Stephen Prothero is the bestselling author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't and a professor of religion at Boston University. His latest book is God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World -- And Why Their Differences Matter. I caught up with Prothero on his book tour to chat with him about religious zealotry, atheists, and Islamic pride.
As you discuss in the book, religious zealotry has been the cause of much tragedy in world history. Is there an antidote to that or is that just the way things will always have to be?
Well, zealotry of both the religious and the nonreligious sort has been the cause of much bloodshed. If we are to blame Jesus and Muhammad for violence by proxy from the hand of God we must blame Marx and Lenin for the atrocities of Stalin and Mao.
As far as the antidote goes, I don't think pretend pluralism is the way to go. All religions are not one. They are neither the unified beauty the multiculturalists want them to be nor the unified ugliness the new atheists insist that they are. In a world in which the world's religions do so much good and so much evil, we need to see them as they are on the ground, not as we want them to be. I am not a "clash of civilizations" guy, but as any ordinary Muslim in Indonesia or Christian in Nigeria can tell you, Islam and Christianity are not one and the same. It is just as false to say that all religions are poison as it is to say that all religions are beautiful and true.
The way forward? To work to understand religious differences and then to try to find a way to respect and perhaps even honor them. On the question of race and ethnicity, we used to imagine that a colorblind society was the way to go. We are all human beings after all. Why should being black or Hispanic or Chinese matter? We now know that the way forward on race and ethnicity is not to turn a blind eye to diversity but to acknowledge, understand, and respect differences. Why can't we do the same with religion?
Do you consider atheists and their strict and steadfast adherence to non-belief a religion unto itself?
It depends on the atheist. Some atheists are religious. Some are even fundamentalists. Others are non-religious. It's way too simplistic to say that atheism isn't a religion because atheists reject God. So do Buddhists. So do Jains. So do Confucians. But that doesn't mean that Buddhism, Jainism, and Confucianism aren't religions.
In evaluating whether atheism is a religion you have to ask to what extent it walks and talks like other religions. Fine, atheism rejects God. But does it have an ethical code? Do its adherents gather into communities? Do they perform rituals? Celebrate holidays? Tell stories? Preach dogmas? The answer, of course, is yes and no. So like I say it depends on the atheist.
I have met atheists who are far more religious than most of my churchgoing friends -- zealots who join free-thought communities, work hard to make converts, and celebrate Darwin Day with a fervor exceeding most Jews at Purim. But other atheist friends of mine take their non-theism with a yawn, which is to say non-religiously. Which reminds me of the joke about the curious son who asks his father why he believes there is no God. The father replies, "I don't know. You'll just have to take it on faith."
The basis of your book is how all these religions differ, but don't you see commonalities in those that are monotheistic?
Of course there are commonalities. In the western monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God or Jesus or Allah is said to be a creator, lawgiver, and judge. He (and He is most often thought of as male) speaks through prophets and in scriptures. And He acts in history -- from the glorious beginning to the bitter end. Moreover, when it comes to the mathematics of divinity, these Abrahamic religions are in common cause against the Buddhists (who traditionally say there is no God) and Hindus (who traditionally say there are many). But even these so-called Abrahamic religions differ when it comes to describing God. Can He take human form, as Jesus does for Christians? Or must he refuse not only a human body but also artistic representation, as Allah does for Muslims? More importantly, the Abrahamic gods differ sharply when it comes to the requirements they set forth for believers. What exactly does this one "God" require? The Five Pillars of Islam? The Seven Sacraments of Catholicism? Or the 613 mitzvot of Judaism?
In the book, you write about how Islam has a problem with pride. What do you mean by that?
Each of the great religions begins with a sense that something is rotten with the human condition. But the religions differ when it comes to diagnosing the human predicament and they diverge even more when it comes to prescribing the cure. For Christians the problem is sin. For Buddhists it is suffering. For Muslims it is pride or self-sufficiency -- the sense that I can get along just fine without God. The antidote for this sickness, Muslims say, is submission to Allah, which will lead you on the right path through this life and into paradise in the life beyond.
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Benyamin Cohen, the author of My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, is the content director for the Mother Nature Network.
Follow Benyamin Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/myjesusyear
Andrew Pessin: God Is Not One -- But Religions May Be
Is god too busy ending wars around the world? Is god too busy feeding the hungry ? Is god too busy restoring limbs to the amputated ? Is god too busy protecting children from abuse ?
When it comes to religion and spirituality this was not planed by God, but was planted by the priests and mullahs who were not enlightened themselves.
Muslims, Christians, Buddhists etc are constantly in struggle to covert each other and forget the reason these religions were introduced by God.
By constantly trying to make people convert, these people undermine the unity of God and from an outsider point of view, these become soldiers of different Gods that pull each other to their own camp!
Look at Surah 109 in Koran for example.
1. Say O ye That reject Faith!
2. I worship not that which ye worship
3. Nor will ye worship That which I worship
4. And I will not worship That which ye have been Wont to worship
5. Nor will ye worship That which I worship
6. To you be your Way And to me mine.
It Surah states clearly that God in Islam has taken way burden of converting off the shoulders of Muslims and by doing so also provided a way for Muslims to live peacefully in none Muslim communities.
With regards to Christianity the notion of violence and crusade become absurd by just looking at how Jesus Christ was as a character.
So why there are so many conflicts in the name of God and different religions?
The answer depends on the motivation of the person promoting these types of religious crusades!
The motive of the religious leader could be any set of Wealth, Social Status, Political Power, Race, Nationality.
Also the religious leader promoting these types of crusade might inherit the ignorance and preach it because that's his understanding of religion in question.
Since Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad were not aggressive personalities, one might ask where this idea of religious crusades has taken over these faiths.
The answer is wars and governments have been intertwined in history, so the first instance when these religion become officially part of a violent quest to occupy other countries the idea of crusades have been injected into these faiths by a so called faithful government.
The religion which was an instrument for the poor to advocate for a change has become an instrument to keep political power and became opiums of poor people.
It is easy, we have to strive after how Jesus, Mohammad and Buddha were! That's our role models. Despite the attempts by political establishments to rewrite the revelations so it can be used as a political tools in the hand of ruling elites, the personality of God's prophets could be used to reach true spirituality.
IMHO an society cannot continue to develop without spirituality. Regardless of economical structure and political system, it is selfless people who are the glue that keep the society together. A society with many selfish individuals each promoting their own interests is doomed to stop at some point.
The whole development of US was after a period of dominating selfless antiwar and civil right activist people who have taken the power and our progress is for their idealism and self sacrifice. We see now how the very fabric of society is thorn because of greed and profiteering and lack of morality!
Here in US the rigid separation of church and state has two unintended consequences.
1. The people with political agenda (Right Christian) will have monopoly when it comes to teaching our kids morality and spirituality, this in long run will produce militant Christians which will be death sentence for the society as whole.
2. The morality and spirituality will be out of fashion and something that people will not follow.
Let's teach spirituality. In essence all religions are one and from same God!
In fact, the Pope has recently bemoaned how church attendance had decreased and secularism increased in Poland, Russia and all throughout the former Soviet republics since the fall of the USSR.
This myth of "atheistic Communism" is a creation of the McCarthy era, not historical reality. Sadly, folks like Prothero perpetuate anti-atheist prejudice with their characterizations and revisionist history.
Just checking but I take it you are responding to comments, not the article itself. The article was saying blaming Jesus or Mohammad for violence was like blaming *MARX* for Stalin's atrocities.
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A number of recent news articles and commentaries by theists have cited "the angry Atheist.** Many have called Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher and Julia Sweeney angry. To me they seem level-headed or funny. Is it anger they see, or a reflection of the emotion they feel about non-believers? --Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D.
Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God? http://www.newsweek.com/id/47164
In the current religious climate, most religions see secularism as a direct threat. Most of these groups have taken an aggressive stance against secularists, Atheists, humanists and anyone else who dares to challenge religion. Aggressiveness toward a secular worldview is a great recruiting tool for fundamentalists of all stripes. Secularism has become the new substitute for the devil. When a minister mentions "secular humanist" from the pulpit, it's almost always a spear thrown at those who would deny the god virus.
Go into any Christian bookstore, and you will find books about living in a secular world, living with a spouse who is not saved or how to convert friends and relatives. The god virus is always concerned with protecting and expanding its territory — that is what these books are all about.
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan)) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window." --Stephen King
"I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, `If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo, 'did you tell me?"
If heaven and hell did exist (understand that I'm an atheist, so I am conducting a thought experiment here), then I would want to go to hell just to spite your mean-spirited little god. Why would I want to spend eternity basking in the glow of someone who actually condemned sentient beings to never-ending torment? I would despise Her for the tyrant She is.
Which raises an interesting point - since I do not wish to condemn anyone to eternal torment (nor do I wish anyone to worship or obey me), am I not better than Gawd? Why would I worship and obey a lesser being?
When you die, and there is no afterlife, and your bones lie mouldering in the ground, all I can say is, I told you so. Hee-hee!
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Dr. Frank Schaeffer, the celebrated author of Crazy for God, wrote: “I am a religious person, a churchgoer. Nevertheless, this one-of-a-kind book [The God Virus] is a vital reminder of the fact that we think objectively at what religion does to us.”
I'd attempt to try to correct the writer, but I doubt he really believes in any of the mush he's written here. So good luck selling your book and may Hashem-Jehovah, if he exists, grant you some wisdom, and fill up your greed so you'll enjoy it and not try to publish a series and make money off of it.