A Crisis: Faith

I went to see Religulous on Friday with some friends. It's a documentary by Bill Maher that firmly comes down against the dangers of religion and tries to point out many ridiculous aspects of what we normally excuse in the name of "faith." What he asks many times, and what I find compelling about the movie, is- but what's so great about faith? What's to be admired about ardent and often violent belief in something without proof or evidence, and how has this crutch of "faith" become not only acceptable justification of behavior from irrational belief to support of war, but a praise-worthy and laudable trait of a Good American. How many times do our politicians refer to "faith" in attempts to win their way into the hearts of the American religious majority? And why oh why and when oh when did we decide that "faith" in God or his "plan" are acceptable justifications for actions that, in reality, should be judged based on earthly, real scales like morality. Many people, granted, recognize how ludicrous it is when, for example, Sarah Palin says that the war in Iraq is a mission from God- but far too many Americans are instead comforted and inspired by those kinds of words. I just hope that we start to hold our government accountable for explanations and rationalizations based on what is right, what is effective, what is humane, and what is feasible, rather than what some batty ex-beauty queen tells us is the path of God.

In my search for common opinion in my own struggle against what I see as the ridiculous nature of religion, I've also been reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I think he does a brilliant job of logically pointing out fallacies within religious and about religion as whole, and of mandating that we hold religious "beliefs" to the same standard of scrutiny to which we take for granted that we can hold any other belief. Much in line with the faith-bashing above, I completely agree with much of what he says, including the question of why, if it goes against more basic laws of, say, morality or kindness, putting something under the umbrella of "religious belief" completely immunizes it from judgment or scrutiny. While I do believe that people should be free to practice religion, on a basic level, I think that the level of "religious freedom" can sometimes be so high that it means excusing things that are violent, hateful, and would otherwise be criminal. I read about a boy who wore a t-shirt to school that expressed some sort of homophobic sentiment, and a case was brought against the school for sending him home- the boy eventually won the case, because the shirt allegedly was just expressing his religious freedom. I just don't get how something falling under some strange banner of faith or religious belief allows it to become acceptable. Granted, this was probably in an uber-conservative southern religious community, and would likely not have ended the same way in other places, but it's still scary to think that such things can be tolerated in the powerful and dubious name of God.