things I wish I had said

Ayaan Hirsi Ali version.


There are a couple aspects to that last statement. First, while Mill or Locke in particular are indeed much sympathetic figures to my own ideas about politics and morality than anything Jesus is recorded as saying or done, I think my leaning there is more like Gandhi's statement of "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." I don't necessarily think people shouldn't admire Jesus, in either the story or the teachings involved in it. I'm just not sure they do a very good job of it (or rather, they historically and currently focus some attention on some awfully useless things that look more like they were politically inserted later, say, around the Council of Nicaea and moving forward from there). People tend to go into religion, any religion not merely Christianity, less with a notion of looking for say, guidance in their own affairs, and thereafter trying to change their ways to be more "moral" and instead gravitate more toward a notion of validating and finding acceptance for their pre-existing beliefs and thus gain a merit badge to cast down the behaviors of others without skeptically examining their own (ie, to feel better about themselves without the pain and suffering of any "actual" personal redemption, which seems like it's one of the principle elements of religion, certainly it features prominently in Christianity). This sort of behavior is very much frowned upon, so far as I can tell, both by atheists and by, amazingly enough, the actions of Jesus, but it appears to be remarkably common and pervasive among the religious (again, of any variety).

You could try make a persuasive case that the problem is that they're not "Christian" or "Muslim" by doing this I suppose. But that's not really resolving the underlying problem of how those titles are used in society (often as a shorthand for certain stereotypes and morals, both positively and negatively) or how they (both the titles and dogmas) are tortured and abused by powerful and influential members of society, often because of their supposed religious or moral qualities, for often negative ends (say, terrorism, or starting wars of aggression) so much as trying to parse out the true nature of what it means to be Christian or Muslim by ignoring sections of text and dogma that can be interpreted or applied, albeit somewhat selectively, in these harmful ways. Usually theists lay the considerable crimes of nationalism or especially communism at the feet of atheists but these are, to me, simply different forms of "church" with all the required elements of conforming to the central ideals and so it doesn't quite work to say these are necessarily atheists' faults, given that atheists don't tend to have any centralised ideal or certainly any cogent narratives about what that might be as religion's canonical texts lay out to compare it toward. A proper analogy for me is like trying to call Ayn Rand's objectivism something other than "libertarian" because it's not typically something I agree with in method or even some conclusions, and certainly its practicality and utility (or vice versa if they are to criticize my own standing or approaches, typically taken from Hayek rather than Rand). It's still very much like libertarianism in a philosophical manner even if it looks uglier, in result, than it seems like it ought to. The dogma and its applications can be used to disastrous ends when there are many insights and choices involved in applying them that would be much more beneficial (both to oneself and to others). Political dogma and the fierce battles that take place over often very trivial matters internally very much resembles the world of beliefs more accurately than the attempts to lay crimes against humanity against all people who might refer to themselves by a particular title.

Second, this is something Mill focused on by pointing out the rise of Christianity as a persecuted system of beliefs and morals by the pagan Romans, where that belief structure had to be tested, and tortured (as only ideas can be), in order to gain a currency and sway over a populace, in a process taking many centuries. That system of debate, argument, and demonstration of resolve in pursuit of a stronger and more resilient version of faith was then abandoned over many centuries, taking only objects like Lutheran reformation or perhaps the Enlightenment age as some recourse for strengthening the foundations and appeal of such morals. A faith untested by these events is hardly useful to its holder, particularly in an environment populated with many skeptics as the modern secular world can be. Islam, particularly in the Middle East and in its fundamentalist sects transplanted to Europe, is very much more in the grip of this attempt to restrict and crush dissenting voices and debate over its moral or dogmatic foundations, its applications by its followers, and indeed even outsider's discussion and inquiry itself is deemed questionable and often detestable. But looking at the recent scandals of the Catholic Church in Europe (and America and elsewhere) as an example, it's hard to view the organisational response to these events as anything other than attempts to insulate hardline followers of that faith from criticism and debate over the institutional values and practices that have emerged in a system several centuries old. Maybe that institution still has some value at large and maybe it does not and an open debate and forum might be frightening and difficult, but it should at least be open to the possibility that it has done something egregiously and systematically wrong to its own members and seek to correct this error. Otherwise it's very hard to make the idea that it has value to anyone else apparent where they have very harsh views about the abuse of power and authority involved in hushing up sex crimes and scandals, sometimes spanning decades.

So I'd say that yes, I'd rather look to say, Kant, Locke, Paine, Smith, or Mill than Jesus. One very big reason is that the people who actually studied the former group don't tend to be as powerful and influential as the latter and thus aren't as "dangerous", and another is that they don't tend to be as widely divergent in attaching themselves to the dogmatic ideas being espoused (though "capitalism or "free markets" is getting very divergent in the present era, as Stewart's diatribes against the subject last night and prior demonstrate that there's somehow this narrative that "free markets" caused the problems when it looks a lot more like incompetent governance and subsequent violation of agreed upon rules did from the "free market" perspective). And mostly because I think the arguments are largely more complete (for example compare the Golden Rule to Kant's categorical imperative, as a merely incremental improvement in soundness), coming as they do with the advantage of several centuries of Christian dogma and theology being practiced, institutionalized, and criticized. With the unfortunate element for all involved being that they have now often departed from internal debates within Christian dogmatism without intersection from these external debates about alternative systems of morals which may or may not offer some individual, societal, or logical advantages.

I look at most religions as a product of their environment and times, with fables and mythologies assembled to make them more powerful to new followers and thus strengthen their ideological base and institutional supports. Over time, they can lose some of their meaning and importance, in a way that codifying the tribal customs of a few nomads and merchants in Arabia or justifications of the bloody wars and conquests, and the kingship of a wandering people in Judea appears to the outside to have done. It's possible that these ways and customs were in some manner, superior, for practical or functional reasons necessary to the behavior of people living in any society. In such a case, they can be preserved. Sadly, more common historically is that they were simply imposed and accepted out of conquest and strife. Here we end up with such discussions as result in "because I/he/we said so" or "because that's the way we did it" as somehow appropriate responses to the questioning few. These are hardly practical and superior moral guidance and the subsequent frothing and stamping of feet that "they are so" gets ever so tiresome. If we must have institutions, let them be decent and tolerable things, amenable to some changes in their form and functions so that they do not harden and calcify into rocks and become, overtime, utterly useless. I look at the institution of journalism and see no great reason to be saddened that these great and long lasting newspapers should be destroyed by innovations, but I recognize that there might be a useful function that those institutions perform in the debates that have sprang up during this period of change and difficulty and perhaps we should find a way to preserve that function, even if it should take new avenues to do so. What astounds me is how impenetrable religious institutions have become to asking and answering that simple question of "what do you actually do here again?"