I think what has me most confused as I think about the “frackin cracker” mess that PZ Myers started (see a good analysis at the “Good Math, Bad Math” blog) is the sense of absolute that both sides have. In fact, this is what I have had against most religions (or ideologies of any type, for that matter). The idea that one is right, and therefore everyone else is necessarily wrong.
Do I believe in absolutes? Yes. We will all die. Everything changes. Child abuse is wrong. I cannot think a way around these things. They seem pretty solid to me. I am sure there are others, but these were the first three things that came to mind. You might ask why I did not say “Killing is wrong.” Mostly because I am not sure that this is a black and white issue. I think I might be able to say that killing is not right, but they are not the same thing to me. To use a classic example, if I could go back and kill Hitler before he caused millions of jews to die, would I? Probably, although I would not say that taking a life is right. And to be honest, if that act had not happened, what would the world look like now? Maybe a much better place, maybe not very different, or maybe much worse. Perhaps the event of killing over six million jews galvanized the twentieth century to be better than it would have been. The fact is, we don’t know. That is why, to me, it is hard to subscribe to many absolutes. There are too many things we don’t know.
Even my comment about child abuse. I do not think, as a father, that I would ever come to believe that child abuse is not wrong. But there have been many people who have lived through it and become incredible people because of their having lived through it. It was painful, horrible, and unconscionable, but can good come out of it? I think yes. But never would I accept that ahead of the act itself. Ha. I said never, and then immediately started to think “well isn’t there sometime were I would?” I don’t think so, but that is how I often think. What if?
This is one of the reasons I left the Catholic Church. I could not accept that there was only one way to heaven. What about all the people that did not believe in Jesus? Were they all going to hell because they did not believe? That did not seem to match with the loving God I had been taught about. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a threat from a child. Love me or I will do something bad to you. But it is grounded in an absolute. But what of the other myriad of Christian denominations? Which one has it right? What about Muslims? Jews? any religion that believes they are the holders of the the “Truth”?
My brother accused me of feeling the same way about Buddhism, which I converted to over ten years ago. At least in the sense of being as convinced of the truth as other religions. Maybe he is right, but what I have come to believe about Buddhism is not based on faith in something I cannot see, but in observing the world around me and seeing how well the philosophy (yes, I believe it to be more of a philosophy than a religion) fits it. And I do not go around telling others they will not experience Nirvana unless they believe in my brand of Buddhism. Nor will I tell my children (as my mother did to me upon my conversion to Buddhism) that they will go to some Buddhist hell if they choose to follow another spiritual path than I have.
So, in the whole Eucharist debacle, it comes down to two sides so convinced they are right they are unable to have a meaningful conversation. I guess that means I believe another absolute. Absolutism is wrong.
