I Love Religion (A rebuttal)
I love religion. I love the tapestry that religion weaves with threads of culture, tradition, and history--the way that the fabric changes and moves, and how that cloth is used--as a robe, a tent, a piece of art. Religion is one of those things that you can't avoid. I think that it's a part of human nature. Not the concept of religion as we have it today: belief in God and certain tenants that we should follow to up our holy status. But religion in the sense of having a core philosophy, a trust in something that exists outside of yourself--even if that trust is only that oneself is the only vessel for understanding the world. Is this a human construct or some sort of coping mechanism? Perhaps, but that doesn't invalidate it or make it any less necessary or real. The point of religion, as I see it, is not a means to and end, it's a means to an existence, a 'means to a means.'
I love religion because it's completely fascinating. The different mythologies that we've created that all really mean the same thing (mythology not in the sense of fiction, necessarily, but a construction of adages and verse and oral history). This is what I wish we could all appreciate about religion rather than argue about which construction is right or better. But looking past the horrors that we've committed in the name of "religion," there is something beautiful about the personal association humans can have with a belief. That's what makes us extraordinary--that we can believe in things, that we can establish moral value systems, that we can conceive of life and of death and of an ego, a body, a connection between ourselves and other egos and bodies.
Religion is what makes this all matter.
Not belief in God or Allah or Jehovah or Buddha or The Force--just simple belief that there is an intent behind our actions and thoughts, and that they affect another individual or even the environment. Trust in something else.
This is why I love Islam. That trust and that investment in religion, in something greater, in the word of Allah...It means something huge. Islam comes in a number of tasty varieties, but each has the potential to become intimately entwined in a persons life. So much that the person becomes a part of a community in which Islam is intimately entwined with the community. So much that the community can shift different forms--an Empire, a number of states, members of a legal system--the dar al-Islam. Diin (دين) means religion, medina (مدينة) means city, same root, not a mistake. The city is an essential unit because it is a source of people, of the faithful. The implications that kind of association has on society, politics, foreign policy, and individual lives are major. And that all springs out of one religion--pretty powerful stuff. It's certainly not a thing that we can or should discount, and why would we want to? If nothing else, it shows the strength of humanity, and maybe even the strength of something outside of humanity. Perhaps something even greater.
I love religion because it's completely fascinating. The different mythologies that we've created that all really mean the same thing (mythology not in the sense of fiction, necessarily, but a construction of adages and verse and oral history). This is what I wish we could all appreciate about religion rather than argue about which construction is right or better. But looking past the horrors that we've committed in the name of "religion," there is something beautiful about the personal association humans can have with a belief. That's what makes us extraordinary--that we can believe in things, that we can establish moral value systems, that we can conceive of life and of death and of an ego, a body, a connection between ourselves and other egos and bodies.
Religion is what makes this all matter.
Not belief in God or Allah or Jehovah or Buddha or The Force--just simple belief that there is an intent behind our actions and thoughts, and that they affect another individual or even the environment. Trust in something else.
This is why I love Islam. That trust and that investment in religion, in something greater, in the word of Allah...It means something huge. Islam comes in a number of tasty varieties, but each has the potential to become intimately entwined in a persons life. So much that the person becomes a part of a community in which Islam is intimately entwined with the community. So much that the community can shift different forms--an Empire, a number of states, members of a legal system--the dar al-Islam. Diin (دين) means religion, medina (مدينة) means city, same root, not a mistake. The city is an essential unit because it is a source of people, of the faithful. The implications that kind of association has on society, politics, foreign policy, and individual lives are major. And that all springs out of one religion--pretty powerful stuff. It's certainly not a thing that we can or should discount, and why would we want to? If nothing else, it shows the strength of humanity, and maybe even the strength of something outside of humanity. Perhaps something even greater.