14 October, 2008
Thanks to the tradition of religious freedom and the protection of religious expression that Americans enjoy, many of us labor under a terrible misconception. This misconception is that religion, because it is a personal, experiential, and wholly subjective state, condition, or system of belief, is above or lies outsid the realm of criticism. Because we cannot experience another's spirituality, because we cannot intrude on and in his experience of the Divine, we often (wrongly) conclude that it is not possible to examine his religious belief critically. The First Amendment guarantees one's freedom to believe as one wishes to believe, and thus we as Americans are more than happy to extend this univeral, unitarian, live-and-let-live approach to virtually any religious faith or spiritual-political dogma, regardless of content. While we may feel very "open-minded" in so doing, we are making a grave mistake.
Logically, only atheism is supportable, because there is no credible, logical proof of the existence of God. There are a variety of puzzles and questions that can be explored and posed (and have been) by deist apologists, and many of these form compelling inductive arguments asserting the possibility or likelihood of the existence of the Divine. (The "uncaused first cause" is the one I find most persuasive.) Regardless, we must stipulate when discussing religion and spirituality that the experiential component of religious belief exists outside of, and is impervious to, logical analysis. It cannot be proven and is not repeatable or reproducible from one individual to another. In evaluating religion(s), we cannot therefore speak to the Divine or its nature. We are left with what we can examine.
"What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires," said Ayn Rand, "is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind -- a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically." Religion is philosophy, and vice versa; what we must do, in evaluating any religion or system of spiritual belief, is to look at both the source and the expression of that faith. These do not exist outside the realm of logic or of critical thought; they can be studied and the facts concerning them can be identified in a non-contradictory manner. We may find, in so doing, that a religion can express itself in acceptable, even beneficial ways, despite being based on questionable or even absurd foundations. We may find that a religion can be based on benign or even laudable foundations, but that its expression -- then, now, or both -- ought to be questioned or even decried. We may also find that a religion fails in both its foundation and expression. The gauge we use in all cases is objective reality. When logic and reason are applied to a religion's foundations and to its expressions, that religion can be analyzed critically and we may form conclusions about its validity.
All religions, then, are not equally valid, no matter how understanding we try to be concerning freedom of religion. An invalid religion, therefore, ought to be the subject of ridicule at best and of actual government sanction at worst. Let us look at some examples that run the gamut.
Take, for example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons, as they are commonly known, are a powerful church whose humble origin story unfolded not far from my home town in Upstate New York. Founder Joseph Smith claimed to have been visited by an angel, Moroni, who gave him the Book of Mormon on golden plates. Smith's church grew and, despite sometimes violent persecution, is now an established American faith. I've personally attended the Hill Cumorah pageant more than once.
In the expression of their faith, the Mormons are a laudable group. They are friendly, engage in survivalism and preparedness (they store food, for example), are morally upright (they are represented disproportionately among certain government agencies for this reason), and are extremely welcoming to those who visit them in Palmyra each year. When one examines the foundations of their religion, however (a task made easier by the fact that the LDS is not very old, and thus good records of Smith's activities exist), it's painfully obvious that Smith was a fraud who concocted the religion for his own gratification. The Book of Mormon reads like something crudely created to sound like the Bible. The Mormons once believed black people were the cursed descendants of Noah's son Ham, and treated them accordingly as official church doctrine. Smith himself famously "translated" a set of artifacts known as the Kinderhook Plates -- and later analysis revealed he was making up his fraudulent translation as he went. There's much more, but the point is that the Mormon faith is rooted in fraud and fabrication (on the part of Joseph Smith), yet its expression is not harmful and is in fact arguably beneficial.
By contrast, consider Scientology, the extremely bizarre spiritual faith made famous by the couch-jumping exploits of Tom Cruise (not to mention other Hollywood Scientologists). When one delves into the actual tenets of Scientologist belief, one finds a bizarre amalgamation that reads like it was concocted by a science fiction author -- which, of course, founder L. Ron Hubbard was. The tenets of Scientology are as strange and illogical as the expression of this "religion;" they range from the belief that we are inhabited by the ethereal corpses of deceased space aliens, to the idea that psychology and psychiatry are a conspiracy that should be shunned (Cruise's famous denunciation of Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants while coping with post-partum depression is the most famous example), to strange practices involving quack quasi-medical do-nothing devices such as the "engram machine."
Ridiculous and fraudulent as Scientology's foundations and tenets appear, its expression is more worrisome. The Internet-based group Anonymous protests Scientology events for this reason; they claim the Scientologists wage war against free speech and engage in a variety of extralegal practices (not to mention legal harassment, drawing on the organization's deep pockets and legal resources), when not simply leading people astray in spreading their ill-conceived belief system. The conclusion one logically draws, therefore, is that when examining Scientology critically, both its foundations and its expressions should be questioned.
Finally, let us look at a powerful religion whose foundations are arguably benign (by the standards of the era in which they occurred): Islam. Islam is upheld as a "religion of peace," whose foundations with the prophet Muhammad are now a matter of historical record. In its earliest days, Muhammad, who claimed to bring the literal word of God (Allah) as set down in the scriptures of the Koran, even preached tolerance for other faiths. Compared to these foundations, the contemporary expression of Islam is argued by Muslims and non-Muslisms alike. Islamic apologists argue that the violence and terrorism perpetrated globally in the name of Islam is carried out by a minority of "radicals" and "extremists." They point to the scriptures within the Koran that preach peace and tolerance to make their case.
What many people do not realize is that the Koran as it exists now is not in chronological order, which is very important. The concept of "abrogation," applied to the Koran, instructs followers to obey later verses when thsoe verses conflict with earlier verses. All scriptures preaching tolerance and peace are therefore abrogated by later scripture in which Muhammad preached violence and subjugation of infidels, of non-believers. More importantly, those Muslisms who today seem capable of living at peace with non-Muslims are essentially lapsed practitioners of their religion. The surge in violent, terrorist Islam is a return to the fundamental tenets of the religion itself. It is the legitimate expression of what the Muslim religion actually teaches. As such, unless we are to believe that a majority or even a plurality of Muslims don't actually believe in the religion to which they lay claim, we cannot help but conclude that the majority of Muslims (excluding lapsed practitioners) at least tacitly accept the doctrine of doing violence to non-believers. The alternative is to ignore what their religion preaches and to illogically conclude that, while they claim to believe in the scriptures of the Koran, most Muslims simply do not really mean it.
This brings us back to freedom of religion. While we cannot afford to empower the government to police religious beliefs, we ought to, as a society bound by the rule of law, at least acknowledge that some "religions" are not worthy of protection because they actively violate the rights of other Americans while using the aegis of the First Amendment to do it. A questionably founded religion like the LDS, whose expression is arguably harmless, is not the problem. An absurd organization whose quasi-religious activities may skirt or violate the law, such as Scientology, could be, and whether such an organization should be considered a tax-exempt church (or a dangerous cult that intimidates critics illegally) is something we ought to revisit, often. A violent, terrorist religion conceived in primitive times whose followers refuse to moderate their beliefs in today's age most definitely is a problem, and I do not think Western society can afford any longer to protect Islam as a valid religion when its fundamental tenets preach death and subjugation of all non-Muslims.
When examining religion, then, we must look to that religion's origins and to its visible effects. We must do so objectively, dispassionately, and critically. We must resist the urge to accept, in some unitarian spirit of toleration, that all religious faith must necessarily be equally valid, because clearly it is not. Only when we are willing to be candid about these issues will we have any hope of overcoming the problems caused by invalid spiritual beliefs. >>