Mahatma Gandhi: A great man who spent his life striving for the truth.
I read an article on Stuff.co.nz about the furore over the saying of prayers in Wanganui District Council and it made me furious. It made me furious for a number of reasons, paramount being the ridiculous amount entitlement that a lot of Christians feel and the outright hypocrisy many of them display.
The drama began with a suggestion made by mayor Anette Main which was that the references to god should be removed from the prayer used to open each meeting . Apparently this sparked a furore about whether or not praying was an appropriate item of business for the council. The issue ended up as a complaint at the Human Rights Commission. It turns out that Councillor Clive Solomon laid the complaint with the commission to get a neutral voice to mediate the situation.
Apparently mediation failed and now the Office of Human Rights Proceedings has been asked to consider taking the issue to a tribunal. Dr Solomon indicated that should the office decline, he would take the case there himself. If the tribunal heard the case and ruled that discrimination took place the judgement would be akin to that of a district court.
You can read the full sorry story here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5438985/Prayer-row-heads-to-tribunal
To illustrate the level of entitlement the rest of us non Christians have to deal with, here is a quote from a Christian on this very blog:
You choose to believe what you want, how can you possibly be afraid that I am “enforcing” my opinion on you?
And one answer is, obviously, by doing things like trying to force people to pray as part of a governmental agenda. Christians feel so entitled to privilege that it seems they are physically unable to consider religion from another’s perspective. This is, I suppose unsurprising, since if they had to, briefly, consider the viewpoint of others and look at what they believe they probably wouldn’t be Christians for much longer after that. I know this to be true since that’s how most atheists become atheists after all.
The government has no place supporting one religion or indeed any religion over another or over no religion at all. It seems though, that Christians here in New Zealand and many other places feel that they have a right to espouse their ridiculous fairy tales and insist on the public uttering of their magical spells whenever and however they choose, even in the course of working for people who do not hold similar beliefs; those people’s opinion be damned.
I’m pretty sure the pious council members would take massive umbrage if they were instructed to take out their musallah, point it towards Mecca, get down on their hands and knees and open the council meeting by performing a nice decent and appropriately pious Salah. The way I see it is if somebody in a governmental capacity insists on including one religion in governmental business, they should include ALL religions in government business. Perhaps each meeting should be opened by praying to a different deity? Or perhaps we should just leave religion out of governmental business entirely.
Government and governmental bodies have no place in dictating to anybody what they should believe and has even less of a place supporting one belief system over another. Government should work for all people equally all the time.
Religion should be handled like a dirty family secret with the appropriate amount of embarrassment. It should only be talked about in hushed voices behind closed doors and should be kept as far away from the rest of us as possible.
This is the bit in the article that really annoy me:
Dr Solomon said his stance had come at a personal cost, with patients leaving his Whanganui surgery and his children being hassled at school.
I would like to remind these Christians who feel they can no longer support a man who is working for the greater good of everybody and who are hassling his children of what they allege to believe. I would like to quote their God Himself, Jesus Christ, from the New Testament (the bit without the horrors of slavery and genocide and child murder… hah, kidding, there’s still slavery) from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 22:
22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Hassling children? Nice one Christians, nice one. Hypocrisy much? Christian love? More like a petulant tantrum over their magic spells being taken away.
A great man once said these two things which sums everything up nicely:
“ Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.”
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
The first one I would like to point out to the Christians who are ‘retaliating’ against Dr. Solomon’s quest, by leaving his medical practise and hassling his children, to rid his council meetings of prayer. Think about that quote for a second.
The second one, I think, sums up the vast majority of Christians. What you say and what you do should match. If you say you follow Jesus, why then do you not do as you believe he did?
Unlike Jesus of course, Mahatma Gandhi actually existed; we have empirical evidence for his existence and we have a pretty clear record of the good he did.
Well, this is what I say when people ask me why I’m against religion. Every ‘true believer’ is a potential threat, because they’ve already indicated that they view their spiritual leader as the unquestionable authority on some immortal power.
I know some believers can be very tolerant and willing to question, but anyone who identifies themselves with a religion has a line somewhere beyond which lies people whose orders they will never question. At its core, every religious person in every religion has the potential to become a fanatic and do unspeakable things without a real reason. Sure, some people are like this for some political movements too. But government supporters tend to not span entire continents. The Nazi’s were not big, for the most part, on questioning the will of the Reich, but Nazism never really got any major, unquestioned hold anywhere but in Germany. And Hitler used religious ideas and claims of god to incite loyalty to the Reich even further. Convince a religious person, who by definition does not question the existence of the higher power they worship, that something is god’s will, and they will do it.
Christianity has enjoyed a vicegrip on morality and government for generations, a position it rose to through centuries of brutal wars, conquest and slavery. No other religion has sunk its tendrils so firmly into so many ‘first world’ countries. Now, their bastion as the source of all things moral is beginning to be publicly assaulted, as they side with the more anti-human sides of issues like
homosexuality. Sadly, the church has lived through this before. Almost every form of oppression, from slavery to racism to chauvinism to pedophilia, has been declared moral by the church. As public opinions changed, most churches changed there stance. And I feel that within my lifetime I will see the majority of churches choose to ignore the parts of the bible that say homosexuality is a sin, just as they have chosen to ignore all the support in the book for racism and slavery and rape and murder.
But I always worry. Because I know the potential for every religious person to become a fanatic is there. And I know that if someone, somewhere presses the right buttons they will have a veritable army of people willing to die for them.
You make a couple of good points.
I do find it terribly amusing how the religious bend and twist what they believe to fit what they want to believe. It’s almost as if they don’t read the Bible…
I’ve been meaning to write a post about it but the essence of it would be that of all the Christians around today, in my opinion the only ones who aren’t bending their religion and ignoring what the Bible actually says is the Westboro Baptist Church. I think Fred Phelps and co. are perhaps the only Christians in the world who act exactly as the Bible tells them to without self editing their beliefs into something more palatable.
I bet most Christians would want to violently disagree with that but then, they are the same Christians who don’t find the fact that there are over 38,000 denominations of Christianity strange.
I think you’re right about the potential for any religious to become fanatics. I’m sure your average religionut would like to deny it but I think all it will really take is, as you said, for one person charismatic enough to press the right buttons. They’ve been conditioned to not question religious authority or require evidence for what they believe; now they just need to be convinced of what that authority wants them to do and you’ve got extremists on your hands.