NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/callahan/15630

Text File | 1992-12-22 | 11.9 KB | 212 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Unbe Awakens
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 04:48:33 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phyllis Rostykus) writes:
>Liralen reads the following with her eyes growing wider and wider...

[Orson Scott Card quote on myth deleted]

>"And that is the basis of all religions," she says softly, "Myth alongside
>a system of morality to explain it.  I guess all along I've been trying to
>argue that the particulars of the mythology *don't* matter to the validity
>of a religion, and getting stuck all wrong in an argument about what is
>'truth'.  Most religions share a central core of 'truth' of which the
>particulars don't really matter, anyone can believe that the particulars
>are true/false (can't be proven) and they are the ones that don't
>*matter*, it's the universal truths that matter in the end..."

>"But those truths can't be 'proven' either," she says, sighing softly,
>"Other than in their commonality across much of humanity."

>"Up to this point, Michael, you've mostly only pointed out the particulars
>of various religions that might cause them to call each other 'wrong'.
>There are also a lot of 'rights' that all religions share because of that
>commonality of what grabs people and tells them that a myth is True.
>Courage in adversity, sacrifice for what is right, honesty and trust,
>responsibility for those that need the help, harming none except in need,
>and striving to always touch perfection.  NOT that you've denied the
>above, in fact, I think you noted to StM that there is a lot of
>commonality.  But I guess I'm trying to stress that commonality as opposed
>to the particular differences..."

    "I suspect that we probably still differ, though probably less
than either of us believed at first.  I'm still inclined to think that
some of the truths which religions differ on are truths which they
would consider universal.  And that there are religious truths which
the people who hold them believe proved in some way more certain than
their commonality.

    "Still, some of this is surely a difference in emphasis.
Imagine if someone said, `People are the same in all important
aspects.'  Person A might say, `Indeed, that's true.  People are all
the same in terms of their fundamental rights, and their infinite
value to God/the universe/humanity/whatever, and it terms of basic
wants and needs and drives.'  And Person B might say, `How can you
call people the same?  Some are taller, some shorter; some healthy,
some sick; some old, some young; some wise, some foolish.  No two
people are alike-- even twins differ in infinite ways.'

    "Person A and Person B may not disagree at all, fundamentally.
Then again, they may.  And if they disagree, A is more likely to
overemphasize the similarities between people, while B is more likely
to overaccentuate the differences.  That doesn't necessarily mean that
A is wrong or that B is wrong-- only that _if_ one of them is wrong,
his error is more likely to go in one direction than another.  If I
err, it is perhaps more likely that I see more fundamentally dividing
human beliefs than there are.  I don't _think_ so, of course--
believing one is _currently_ in error in one's beliefs would seem to be
a contradiction (conversely, believing one _cannot_ be in error in
one's beliefs would be arrogance bordering on insanity :-) ).
Naturally, I think I've drawn the most reasonable conclusions given
the knowledge I've been given or I'd be drawing different conclusions.

    "Of course, it's always possible that one of us is massively
in error and the other is in error in the `unlikely' direction-- thus,
that both Liralen and I are wrong either because there is far less
difference in human belief than either of us thinks, or because there
is far more crucial importance in even small ritual differences than
either of us guesses.  But in such an argument I suspect we'd find
ourselves essentially allied, whether against someone who claimed that
Naziism and Christianity supported essentially the same values, or a
17th century Puritan who believed that Catholics and Quakers (to say
nothing of Jews, Muslims or pagans) were destined for Hell."

>"This last Sunday, on the day of the children's Christmas Pagent, the
>deacon/lay leader of the service got up and said, 'May you celebrate this
>season with joy, give thanks for what you have and remember those who have
>none.  For this is the first day of Chanukah.' She then went on to tell
>the story of Chanukah, about how a king had taken over the land, and how
>the king had suppressed the religion by killing those that wouldn't
>convert.  So most did.  How a tribe (the Jacobees?) rose up against that
>king and with ferocity and guerilla warfare and the conviction that they
>were right in what they did, took back the lands all the way to
>Jeruselum.  When they had taken it back, they cleaned up the mostly
>wrecked Temple and worked to rededicate it to their God.  However, they
>only had enough holy oil for one day's light in the lamps of the temple.
>So they filled the lamps, lit them, and the lamps lasted for eight days.
>The eight days of Chanukah.  She ended with the words, 'May we enter the
>new year with a better understanding of our commonalities than our
>differences with others.  Happy Chanukah.'"

    "Very nicely told.  But there's another way of telling the story:

    "Once upon a time there was Alexander the Great, who conquered
the known world from Greece to the borders of India.  He died young,
and his empire fell to his feuding generals.  The land of Judah
originally fell to Ptolemy, ruler of Egypt.  Then, during a war
between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, who ruled Syria and (for a
time) Persia, the Seleucids took Judah.  Now, the Greeks were a very
cosmopolitan and tolerant people, as people went back then.  Their
religion was syncretic, and adopted gods from all over the place as
seemed appropriate.  Most places didn't mind having new temples
erected and new gods worshipped-- after all, the Greeks had no problem
with including both the local gods and the Hellenistic gods together--
if the local gods were interesting and compelling enough, they might
be spread throughout the Empire.

    "Judah was different, for some reason.  They had an intolerant
priest class which insisted on worshipping an invisible god (or so
they said-- there was a Holy of Holies in their main temple to which
only the High Priest could go, and some whispered that there he
worshipped an ass's head).  Of course, not everyone was so difficult--
there were people in Judah who welcomed Greek culture, which was after
all in many ways a distillation the best of the many cultures which
Alexander had conquered.  Greek literature was what we know it to be,
Greek sport had nothing to compare to it.  Some young Judans would
participate in the sports contests (despite the condemnation of the
priests) and, to hide their differentness in the naked competitions,
would wear artificial foreskins.  There was conflict, but it was under
control.

    "But then, in the reign of Antiochus III, the king demanded to
know why this subject people didn't have statues of the king and the
gods in its central temple like everyone else.  Were they saying their
god was _better_ than those of Greece?  And if so, was that not very
close to treason-- as much to say, in those days when king and god
were not so far apart (Alexander, after all, was considered a god)
that they were not subject to the king.  So he ordered that the
statues be put in.

    "There were those who didn't object.  Most, probably, at least
at first.  Some probably didn't mind-- after all, the Greeks weren't
forbidding worship of the Judan god, they were simply requiring that
other religions be accommodated as well.  Others noted that even in
its decline, the Seleucid Empire should be more than a match for tiny
Judah.  But there was a man named Mattathias and his sons who said that
it was not possible to worship the Judan god _and_ the other gods,
together, and that it were better to die than to allow people of other
religions to celebrate their rites inside the temple at Jerusalem.
And he and his sons embarked on a campaign against the Greeks, and
against the more yielding and tolerant Judans.  His son, who took up
the leadership after Mattathias, was called Judah the Hammer, or Judah
Maccabee, and the kings descended from him were called Maccabees.

    "In the end, somehow, they won.  Which is to say, they
succeeded in replacing the relatively tolerant Seleucid Empire with a
religious-minded monarchy run from Jerusalem.  Without doubt, many of
the same Judans who had been the most accepting of new ideas and new
cultures found themselves persecuted for it, or in exile.

    "Which tale is the true one, mine or Liralen's?  _Both_,
surely.  We've seen the tale before, many times.  Most recently in
places like Latvia, where no sooner had Latvian nationality ceased to
face Soviet oppression than ethnic Russians faced Latvian oppression

    "For the holiday, Liralen, who delights in tolerance and
acceptance and the common threads which bind together disparate
beliefs, told the tale of people whose valor and whose victory lay in
their exclusiveness and in their conviction that their faith was
superior to all its rivals.  So somehow it seemed fitting that I, who
if anything must overemphasize the importance of the differences
between faiths and the consequences thereof, should tell the tale from
the point of view of the people who were accepting of new ideas and
tolerant of differentness.  The Greeks, after all, were happy to see
all gods as paths to the same ends-- Marduk must be the Babylonians'
name for Zeus, Ra the Egyptians' name for Apollo, and so on.  They
were hardly theocrats.  True, in one case, they demanded that the
largest temple in Jerusalem be opened to their gods, but they'd
willingly have allowed statues of the Jewish god in their temples if
someone would only give a description to their sculptors.  And the
Temple was really a public building, after all-- this is in some ways
more like desegregation than like religious persecution.  Why should
only whites be allowed the use of the library?  Why should only Jews
be allowed the use of the Temple?

    "The Greeks lost a small battle here, just as the cause of
desegregation suffered a loss with _Plessy v. Ferguson_ (for non-US
readers, the Supreme Court case which said that "seperate but equal"
facilities for whites and blacks did not violate the Constitutional
mandate of equal protection).  But they remained, and left us a great
cultural inheritance of their own: democracy, philosophy, logic,
drama... The Maccabees left us the ideal of fighting for religious
freedom-- the Greeks left us the political structure which meant that
religious freedom need not depend on the whim of a king.  Judah left
the idea of a god unconstrained by form or nature-- and Greece the
logical tools with which we could hypothesize about God and Nature.

    "Today, then, let us celebrate these two enemies.  Not because
they were the same, for they were not.  Or rather they were, in many
ways-- but it is their differences that are worthy of celebration on
this day.

    "To Judah and to Greece-- to courage of conviction and to
wonder at diversity."

    << CRASH >>

Michael
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS    "Indeed I tremble for my country
[e-mail]     when I reflect that God is just."
[e-mail]     -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
[e-mail]        Virginia (1784)