How the world goes around
As I begin today’s post I need to declare an interest – I do not believe in God.
That registered, I would also like to add that I do not consider myself to be anti-religion per se, say in the style of Professor Richard Hawkins who delights in crusading (to use a word) against those who ‘believe’.
Rather, I’m in the ‘live and let live’ or ‘whatever turns you on’ camp which acknowledges the sincerity of many believers and – whilst having no desire to join them – to an extent I envy those I know whose lives seem to involve distinctly positive degrees of contentment, resignation and ‘sense of purpose’ directly because of their religious beliefs.
I even have no personal difficulty in going a stage further and taking the view that it might be an all-round “win-win” (even on a basic humanist/secular level) if – looking to the future and the inevitability of death for members of every species that ever comes into being – if it turned out to be the case that ‘whatever any individual believes will happen to him or her afterwards’ actually did come to pass.
[At this point I’m beginning to acquire a suspicion that my opening ‘disclaimers’ are going to occupy a disproportionate percentage of my entire offering today!]
But I digress.
One of the problems that confronts all major religions – and indeed, come to think of it, all minor ones and indeed the entire range of ‘cults’ and offshoots ever hatched as well – is that of remaining relevant ‘in the moment’ going forward as technology, science and indeed human society develop and we learn more and more about the nature of the universe, if only on the basis that the more knowledge we acquire, the more we appreciate how much more there probably is still to discover.
Generalising here for the sake of my theme, if your chosen religion styles itself having originated – in whatever form this occurred – by direct contact with God, and that its scriptures were either ‘revealed’ by Him to mortal beings, or else effectively announced by Him and taken down, shorthand style, by those privileged enough to have been present at the time – then the results inevitably become respected and indeed worshipped as “the word of God” and/or the nearest human beings are ever going to get to the fundamental principles by which they should live their lives.
Which brings me to my “Brexit” reference.
Clearly, a deep problem subsequently arises when adherents of two or more different major religions – with different “words of God” in their knapsacks – meet up.
Both devoutly believe that theirs is the right, correct, true one … and inevitably, therefore, the other’s is either misguided, mistaken and/or somehow (however sincerely) has “got the wrong end of the stick”.
Next, of course, comes disagreement on that rather fundamental issue – and finally argument on both an intellectual and then “street” level at which followers of both religions perhaps get rather more aerated than is good for them.
Or, indeed, anyone else.
(I ask my readers to ‘twig’ my Brexit mention here).
And thereby, with beliefs and passions on both sides at the infamous Spinal Tap “11 out of 10” level, religious conflicts and wars have proliferated down through the millennia.
Returning to the “word of God” aspect of the equation – and here again allowing for my ‘disconnected’ viewpoint – those invested heavily in religions (as in, leadership-wise), not being fools, have (to an extent) constantly move ‘with the times’ in order to remain logically – and every other which-way – ‘relevant’ to those with whom they happen to be sharing the Earth.
And thus gaps appear between – as it were – those fundamentalists ‘on the bus’ of each religion who hold to the view that their “word of God” is absolute and immovable, effectively get off the vehicle almost as the driver starts the engine in order to drive out of the bus station.
At the other end of the scale, there are committed followers of every religion who are going to stay on the bus for the entire journey, however many stops there are along the way and whatever its ultimate destination (if any).
And eventually, inevitably, we reach the position where (to coin a phrase) every religion “is a broad church” – yes, rather like the major UK political parties claim to be – in which (whilst everyone concerned professes to belong to a common whole) there are factions with the mass who simultaneously hold quite different attitudes towards human society and fervently espouse similarly divergent – and often irreconcilable – policies. And become quite agitated about it.
Cue my final reference to Brexit.
I call in evidence the plight of two Australian sporting greats – the tennis player Margaret Court and the rugby player Isreal Folau – whose ‘old-fashioned’ Christian fundamental views are terminally offensive to our modern Millennial, politically-correct, “woke” generation.
Somewhat closer to home, earlier this morning I spotted this report by Harriet Sherwood on the website of – THE GUARDIAN
