Musings, ruminations, thoughts and discussions on life & living, music, religion, politics, love, philosophy, and all other eccentricities of this sort.
AC Grayling contributes a simple and well–written but deep (as usual) article, this one at last speaking out against the claim that any particular religion merits special attention or privileges.
Highlights:
It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect. to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe
something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the
opposite of respect. It is time to say so. it is time to demand and apply a right for the rest of us to non-interference by
religious persons and organisations - a right to be free of proselytisation and
the efforts of self-selected minority groups to impose their own choice of
morality and practice on those who do not share their outlook. But no organised religion, as an institution, has a greater claim to the
attention of others in society than does a trade union, political party,
voluntary organisation, or any other special interest group - for "special
interest groups" are exactly what churches and organised religious bodies are. |
most of the Atheists I know that came from religious backgrounds didn't give a
care about restrictive cultures that much, we just didn't buy into the tripe we
were being fed. |
Each radical religious break from convention has come due to social, economic, political, and other factors at that time. This makes each such religion a contextually grounded, living, breathing response to the circumstances from which it emerged. Sometimes it drew upon and added to thoroughly documented traditions of the time (Judaism, for instance, with the God of Micah seen as the same as the God of Noah despite hugely differing portrayals of the Deity). At other times these religious responses arose from and then broke away completely (such as with Christianity), or emerged from totally different circumstances and drew upon elements already present (such as Islam).
Jews documented their nationalist history extensively (though most likely from their captivity in Babylon onwards, and thus drawing upon Babylonian myths and legends too) and certainly knew their religion thoroughly. They proved eloquent in these matters and consummate at exegesis, midrash and religious debate.
So when people presented Yeshua‘ (Jesus) as THE Messiah expected by the Jews they had a fight on their hands, not least of which because nothing in Judaism predicted a messiah who would die before emancipating them. Earliest Christians naturally came from Jewish stock. Accordingly they drew upon Jewish history (they had to so that others would engage them in debate). Gentile Christians, therefore, had to subsume the entire Tanakh as their Old Testament in order to establish Jesus’ place within history — only to break him away from it.
Of course, Muhammad had a much more radical, even grandiloquent, solution: simply to declare that the Jews and Christians had corrupted their holy books and had strayed from their true path. Therefore he had no need to argue with them on their own religious grounds.
clipped from richarddawkins.net
