But apparently, I live in a country where...
58% of my fellow citizens believe you have to believe in God to be a moral person.
83% of them believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. 28% believe in evolution.
I just don't get it. Of course, as a Jew raised in a very unreligious household — nobody in my family attends a synagogue regularly — I'm clearly way in the minority as far as faith goes.
This reminded me of a book I read a few years back by Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God. A concept she kept returning to was the tension between logos, the knowledge of the rational, and mythos, the belief in the rationally inexplicable. At various times in their histories, the major religious faiths have struggled to balance the two. For example, the Islamic world was a center of scientific development at one point, but now, not so much, to put it mildly. The Christian world seems to be going the same way if this poll is any indication.
Yet I know there are religious people who don't put their brain on God-is-my-copilot autopilot. One friend of mine tells me about a conversation with her father, a physicist at Stanford University, who finds that the more he learns in the course of his work, the more his faith is strengthened. There's no conflict there for him.
What saddens me about the kind of religious faith that's taken root here is how mindbogglingly literal it is. No room for mystery. No room for spiritual struggle. Everything is neatly spelled out. This is right, and this is wrong, and it says so in the manual. Don't confuse me with the facts (or those pesky science classes in school), my mind is made up.
What a dreary universe these people must live in. I don't want to live there with them. It's good to know there are other people out there who share my views and want something better too.
Not to mention, let's see how "blessed" a country we really are if our scientific and technological prowess comes to a crashing halt because we've become a bunch of hide-bound dumbasses with WWJD slogans plastered all over our cars and our t-shirts.
--> "Believe It, or Not", Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/opinion/15KRIS.html
