By Harry T. Cook
Deuteronomy 8: 1-10
The scene is an area of Gaza: Israel, or, depending on your point of view, Palestine. A rabbi says, paraphrasing our text from Deuteronomy, This land was promised on oath by God to our ancestors. It is therefore our land by the divine hand, and we may not cede it to another. A few yards away an imam, quoting Holy Koran says in effect: This land was a gift from Allah to those who follow Islam. We may not cede it to another. And the fat is in the fire. The fire bids fair to be unquenchable if it is fueled by religion.
Last month I gave a series of lectures in the Center for New Thinking under the general title: Religion May Be The Death of Us All. I meant it absolutely. Religion has often been the death of human beings from the earliest times of the perhaps inaptly named Homo sapiens – man of wisdom. What is so all-fired wise about depriving and killing other people in the name of some god? This is where religion goes wrong. How can we prevent it from doing so? How can the human race avoid another set of Crusades – moving from West to East or vice versa?
One way is to abandon the philosophical form of religion known as “theism,” which asserts belief in a deity that is out there or up there, a deity that speaks through a word revealed exclusively to human religious authority which then gets to say what that word is and to insist that its interpretation of the word is not subject to debate.
It’s not that there may not be such a deity as the one we speak of so blithely in our prayers, but there is no evidence that there is. Such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and others of our Founding Parents were “deists,” who merely surmised that some greater force and wisdom than that of humankind was responsible for the existence of life, but Jefferson and others set forth no firm assertions about that force and wisdom. Then there are those who are inclined to believe that nature itself in its richness and plentitude may actually be the substance of any deity, should one exist.
The farther away we get from theism, the farther we get from conflict based on competing theisms. You can either believe what the imam on one side of the line in Gaza says or what the rabbi on the other side says. You cannot believe in both at once. You can either take sides, or walk away before the shooting starts.
Agnosticism about such things as deities and revealed truths and which god gave which land to which set of believers serves the cause of humanity far better than competing theisms. Bringing the world to the brink of World War III over unsupportable religious belief is outrageously stupid. The same goes for bringing the church to the verge of schism by those who insist that god forbids gay and lesbian persons from forming loving relationships in marriage, or that women have no reproductive rights.
If you live in Israel-Palestine and you want to take sides over who gets to govern a piece of land, you’re on your own. You can encourage negotiation or simply say that might makes right, and get out of the way. If the idea of gay and lesbian persons being married offends you, say so and work toward laws against it; but don’t drag god into it because you have no idea if your imagined god might concern its divine self with such matters. If you think abortion is wrong, don’t have one; but leave god out of it because no one has the slightest idea of what any god may think about it.
Agnosticism is only and eminently to say, “I don’t know.” It is to say, “Let’s look at our human experience with any issue or idea through the eyes of reason with a compassionate heart and try to reach a conclusion that serves both.” – The strife in Israel-Palestine and the stupid arguments over human sexuality that just now plague the Anglican Communion are what give the idea of “god” a bad name. – Enough, already.
© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
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