What's Your Take on Organized Religion?
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 10:17:00 EST
From: "Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D."
Subject: Re: FAIR Memo on Hebron Massacre (fwd)
To: Multiple recipients of list QC-L
In-Reply-To: MMEEROPO AT WNEC.BITNET -- Mon, 21 Mar 1994 09:32:07 -0500
Sorry Mike is going nomail because we could have had a good fight on
this religion thing.
As an Atheist by upbringing and choice, I note that religion is most
often accmpanied by action. Belief is a private matter engaged in
inside the head. Religion is public expression in the midst of others
who are usually affected by the expression. On Sunday morning, when the
devout worshippers toddle off to church, I am temporarily plagued by
traffic jams but take advantage by having the super market to myself while
they raise their voice to make joyful noises unto the Lord.
I also suffer the effect of their pressure groups on the laws of my state.
This morning the Catholic sponsored anti-abortion law went into effect.
My public schools are under seige to remove books from the library because
of the tender ministrations of the fundamentalist Protestant churches.
When I taught, I would get, periodically, long lists of religious holidays
for which I was supposed to excuse students. (Separation of church and
state?)
I must bow my head in prayer at public gatherings.
And worst of all, I must suffer the depradations of Louis Farrakhan,
Yahweh ben Yahweh, the Lubavitchers, the Aryan Christian Brotherhood,
the Ku Klux Klan (yes, a religious organizaiton), Pat Robertson and
his brethren, and the gaggle of child molesting priests all over the
country.
I know, Betty Lee, I am condemning entities because of individuals. But
I will cite my own religious authority, Soren Kierkegaard who condemned
the organized religions as follows
...a crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason
of the fact that it renders the individual completely
impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his
sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.
...The falsehood first of all is the notion that the
crowd does what in fact only the INDIVIDUAL in the crowd
does, though it be every INDIVIDUAL. For 'crowd' is an
abstraction and has no hands: but each individual has
ordinarily two hands.
...In the next place, the falsehood is that the crowd
had the 'courage' for it, for no one of the individuals
was ever so cowardly as the crowd always is.
The crowd is untruth. Hence none has more contempt
for what it is to be a man than they who make it their
profession to lead the crowd...
...The witness for the truth--who naturally has nothing
to do with politics and must above everything else be most
vigilantly on the watch not to be confounded with the
politician...is to engage himself if possible with all,
but individually, talking to every one severally on the
the streets and lanes...in order to disintegrate the
crowd, though not with the intent of educating the
crowd as such, but rather with the hope that one or
another individual might return from this assemblage
and become a single individual.
Phillips comment: Organizations of religion are generally mindless
regressions to the numb morality of the lower sensibilities of the
humans that take refuge in them. Along with Kierkegaard, I "pray"
that people can be isolated from the conscience-destroying crowd
of religious organizations and brought to individual humanity and
personal concern for their fellows.
It is crowd mentality that brought us Hebron and crowd mentality
that prevails in Bosnia. It is crowd mentality that shoots doctors
in the back and it is crowd mentality that fights adoption of
needy children.
I do not believe Mike's P.C. creed for a minute. It is another example
of crowd mentality. The screaming lunatics on the West Bank jumping
up and down and yelling "kill, kill, kill" are indistinguishable from
one another in their total lack of personal identity and responsibility.
In Altoona, they are trying a smirking priest for molesting an altar
boy. The priest admits he has molested 26 other boys, but not THIS
one. The church is paying for his lawyer as if condoning the act.
After all, they (the church) can forgive him and make him repent and
they really don't give a flaking damn about those 26 boys, any more than
the loonies that supported Goldstein in his massacre have a care at all
about the families of the people who were killed.
It is, I think, easy to kill in the name of God and country. It is somewhat
more difficult to assume personal responsibility under the common law.
GMP@PSUVM.PSU.EDU
Gerald M. Phillips (Professor Emeritus), Speech Communication
Trade and Applied Books Editor, Hampton Press
Editor, IPCT: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century
ISSN 1064-4326. Send submissions to GMP3 at PSUVM.PSU.EDU
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
Manuscripts are being accepted for the 1994 volumes.
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