- Joined
- Jan 2, 2012
- Messages
- 11,206
- Reaction score
- 3,271
- Location
- Walking the Underworld
- Website
- www.richardgarfinkle.com
Historically, religions and philosophies have arisen in social contexts dominated by other religions and philosophies. Under those circumstances the new teaching will usually set out to explain its differences from the dominant form. Again historically, such marking out of differences is not often done with what we would call RYFW.
All of which is a delicate way of saying that religions and philosophies often tell stories about other religions and philosophies that are not accurate to those religions.
Philosophical distinctions have commonly been made in the form of attacks on and mockery of the teachers and teachings they are trying to replace. This is easy to see in the treatment of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues, or (if you are interested in being bored to death) the opening sections of Aristotle's Physics where he dismisses many other theories of the universe before laying out his own.
But philosophers arguing with each other lacks sacral character, so we can look back with sardonic amusement while sniping happily away in the same way at other philosophers (It's a hobby).
The situation is more complicated in the case of religion, in which this mythologizing can become fixed as a tenet of the religion and propagate unto the present day.
The problem can exist even where people think they are being respectful to each other, but use the language of their religion in a manner that, without the speaker noticing, is actually insulting.
Let me take a running start with a couple of not-so-hot-button-as-they-might-be examples.
A number of early Buddhist writings were attempts to distinguish Buddhism from Hinduism. In these early texts the Buddha is preaching against the idea that one has to stick to the caste one is born into. It's explicitly stated that a person who acts like a Brahmin is a Brahmin. There's also a story that Brahma was not the creator of the universe, only the first being to come into existence.
Some Hindu writings came back with the idea that the Buddha was an Avatar of Vishnu, but that the Buddha's teachings were meant to mislead demons or other beings.
In the Bible, specifically in the Book of Daniel, there is a mythologizing of the religion of Persia (Mazda worship, or Zoroastrianism as it is now called), treating it as unsophisticated and easily impressed by miracles like surviving a den full of lions. Zoroastrianism is a living, very sophisticated religion.
Expanding this, there is the biblical admonition against idol worship. Anti-idol stories are almost all based on the idea of idols with feet of clay, as if the people who use images in their worship can't tell the difference between the image and the being which is worshiped.
The next example I have is one that I've been dealing with to some extent all my life, the manner in which Christianity mythologizes Judaism. To reiterate, I was raised Jewish, but I'm now an atheist.
The New Testament story of the arising of Christianity places it in the context of two dominant religions and cultures: Judaic and Roman. There are a number of elements in the story that are specifically reactive against these dominant influences.
However, unlike the Buddhist / Hindu stories, Christianity does not, in general, assert that Judaism was wrong, rather that it was incomplete. It does, however, ascribe wrong to the Jewish authorities at the time, particularly the Pharisees, portraying them as at best ignorant, at worst evil.
The thing is, all modern Judaic teaching descends from the Pharisees. They were the forward-looking reformist faction among the rabbis of the time. They also included among their number teachers of the Golden Rule and love thy neighbor as thyself sorts of things.
Islam, when it arose, had to place Judaism and Christianity in its own context. It created the concept of People of the Book, and used its own version of the idea that these religions were mostly correct (except for the divinity of Jesus) and the concept of incompleteness.
It might seem like this kind of mythologizing is a matter for theologians and that people can respect each other person to person without having to deal with it. But there's a subtle process at work that makes things more difficult.
The sacral mythologizing of other religions, it seems to me, gives social permission to casually mythologize other religions. Thus a person seeking to tell a story about another religion might not feel any need to actually find out anything about it.
For a couple of old examples, have a look at the Song of Roland wherein Islam is portrayed as a polytheistic idol-worshiping religion. Or have a read through the Thousand and One Nights where the portrayal of Christian monasticism is not exactly canonical (You don't want to know what the host is made out of).
This casual portrayal continues to this day with the tropes of the Straw _____ (fill in the blank with the religion or non-religion people wish to treat as a religion).
This brings the problem home to AW and a tension in RYFW.
If a person is writing something that comes from that person's religion, one must be respectful of that writer's religion.
But if that person is writing something about another religion, that writer needs to be respectful of the followers of that religion.
We deal with issues of condemnation and respect every day and we offer challenges to preconceived notions and help with understanding every day, but in some ways this is different.
The mythologizing of a religion can sometimes be built into the worldview of another religion. The relation between Judaism and Christianity is paradigmatic here, as is the relation between polytheistic and image-using religions to monotheistic, non-image-using religions.
On a more subtle level there is a mythologizing by faith-based religions into the idea that all ideas, religious or otherwise, must be faith-based. We've already had a thread on that, but the mythologizing premise underlies the concept that science and atheism as must be faiths.
So how do we go about the creation of mutual respect in this circumstance?
All of which is a delicate way of saying that religions and philosophies often tell stories about other religions and philosophies that are not accurate to those religions.
Philosophical distinctions have commonly been made in the form of attacks on and mockery of the teachers and teachings they are trying to replace. This is easy to see in the treatment of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues, or (if you are interested in being bored to death) the opening sections of Aristotle's Physics where he dismisses many other theories of the universe before laying out his own.
But philosophers arguing with each other lacks sacral character, so we can look back with sardonic amusement while sniping happily away in the same way at other philosophers (It's a hobby).
The situation is more complicated in the case of religion, in which this mythologizing can become fixed as a tenet of the religion and propagate unto the present day.
The problem can exist even where people think they are being respectful to each other, but use the language of their religion in a manner that, without the speaker noticing, is actually insulting.
Let me take a running start with a couple of not-so-hot-button-as-they-might-be examples.
A number of early Buddhist writings were attempts to distinguish Buddhism from Hinduism. In these early texts the Buddha is preaching against the idea that one has to stick to the caste one is born into. It's explicitly stated that a person who acts like a Brahmin is a Brahmin. There's also a story that Brahma was not the creator of the universe, only the first being to come into existence.
Some Hindu writings came back with the idea that the Buddha was an Avatar of Vishnu, but that the Buddha's teachings were meant to mislead demons or other beings.
In the Bible, specifically in the Book of Daniel, there is a mythologizing of the religion of Persia (Mazda worship, or Zoroastrianism as it is now called), treating it as unsophisticated and easily impressed by miracles like surviving a den full of lions. Zoroastrianism is a living, very sophisticated religion.
Expanding this, there is the biblical admonition against idol worship. Anti-idol stories are almost all based on the idea of idols with feet of clay, as if the people who use images in their worship can't tell the difference between the image and the being which is worshiped.
The next example I have is one that I've been dealing with to some extent all my life, the manner in which Christianity mythologizes Judaism. To reiterate, I was raised Jewish, but I'm now an atheist.
The New Testament story of the arising of Christianity places it in the context of two dominant religions and cultures: Judaic and Roman. There are a number of elements in the story that are specifically reactive against these dominant influences.
However, unlike the Buddhist / Hindu stories, Christianity does not, in general, assert that Judaism was wrong, rather that it was incomplete. It does, however, ascribe wrong to the Jewish authorities at the time, particularly the Pharisees, portraying them as at best ignorant, at worst evil.
The thing is, all modern Judaic teaching descends from the Pharisees. They were the forward-looking reformist faction among the rabbis of the time. They also included among their number teachers of the Golden Rule and love thy neighbor as thyself sorts of things.
Islam, when it arose, had to place Judaism and Christianity in its own context. It created the concept of People of the Book, and used its own version of the idea that these religions were mostly correct (except for the divinity of Jesus) and the concept of incompleteness.
It might seem like this kind of mythologizing is a matter for theologians and that people can respect each other person to person without having to deal with it. But there's a subtle process at work that makes things more difficult.
The sacral mythologizing of other religions, it seems to me, gives social permission to casually mythologize other religions. Thus a person seeking to tell a story about another religion might not feel any need to actually find out anything about it.
For a couple of old examples, have a look at the Song of Roland wherein Islam is portrayed as a polytheistic idol-worshiping religion. Or have a read through the Thousand and One Nights where the portrayal of Christian monasticism is not exactly canonical (You don't want to know what the host is made out of).
This casual portrayal continues to this day with the tropes of the Straw _____ (fill in the blank with the religion or non-religion people wish to treat as a religion).
This brings the problem home to AW and a tension in RYFW.
If a person is writing something that comes from that person's religion, one must be respectful of that writer's religion.
But if that person is writing something about another religion, that writer needs to be respectful of the followers of that religion.
We deal with issues of condemnation and respect every day and we offer challenges to preconceived notions and help with understanding every day, but in some ways this is different.
The mythologizing of a religion can sometimes be built into the worldview of another religion. The relation between Judaism and Christianity is paradigmatic here, as is the relation between polytheistic and image-using religions to monotheistic, non-image-using religions.
On a more subtle level there is a mythologizing by faith-based religions into the idea that all ideas, religious or otherwise, must be faith-based. We've already had a thread on that, but the mythologizing premise underlies the concept that science and atheism as must be faiths.
So how do we go about the creation of mutual respect in this circumstance?
Last edited: