Comments on: Religion is like Sausage (The Only Thing I Ever Wrote on Facebook Worth Saving)

By: Rich P

Rich P — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:28:05 +0000

I’ve never understood why software developers/programmers who are required to use logic and reason to produce sound programs all of a sudden jettison that very logic and reason when religion is discussed. It’s a non sequitur to suggest that just because some religious don’t believe the “official line” that somehow the teaching is itself incorrect or wrong. It only proves what you said: those religious are living a lie.

But to the topic of celibacy — why look in the Bible for teaching on priestly celibacy anyway? You clearly don’t take what’s in the Bible as authoritative, right? But by saying that the teaching is not found in the Bible, the implication is that the Bible is some sort of authority on the matter. But that’s an obvious contradiction. So the problem here isn’t that the teaching can’t be found in the Bible it’s that many people reject the teaching itself, regardless of where it’s found.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:59:18 +0000

Jews, like practitioners of all old religions, don’t believe necessarily everything written down in the old books. The really critical pieces are what people are taught as children and accept before they develop critical faculties. The pieces that have been thrown away by earlier generations don’t have the same impact they used too, simply because they weren’t taught any more. You can’t lose faith in something you never believed in in the first place. But when you realize that something you never even thought to question, that you’ve always just sort of assumed was true, isn’t so? That’s shocking.

In the specific case of contemporary Judaism, the biggest shocker is the increasing realization of the last twenty or so years that the exodus from Egypt was pretty much a complete fiction. The Jews were never slaves in Egypt. That’s quite troubling, and more than a few folks are still in denial about that. See this article from 2006 for one example.

By: C. Doley

C. Doley — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:55:49 +0000

If we were really following the religion of the Bible we’d all be Jewish, much like Yeshua himself.

Modern Judaism is not very close to the religion of the bible (you don’t see too many Jews performing animal sacrifice, do you?) Like all religions, Judaism has evolved over the centuries to fit into the modern world. Both modern Judaism and Christianity grew out of the destruction of the temple, transforming into a set of principles and rituals that were not directly tied to city-states.

The more I learn about how Judaism came to be, the more I respect and enjoy it. Although they evolved, central Jewish traditions have stood the test of time for thousands of years. What other institution has been able to leave its mark over a period even approaching that? Contrary to what you imply, I think the history is one of the most important and beautiful things about religion.

I can’t speak with authority about religions other than Judaism, but even very religious Jews are aware of how their religion has evolved. It is (and has been for at least 1500 years) about interpretation and application to modern life, not blind obedience. I’ve met very few Jews who were troubled by detailed historical study of their religion.

Of course, I enjoy making sausage too. So take that for what it’s worth…

By: Michael Kay

Michael Kay — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:00:11 +0000

The things that constitute mature religious belief are not scientific truths, but neither are they lies. I like to think of them as a model: a model that is a gross abstraction and simplification of a reality that is too complex for us ever to fully understand. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…”. The stories, the models, and the metaphors have accumulated over the centuries and they are useful because they cast light into a dark tunnel that we can never penetrate. Religious belief does not mean believing that the stories are all true in a scientific or historical sense; it means accepting them as ideas that shed light on the world we live in, on the way it came into being, and on the choices we should make about the way we live in it.

By: Leif Halvard Silli

Leif Halvard Silli — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:14:12 +0000

I studied theology in a protestant theological faculty. During that time, I became a Greek Orthodox (or Orthodox, as John Cowan, said) Christian, and I felt that the scientific tearing apart of the Bible that the (mostly) protestant German (based) theology and exegesis put me through, lead me to believe in the Catholic/Orthodox understanding of the Church and Bible - what I learned fitted much better together with Orthodoxy and Catholisism than anything else. (Also, Biblical sciense is, like any other science, self-critical – that was also a great help. ) Thus I also do not find it true that if you study Christianity deeply enough, then you come to understand so much that you have to hold back your knowledge to not break against the Church's teaching. I also find the common attitude towards walking on water as «safe» and Virgin Birth as «unsafe», as artificial. Dig deeper, and come up with a more honest dilemma. ;-) The latter is all related to the concept of the Incarnation – which isn't any scientific Concept. Otherwise, with Saint Paul: «When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.»

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:51:15 +0000

Priestly celibacy has always been a matter of Church discipline, not doctrine; we don't hear of it until the fourth century, and the prohibition on marriage (as opposed to sex) doesn't appear until the eleventh. To this day, it does not affect Eastern Catholic priests, who are encouraged to marry before ordination unless they intend to become monks or bishops. (There are 22 non-Latin churches that report to the Pope, all but two of them forks of various other Christian denominations, and jointly representing only about 1% of all Catholics, but officially equal to the Latin Patriarchate.) Similarly, if an Orthodox or Anglican priest converts to Catholicism, he is (Orthodox) or can be re-ordained (Anglican) a priest even though married.