evidence either way.  Belief or non-belief requires a leap of faith that has no rational basis.  Based purely on observable evidence, agnosticism is the only rational position.  My honest answer when pushed (and somebody would have to push hard) is that I don’t have enough information to make the determination.

I read a lot of crime novels and true crime stories several years ago, and noted that what gets killers caught are patterns that they either fail to notice or insist upon repeating despite the risk.  If there’s no pattern in the victims, or the timing or manner of killing, there’s very little for investigators to go on.  I had plotted a story in which the killer picks random people in random cities, and using many different methods to kill them.  Besides being a depressing thought, I decided not to go ahead with the story for two reasons:  1) I didn’t want to give anybody any ideas (a groundless fear—people already get wacky ideas); and 2) I couldn’t think of any realistic way that the killer could have been caught or even how an investigator could tie the killings together.  I’d have to add some brilliant deduction or unbelievable stroke of luck for “The Hero” to get anywhere.  I’m not too concerned anymore about giving people ideas-I’m sure there are plenty of nutcases out there who have thought up even more frightening things.  Heck, there might even be people out there already doing random killings.  I couldn’t come up with a plausible way to get around my second objection, though, without making the story seem contrived.  What little I’ve learned about crime scene investigation over the past few years still hasn’t changed my mind.  Somebody who just wanted to kill random people could get away with it for quite some time, despite the best efforts of our law enforcement community.  It’s a frightening thought.

As you might imagine, it’s the D.C. area sniper who got me to thinking about this again.  That one probably would have remained free had he stopped after the 7th or 8th attack.  But he’s gotten careless, and will undoubtedly be caught if he continues.

What distinguishes a religion from a cult?  I don’t remember how the subject came up yesterday, but my friend John’s immediate answer was “The number of followers.”  The six of us talked around the topic all the way back to the office after lunch, and that was still the most satisfying answer, as far as I’m concerned.  Merriam-Webster‘s definition of the word cult isn’t much help, and the Defining Terms article from the Deception in the Church page, although interesting, just adds more fuel to the fire.  Popular usage of the term cult is all about what’s considered mainstream.

No, there really isn’t a point to all this pondering, beyond noting that one person’s (or group’s) cult may be another’s religion.  Definitions are such slippery things sometimes.