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Hymns Ancient & Modern - Peter Vardy

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103 pages

English

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Intends to provide criteria to separate good and bad manifestations of religion found in the Western and Eastern philosophical conditions, that there is a single human nature which all human beings share and certain types of attitudes and behaviour can be profoundly damaging.

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Publié par	Hymns Ancient & Modern
Date de parution	23 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780334047643
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0029€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Good and Bad Religion
Good and Bad Religion
Peter Vardy
© Peter Vardy 2010
Published in 2010 by SCM Press Editorial office 13–17 Long Lane, London, ec1a 9pn, UK
SCM Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd (a registered charity) 13A Hellesdon Park Road Norwich, nr6 5dr www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.
The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978-0-334-04349-2
Originated by The Manila Typesetting Company Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham SN14 6LH
Contents
Preface
Part One The Challenge
1 Atheism
2 Truth
3 The Euthyphro Dilemma
4 Good and Bad
Part Two A Way Forward
5 Authority
6 The Problem of Texts
7 Science and Religion
8 Justice
9 Equality
10 Freedom
Conclusion: Distinguishing Good from Bad Religion
To my wife, Charlotte,
without whom this book
would have been much
the poorer. With grateful thanks
Preface
The title of this book, Good and Bad Religion , may attract controversy. In practice most of us judge religion day by day. Politicians hail the positive influence it arguably has on education and community cohesion, and celebrity atheists attempt to demonstrate that religion is ‘the root of all evil’, tarring the moderate majority with the same brush as caricature fanatics. Most of us make smaller claims about the positive or negative effects of religious faith on a regular basis. Billions of people hold to the truth of their own religious perspective with passion and commitment, and sometimes fail to see anything good in other religions. Yet despite their prevalence, such judgements do not usually bear theoretical scrutiny and it can be dangerous to stand by them for long. People risk being labelled as cultural imperialists or simply fundamentalists when they stand by their own views and will not listen to those of others. Members of religions who stand up against ‘bad religion’ within their own traditions risk being ostracized and reviled.
This book is absolutely not about which religions are good and which religions are bad. It is rather an attempt to arrive at criteria by which some manifestations of religion (which may be found within any or all traditions) may be described in these terms. As such, this book continues a debate that has been going on at some level for millennia, yet which is bound to fail. My hope is that in failing it may serve to revive discussion of the central question, promote evaluation of the things people do in the name of faith and encourage action by motivating individuals and groups to stand out against aspects of their own religious traditions that need to be challenged and condemned. Such discussions, evaluations and actions will never be easy but are an essential requirement for those who aspire to lives of integrity and truth, as do most religious people. Anything less will smack of expediency and weakness – hardly virtues prized by religion.
Taking a stand is never easy – it is always more comfortable to acquiesce and to accept the received wisdom of one’s community. What is easy and what is right are, however, rarely the same. Too often religious people see things as divided between ‘us’ and ‘them’. They argue that ‘whoever is not with us is against us’ and that anybody who challenges things done in the name of faith is an enemy of all faith. This is a human reaction, but poor logic. Evil is usually found in the midst of good. It is within religious traditions as well as outside them that ‘bad religion’ needs to be challenged and rejected.
Religion has indeed been responsible for great suffering, persecution, wars, death and hatred. It has contributed to the suppression of learning and science and the denial of human fulfilment. Murder, cruelty and some of the most horrific tortures have been practised in the name of religion by people who would ordinarily be mild and compassionate becoming raging fanatics, convinced they are right, intent on asserting and enforcing the primacy of their understanding of religious truth. However, religion at its best has also inspired the greatest music, architecture, painting, philosophy as well the heights of self-sacrifice, love and compassion. It has called saints and moral heroes, as well as ordinary people living ordinary lives, to acts of moral heroism and greatness that can only inspire others. Some of the most awesome human achievements in all fields have been directly related to the religious imperative. Most people would accept these claims, and yet herein lies the dilemma and the theme of this book. Once one says ‘religion at its best’, a contrast is being drawn between some forms of religion and others – the others representing religion at its worst or, perhaps, religion at a mediocre stage where it has degenerated into a form a social convention devoid of passion or real content. So a distinction needs to be made between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion.
This seems so simple and so obvious a claim, but it is fraught with controversy and difficulty. Many religious people would not accept any external means of validating their claims. Religion, for its many adherents, often includes the acceptance of a supreme deity and literal account of God’s will, and should not, indeed cannot be subject to any external test. To judge God, God’s words or even the actions of God’s faithful followers by any human standard would be to suggest that God is not supreme or the religion not a proper account of the divine will. Alternative positions, it may be argued, are simply heresy. This book will argue that this is an unacceptable approach – there is too much bad religion around, and bad religion is plain dangerous. Further, a general feature of belonging to a religion is the need for conformity and loyalty, which can bind a community into a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but also discourage critical thought and stifle debate within religious traditions. Submitting to proper authority can easily be extended into failing to question the status quo and fearing to stand out against abuse of authority. This book will argue that conformity is misplaced if it results in a refusal to engage with practices that should be condemned. To refuse to criticize evil in the name of loyalty is not a virtue – it is to be complicit in the evil, even if the evil is being carried out in the name of the religion to which one belongs.
In The Chamber of Secrets , the second of the Harry Potter books, Neville Longbottom stands against his friends Ron, Hermione and Harry because he believes that what they are doing is wrong. He appeals to a higher standard than loyalty or friendship and is willing to act on this. At the end of the film the headmaster of Hogwarts School says to the assembled students, when talking about Neville: ‘It takes great courage to stand against your enemies, but even more to stand against your friends.’ Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia , said:
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites . . .
The same may equally be said of other world religions. Of course the burning, torture, exclusion and other sanctions sometimes applied by religion have been wrong, but where were the voices that stood against this oppression? Where were those who were willing, from within a religion, to stand against their own supposed brothers and sisters of faith and to condemn them?
To anyone who considers the effects that bad religion can have on individuals, communities and the world, it must be clear that the consequences of failing to challenge bad religion are simply too grave for this to be a permissible way forward. Many will immediately think in terms of acts of terrorism, which have dominated news programmes and government agendas around the world in recent years. Terrorist acts may indeed be driven by bad religion, but the effects of bad religion are far deeper, more common and more prevalent than these well-publicized examples. They are felt in every world religion. They produce injustice, oppression and discrimination, and destroy many more lives and stand in the way of more human achievements than terrorism ever could.
There is, then, a common responsibility to stand up against bad religion, even when doing so is difficult or personally costly. This responsibility extends to members of all religious traditions and demands a willingness to stand up against bad religion within their own tradition as well as to criticize it in other traditions. This means accepting that there is a meaningful distinction between ‘good religion’ and ‘bad religion’, and providing clear, consistent criteria by which to make this distinction, criteria that to date have been elusive. This is the aim of this book. If it succeeds, making the distinction will be justified, and every religious tradition will be provided with some tools for engaging with the bad religio