(I’ve been too busy over the past couple weeks to keep up with low-priority things, so now that I’ve finished part of a project, I’m playing catch-up.)
One of the things that I like about Paul Graham’s essays is that they’re always thought-provoking. This one is no exception, and I recommend that anyone who has children or plans to (or even deals with them occasionally) read it immediately and take it to heart.
Great essay, but it was a little bit arrogant at dismissing all religious upbringing as telling kids lies.
That you specifically picked that particular item to disagree with says more about you than about the author.
Long ago, as a barely-past-teenager, I expressed my opinion (that one should always try to tell one’s children the truth) to an older mother-of-three. She reacted very strongly, telling me that I had no right to an opinion on the subject. At the time, I thought age and experience gave her some insight that I lacked, but as I’ve gotten some age and experience myself, I realize that she was overreacting… it makes me wonder just what lies she was feeling uncomfortable for telling her kids.
— Robert Pirzig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Yes, it says more about me, because it says I agree with the rest of the essay. 😉
OBTW, I’m not sure where you get the idea that I’m a fanatic who wants to lie to his kids. One man’s fanatic is another man’s idealist. People like Dawkins “the God delusion”, doth protest too much methinks.
I clearly don’t care if you are Jewish or not, it isn’t like I’m trying to sell anything. Of course I want to teach it to my kids though, because I think it is a good thing in my life and the life of my people, and because without it, this good thing wouldn’t survive. I think I have that right. If you, or others, want to call that being a liar and a fanatic, well, they know where they can put it! 🙂
Religion can be a force for good, but throughout recorded history, organized religion has mostly been used for evil or selfish purposes. If it were harmless, people like Dawkins might still consider it a delusion, but they wouldn’t have any motivation to attack it.
Paul G. has the right of it: according to all the evidence directly available to our senses (as opposed to things told to us by other people, who could be lying, exaggerating, or mistaken), pretty much all religions — including my own — are full of lies. Religious stories may have varying levels of historical fact behind them, but it’s highly unlikely that even the most accurate historical ones would be recognizable to someone who was actually there.
I happen to think that my religion is indeed harmless, and that most other religions could be (well, other than being not true, but that’s not the worst form of harm I suppose.) Ironically, Judaism has been treated by other societies often like they think it’s the most harmful religion in the world. I’m not sure why.
Judaism happens to be a historical religion, more than any other, because it is not a religion started by a small band of people who went out to convince others like all other religions, but rather is a religion that came from a revelation given to over a million people. It’s the only nearly irrefutably revealed religion, which is why so many other religions that claim to be revealed ones based themselves on it saying “oh yes, that’s true, but here’s version 2.0 and 3.0”
But we’ve discussed this before.
And as we’ve discussed before, I’m not impressed by things that someone else claims happened thousands of years ago. I know too much about how rare the juxtaposition of what people say and what really happened is. And that’s when it just happened minutes ago, and mere feet from the person relating the tale. The further back or farther away you go from the event itself (and not coincidentally, the fewer witnesses there are around the teller to contradict him), the more fanciful the stories get. And when you get it second- or third-hand… well, it’s amazing how quickly stories take on a life of their own.
The basic difference between us is that you’re willing to believe at least one such story, and I’m not.
Everyone has certain axioms, however, even science and mathematics, as has been proven by Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, are based upon unprovable axioms. One of my unprovable axioms is that there is a G-d, another is that there was an Exodus from Egypt, and another is that that with a million witnesses passing something on through history, one can believe their testimony; just as one can believe that Washington crossed the Delaware River, with a lot less witnesses there.
My unprovable axioms pretty much all boil down to “I can usually trust my senses.” My senses can be fooled at times, but that’s what the scientific method is designed to counter.
Last time I checked, you weren’t an atheist. So I think this is a bit hypocritical, unless you think your religion is somehow not “needing proof” and mine is.
That’s exactly what I think, and with good reason: you claim that your religion is historical fact, while mine is understood by most of its adherents to be “real” only within the confines of the mind, and makes no claim to being factual.
I never could figure out how one could take something that admitted its fictional character seriously as a religion, but then again, some branches of Judaism are like that, such as Reconstructionism; and I didn’t understand their appeal either.
It’s simple enough. If you’re going to have a religion, do you want one that lies to you, or one that tells the truth?
No one can claim any independently verifiable evidence for any religion, which makes it pretty obvious that all religions are made up by people — if a supreme being cared enough to found one, it would surely have provided some kind of proof of its tenets, so that people couldn’t hijack the religion and take it in a different direction (as has happened even to Judaism to a point, thus the various denominations of it).
If you realize that all religions are invented by people, but believe that there’s a power greater than humans despite that (as I do), you’re neither fish nor fowl — you’re not an atheist or agnostic, and there’s no place for you in any of the organized and traditional religions. But there are a few other, non-traditional religions, ones that believe that the purpose of religion is to help people (both groups and individuals) and don’t make fantastic claims that can’t be proven. In other words, ones that tell you the truth.
That the trappings of such religions are acknowledged to be partially or even entirely in the mind has no effect on their validity. An idea can have as much influence and power as any physical item or historical fact.
Does that help explain it?
Well, what is common to all the branches of Judaism that did differ from Judaism based on the Oral and Written Torah is simple – they all, historically and in the present day, didn’t last very long. It is like a laboratory that invented an artificial potato. The potato looked a lot like a real potato, but it couldn’t reproduce itself. The reason? They weren’t based on the truth. Of course, if one redefines the statement “this is really a lie” to = “the truth”, then I guess one could say they are telling the truth. This is going in a direction I don’t like though, as I’m firmly against pushing my religion as my religion is also.
You really shouldn’t comment on things so close to midnight… it sounds like there’s too much blood in your caffeine system. 😉 If you’re trying to say something coherent, please try again in the morning.
I looked at it now and except the potato part it looks coherent enough. If you can’t figure it out I’m not going to bother.