I have walked into a house of worship once in my life. It was for a friend's bar mitzvah service and I paid more attention to the fly buzzing around my seat than the endless Hebrew litany laboriously being recited. My extremely limited experience with this phenomenon called religion makes me want to write about it.
An alien comes up to you and asks: "What is this thing you call religion?" What do you say? My first answer would most likely be "No." A complete historical look at humanity's religious habits and happenings would take far too long, so after my completely unhelpful one word answer, the alien would have to settle for a couple general statements from me.
"Religion is humanity's way of explaining, understanding, justifying, and regulating our lives and the experiences, actions, and thoughts they encompass. This is often achieved through references and beliefs in higher powers or truths. It often serves as a wellspring of morality (another concept that can be explored in profound depth) and sanctuary for those in need of it. It also has been the cause, directly or indirectly, of an immense number of human deaths because of conflicts in belief and/or doctrine."
The third and fourth statements made above were obviously put forth from very different perspectives. Both seem to isolate a certain aspect of religion, positive or negative. An examination of and attempt to compromise them would be a pretty swell thing to take the alien, and upon further thought, myself, through.
True: religion is generally a great advertiser of high moral standards, altruism, and peace. Think of famous figures related to peace, and who comes to mind? Mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. Religion's also been a beastly cultural facilitator: there's an endless amount of wonderful art and music that's sprung up as a result of faith. Holidays are a significant part of practically all human cultures. Guess where most holidays came from?
Flip it. The Aztec religion decided that sacrificing human beings was the way to pay off our debt to the gods and keep the world in one piece. As of 2008, at least 1,121 suicide bombers have detonated themselves and their victims in not the world, but just Iraq. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, terrorist attacks justified by religious ideals. What do they all have in common? Religion, Death, and all his friends.
We took a great idea and then did what we always manage to do: disagree about it. If I only had time to tell Mr. Alien one thing about humanity before he moved on to Alpha Centauri or wherever aliens take vacations, it would be that we are a bunch of greedy, violent bastards.
Optimism or pessimism: which one should we use to view God, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Nirvana, etc.? The cliche answer is "a little bit of both"... I'm going to be cliche. We can't label faith as a horrible concept that causes nothing but death and destruction; rational people will realize that it's far from being something so malignant. We also can't view it as a perfect concept in theory or in practice; the same rational people, Bless them, would realize that it's simply not how things are.
So. What happened? Why did a humble movement started by a certain miracle-working carpenter lead to numerous bloody military campaigns that swept across and out of Europe? Conflict. You can't tell the majority of the human race to try to explain why we exist and where we came from and what's right and what's wrong, then expect the same answer from everyone; it's not possible. Islam is often stereotyped with violence: planes flying into buildings, men in turbans whipping out their AK-47s, young martyrs blowing themselves up. Are all Muslims like that? I shouldn't need to answer, but for anyone who's feeling a little slow right now, the answer's "No." The people that you hear about on TV calling non-Muslims infidels, people to be killed, bound for hell, etc., they're just the ones who've taken an offensive attitude on faith. They lack something important. That something is called tolerance. T-O-L-E-R-A-N-C-E. If our mutual acquaintance of an alien decided that he could spare another minute on smelly, nasty Earth, that's what I would say: What humanity needs is tolerance.
An alien comes up to you and asks: "What is this thing you call religion?" What do you say? My first answer would most likely be "No." A complete historical look at humanity's religious habits and happenings would take far too long, so after my completely unhelpful one word answer, the alien would have to settle for a couple general statements from me.
"Religion is humanity's way of explaining, understanding, justifying, and regulating our lives and the experiences, actions, and thoughts they encompass. This is often achieved through references and beliefs in higher powers or truths. It often serves as a wellspring of morality (another concept that can be explored in profound depth) and sanctuary for those in need of it. It also has been the cause, directly or indirectly, of an immense number of human deaths because of conflicts in belief and/or doctrine."
The third and fourth statements made above were obviously put forth from very different perspectives. Both seem to isolate a certain aspect of religion, positive or negative. An examination of and attempt to compromise them would be a pretty swell thing to take the alien, and upon further thought, myself, through.
True: religion is generally a great advertiser of high moral standards, altruism, and peace. Think of famous figures related to peace, and who comes to mind? Mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. Religion's also been a beastly cultural facilitator: there's an endless amount of wonderful art and music that's sprung up as a result of faith. Holidays are a significant part of practically all human cultures. Guess where most holidays came from?
Flip it. The Aztec religion decided that sacrificing human beings was the way to pay off our debt to the gods and keep the world in one piece. As of 2008, at least 1,121 suicide bombers have detonated themselves and their victims in not the world, but just Iraq. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, terrorist attacks justified by religious ideals. What do they all have in common? Religion, Death, and all his friends.
We took a great idea and then did what we always manage to do: disagree about it. If I only had time to tell Mr. Alien one thing about humanity before he moved on to Alpha Centauri or wherever aliens take vacations, it would be that we are a bunch of greedy, violent bastards.
Optimism or pessimism: which one should we use to view God, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Nirvana, etc.? The cliche answer is "a little bit of both"... I'm going to be cliche. We can't label faith as a horrible concept that causes nothing but death and destruction; rational people will realize that it's far from being something so malignant. We also can't view it as a perfect concept in theory or in practice; the same rational people, Bless them, would realize that it's simply not how things are.
So. What happened? Why did a humble movement started by a certain miracle-working carpenter lead to numerous bloody military campaigns that swept across and out of Europe? Conflict. You can't tell the majority of the human race to try to explain why we exist and where we came from and what's right and what's wrong, then expect the same answer from everyone; it's not possible. Islam is often stereotyped with violence: planes flying into buildings, men in turbans whipping out their AK-47s, young martyrs blowing themselves up. Are all Muslims like that? I shouldn't need to answer, but for anyone who's feeling a little slow right now, the answer's "No." The people that you hear about on TV calling non-Muslims infidels, people to be killed, bound for hell, etc., they're just the ones who've taken an offensive attitude on faith. They lack something important. That something is called tolerance. T-O-L-E-R-A-N-C-E. If our mutual acquaintance of an alien decided that he could spare another minute on smelly, nasty Earth, that's what I would say: What humanity needs is tolerance.
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