My Position on Dogmatic Religion.
Introduction
Well, I said I was going to write something, here it is. I’m doing this to finally get something down in writing that’s been rattling round my my mind for ages. This isn’t how I originally envisioned writing this, but I applied some lessons I learned from designing in Secondlife, and just left it alone to take shape without prodding it. I only put fingers to keyboard when the time felt right. As with everything this is my own opinion, I don’t claim to be any kind of authority, though I have popped some references in to back up my position. You might not agree with me, hey that’s cool, send me a comment, we can chat. Here we go…..
I was raised Anglican, though looking back, I could never really see the rules side of things making too much sense. I mean, you have a proposed god who created and loves all his creations, but if you break one of the rules in this book of his you’ll burn for all eternity? Doesn’t sound much like love to me, how about you? To be honest it never seemed to work when you put the Church into the equation.
I’ve been taking a look at various websites recently, watching the cut and thrust of debate. There’s a lot of arguing over what various verses in the Bible mean and also about contradictions, errors and other such things. A few minutes with Google will bring up enough material to keep you bemused and highly bored for quite some time. Now I was mulling over things since my shift to a Buddhist viewpoint and I realised what was nagging at me. Everyone argues about the book, it’s content, it’s authorship, it’s history, etc, etc. Thing is, from a Buddhist perspective, that’s quite secondary. I would like to point out right now, that I have no intention of arguing individual points within any holy text, there really isn’t much point to it from my perspective. Secondly, yes I’m picking specifically on the bible, but from my background that’s my natural choice.
The problem with the origin of this information as I perceive it.
Dogma, theistic religion has plenty and all of it comes from this holy book, this bible (or it’s analogue). But, suppose we take issue with the book. Not the content, the book. After all, from a Buddhist perspective holy texts are guidelines not rigid rules.
That helped me refine my issue with dogmatic religion. You have a book, which claims to be divinely inspired, if you’re being intellectually honest you have no way of proving this. This thing is filled with stories and tales, millennia old, of unproven truthfulness or accuracy. You’re expected to live your life by this.
Your exact word, your final truth is something that you have little accurate idea of the earliest origins of. After all, it’s not like you have a revision control system on it. Inarguable, literal, final word….. We have no final provable idea who of though.
The problems since the origin, translation and compilation.
Still, let’s look at other aspects since the texts were written. Translations aren’t always exactly possible into modern English, sometimes a translator just has to get as near as possible, do their best. Political spin can find it’s way in, remember the origin of Anglicanism was in 1529[1] to allow King Henry VIII of England to divorce Catherine of Aragon. To lift a direct quote from this source:
“1538 John Rogers (alias Thomas Matthew) prints the Tyndale Bible translation (finished by Miles Coverdale) in Paris. It is approved by the Henry VIII as the “Great Bible” to be read by all his people.” [1]
A bible approved by Henry VIII, a secular authority. But this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, secular authorities have gotten involved before, but much much earlier. This person was the Roman emperor Constantine and the event is known as the Council of Nicea, this took place in the small Turkish town of Nicea in 325 C.E. [2]
“Constantine became the sole Roman emperor in 324, amidst a period of intense squabbling by the various local bishops (not to mention pamphleteering and widespread graffiti campaigns by both sides). So intense were the feelings on both sides of the principal controversy, that civil unrest was being threatened, and Constantine wanted to put a stop to the controversies before it came to that. So he convened the First Council of Nicea the following year. His commandment to the bishops: Get your act together and quit squabbling. Come up with a consistent doctrine that would be universal, i.e.catholic - note the small “c”, and could be understood and practiced by all.” [2]
Of particular interest is the role of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesaria, in fact my second reference is well worth a read.
N.B. I have no intention of dealing with Mithraism here, it’s off my topic, if you’re interested in that I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader. But I will direct you to the first section of the popular Internet movie “Zeitgeist”, if you don’t fancy too much heavy reading.
So to what can we say now? Errors creep in over time due to translation problems, secular authorities get involved even from the earliest stages and changes get made. So this exact word, this ultimate truth is unlikely to have even been handed down accurately. It might be lauded as the word of god, but it seems to have been changed to suit other aims over the years.
The problems of interpretation.
My third issue is one that’s always been present. How exactly does one interpret this dogma, especially when it seems self contradictory or other people disagree? Well if this is the exact infallible word of a divine creator, and if we accept that as true for the sake of argument, then there is only one interpretation that we can honestly make and that is the literal one. Be that as it may, the question of interpretation is a thorny issue.
“Christians have reached a near consensus on what the Bible says. However, Christian denominations as well as individual Christians — theologians, clergy and laity — hold a wide range of assumptions about the nature of the Bible. Different assumptions lead to different methods of interpreting the text. As a result, they reach very diverse conclusions about what a given passage actually means” [3]
There are many sub-sects of Christianity, often a result of doctrinal differences, the relationship hasn’t always been a pleasant one between them, but there they are. Often even within the same communion there are vast differences of opinion, the recent Anglican issue with Women Bishops and Homosexual clergy are simply a case in point, though to lift a quote:
“There have been major human rights conflicts throughout history in which both or all sides quoted extensively from the Bible to support their positions. This has happened over human slavery, women’s suffrage, the use of contraceptives, the roles and status of women, female ordination, how to discipline children, racial segregation, inter-racial marriage, abortion access, religious tolerance, equal rights for gays and lesbians, same-sex marriage, etc. One of the reasons why emotions currently run particularly high in North America on topics like abortion and homosexuality is that many Christians on all sides of the issues sincerely believe that the Bible totally supports their viewpoint.” [3]
So, one truth, one divine final word that we can’t quite seem to agree on. Or as Bill Hicks put it so well, “I think what God meant to say….”.
Bringing it home.
I’ll post my own position on religious texts here. The Buddha exhorted people not to take his words as a literal truth, but to put them to the test. When testing the truth of a claim, Buddhism puts personal experience first, reason second and scripture last. This is, in my view, the best way of approaching this sort of literature.
To make an analogy, you could easily think of a dogmatic religious book as a map or guide to the territory of Human spirituality and belief, it tries to tell you where everything is, how to get there and what to do. Fine, that sounds like a good analogy, but how does that argue against dogma? Simple. Your map takes no account of the weather and even less of changes that happened since it was made. It won’t warn you about potholes, cowpats, slippery areas, or indeed anything that the map maker didn’t have the space or time to list. There are many changeable things (the cowpats and weather for example), that just don’t belong on a map and there’s nothing that can be done on the part of the mapmaker, that’s just a limitation of the method and we have to deal with it.
So our map, while useful, can only ever be a rough guide to the territory. The experience of walking the territory, of making our journey, is left to the individual. If the territory changes for whatever reason, we’re obliged to put the map aside and explore, our map is now of less use. Eventually, it will be of no use whatsoever, after all it’s not like we’re allowed to update it are we?
I find the Dharma to be more of a guide on how to travel, it doesn’t seem to me that it tries to map the territory rather than advise, train and equip the traveler themselves. The whole thing is not meant to be taken word for word literally, you have to test it and apply it for yourself in your own life. This is better and the best part is it never dates, give people the skills and tools they need to travel and let them take it from there, applying them in the appropriate way as they find need.
References.
[1] http://justus.anglican.org/resources/timeline/06reformation.html
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