Create Your Own Religion (11 page)

If one religion is a good thing, the inclusive approach reasons, then two or three are even better. It's for this reason that polytheistic and animistic religions throughout history rarely had any problems borrowing from other traditions.

Even more importantly, in this way of looking at the world, difference is not perceived as a threat. Maybe a different idea will turn out to be good so we'll use it, and maybe it won't, and so we'll discard it. In either case, just because somebody lives by a different religion, philosophy, or set of priorities doesn't automatically mean they are our enemies. The inclusive approach is not driven by the territorial instinct that pushes a rooster to attack any other male venturing in his coop. Rather than automatically reacting with hostility, the inclusive approach will take a look at the new arrival to decide whether to become friends, fight, or ignore it. Typically, embracing the novelty or ignoring it will be the main options, for the inclusive approach holds that as long as something doesn't directly threaten us, the best policy is to live and let live.

Taoism, Buddhism, and many forms of Animism are all classic examples of inclusive religions encouraging people to think for themselves. The same tendency is also found among the more liberal interpretations of any other religion, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. In many ways, in fact, liberal Christians, Muslims, and Jews have more in common with Taoists and Buddhists than they do with very conservative branches of their own religion.

In the same way you can find inclusive currents in just about every religion, it is also possible to find exclusive factions in otherwise
inclusive religions. The founder of a branch of Buddhism known as Nichiren, for example, considered most other forms of Buddhism corruptions that should be prohibited, and even hinted that killing heretics may not be such a bad idea. But these slips into the waters of rabid fundamentalism tend to be the exception in traditions like Buddhism, because there's absolutely nothing in their doctrines to support them. They are considerably less rare when the very scriptures of a religious tradition contain exclusive messages such as the lovely golden calf episode mentioned earlier.

In order to understand the exclusive way of thinking, consider this story. When the first permanent English colony in North America was established in Jamestown in the early 1600s, the early settlers ran into more trouble than they had expected. Poor planning led them to the edge of starvation. Wintertime found them so hungry and desperate that, in a few cases, they dug up the bodies of their deceased companions to eat them. In the midst of this crisis, the colony was saved by the intervention of the Powhatan, a local tribe that took pity on them by bringing them food and showing them where and when to plant crops.

Logic would dictate the English would be eternally grateful to the Powhatan, since in their moment of greatest need the Powhatan had saved their lives. But no. Here is a diary entry by one of the settlers, offering us a window on the inner workings of the English colonial mind: “If it had not pleased God to put a terror into the savages' heart we would have all perished by those wild and cruel pagans, being in the weak state that we were.”
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What kind of sick bastard would write this? Complete strangers come to rescue you from certain death, and rather than recognizing their kindness, you still consider them “wild and cruel pagans” who have been momentarily pushed to good actions by God's intervention?!? Some very strange logic is at work here. What, more than saving you, can they do before you acknowledge they are not “wild and cruel,” but perhaps nice people after all?

This is the problem. There's absolutely nothing they can do, for the exclusive mind is not going to be convinced by actions or empirical evidence. The religious ideology of the English told them that no matter how nice somebody is, as long as they don't subscribe to your same set of beliefs, they are evil. The fact that someone may behave in a perfectly decent way—and, incidentally, save you from
feeding on your dead companions
—doesn't diminish their evil status, because they still don't belong to the Only True Religion.

In Asia, an inclusive approach in many instances allowed the Chinese to practice Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism at the same time, while in the West just the thought of following two religious traditions simultaneously was enough to send the local inquisitor on your trail. Why can't Westerners practice Islam and Christianity at the same time, or whatever other combination they feel like? Because most versions of these religions assume God lays out a single path for human beings to follow. Mixing it with anything else would be diluting the truth with errors. As Jesus said in the Gospel, in one of the lines most loved by fundamentalists, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
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Once internalized, this concept has a tremendous impact on how we perceive anything and anyone who doesn't share our same theology. If you firmly believe there's only one way to the truth, a
difference of opinion means at least one of us must be wrong. And since the fans of the exclusive approach believe they have a monopoly on Truth, it means whoever disagrees with them is in error.

Exclusive religions also tend to be characterized by a sharp dualism: there is God and the Devil, absolute good and absolute evil, and not a whole lot of room in between. This logic is clearly articulated by Jesus in his statement, “He who is not with me is against me”
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—a sentiment that has been repeated by plenty of people, from Benito Mussolini (his “either with us or against us” was one of his classic slogans) to George W. Bush (“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”
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). Neutrality is not an option, for this worldview forces you to pick sides.

Since exclusive religions don't allow neutrality and view the whole world as a battlefield between the forces of good and evil, open conflict is inevitable. This mentality, in fact, is rooted in rivalry, direct opposition, and a quest for supremacy. Just like an Old West gunslinger, the exclusive mindset swears “this town ain't big enough for the both of us.” Anyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong but—whether they know it or not—is also an agent of evil. And in order for good to triumph, anyone engaging in “wrong” behaviors or harboring “wrong” ideas needs to be stopped.

Not everyone in the exclusive religious camp agrees on the methods to employ in order to stop the agents of evil. The more benign version consists of preaching one's message in the hope of converting other people, and leading them away from their mistakes. This approach is a bit arrogant and self-righteous, but at least it tries to reach out to those who disagree with them, and so I have nothing against it. If nothing else, it is an honest attempt to win hearts and minds by doing your best to convince people.

The other strategies by which the exclusive crusaders try to conquer the world are considerably less benign. Usually, they either try to impose their viewpoint on everyone else through violence or through laws enforcing their own idea of morality. We will return to these themes later in the chapter since they dramatically affect everyone in the world.

In either case, this dogmatic certainty of being the only ones to have access to the truth makes the adherents of the exclusive approach intolerant at heart. Whereas individuals who follow multiple paths have no problem with those who wish to follow only one, the courtesy is usually not returned, since the believers in a single path typically want everyone else to abandon their ideas and embrace theirs. Not only do these guys hate the supporters of an inclusive outlook, but they also hate each other, since the proponents of a single path to the truth other than one's own are competition. Not until the entire world believes what they believe will they feel satisfied. This aggressive tendency marks these people as a threat to anyone who is unwilling to join their ranks.

For this reason, the inclusive and the exclusive approach are not simply different, equally legitimate points of view. This is not a matter of personal taste. In one case, we are faced with a rigid choice precluding all other choices. In the other, we are allowed full freedom of choice as long as we don't infringe on the freedom of others.

Personally, I regularly run into plenty of philosophies and religions I don't like and with whose conclusions I disagree. But this doesn't mean they should be stamped out of existence. Since the truth is not self-evident, I fully believe people should have the freedom to find out for themselves. Independent inquiry is sacred to me. Freedom is the key value that makes everything else possible.

Unfortunately, most exclusive ideologies don't share my enthusiasm for liberty. True freedom, in their mind, is found by following their brand of religious dogma. Freedom of choice, by contrast, is seen as an opportunity for evil to prosper, and as an act of aggression against God's revealed truth. This is what the Puritan John Norton expressed with great clarity when he referred to liberty of worship as “a liberty to seduce others from the true God.”
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More recently, a fundamentalist Muslim preacher said, “secularism is a disgusting form of oppression . . . No Muslim can accept secularism, freedom, and democracy. It is for Allah alone to legislate how society shall be regulated! Muslims wish and long for Allah's law to replace the law of man.”
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In other words, regardless of which particular religion they embrace, fundamentalists are at war with the very idea of freedom, and with anyone who refuses to help them impose their doctrine on every aspect of life.

Most fundamentalists deeply resent being compared to fundamentalists from other religions, since they are locked in a fierce competition with them. But their ideological underpinnings are the same. They all promote an exclusive theology, and they all want the whole world to follow their beliefs.

Genuine differences also exist, however. Save for a few exceptions, most Christian fundamentalists today are considerably less prone to violence than their Muslim counterparts. This has less to do with profound religious differences than with historical transformations. If religion was the cause, then it would be logical to expect fundamentalist Christians to have been a peaceful lot throughout the centuries, and this is clearly not the case.

The first reason is simple: the growth of secularism in the West and the historical experience of the Enlightenment have hobbled the repressive power of fundamentalist Christian institutions. To put it bluntly, they no longer have the power and the widespread support necessary to squash dissent. As long as they did have it, they were only too happy to use it.

The second reason also has nothing to do with theology: without even realizing it, through living in democratic societies and being exposed to pluralistic cultural influences, modern Christian fundamentalists have internalized at least a few more tolerant values. And this makes them less likely to act on the bloodiest passages in their scriptures. If it weren't for these two accidents of history, there would be nothing preventing some of them from behaving like their witch-burning ancestors.

But in order to avoid the unflattering comparison to Islamic fundamentalists, hardcore conservative Christians like to reinvent a more pleasant history for themselves. As an example of this creative endeavor to rewrite the past, they sometimes argue that the libertarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence are derived not from the Enlightenment, but from Christianity! This sounds great until you consider the nearly 2,000 years of evidence to the contrary. Considering the amount of religious oppression enacted by Jesus' fans for many centuries before the Declaration of Independence, the notion that the freedom-loving ideals stem from Christianity can only be bought by someone who knows nothing about history. If true Christianity does indeed encourage freedom, then the logical conclusion is that only a tiny minority of people through the ages were “true” Christians. The good old days when fundamentalist Christianity was in power, in fact, show us a record as bloody and repressive as that of modern fundamentalist Islam.

Despite the best efforts to clean up the past, the similarity in worldviews between different brands of religious fundamentalism still transpires in some of their comments. Osama bin Laden, for example, believed God made 9/11 possible, and considered secularism a crime deserving punishment. Christian evangelical leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell interpreted 9/11 as divine retribution for secularism. Consider Jerry Falwell's comments: “We make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point my finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen.’”
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And not to be outdone, here is Pat Robertson:

I believe that the protection, the covering of God that has been on this great land of ours for so may years, had lifted on September 11, and allowed this thing to happen. God apparently had good reasons for exposing the USA to such destruction, given the many sins that Americans have committed ever since the Roe versus Wade court case and the Supreme Court's decision to keep God out of the schools. In fact, American infidelity goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, to situational ethics and notions of cultural relativity, along with a flirtation with communism at the highest levels of government. The point is not just that Americans have been bad and forfeited their entitlements. It is that unless they reform themselves in a hurry, something far worse may happen to them.
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Despite their deep mutual hatred for one another, many religious totalitarians end up supporting the same things. They all resent separation of church and state, despise secular culture, want to
convert the entire world, hold on to Apocalyptic expectations, envision an afterlife in which their rivals will be tortured in hell, display an unusual passion for censorship, impose their moral ideals by law at any chance they get, support separate religious schools, reject evolution, and oppose uninhibited sexuality. In light of these common features, I fail to be excited by their supposed differences; they all seem like wannabe Talibans to me.