Memories of the 28th Century

Recently, I made the mistake of joining an online discussion of religious exemptions to certain laws; discussions such as, whether a baker should be legally required to make a wedding cake for a gay couple getting married, if his religion finds that abhorrent. Or whether American Indians should be able to hunt eagles for their feathers as part of their religious activity. Even with people who are quite open-minded this is a potentially explosive subject. My opinion is that persons who have religious scruples for or against something should be allowed to act by their consciences, but I question whether anyone wants to put this principle to the test. For example, the baker would rather make the damned cake and collect the price, and the gay couple probably would rather support a baker who supported them. No one likes violate his religious principles, but some infractions are minimal. The baker would be violating his principles by making that gay wedding cake, but the degree of infraction would be small to most people, so they would shrug and get the income from the cake.

Some people find the idea of bending one's religious principles to be the worst sin. But that leads into the next and perhaps most controversial point; to wit, that religious principles change over time. The Hindus try to stay with Sanatan Dharma (eternal truth), but it slips around over time. Hindus would have everyone believe that the Vedas were composed about twenty thousand years ago, but the internal evidence in the Vedas suggests that they may be six or seven thousand years old, about the age of Parsee religion and Yezidism are. At some point those three were a single religion, but there were some splits, and before the splits the religion resembled the Ancient Greek religion. Eternal though the truths were, they changed over the millennia. People should not be surprised that religions change, because religion is cultural, rather than natural. Religions have a common underpinning that involves nature and natural processes, but actual religious practices are cultural expressions of those natural processes. Just as water erodes rock, cultural expressions change over time.

There have been examples of cultural change being forced on people, but that is difficult and produces unnecessary tension. Cultures also change when they are exposed to outside influences, and even if no one tries to change anything there is some seepage, and sometimes cultures change do to internal processes. One story of change that didn't appear to be caused by outside pressures was a tribe in Borneo (I think) in which the men and women lived in separate longhouses, and men visited from time to time to perform their required responsibilities, but they spoke of being disgusted by the contact with women and just did what was necessary. A couple of decades later nearly everyone had moved into individual houses, and only young men lived in the longhouse.

Some people find the idea that religious principles can change disturbing, and I was attacked on the other board for making that suggestion. Apparently some people find think that the world is a constant. The Australian Aborigines are one such group, and they are said to favor putting things back to the way they were when the first people got to Australia.

Another collection of people who think that the world should never change are the climate change alarmists. They seem to think that the temperature averages of the mid-twentieth century were what temperatures should always be, and their attitude was a cultural change, because earlier people expected that climate would be what it would be.

Religions are more resistant to change than are many other cultural institutions, but they change a lot. Maybe some people think that their religions are natural, rather than cultural. If they did, then they might think that their religion deserved special consideration. Well, most religionists think that they have the Truth, and all others are deluded. Since every religion thinks that, it isn't a useful idea, and all religions are wrong (except mine) . So, do any religions deserve special status before the law to protect them from harm to their belief systems and psyches? The answer is, no. They should realize that all religions are examples of systems of self-delusion without provable objective facts to back them up.

That should offend almost everyone. If you have a relevant opinion, then let me know. I was trying to write about people taking themselves too seriously and provide examples.


I write like H. P. Lovecraft according to https://iwl.me/.