For the Bible Tells Me So
I watched a really good documentary this weekend titled, “For the Bible Tells Me So.” It’s a documentary that speaks to several devoutly religious families who ended up having gay children. They talk about what they had believed, what they went through, and what they believe now.
It’s not a very fast paced or hard hitting documentary, but it would serve a lot of religious families good to watch this.
My wife asked me this evening if I was a gay rights supporter and I said, “of course”. I do however remember when I was in high school making fun of this one guy for being gay. I called him names, snickered behind his back, and told gay jokes about him. I feel horrible about that. If I could go back and educate my younger self, I would.
To this day though, I catch myself saying thinks like, “oh man… that’s so gay”. Essentially I’ve made the terms “gay” and “lame” interchangeable. Does that make me wrong… maybe. I’m sure some would say so, but I have gay friends who say things like, “that’s so gay!” Is this like the term “nigga” with black people? They can say it, but I can’t?
Considering I’m a white male, probably most of what I say or do could be construed as racist or homophobic, though I am neither. Is this not another stereotype though? “All white people are closet racists or homophobes.”
I think if we’re going to evolve as a species and survive, we’re going to have to get out of this in-group / out-group mentality. We’re going to have to stop thinking in terms of “us” and “them”.
Religion, by definition, is exclusive. I think this is why religion can be so damaging. Not only does it draw the lines for “us” and “them” it tells “us” how we should treat “them” and then not to question it. I think this is one of the main reasons why religion can be so easily subverted to accomplish evil things.
Now I know someone is going to come out and say, “Hey, what about atheism, Stalin, Mao, etc”. Same tired ass argument that they’ve been making every time a secular person points to one of the many cases where religion tells people it’s okay to do a wicked act. Here’s the bottom line though…
Suppose there are two groups. One that questions everything, demands evidence, is not convinced by arguments from authority, and seeks only to increase the happiness of ALL humans (not just those who believe what we believe).
And then there’s the other group who: takes things on faith, is persuaded by arguments from authority, and has a clear concept of “us” and “them”…
In my opinion, the second group is far more easily subverted than the first.
Here’s how we know…
Walk into any church with some B.S. story, it could be anything… any claim you want. Then tell me what percentage you think you can fool.
Then walk into a science lab and make that same claim to a bunch of scientists. Then tell me what percentage you think you can fool in that room.
We need only this thought experiment to see that the religiously motivated are more easily duped than skeptical people who require evidence for a claim.
Once you dupe them, you can use that false premise to justify just about anything you want.
The one thing I didn’t like about this documentary is that people kept saying, “Then I learned that you can’t take the bible literally, you have to take it in context during the time it was written.”
How about you just take it as it is, a bunch of nonsense our society could do without.
