March 28, 2009, 9:52 am by dc-agape.

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Surah 107: Al-Mā’ūn: Acts of Kindness

The overall meaning of this revelation is something I wish more religious people understood.  Both the concept of helping others, like Hamas (LA Times) does for the sick, poor, and uneducated and the concept of hollow worship are important to more than religion.  But I do have a major bone to pick with how the Prophet defines religion. 

In the Qur’an, at least in this surāh, the definition of one who rejects religion (all religion) is someone who does not support the orphan and does not feed the needy.  There can be no misunderstanding here…by rejecting Islam one is also rejecting social services which Atheist and Humanist believe are critical to maintain.  So does this make Atheist and Humanist Muslim?  Of course it does not.  Both Atheist and Humanist do not believe in Allāh.  Yet both believe that social services are important.  This is at the cornerstone of my bone to pick.  The Prophet here is implying that non-religious people are also those who do not serve the downtrodden.  But one does not have to be religious to serve the poor.  So the link, that the Prophet was attempting to make, is incorrect. 

At the same time, if religion was about serving the poor and the orphan, Atheist would have no trouble at all with religion.  Instead many of us Atheist would flock to it.  But that is not the case; religion is not about serving the poor and helping the needy.  Religion is about saving your own personal soul by serving a supernatural being with arbitrary rules.  No matter how you “paint it”, that is the bottom line.  As a result, any good action done in the name of religion is hollow.  I can say this because the act was done due to a commandment you were told to follow.  You did not do it because it is the correct action to take.  There is no freewill under these conditions.  In religion you either do what you are told is the right thing to do or you suffer the “spiritual” consequence.  No wonder so many people are “unmindful of their prayer”.  In the US that is the same thing as “lip service” or “going through the motions”. 

Doing what is right, doing what is good for society must come from inside a person.  No religion or supernatural being can be the source of that desire.  When the source is exterior, then the action is based on false pretenses, it is hollow.  There is an ulterior motive for the action, in the case of religion; it is to “save your soul”.  Only by dumping the religious attitude and doing the act on your own freewill, without receiving the “get out of Hell” card, can any act truly be called good.

In the end, the Prophet was headed in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the link between religion and doing good does not exist.  And this leads to hollow acts done in the name of religion.  The true meaning of doing good is lost and people like me, a gay Atheist, are turned off by religion.  As the old Nike add use to say, “Just do it” (BlogSounds). 

I must admit reading the article I linked to at the top of this post does put Hamas in better light than most “Christian” social services.  Due to Hamas’ need for money they have separated their military/religious actions from their social services.  In doing so, they have also removed the proselytizing from their service.  Further, it has won the hearts and minds of the people, as the Hamas political victory shows.  Something that Christians might want to think about.

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March 28, 2009, 7:36 am by dc-agape.

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Since I am a gay Atheist it is useful to write and explain my personal beliefs as part of this experiment.  Having a balanced life is one of them.  Growing up three things strengthened this belief: family experiences, laws of the Southern States, and Dungeons and Dragons.  True I was a D&D™ fan.  I was also a Star Trek fan.  That show influenced other beliefs that will deserve a post to its self.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist/Presbyterian house.  One of the two is much more balanced than the other.  My mother was good at using daily experiences to show me the errors of actions (mine and other peoples) in an attempt to explain both forms of Christianity.  One of the first lessons on balance was about the difference between Southern Baptist (SB) and Presbyterian.  You see, in the early 1900’s SB went off the deep end: no drinking, no card playing, no dancing.  As with the Prohibition of the 20’s this was unsustainable to society.  After awhile the SB relaxed (a little) and began to allow these “sinful” acts.  But knowing the history made me question the “extreme” conditions of that religion, and later all religions.  Alcoholism and workaholics were two more of the lessons I learned about.  I was reminded on many occasions that my family had a history of both these conditions.  I was taught from an early age that I would be forced to confront those conditions and may even have to fight them my entire life.  I saw first-hand the damage workaholics can do to themselves and their families.  The 70’s had a few economic crises of its own.  As a younger teenager I was constantly warned about the damage that alcohol could do to the liver.  As I became an older teenager the first cases of “date rape” were becoming sensationalized.  I saw that in both the case of workaholics and alcohol abuse it was due to not keeping an “even keel”.  I also was able to recognize that religious fervor was similar, simply by the fact that it lasted only a slight bit longer than the effects of alcohol or throwing yourself into work.  During high school I got to “enjoy” the SB revivals that occur each summer.  And each summer the same people re-committed themselves to the exact same “promises” that they had the year before.  For those unaware of SB revivals it is a spiritual New Year’s Day resolution that is required if you don’t want to go to hell.  In the end I saw that all three did not solve the daily or the life problems that one faces.  All three just cover it up and let their “victims” forget about those problems for short periods of time.  Unfortunately, those problems have to be dealt with.  Forgetting them does nothing but postpone the inevitable confrontation.  I recognized that all three were forms of procrastination.  Two of the three were acceptable forms of procrastination but all three were the same.  All three required the same approach: a balanced life.

The Southern States (and many others) have some very archaic laws on their books (dumblaws.com).  During high school I was introduced to some of the laws that no one had bothered to remove.  It was exceedingly funny, until I realized that if someone wanted to pursue legal action, based on those laws, nothing could stop them.  This line of thought brought me to realize how humans try to control each other by arbitrary definitions of law.  Just take a look at that link to dumblaws.com; some of those laws are exceedingly precise to the point of it could only have happened once.  These laws were obviously someone’s pet peeve and that someone was powerful enough to make it a law.  In the end it taught me that you cannot control a society simply by writing a new law.  Using alcohol again, Prohibition is one of the best examples of this being true.  By this time I had also been exposed to both George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  The concept of a totalitarian society was a catalyst for me to recognize that again balance was required.  These two separate but similar experiences, the dumb laws and the totalitarian society, could only be challenged by learning to live a balanced life.

So how does D&D™ fit in?  In the game there are 9 “alignments”.  Think of them as steps from being purely lawful and good to purely chaotic and evil.  At both extremes even one “falling of the boat” is disastrous.  I slowly learned the concept of “neutral” was not avoiding confrontation.  In fact, in the game pure neutral sometimes required as much work to maintain as the purely lawful good or the purely chaotic evil.  But in the neutral alignment you had the opportunity to re-align.  Using that alignment you were allowed to do both good and evil acts and both lawful and chaotic acts.  This made sense to me; it hit a deep nerve that resonated throughout my young mind.  But at the center of the concept of neutral was also the concept of balance – a balanced life. 

So I combined all the experiences I that I saw and recognized how each was damaging not just to the individual or family but to society as well.  The extremism of religion, alcohol, and work had major consequences.  Each avoided the “here-and-now”.  The dumb laws and the concept of totalitarian society did the same thing, except on a larger scale.  These were where the government avoided the “here-and-now”.  The concept of neutrality, not as avoidance, but as something to strive for could eliminate the consequences of these extremisms.  To say the least, living a purely “neutral” life by balancing both good and evil and law and chaos is not the optimal choice.  Today I lean towards what the game calls neutral good.  Some laws need to be broken, others should be held up at any cost.  But doing good for society and for individuals is always preferred.  Defining what is “good” for society, well, humankind is still trying to figure that one out.

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