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Michael Amram . . . Would God |
In the light of of the events of September 11, 2001, the sudden impact of loss of life, the demolition of a symbol of American freedom and power, and the way it has proven the strength of humanity in the face of adversity under the guise of religion, I have chosen to weigh the two concepts: faith and religion. Religion is a greatly subjective concept
created by humans for the simple purpose of directing their faith. This seems
harmless enough, although human nature most often, as history has proven time
and again, cannot maintain this simple purpose. Faith in God, humanity, the
future, basically anything worthy of trust and a firm, positive belief is
mostly objective. It is a personal, private, metaphysical concept that
supersedes human interpretation. Therefore I see faith transcending any values
religion has taught because faith cannot be changed or taken away, persecuted
or proselytized. It is human nature to cling blindly to certain concepts such
as those cited by psychologist Abraham Maslow. If we take his hierarchy of
needs, for example, we find it impossible to eliminate a common need to belong
to something. In short, while religion's benefits are finite to the point of
human conflagration, faith's personal and collective benefits are infinite.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1.) In this book I suggest that the elimination of
organized religion would ultimately benefit humankind. I submit that religion
cannot be contained (in most cases), and was designed with no regard for human
instincts and is therefore pre-dispositioned for corruption. From the earliest
times, man (usually the one in charge) has profited from religion and its
manipulative effects. The wealthy prosper, the poor stay at their level, and
blood spilled and lives lost is alright because it is in the name of religion,
the path a select few have mandated for all to reach God. Does this sound like
there is love for our fellow human anywhere to be found? Does this sound like
there is an altruistic thread in the tapestry society has immaculately woven? I
humbly pose these as rhetorical questions, the answers to which lie somewhere
deep within the subconscious collective minds of humanity. The answers to these questions remain repressed in the recesses of a large portion of society's minds because their recognition might mean the cessation of what has been a very lucrative business for centuries, something that has rationalized some of the most violent behavior man can perpetrate, something that has been used to conceal criminal action over time, but also something that has proven to get humans through the darkest hours.
Excerpt . . .
Webster's definition of religion : “a belief and reverence for a supernatural power, a specific unified system of this expression.” A specific unified system of belief? In
America at least, this set concept seems to contradict a freedom afforded us in
the Bill of Rights. Therein lies the problem, the conundrum that has remained
tucked deep within the human fibers that bind America and the world, a conflict
of two concepts that have inherently provoked more loss of human life than the
Civil War and the events of September 11, 2001, put together. I choose these
two events because they were perhaps the two most horrific occurrences on
American soil in the past three centuries. The Civil War was fought for
political reasons. Though there were many reasons, slavery was perhaps the most
volatile. While it became a matter of politics, which states were to be free
and which slave, the compelling force or doctrine to enslave the Negro was
rooted in religion and justified by the ensuing faith. The terrorist attacks
two centuries later were acts of hatred under the guise of religion, this time
Islam, the largest of the three major religions in the Western world. The blind
faith in Allah, the supreme being in the Moslem world, justified this violence.
The doctrine of Islam dictates that one love the next world and not be afraid
of killing. This conflicts with the Christian doctrine of “Thou shalt not
kill,” while Christianity also dictates a better life in the next world. A
complex phenomenon defying definition, religion has played a part in social,
political, and economic interaction for centuries. Religion has been studied in
various ways throughout time, trying to understand this brainstorm of man that,
according to the word's etymology, brings humanity together. The word religion
itself originates from ligament, a connecting tie or bond. It is my purpose,
however, in this book to establish the clear separation of the two concepts:
faith and religion. It would appear that by Webster's definition one cannot
have faith without religion; that the two words have been used interchangeably
for centuries. Faith in one another, a belief in a higher power, faith in the
future it seems cannot exist without the doctrines and subjectivity of
religion. The two concepts have almost become synonymous, which I see as a
dangerous coupling because human nature is intolerant, as history has proven,
of even the smallest deviations in the organized world. Perhaps the idea of the
binding force of religion is harmless to a point, but as soon as a
fundamentalist starts dictating how the doctrines should be followed, how one
culture is wrong because it doesn't practice and observe the way the current
fundamental group has deemed necessary, power corrupts a course intended to
lead to a peaceful life and the cycle of violence begins. Religion has been
studied from a historical, phenomenological and behavioral perspective. The
historical approach relies on texts such as the Bible, Torah or Koran. Whether
or not one chooses to accept these writings as the written word of God, these
texts are subject to gross human interpretation, thus presenting a system of
belief that most often leads to conflict. The rituals practiced by a community
as a whole are studied to create an idea of how religion shaped a peoples'
lives, how their devotion to a certain set of laws dictated their way of
living. The phenomenological approach may draw from the historical while its
true intent is to get to the nature of religion, the factors that lie behind
the manifestation itself. However, this approach has sometimes been criticized
for losing sight of the aspects certain religions have, as it can overly
generalize and speculate on the occurrences of such belief systems. The
behavioral approach studies religion from psychological, sociological and
anthropological standpoints. The writings of Sigmund Freud are often referred
to in the psychological approach to tracing the need for religion, the human
need to organize one's own life and then develop situations for conflict
because of it. William James dealt with the conscious expressions of religious
interpretation while Freud deals with the unconscious motivation for the
religious experience. A problem with this approach is that of translating the
individual's religious experience with that of the community. While the
community can have a doctrine followed by participants of the experience, the
individual can have many conscious or unconscious variations by which he or she
may practice the religion. Having free will, a luxury purportedly afforded
humans by God paradoxically, it is not inherently in their nature to strictly
follow a proposed set of ideas. The Taliban, for example, preaches a rigid,
extreme form of Islam not followed by the majority of Muslims. Fanatics like
Osama Bin Laden oppress their people with the forced followings of these
precepts. In this country Jerry Falwell, on a less extreme, much less
oppressive scale by the fact that it is preached in a democracy, as a
representative of the religious right, tries to implement a following of
Christianity that most often causes controversy. It is not possible for a
religion to be coerced on a people as we see in Afghanistan and many societies
in the Middle East. In this country we have the constitution protecting our
freedom of religion so the fundamentalists never get very far in the coercion
of a religion. In this country many denominations of Christianity exist
peacefully while in other countries these differences have often been at the
root of conflict. However, even now in America, relations between Christians,
Jews, and Muslims aren't always peaceful. Still, in America, anti-Semitic
phrases are thoughtlessly, at times intentionally, uttered and infrequent acts
of hate occur. For the most part faith, or the positive energy one puts into
following a code, is left untouched until one begins to try to get others to
follow the same code. Religion, because we are human, and thereby subject to
free will, cannot be contained. In many instances usually born-again Christians
and Jehovah's Witnesses feel their message must be spread, insinuating subtly
that any other way of living is not worth much. This condescension only creates
fear, annoyance, and animosity towards those with the arrogance to profess that
their pattern for a simple belief is better than anything in this world. Many
of these disciples of God are perceived as annoying and ultimately end up
alienating any potential converts. Indeed, misconceptions of many of these
people are bound to be formed and hatred is often the end result, ironically,
although possibly systemically, the direct opposite of the initial intent. I
surmise that the potential conflict enticed by the random, constant
solicitation of an organized religion can result in achieving of the ultimate
goal, whatever that may be. In short, conflict is essential to the
equation.