Common Treasures: Don’t tolerate the intolerable!

(I wrote the following articles several years ago. The massacre of October 7 in Israel and the continuous Islamic terror attacks across the world show that they remain very actual.)

RELIGION versus FAITH

There’s a significant difference between religion and faith. Faith is natural and essential to any human being, even to atheists; there are many other positive beliefs besides the belief in some kind of immaterial primordial entity: the belief in human life, in human dignity, love, truth, freedom, knowledge, democracy and peace. These are, always were and always will be values that contribute to build a better world. Both believers and non-believers may share and practice these essential values. Besides, the existence of that entity and its unknown essence doesn’t depend on the number of those who believe or disbelieve. That would be reducing god to human standards and patterns. That’s what religions try to do, though it’s humanly impossible to do it.

HUMANS – CREATORS OF GODS AND RELIGIONS

All religions are human constructions and the kind of belief they demand is much beyond the faith in some spiritual entity. They have a structure, a hierarchy, dogmas, “holy books”, prophets, codes of law and behaviour. They impose rules and rituals, they shape minds, attitudes, and habits, they create artificial identities. They may contribute to build a more complete and solid personality or just erase the true inner identity.

Not all religions are the same. Some respect human life and the dignity of believers and non-believers, allow different beliefs within it, use peaceful means to spread their message and don’t pretend to be the only belief in the world. In the present, the most part of religions defend or accept the defense of positive values, like the fundamental human rights, social and gender equality, cultural, ethnical and religious diversity, and allow their followers the freedom of thinking and expressing themselves even when they criticize that same religion. Other religions demand mental submission, total uniformity of behaviour and speech, and the imposition of their own dogmas and rules to the whole world, believers and non-believers. In the present, on the surface of this beautiful planet, there is only one religion with these autocratic, conflicting and killing principles: Islam.

All gods from all religions are also human creations, both the ones from the polytheist and the monotheist religions. Men created gods to their own image and not the opposite. How could any sensible mind admit that god could create terrorists, killers, evil and corrupt individuals? Men created gods and religions, and with both they “recreated” men and god(s), established social and political systems that they consider superior because, as they pretend, their dogmas have a “divine” origin and fundament. The peaceful religions created peaceful gods and values; the violent ones created violent gods, imaginary monsters they worship as an image of perfection.

Along History, humans had the opportunity to improve their religions, make them better, more reasonable, more honest, more human… Along History all religions degenerated in some point in time, almost all used violence, persecution and oppression. After degeneration, some were reborn and took a more sensible path; others kept on degenerating. And yet their followers consider them the only law to follow.

God itself is beyond all religions and dogmas, is the Unfathomable, the Totality, the Unknown, the Eternal Mystery... as it is conceived, for example, in Taoism, that is more a philosophy than a religion. Only arrogant beings can presume they may know the Whole Universe, the Unfathomable Conscience, all visible creations and all that is beyond our sight, reason, beliefs or science. Some religions have this assumption in their basis ― the assumption that they “know” god, its whole being, thoughts and will ―, a very arrogant and absurd presumption. They call this “revelation” from god but try to present it as/in human words and facts following human patterns, as if humans were gods and the Universe was nothing more than Earth and humans, only the graspable surface of the visible reality or the reality grasped or forged by individual visions… Only the soul, not the limited human reason, can apprehend a tiny particle of such entity. That’s precisely why believe or disbelieve is equally legitimate and human.

If the relation with god was more a relation of “feeling” than “believing”, all religions would become less relevant though not their values and principles because those exist before and after religions, inside and outside religions. Goodness, empathy, solidarity, generosity, truth are natural and human in their essence. So, since it’s impossible to eliminate religions, “feel” god (if you feel that need) instead of “believing” in it; or, even better, feel believing in all that is good (call it god, if you wish) not in religions. While we are (just) feeling, our minds are free and can choose freely the best values and actions; when that spiritual feeling becomes a shaped “belief” tends to fall in theorization and dogmas. This is just a point of view… though I believe in it because I feel it’s true, and it’s harmless. Feeling is probably the most pure way of believing… and everybody believes in something or in many things. I just wish those things were always good…

Émile Durkheim considers religion a sociological phenomenon because it has dogmas and practices (social actions and rituals) that all must follow, just like in an organized society there are laws, social and ethical (or moral) conventions that apply to all. But in a free society there’s a large range of variation in what concerns freedom of thought, expression, social roles, behaviours, etc. Some religions are closed systems; freedom and belief are pre-determined by dogmas and rules created by individuals or small minorities of a community to build religion. So, religion is born from within human societies, not from a metaphysical world. But above all, some religions may get inside whole societies in a totalitarian way; take possession of people’s minds through belief, apparently with their own consent, until societies cease to be “earthly” societies of complete human beings and become cults of superstition. Islamic societies are living in this terrible state; they are dead societies, because they are unable of living as real people, of organizing in various ways and concentrate more in producing and creating than in obeying and destroying. In Islamic societies the roots of “social determinism” are mainly embedded in Islam itself. Islam was the author of rites, dogmas and practices; Islamic societies, preserving them without change, became the constant builders of their own social and mental prisons.

Commenting Durkheim views towards religion, Simon Deploige presents the following considerations:

«Voici, par exemple, le fait religieux, Il est, par définition, un fait social. En effet, «la religion consiste en un ensemble de croyances et de pratiques obligatoires. Or, tout ce qui est obligatoire est d’origine sociale. Rites et dogmes sont donc l’œuvre de la société». Là-dessus, M. Durkheim formule cette conclusion méthodologique: «Si la notion du sacré est d’origine sociale, elle ne peut s’expliquer que sociologiquement». Ce n’est pas dans la nature humaine en général qu’il faut aller chercher la cause déterminante des phénomènes religieux, c’est dans la nature des sociétés. «Le problème de l'origine de la religion se pose en termes sociologiques». Les forces, devant lesquelles le croyant s’incline, sont des forces sociales. Elles sont le produit direct de sentiments collectifs. Pour découvrir les causes de ces sentiments, il faudra observer les conditions de l’existence collective (Définition des phénomènes religieuses, Durkheim)»