This is a series of email correspondence with a friend (who is a Catholic) on the issues of religion. It started when I sent out an email with a damning link on religious fundamentalism and inferring from that video link as to why I did not have a religion. This friend (let's call her X) sort of disagreed with some of my arguments and this set off further email correspondences regarding the topic of religion. I present the emails as they are below, and nothing has been edited with the exception of spellings, grammatical errors and any information that might divulge the identity of my friend.
========================================================================== This is a link to a video clip online. I think it is damn scary.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/01/gods_friends_ar.html
I have always told my friends that I have the greatest contempt for religion. Not that I can disprove the existence of god, or that I think that faith is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe I should qualify myself by saying that my contempt for religions is limited to those religions that would deny empirical evidence just because it goes against their dogma. Human beings as a civilization progress because we improve on our ideas, not because we try to fit new findings onto old ideas.
I have also argued a lot of times with my Christian friends that if I choose to live my life as righteous as I hope to do so, by being good to my fellow man, and by treating everybody with due respect, does that not make me, to a certain extent, a Christian. But often I am rebuffed by them, as they claim I can never be a Christian because I do not treat things written in the bible as the gospel truth. I think Christianity as a religion has its flaws, and it also has its merits, just like any other religion, ideology or concepts. However, it is sad that the majority of the religious right focuses on these flawed and outdated teachings rather than that is truly of merit. To quote Mohandas Gandhi: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Of course, I used Christianity as an example here. The above comments could apply to any other religion.
Sincerely,
Wah Pheow
==================================================================Hi Wah Pheow,
Unfortunately, we didn't meet up before you left.:) I didn't get a call from you so I assumed you were busy.
Anyway, about your comment that Christians do not see you as a true Christian until you fully and unquestionably believe everything the Bible says, I would just like to clarify that since you do not believe in Christianity as the true religion, you cannot be considered a Christian, just like you cannot be a Muslim or a Hindu or a Taoist if you do not believe in their religious teachings.
However, in Catholicism, we believe that Heaven (ie Salvation) is meant for everyone, including non-Catholics (or non-Christians - whichever way you see it). We do not believe that just because you are not a Christian, you cannot go to heaven. Conversely, being a Catholic (or Christian) does not necessarily guarantee you Salvation.
Catholics believe that believing in Christ is not a "mian si jin pai" because we also believe in free will. If you believe in Christ and expect Him to give you priority first class passage into Heaven REGARDLESS of your decisions, deeds and will, then free will is rubbish. How can there be free will if whatever you do has no consequences?
There is however, a more stringent denomination of Christians who believe that passage to Heaven depends on BOTH deeds and belief in Christ. However, Catholics believe that Jesus came for everyone, not just Christians. Furthermore, God is Love - and where there is love, there is God. So how can other religions that preach love and kindness not be of God? However, the analogy is that just as different people see different things if they look through glass panels of different shades, our belief is that other loving religions are just looking at God through a different coloured panel from us. As such, whether or not anyone goes to Heaven is ultimately between them and God and not for anyone of us to pre-judge.
Then you would ask why do Catholics even bother to try and spread their faith if just about anyone can go to Heaven? The reason is that we would like everyone to share a loving relationship with Christ even before they die because we believe that that's a good thing for everyone, and of course, we believe that though people of other religions may also go to Heaven, Catholicism is the true religion (of course it has to be for us, since otherwise we won't be calling ourselves Catholics, but would be calling ourselves an animist or pantheist or something). Nevertheless, I as a Catholic would not belittle anyone else's religion or chance to go to Heaven.
Catholics believe that deeds are as important as beliefs. Since you mentioned you are doing good deeds and leading a "Christ-like" life, I believe you are well on your way to Heaven, and most likely ahead of me in the race.
Glad you shared your thoughts with us!:)
X
===================================================================Hi,
Sorry for not replying earlier. Have been tied up with work during the
week...
I think you have misunderstood what I am trying to say, or maybe the phrasing of my words were not good enough. I never said I was or wanted to be a Christian. What I meant to say was that if I did all the good deeds that a certain religion preaches without subscribing to certain beliefs which I cannot bring myself to believe, does that not make me to a certain extent similar to a follower of that religion. Okay, my bad, mea culpa.
But really the point of my previous email was that most religions and religious followers do not really follow what their religion preaches. I think you've got that point more or less covered as well with your description of your faith. However, this led me to think: do we really need religion in order for one to do good, to be kind, to love your fellow men (or women)?
There are essentially two questions I would like to post to you: (1) what is the source of your moral sense of right and wrong, or to put it simply, where do you get instructions for your moral behavior? (2) If there were no heaven, will you (or any other person with a religion belief, not necessarily catholic or Christianity) still try to do as much good as possible, to be kind and to love your fellow men (or women) as much as possible?
Let me try to second guess your answer to my first question. I would suspect that you would say something like the bible or the teaching of Jesus (which is essentially found in the bible). But have you really read the bible in its full entirety? There are stories of bloodshed, instructions for genocide, incest etc. One reason why I do not have a religion was when I read the bible and Koran in their entirety when I was much younger, and decided that I did not see the love, peace and goodwill that so many Christians or Muslims extol. Now you may say that "but you are nitpicking the parts that are bad! There are parts in both books that extol good virtues as well". Yes, I concede that, but if this were the argument that you take, aren't most religious people nitpicking their moral values from these ancient text? Why can't we be secular and have moral values that does not tie itself in with a supernatural being or some ancient outdated text? I have my secular moral values as well, and I see no reason why we need to postulate a god in order to be good. (and I an assuming that you are one of the more 'progressive thinking' Catholics.... remember that there are a lot of religious people out there who take the Koran/bible verbatim as "truth".... where do you think terrorists like Al Qaeda and Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma bomber) get their justification from???)
This brings me to the second question. I will not try to second guess you here, but I will tell you my answer. As an agnostic leaning towards atheist, I believe that when I die, my life will be well and truly over and there is no heaven for me to go to. But despite of this, I will still try to my best to be good to my fellow men (or women), to try and do good as much as I can, to be kind to others and try to live a moral and just live to the best I can. You see, I have long decided that if going to heaven was going to be a 'reward' for being good, then one isn't being 'good' intrinsically, but rather out of either a fear of punishment from a supernatural being, or out of desire for a greater reward. Consider this hypothetical question: what if 'god' or the supernatural being that created the universe (if there is one) turned out to be an asshole like... Darth Vader? What if the only way to get to eternal bliss is to kill as many as your fellow men as possible, and if you are kind, good and altruistic, you will burn in hell fire for eternity? Now will you go out there to kill as many people as you can find? I won't, and I suspect you won’t either. Even if I had to burn in hell fire for eternity, I will still try to be good to my fellow men. This is because I get my own moral values by judging what is good or what is bad by my own conscious reasoning and not because someone else tells me so, or some ancient text dictates that to me. I think unlike many animals, human beings are blessed with this thing called "critical thinking", and what a shame if we allow ourselves not to use it.
I am really not trying to be provocative here, but I would just like you to think about the issues I raised. I may have misquoted and misunderstood you or your religious beliefs in many ways, and if that were the case, I apologize for that and please do not hesitate to correct me. I think it is fine for people to have faith, and unlike some atheist, I do not see the need to obliterate or suggest that god does not exist. My stand has always been: we don't know, there is no way we can know, and there is no need to know if god exists. Just try to live your life to the fullest and I am sure that, if god exists, everything will fall into place (this I think you will agree with me). If god did not exist, well, at least one did not lead an unfulfilling life. My gripe has never been with god, but religion, which I find to be unnecessary. Just because there are religions does not mean god exists. Conversely, just because god exists does not mean that there need to be religions.
Well, that's all for now, and Happy Chinese New Year!
sincerely,
Wah Pheow
===================================================================Hihi,
It's nice that you bother to spell out your thoughts. I totally agree with you that having a religion doesn't mean you will be good - you don't need a religion to be good because you are born with intrinsic moral values. I think it started with what Confucius preached and what Jesus Christ reiterated in his sermons in the gospels: "do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you." This in a sense guides us - though not completely - to follow certain code of conduct, i.e., if you don't want others to rob, murder, rap, cheat, steal from you etc, then you should ideally not do it to others.
This don't do what you dislike to other people stricture however, is only part of the picture, as no one is the same. Some people might be masochistic and don't mind being verbally abused (or in whatever form), insulted, lied to etc. But others may be different, and mind these things. That's where 5,000 years of civilization comes in. As society evolves, our understanding of good and bad and what works and what doesn't also evolves. That's how we established culture, laws and regulations and evolved from being pure survivalists (i.e. I only care about how I can live another day) to people who try to be more communal, more welfarist etc. I would say this is how I derive my moral values if there were no God.
Similarly, when you read the Bible you see a lot of war and killings and genocide and brutality (even from God - the Jews always write about how God will smite people), especially in the Old Testament (which is from the Torah). However, in the New Testament, the Gospel and the Epistles of St Paul reveal a religion that's more about love and forgiveness and not about war. This is not a contradiction or an internal clash of faiths.
The Catholic church's explanation about this apparent schism in style and teachings is that while God's eternal truth does not change, people's understanding about God evolves (for the better we most certainly hope). The Jews who wrote the OT were most concerned with their survival and quite ready to defend their faith through war and saw their God, as most early religions that are concerned about survival do, as a giver of triumph - wealth, victory, justice etc – over their circumstances. Hence, this was reflected in their OT writings.
However, after Jesus came, He opened our eyes to what's more important, i.e. love, and even then, He was rejected by many Jews who chose to believe in the God of the OT.
This is the reason why the Catholic church does not, like some Protestant denominations, view the Bible as a completely perfect, flawless piece of writing, nor does it view it as the absolutely true account of all the events in the history of Christianity. In fact, there are some obvious errors in the Bible – e.g., there are two completely different accounts of how Judas died. Although the Bible is divinely-inspired, the Catholic church believes that the Bible is afterall still written by humans, who are not perfect – even the prophets and saints.
Hence, the Catholic church does not believe in literal interpretations of the Bible. However, we believe that the Bible is the most authoritarian piece of writing on how the Church should conduct itself, but it should nevertheless be interpreted within context and according to the subsequent 2,000 years of Church tradition which continually sheds new light on the faith.
Hope this explains the issue about why the Bible isn't all that loving and about how I would get a sense of what is right and what is wrong if there were no God or religion to guide me.:) Nevertheless, I personally (I am totally not speaking for anyone else) find that the Church's teachings provide a good guide for how I should conduct myself because I always forget certain values or am not so sensitive to certain other values (which I initially thought weren't so important).
The second part, about - if there were no Heaven, what would motivate me to do good - well, I would say that whatever good I do does not guarantee me passage into Heaven anyway (since Catholics do not believe baptism is a free express ticket into Heaven, unlike some protestant denominations). Before I became a Catholic, what motivated me to do good, is like you, a desire to not want to live life with regrets because I have one life only. After I became a Catholic, what really motivates me to do good is God's love and forgiveness for me. I admit that initially, when I first joined the religion, there was a fear that I might go to Hell and that drove me to want to do more good deeds to sort of get more brownie points. However, after a while, I realised that this mentality cannot sustain anyone. I realised that I feel bad trying to be good that way and because I did not sincerely want to be good, I ended up feeling burdened because those acts do not come naturally to me and anxious all the time because I keep thinking that God is looking at my behaviour and taking down demerit points. After a while, I was a complete wreck, as I kept thinking I wasn't good enough.
After I became a wreck, I realised from various sermons, masses and confiding in friends that God will forgive me if I truly repented from my previous folly of insincere goodness. And because he loves and forgives me despite my imperfections, I feel inspired to spread this love and forgiveness to others – to those to whom much is given, much should also be expected. Coupled with the fact that I do only have 1 life on this planet and I don't want to let down the One who put me here for a reason - though what only He knows - I am determined to try and live this life to the fullest.
Hope this gives you some idea about what it's like for me as a Catholic.
And hey, I truly agree with you that one should not join a religion just to get a passage to Heaven or to blindly follow what that religion teaches. You cannot consider it true belief if you blindly follow something. You must personally be convinced that it is true. I myself have many points about Catholic church teachings that I do not yet agree with or that I do not understand. But my take is I will slowly try to understand, but I will not blindly follow.
Yes, having a religion does not mean God exists. That's why to Catholics, faith is a gift. It is given to you, as there is not much you can do to unnaturally believe in God if you are naturally disbelieving. So we never try to force people to go to church with us or join the faith - because we would rather people come in knowing fully what to expect, why they are here and what they do or do not believe in. What we do is try as much as possible to explain to others doubts that they have about the faith and also to try and lead a life that would make us worthy of being Christ's followers (a saint once said, that Catholics should spread their faith, and only if necessary, use words).
Happy New Year to you too! Am happy for you that you are living a fulfilling and enriching life now. I couldn't say the same for myself a year ago - was v miserable and lost then. I'm only slowly beginning to pick up, but luckily, it's not too late!
X
===================================================================Hihi,
I agree with you on most points, with the exception about the understanding of good and evil being "evolved" over just 5000 years. I think it is longer than that and 5000 years ago, human beings are already endowed with an intrinsic moral sense of what is good or bad. If you have the time, you might want to check out Marc Hauser's book "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong". The thesis of the book is that moral, like language, is an instinct and he goes on to show how it can be
evolved over time.
Anyway, it seems really strange to me how we can both agree on the same behavior, but draw from different basis for that same behavior. Admittedly, I find your whole explanation on the basis of the Catholic faith to be somewhat perfunctory ... isn't it much more simpler to say I will do good regardless of what some ancient text or supernatural being says? But then again, I may be the one who takes Occam's Razor to the extreme. But as long as faith provides a basis for one to do good, and on the condition that one does not use this faith as an argument against empirical reality (i.e. think of all the evolutionary or holocaust deniers) or allow this faith to close your mind to different perspectives in life (i.e. be dogmatic), I think it is a useful thing to have as it allows one to get through life. And that is again my whole gripe against most religions, because they tend to ignore the faith and only concentrate on the dogma, which seems to me to be doing things the wrong way around.
Well, we have all struggled with our own insecurities and fear of the unknown... Glad to hear that you have found a way out of it though.... Hope you can live your life to the fullest as well!
Sincerely,
Wah Pheow
