Let's get Real

I have a little mental zip drive that I call "Do These People Ever Listen to Themselves?" It has a pretty large capacity, I must add. I just downloaded a new one from the Rev. Ray Mummert, made during the controversy in Dover PA, over whether or not to allow the teaching of intelligent design into the schools. Pastor Mummert said: "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." I might wish to ask Pastor Mummert, that given that statement, just what segment he represents. This quote is from Charles Pierce's new book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It is a great read!

The book made me take a good look at some things.

FAITH: Faith is not a fact. I can have something called 'faith', and the only fact involved there is that I have it, not that is contains one grain of truth. Faith should be based on facts, and this brings us to the next thing:

BELIEF: Just believing something without empirical evidence, does not make it true. It only shows that one is choosing to give the weight of provable fact to something that may not have a single provable fact. Hearing some person saying it on TV or the Net does not make a fairy tale true. There will be those who rise right up and yell (given the current state of right wing debate) that there are a 'billion Christians who believe that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and he is going to come again and splatter all the people who don't believe." So what? There are a billion Muslims, several hundred million Buddhists and Hindus who don't believe it. Nothing is proven beyond the fact that a lot of people can line up behind their most dearly held delusion. It is when they begin to threaten the people who do not share their 'belief' that it gets dicey.

This brings me to the thing that drives people into the arms of wholesale acceptance of irrational belief.

FEAR: The one fact that no one can argue is that we die. This earthly life will end. Nobody..and I mean nobody gets out alive. This basic truth can seem to render life meaningless, and this is intolerable to many, so as soon as man began to think beyond survival, man began to concoct stories to offset that last great unknown. The Egyptians thought they had it covered with the rites for the dead and mummification. Well, museums are full of those people, still dead and looking pretty much worse for the wear. Jesus told followers that some of them would not taste death until they saw "The Son of Man returning in glory." OK...that was in 33 CE, and all those people are dead, and Jesus is still a no-show. Theology has a term for this little hiccup in the accuracy department. It is called "The Delayed Parousia". Maybe they should call it "Ooops!"

The Buddha pointed out that all suffering is caused by clinging to a belief that something just has to be unchangeable, and therefore, one must hang on to that, regardless of how ridiculous it makes the the requisite system needed to sustain the belief seem. If a person just accepts that everything changes, and that everyone dies, two facts that all our senses and experience tell us are true, regardless how badly we may want to deny it, then the life we have becomes infinitely more precious.

I am now going to enjoy some sun and the summer wind, and I do not have to believe that Adam rode a triceratops, in order to do that.

Tim