"It was then, in my daily contact with a diversity of people from a diversity of beliefs, that I concluded we all experience the same thing but are interpreting these experiences through our own worldview, imputing our own stories onto this experience, and articulating it in our own frameworks and languages. What a beautiful and peaceful revelation that was."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nakedpastor/2013/11/muslims-christians-and-flying-horses/
Reading this should make me happy. I agree, and have wanted to find a way to say something like this for a long time. And this is so simple and well said. Yet it makes me angry. Why does this even have to be said? Is this really not obvious to some people? How arrogant does someone have to be to think they have some special, privileged access to feelings and experiences that are different, better, more important that other people's because of their beliefs?
But then I remember, I guess I've always known on some level it isn't obvious. That's why I had wanted to say it myself. Really, that's what made me question religion in the first place. As I kid, I never thought about my friends' non-Catholic beliefs as "wrong." I never really gave much thought to their beliefs at all, except to recognize that they were different from mine. Only after I met evangelicals did I realize that part of religion was believing I was correct about the nature of the world and that others were wrong.* I realized people like them were working from the unstated assumption that they had an inner experience that everyone else was lacking, and they needed to share that with others. As if others don't feel those same things already and attribute them to their religious experience.
At the time, I said I didn't want to claim I was "better" than others. What I really meant even though I didn't have the words was that I didn't want to claim that I somehow was more human than others.
I don't see much causal connection between what a person believes (the ideas that the hold) and what they are capable of feeling. Everyone feels awe, happiness, love, sadness, fear, or at least, has the capacity to. No supernatural causes are necessary. Just look around and listen to people. Read what they write; look at their art. These are basic human emotions. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and everyone else experiences them, so I don't see how they can require belief in any particular deity. The degree of each emotion varies from person to person, but claiming you feel these things "better" or in a more meaningful way than anyone else who believe differently seems arrogant and based entirely on not looking outside yourself. I want no part in that.
So, I am happy someone said it. I do appreciate this revelation and I do think this is a wonderfully elegant way of putting it. And I do appreciate the understanding that a continued contact with a diversity of people can lead to it. I have long thought that's what got me to this point, and I'm happy for that experience.
*Even if you believe there are multiple paths to God, you still probably think at least some people are "doing it wrong." But even murders and other "bad" people can experience the same emotions without changing their "bad" behavior or "incorrect" beliefs, so I don't see how relying on feelings like awe to prove the existence of a "higher power" is a reasonable idea. In fact, when a person is incapable of experiencing certain emotions, we tend to consider that a mental illness, something that's gone wrong in the development of the brain, not that they simply have the wrong beliefs while everything biologically is fine. (I say this as a biologist with anxiety, so thinking of my brain as "defective" in that respect makes sense to me. No one's biologically perfect. But I can understand why to some it might sounds too much like a value judgement. My apologies if it does.)
No comments:
Post a Comment