Despite all the warnings, I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. I want to talk about religion. Undoubtedly, in the process, we’ll probably end up talking about politics, too, but at least by full-heartedly and bravely engaging these two controversial and fiery subjects, nothing can intimidate this endeavor.
Potential danger aside, I am a true lover of religion, even though I consider myself an atheist at this particular moment in time. My interest in religion stems from a long and complicated history in which people, places and dramas have left an indelible mark on my religious identity.
It might strike some readers as strange that I am still drawn to thinking about and engaging with religious concepts, but what draws me to religion is that very complexity — people react strongly, even violently, to religious beliefs and happenings, whether in defense of them or in opposition. What also fascinates me is the process by which people pick their sides in religious debates, and I fear that in America especially, these are not well-informed decisions.
Therefore, my mission, not being a notably qualified religious scholar myself, is to “unpack” — forgive my contribution to the Berkeley community’s frequent use of that verb — the many beautifully difficult religious traditions that pervade our culture on a daily basis with the goal of reducing (or hopefully eliminating) even the smallest feelings of distrust, intolerance or hatred that religious tension infamously inspires.
Over the past few years, my peculiar relation to religion has landed me in countless intense discussions with a wide variety of interlocutors, but I always try to be very clear that I do not aim to convert, only to promote broader understanding. One tricky case that I confront often is that of the religiously unreligious opponent — the “I just don’t care, religion is not a part of my life” mentality. I genuinely struggle to respond to this attitude. My aversion to conversion is so complicated that I hesitate even to try to convince people to care. However, I never understand how someone can find that religion is truly and completely absent from his or her life.
Just consider a few current examples: President Obama, although a self-proclaimed Christian, receives political criticism for his involvement in an “extremist” church and is constantly called a Muslim as a form of political debasement.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney, the first “non-Christian” — and I use that term hesitantly, as the relationship between Christianity and Mormonism is not simple — candidate to run for president in our national history, is consistently asked to defend his religious beliefs as part of his professional identity.
More locally, at UC Berkeley, the paint‐splattering holiday celebrated yearly on campus, known as Holi, is a Hindu tradition with an entirely more complex significance than just a brightly colored dance party on Lower Sproul.
I could happily continue pointing out the relevant intersections of religion and our culture, mostly because I have a secret fetish for finding instances of this convoluted relationship, but I won’t. Suffice it to say religion is an acting agent in our society whether we concern ourselves with understanding it or not.
Personally, I subscribe to the age-old belief that “knowledge is power,” and, as Americans lack any sort of state-required religious education, an exploration into some of the most basic and yet present religious sentiments and practices can be nothing but beneficial, in my opinion, especially if it prompts one of those “uncomfortable conversations” that I love to instigate.
This column is therefore essentially an invitation relying on simple curiosity mixed with a respectful desire to delve into some of the nuances of our subject. I am well aware of the fact that religion is going to be hard to fit in a weekly column, but this is meant to be just the tip of the iceberg.
I would like to think, thanks to a Cal Bear spirit that fears nothing, that there aren’t any truly “off-limits” topics. Didn’t you ever wonder why some students on campus wear hijab or what “kosher” really means? Or maybe you can’t get over the Hare Krishnas that walk around campus chanting and singing?
Maybe I’m the only one who gets my kicks by looking into these types of questions, but I highly doubt it. And since we face the end of the world again, according to the Mayan calendar this time — also based on their spiritual beliefs of how the world works, just sayin’ — then why the hell not?
Contact Hannah Brady at [email protected].
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Wow, a lot of angry comments. Hannah, I can’t wait to see where this goes and what you discover to share in this column. The reality is everyone functions on some level of belief system and every individual that participates in a particular religion brings to it their own interpretation and practice of living out their religious slant. I think the best measure of a religion is how it’s creator, originator or founder lived it out. Who were they? How did they live? How did the world respond to them and how did they respond to the world? We should be able to look at any and all religions in this way, but also understand that there are some pretty messed up people out there who offer some pretty messed up interpretations of the religion they claim for themselves. Many of your are part of a student body, are you all equally represented by any individuals level of participation as a student at Cal? Most likely not. Community, culture, religion and anything else that involves a number of individuals is messy at best. So which communities have learned to live best together? And what are the things that unite them? These are valuable questions and a closer look at religion might shed some light on these questions. Even so every community will have its share of extremely messed up individuals that may paint a horrible picture of that community. Especially here in the states where the only news that ever really gets reported is “bad” news. But that’s another topic. Keep it coming Hannah. Can’t wait to read more.
Great piece Hannah. Nothing should be off limits at Cal and you tackle the complex topic of religion in a very engaging and objective fashion. While most of the world has Religious Education (RE) where pupils engage and discuss all major religions, we don’t have that in the US. Most people hold beliefs about their religion and others’ religions from their family dining table, that is fine, but one cannot have a comprehensive understanding of religion if they dismiss it’s discussion entirely. I can’t wait to read more of your columns. I’m sure they will get many of us thinking and discussing as seen in comments below!!
Oh how sad all the hateists in today’s society. The ignorant have stronger, and bolder claims about things…The more knowledgeable one gets, the less they tend to make these ridiculous claims below… None of them has ever taken a serious read of the Bible, Koran…(statements of “it’s fairy-tale” supports my argument)… Realize people have created this atrocious world we live in, not religion, and definitely not God.
Very cookie cutter. Honestly fuck religion. Just look at all the instances of ethnic cleansing. Belgrade, Baghdad, Bombay, Beirut, Belfast… The common enabling factor is religion.
Or rather the common pretext. Taking land and natural resources is a more mundane, yet essential factor in starting wars.
I’ll ignore the geopolitical abortion clinic bombings for your sake then.
Religion has made a damn fine pretext for violence before the Crusades. Funny how it constantly makes an appearance again and again. Europe was Exhibit A for religious wars during the Middle Ages. Funny how things have quieted down once they became more secular.
After the Libyan consulate and Americans murdered by a bunch of lunatics, I can’t believe you have the gall to snivel out a defense of religious idiocy. At least one can take grim comfort in the fact that Mormons don’t go bombing Broadway theaters.
If we do your analysis to include atheists, then religion is the way to go. Just add in the cleansing and killing numbers from the communist nations and the Nazis, and you beat all the religious cleansing. Then start adding in the killing done by every major empire, and the comparison becomes ridiculous.
Hitler was a militant Catholic as was a good chunk of the Nazi leadership. The Holocaust was the climax of progroms against Jews by Christians that extended back for centuries.
The Soviet Union’s genocidal policies were not driven by any sort of religious imperative. Indeed Stalin, did not conduct the holodomor or any related atrocities in the name of atheism while Hitler conducted the Holocaust in the name of Christianity.
The problem with communist regimes is that they are personality cults not dissimilar to certain religious cults.
I shall quote Sam Harris. “There is society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”
Yes, a “militant Catholic” who never attended Mass or received the sacraments once he moved to Vienna in 1905.
Insofar as Stalin’s purges and the other Soviet genocides were part of the overall Soviet revolutionary program of bringing about the dictatorship of the proletariat & the ensuing workers’ paradise, and insofar as atheism was part of that ideology, and that religion had to be eradicated in order for that dictatorship and paradise to come about, the purges were informed by atheism. You have to do some serious mental and moral gymnastics to pretend otherwise, just as those do who want to deny that Nazi anti-Semitism had its roots in Christian anti-Semitism.
“In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison” – Mr. Hitler
As disgusting as the Soviet Union was, it did not practice genocide. It was an equal opportunity tyrant which suppressed religion as it did polities and ethnic groups.
And even if we accept the Soviet Union as an atheist scourge, if we ignore all the current inequities perpetuated by the godly, religion will continue killing people into the future.
Hitler wasn’t a Catholic or a Christian of any kind. He was a politician who knew when to play the religion card to gain support. As his power grew, he stopped pretending to be Christian and started making plans to eliminate Christians. The eventual plan was to eliminate anything that would challenge his rule.
Do not think that atheism gets off because Stalin did not say he conducted his actions in the name of atheism. Lack of religion is what you support, and that is what Stalin wanted too.
I suggest having a thesis to each column, so that it’s coherent and that everything relates to that thesis. I don’t get what all the columnists don’t understand about this. It’s Berkeley, not SF State.
The thesis is pretty obvious – “Hi, I’m starting a new series of columns. Here’s what it’s about, and here are some of the things I’ll be writing about, and here’s a bit about who I am.”
Was that deep enough literary criticism for you? She’s doing journalism, not literature, and she got her point across. We’ll see over the next few months whether she’s a good columnist, but the first column was just right.
Praise the Lord! I’m sure you’ll be giving such a captivating, controversial, original spin on an unheard, unexamined topic that I’m sure no one’s ever written about! … Oh wait. Haha, sorry, I was going to say I think you’re ridiculous for thinking this is something people care about. Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to talk religion?
But yeah, wow, I officially hate all of this fall’s opinion section. With all the degradation from Sex on Tuesdays to the self-plagiarism stunt, you guys are really just off to a great start here.
Hannah, this will be so much more fun than Sex on Tuesdays. Finally, we get a weekly column with some teeth.
The relationship between Christianity and Mormonism is very simple. Mormonism is derived from Christianity, but it is not Christianity. Mormonism materially contradicts creedal orthodoxy, and disagrees with foundational Christian assumptions concerning the nature of God, the Incarnation, and several lesser doctrines.
The problem is that religion revolves around ancient text and its instructions, in which everyone believes that they have the true spoken word of God. Religion has always stifled the growth of free thought. Religious stories can be fun if they are taught as fiction instead of fact. And don’t tell children thousands of times that they cannot get into heaven unless they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and tell other children they cannot get into heaven unless they accept Islam and so forth. How do you teach a child that Adam and Even were the first two people, when scientists agree that human bones found in East Africa are over one million years old, and Moses first told that story 3500 years ago. God talked to Moses when he was alone, he talked Jesus when he was alone, he talked to Mohammed when he was alone. That is what comes from staying out in the desert sun too long. You do not need ancient text teach morality.
Lets look at God’s first four moral Commandments:
1. You shall have no other gods before me. (Jealous) (Egotistic)
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. (Jealous and Egotistic)
3. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. (Egotistic)
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
(Egotist) One day a week, just for me “the Lord your God”.
Hannah wasn’t foolish to take it easy in the introduction. She knew the intolerant would come out of the wood work, without any of her help. Don’t worry, there is plenty of room in the world of religion for you to be the central character of your own religion so your ego is not hurt.
Modernity is intolerant of idiocy. Atheists don’t blow themselves up or storm embassies.
I’ve met plenty of non-religious bigots, thank you.
Great defense! (sarcasm intended)
Given the state of the world, apparently not enough.
Some of them are posting on this thread.
Or execute 20 million people, like Stalin did.
Oh, wait…
If that’s the best strawman you’ve got I recommend you head back to homeschool.
I would say any examples used during the last century would be more than relevant. The USSR is just one example of the non-religious not living up to your individual moral code. The real strawman is saying that religion is the cause for this instead of it being a convenient reason for angry people to indulge in the violence they crave. Religion as a disguise for groups to get power is what we really see in most of this.
Fine. I’ll give you the USSR.
But you must give me Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, the Congo, Ireland, Armenia, Germany, Poland, Serbia, and Somalia. And I didn’t even have to mention the Crusades!
You can mention all of those. Though by Germany, you don’t mean Nazi Germany, because it wasn’t religious. I will take all of yours and raise you the secular wars and the empires that went with those. And I will throw in Berkeley muggings and Oakland murders just to remind you how much crime and murder has been committed without religion as its source.
Now I am not saying that all religions are good or peaceful, or that any religion has not been used and abused by people wanting power who didn’t care about the religion. What I will say is that having certain religions in the world has promoted more peace and positive human interactions than would exist without any religion.
Christian Europe had a wonderful habit of pogroms against the Jewish stretching back for centuries. You’d be blind to ignore the Holocaust as the ultimate expression of that tradition.
Your discussion of local crime is as laughably shallow and obviously off-topic. People will kill for their god. People will kill for a dollar. These to things are pretty orthogonal. Anyways, Christians are disproportionately represented in the prisoner population while atheists are underrepresented.
I don’t think we should ban religions. I think we regard those who worship a racist sky fairies with the same respect we accord those who believe the world is flat. The sooner the human race is freed from the shackles of Bronze Age mythology the better.
It all comes down to humans. If you think humans will become wonderful people with the end of religious belief, then you just need to look at history to see you are wrong. Communist countries have long run on the basis of no religion and people being naturally good. Their history has shown how horrible the world would be if what you want comes to pass. You are not thinking. Your hate and anger is distorting you.
Honest question. How did you get into Berkeley?
I got into Berkeley by using my mind and not using my anger and hate to develop poor conclusions. You seem to be incapable of looking at the overall data from history. Take your conclusions to any history professor at Cal, and they would tell you to look more objectively at the data. You ignore so much of the history that there has to be something from your past that is preventing you from thinking critically and logically. I won’t ask you how you got into Cal, because I know that there plenty of students who excel at some things and not at others. You should stick to science.
Do you habitually refer to examples that contradict your thesis as “straw men”?
But they do mug Cal students and are the source for most of the murders in Alameda County.
“Religion has always stifled the growth of free thought”
exactly…. except for the whole thing about creating the first universities…. lol…. dumba$$
Yeah, the Catholic Church was a great patron of Galileo’s work on astronomy. In addition, evangelical Christians are pushing the forefront of evolutionary biology.
Keep in mind that the Church declared that the ideas of Copernicus, that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved around it were “false” and “altogether contrary to Holy Scripture”, Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus. It is still contrary to scripture.
The Crusades (Beginning 1095): As a religious
driven military movement, the Crusades, fought mainly against Muslims,
were efforts to recapture the “Holy Land” which lead to irrational
claims of “crosses” appearing on chests of leaders, demoralization of
non-Christians and mass murders of innocent men, women and children.
The Inquisition (Beginning 1184): The purpose of
the Inquisition was stated in a 1578 handbook for inquisitors as, “… for
punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the
correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in
order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils
they would commit.” Such as statement makes it clear that the goal was
to inspire fear amongst a people in order to rule and conquer them.
During the Inquisitions church leaders often supported the enslavement
and/or murder of “heretics”.
Reformation (circa 1518): The intent of the
Reformation was to restore Christianity to a more “pure” form. In order
to do so, millions upon millions of Europeans were murdered as
Catholics murdered Protestants and Protestants murdered Catholics.
Witch Hunts (beginning circa 1480 in Europe): The
witch hunts in the United States were short lived and resulted in very
few deaths compared to the witch hunts in Europe where countless people
were wrongfully murdered after bogus trials.
The Holocaust (beginning circa 1933): Christian
Fundamentalism was a primary cause of the Holocaust. Jewish persons had
been murdered and enslaved throughout Europe’s violent Christian
history and the Nazi’s continued this long tradition of murder –
claiming it to be for the betterment of God and God’s wish. Although
the Jewish people took the largest number of casualties, other groups
were murdered including, homosexuals, Soviet citizens, political
prisoners and the disabled.
The Christian Identity Movement (circa 1915):
Crimes Against the Jewish, African Americans and Homosexuals continued
in the name of “God” with the advent of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) during the Christian Identity Movement. These groups again made
claims of their intentions to purify the Christian religion and use
violence, intimidation and other horrifying methods to make their case.
Other groups which are considered part of the Christian Identity
Movement include: the American Nazi Party; Aryan Nations; Church of
Jesus Christ Christian; Jubilee, National Association for the
Advancement of White People; The Order; Scriptures for America; White
Aryan Resistance (WAR); and White Separatist Banner.
Keep digging further into the history. For example, you would discover that the Nazis claimed Christianity as an ally so they could achieve what they wanted, but papers show that Christians were next on the list for extermination. The Nazis’ final goal was to eliminate all religious. They did the same with their allies from other races. Though they were aligned with the Japanese, once the Nazis gained control of Europe and the US, you think Aryans would mix with Japanese? No. They would exterminate and enslave them too.
Adolf Hitler was raised by a Christian Catholic father and a devout Catholic mother, what is your point?
And Josef Stalin was enrolled in seminary in Tbilisi at one point. Clearly, he repudiated those beliefs later.
I’m not sure what your mistaken focus on Hitler’s Catholicism is supposed to prove. “Guilt by association” is one of the weakest forms of ad hominem argument. It makes as much sense to conclude that since Hitler was a vegetarian, vegetarianism naturally tends toward totalizing politics.
Like I said in the above post to I_h8, religion is a form of mind control and depending on the dosage, you learn how to control other people at an early age, whether you accept or reject the teachings.
I guess the blame Christianity effort isn’t going so well, when now you are going with religion as mind control teaching Hitler to use mind control. You are reaching beyond any reason for a way to connect Hitler with religion.
We learn through observation. From reading Hitler’s bio, his parents, religious Catholics, ran the house in authoritarian manner, he was doing well in Catholic/monastery school, which is very authoritarian, then starting studying Pan-Germanism, another authoritarian idea that adopted openly ethnocentric and racist ideologies, and this ultimately gave rise to the Heim ins Reich policy. That is no more reaching than making the connection between the religious authoritarian teachings of Islam with authoritarian policies of political Islamists, and that “the banner of Islam must fly over every inch of the land”, and Pan Arabism- that Arabs are one Nation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. Both ideas leaving no room for any one else.
Vegetarianism is a nutritional issue. Religious indoctrination is an authoritarian issue. Stalin said he was kicked out the seminary for advocating Marxism and reading forbidden books. Think about it.
I call goalpost-moving. You’re retroactively introducing criteria into this discussion whose only function is to bolster your own position.
Vegetarianism has an ideological function too, and a social one–it’s not just about nutrition, as anyone who lives in a college town should know.
The point is that even with Christian parents, Hitler was not a Christian. You are not born a Christian, and if Hitler had been successful, Christians would have gone the way of the Jews. He did not like any organization that would challenge his authority.
I agree that religion is not genetic, Hitler’s formative years made an impression of how to control. So whether he accepted or rejected what was forced upon him, he still learned the power of control. Historian Alice Miller later wrote, “The family structure could well be characterized as the prototype of a totalitarian regime. Hitler did not encourage free thinking any more than his parents, but he wanted to control others thoughts with his own brand of totalitarianism.
So are you still blaming the Catholicism of his parents, or are you now looking to a psychoanalyst to blame the family structure for Hitler’s actions? Are you going to go along with Alice Miller and say that Hitler was just a victim of his upbringing?
Any kind of political or religious indoctrination during your formatives years has negative impact on a young mind to one degree or another. And if you should reach a certain level of authority it will effect your direction. Hitler was not born to be a Nazi.
You quoted Alice Miller. She had a hypothesis, and she looked for what she needed to make it work. She ignored the facts that Hitler had other influences that have affected him more than his strict father. Historians have long pointed out that his life was more influenced by loss. He was very close to his mother, and was devastated by her death. All but one of his siblings died young. The loss by Germany in WWI affected him greatly. His attitude towards religion was more a reflection of him blaming the God of the Jews and Christians for his losses than from his strict father. Watching his devout Christian mother go to daily mass and then lose all but two of her children to early deaths, and then for her to die young also would have left Hitler believing that God was against him. The Nazis were not about how strict the father was, but about what enemies needed to be destroyed so that Hitler and his Germany didn’t face any more loss.
can i ride in carpool lane if i pee/piss myeself ‘?
I’m texting passages from Atlas Shrugged to my cousin whose apartment was destroyed by flood. He says it’s not reassembling?
So what I’m getting from your post is that you believe this column was written in order to give you public space for ego masturbation.
Just the facts. I never said I or me (ego). There is a big difference between a master debater and a masturbator. Do you have anything to add to the conversation?
The mere mention of religion in a Daily Cal column was apparently enough to prompt you to make a multi-paragraph post attempting to prove that religion is dumb. You don’t engage with any of the points made in the column, it’s just a pretext for you to spew forth (in true borderline-Aspie fashion) your unsolicited opinions about the value and usefulness of religion.
Anytime someone so much as mentions religion on the internet it’s a cue for some crusading blowhard to post his two cents worth. Congratulations, pal–you’ve hijacked this combox. Good luck convincing anyone of the correctness of your views with that gigantic chip on your shoulder.
is it true skittles used to be tiny but had to be made bigger becuse guys kept putting them in their peanus holes?
@peepsqueek:disqus I have recurring fantasy that a sturdy Jewish woman catches me raiding
her refrigerator & shames me. Only much later do we have sex.
i just buttchugged maybe 40 peices of candy corn & i cant feel “my hands