The Dullness of the Creedless (Second Post)

First Posted November 11, 2004.

The world is round, so round that the schools of optimism and pessimism have been arguing from the beginning whether it is the right way up. The difficulty does not arise so much from the mere fact that good and evil are mingled in roughly equal proportions; it arises chiefly from the fact that men always differ about what parts are good and what parts are evil. Hence, the difficulty which besets "undenominational religions." They profess to include what is beautiful in all creeds, but they appear to many to have collected all that is dull in them.

G.K. Chesterton

Unfortunately, when you grow up you have to come to the rather intrusive and uncomfortable realization that you must make decisions. You see, as the mind becomes more disciplined, it becomes rude and refuses to allow us to hold mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously. Thus, it is natural to the stubbornly functional intellect to go through a continuing process of judgment. Yes, I did use the "J" word. I will use other such horribly intolerant vulgarities such as "truth" and "creed" so please shield the eyes of your young readers, lest we infest their minds with logical consistency and common sense. As I was saying, the mind naturally judges, that is it distinguishes between ideas and assigns certain values to them based largely upon one's adopted standard, which, in turn is determined largely by one's worldview. As Chesteron observes, the problem of drastic difference of opinion is not a factual problem. It is not that the pessimist and the optimist, or the Buddhist and the Mormon, or the Muslim and the Christian have different facts upon which to base their decisions. It is much more a question of value assignment and intellectual judgment. For instance, to the radical Muslim, hacking off the heads of frightened, weeping, defenseless women is very good. To the radical Christian, such an act is very bad. You see, it is not even a question of radicalness, as if all things not "moderate" are inherently evil. It is, again, a question of judgment. Now, for one to arbitrarily decide to take what is good from all religions and combine them into some sort of "super religion" is incredibly asinine, because from the outset one must establish criteria for value judgment. In other words, in order to filter the creeds, one must establish a creed, whether written or unwritten (normally the latter), with which to judge the value of certain elements of the other creeds. Normally the quest devolves into a bloody hack job on the most interesting aspects of each religion, aspects that are interesting precisely because they are distinctive, controversial, sometimes uncomfortable, and, at least, thought provoking. Those things to which the devout religious adherent holds with profound zeal are dismissed as divisive, and, therefore, undesirable. The result is, as Chesteron observes, a horrid dullness. A creed without conviction is a creed without life. Of course, the world has its share of such "super religions" that attempt to combine the good from all creeds for the perpetual celebration of the brotherhood of humanity, or some such ridiculous nonsense. These have been dismal, although amusing, failures, for the most part, because you must remove all things interesting and thus render the religion an absolute bore. Nobody wants a boring religion. Lack of conviction will not get you up for morning worship, although I am not sure how worship would apply anyway. Some great zealots of tolerance have noticed this and have attempted to keep the interesting things in their combined creed. The problem with this is that the things in question are interesting because they are unique truth claims. As unique, they very often involve a great deal of controversy. Let me offer another example. The Muslims believe that the prophet Mohammed was inspired of God. As an inspired prophet, he lends divine sanction to wife beating. Whatever your thought on religious wife beating, you must admit this is a very interesting and noteworthy detail of their religion. The Christian does not claim wife beating as a discipline of piety. Why not? Well, because the Christian does not believe Mohammed was inspired of God. In fact, most Christians believe he was a blood thirsty, powermongering, hell-bound heretic who probably soaked in a bit too much of the desert sun, if you know what I mean. This is where that tenaciously nasty brain comes in again. I cannot both believe that Mohammed was inspired of God and that Mohammed was not inspired of God without sacrificing my intelligence and playing the utter fool. The ideas are mutually exclusive. But, the idea that Mohammed was inspired is the very essence of Islam and the very thing from which all the interesting and juicy details are deduced. Once Mohammed is determined to be a false prophet or a cook, Islam falls on its face as completely and utterly irrelevant as an impetus for thought and practice. Likewise, Christianity stands as a vibrant faith or falls as petty moralism, subjectively speaking, depending on one's judgment concerning the divinity of Christ. So, to believe in the equality of all religions, or to accept some sort of combined creed, I must either become painfully boring or breathtakingly stupid. Neither of these options is attractive to most stubbornly serious minds.

Honor, Liberty, Truth!