Remedy for religious fundamentalism? Who would have the nerve to make such a
proposal? Seeking a remedy for such a wild societal phenomenon? You’re in for a bit of lay philosophizing.
Hope you’re up to it?
Some behind-the-scene stuff here. Originally
I made a typographical error in the above paragraph. Instead of “seeking,” I
wrote “seeding” so that the sentence
read “Seeding a remedy….” Now wouldn’t
that be wonderful? We just go out, buy a bag of seed, put it in the spreader
and there it goes throughout the society, slowly germinating and sprouting the
“remedy” flower till it has taken over the entire field. Wouldn’t that be nice? Alas, only a
typo! Not even a dream, though it almost
germinated one in me!
One of my favourite columnists in the Vancouver Sun, Michael Den Tandt, had the courage—or should I say
“nerve?”-- to suggest a remedy, using the title of this post I borrowed from
him, but without the extension “…is clear.”
His full title: “The remedy for religious fundamentalism is clear” (Boxing
Day, Dec. 26, 2015). Wow! This is something we’ve all been waiting for:
a clear remedy for this scourge of fundamentalism. I could hardly think of a
more appropriate Christmas gift, even now that we are into January 2016 with
Christmas long behind us.
For those of us who are writers, there is
enough in Den Tandt’s column to fill a good-sized volume with comments,
reactions and alternatives. I will have to be very selective to keep this down
to an acceptable blog post length. It’s possible that I will have to use two
posts even to say the minimum, but that would not be the end of the world, at
least, not of my world. So, Michael, I’m going to think along with you a little
and make some suggestions as well as ask some questions. I do this in the
framework of appreciation for your courage to even dream of a remedy of so
intractable a global scourge.
Den Tandt’s remedy? In his words, “It is,
simply, ecumenism.” That term means, again in his own words, “the notion that
people of faith, and indeed agnostics and atheists, have far more in common
than they sometimes wish to believe.” My
association with Humanist Atheists has taught me that this is a typical
perspective of that group of people. In fact, based on my association with
them, I consider that part of the core of Humanism and Atheism. Taking that
away from them would be similar to taking Jesus away from Christians or
Muhammad from Muslims. You end up with an empty shell.
Jesus observed that a tree shall by known by
its fruit. We know that there are many kinds of trees, each with its own fruit.
Now trees have certain basic things in common that mark them as trees. They
have roots, stems, branches and, often, leaves and, usually, fruit, though not
necessarily edible. Without those they are not considered trees. Though they
share certain structural features, their root structures vary, bark is
different so that we can identify them as this or that kind of tree. Their
leaves look and behave differently as does their fruit. Trees, yes, all of
them, but still they are very different from each other, used for different
purposes ranging from shade, decoration,
construction, canoes, nesting, food all the way to burning. All trees,
yes, but how different from each other.
By their fruit, including their various uses, you will know that it is this
tree or that tree. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between a Western apple
tree and an African baobab would be looked at askance.
Every society is undergirded by a worldview
that gives it shape and values. Most members of a given society are hardly
aware of that worldview; they just assume it as their “common sense,” but it
affects both their thought patterns as well as behavior. In fact, it creates their culture. Part of
that worldview is the dominant religion of the culture. Yes, behind every
culture lies a religion of some sort. That is to say, a more or less coherent
set of values and ideas by which the
people guide their lives and form their social structures and to which
the people have given their hearts. All of this means that you can learn
something about a people’s religion by analyzing their culture.
It may be that the above was more true in the
past when most cultures tended to be cohesive mono-cultures and mono-religions. This situation may be breaking down into
groupings within a given culture so that today one finds more worldviews next
to each other in any society. Nevertheless, the dominant cultures of the world
have religions behind them, religions that have taken on a large variety of
shapes, values and beliefs that undergird the societies.
Now, can you possibly believe that with, say,
Chinese or Indian cultures being so different from Western cultures, the roots
of these greatly different cultures are one and the same? If the fruits of two
or more trees are widely different, can you argue that the trees are one and
the same? If you did, people would not
take you seriously. These cultures are different because the underlying
religions are different from each other. The fruits from all these different
cultures are different because the religions are different.
Dogmatic insistence that these religions are
basically the same is just that: dogma, ideology, in this case modern
Humanistic , Secular or Atheistic ideology or religion. Adherents of these
movements will ward off any argumentation countering that dogma as much as any
Christian will resist arguments against Christ or a Muslim against Mohammad. We
all defend the values, philosophies and beliefs that constitute the core of our
hearts and minds. Den Tandt is really expressing a major core value of one of
these three close buddies, Humanism, Secularism or Atheism—or all three.
I am tired of having
to mention all three of this triad all the time. I am going to refer to the
whole gamut simply as “Humanism,”
realizing full well not all adherents are Atheists. This will also hold for the
next post.
Now, I’m all for the tolerance and peace Den
Tandt is really after and I honour him for trying to help us solve a major
problem of our time. Absolutely.
However, that should not be based on the faith of one of the many religions, in this case, Secular religion
or worldview. He is really interpreting the entire range of religions from his
particular secular dogmatic view point. And that's alright, as long as he recognizes the legitimacy of others as well. His remedy is undergirded by another
core component of his worldview or religion, namely that his is the only rational or
scientific one. And if I may be politically incorrect, most adherents of his
Humanism, deep down, have contempt for all the other religions except their own
and basically think of them as nonsense. I would hope this is not true of Den Tandt,
but there is a sign in his column that would make us think that this might be the case, but that we’ll examine in the next post.
As a closing aside, there is one other
religion that thinks of all religions as being the same, namely Baha’i. Baha’i members
I know tend to be very sweet and amicable people; most of them have none of the
hard pride that tends to mark Humanists—or condemnation. I suspect the reason
for the difference between these two perspectives to be that the Baha’i come
out of a non-Enlightenment context, a context they share with all non-Humanist
religions, whereas Humanists have faith in reason which has harder edges and
less room for emotion or affection.
