Chris Hedges: After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

[marmar]

from truthdig:



After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

Posted on May 9, 2010
By Chris Hedges


It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars. They have failed to unequivocally denounce unfettered capitalism, globalization and pre-emptive war. The obsession with personal piety and “How-is-it-with-me?” spirituality that permeates most congregations is undiluted narcissism. And while the Protestant church and reformed Judaism have not replicated the perfidiousness of the Catholic bishops, who protect child-molesting priests, they have little to say in an age when we desperately need moral guidance.

I grew up in the church and graduated from a seminary. It is an institution whose cruelty, inflicted on my father, who was a Presbyterian minister, I know intimately. I do not attend church. The cloying, feel-your-pain language of the average clergy member makes me run for the door. The debates in most churches—whether revolving around homosexuality or biblical interpretation—are a waste of energy. I have no desire to belong to any organization, religious or otherwise, which discriminates, nor will I spend my time trying to convince someone that the raw anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John might not be the word of God. It makes no difference to me if Jesus existed or not. There is no historical evidence that he did. Fairy tales about heaven and hell, angels, miracles, saints, divine intervention and God’s beneficent plan for us are repeatedly mocked in the brutality and indiscriminate killing in war zones, where I witnessed children murdered for sport and psychopathic gangsters elevated to demigods. The Bible works only as metaphor.

The institutional church, when it does speak, mutters pious non-statements that mean nothing. “Given the complexity of factors involved, many of which understandably remain confidential, it is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments, and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience,” Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote about the Iraq war. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the eve of the invasion, told believers that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a menace, and that reasonable people could disagree about the necessity of using force to overthrow him. It assured those who supported the war that God would not object. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/after_religion_fizzles_were_stuck_with_nietzsche_20100510/

[pnorman]

1. Frther excerpts:

But I cannot rejoice in the collapse of these institutions. We are not going to be saved by faith in reason, science and technology, which the dead zone of oil forming in the Gulf of Mexico and our production of costly and redundant weapons systems illustrate. Frederick Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or “Superman”—our secular religion—is as fantasy-driven as religious magical thinking.

There remain, in spite of the leaders of these institutions, religiously motivated people toiling in the inner city and the slums of the developing world. They remain true to the core religious and moral values ignored by these institutions. The essential teachings of the monotheistic traditions are now lost in the muck of church dogma, hollow creeds and the banal bureaucracy of institutional religion. These teachings helped create the concept of the individual. The belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that can defy the clamor of the nation is one of the gifts of religious thought. This call for individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for compassion, especially for the weak, the impoverished, the sick and the outcast.

[Demeter]

4. That was faith in magical thinking, that oil spill--don't blame science and technology

That was the bean-counter/profiteer ignoring the logic, advice and experience of science, technology and engineers to do it on the cheap.

Given a choice between Nietzsche and science, I'll take science any day.

[Moostache]

5. THIS ^^^^

To say that "science" is at fault for the BP spill is disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst.

The fact is that safety regulations and equipment were gutted like fatted calves on the alter of profit maximization. If all precautions had been in place the drilling would still be risky and an unacceptable path to stay on, but the damage wrought could have been much, much less if the bottom line bean counters and corporate thieves had not decided to steal the extra money for themselves while risking everything for other people not even involved in their business...

[roguevalley]

10. the cold hearted damn you economics of corporations is the

other side of the coin, the Nietzschean flip. both are extremes of each thing. somewhere in the middle is peace.

[ixion]

2. k/r

well worth the read.

[Demeter]

3. This Is Exactly My Problem With My Unitarian Congregation

They've gone all narcissistic and upscale with the change-over of staff and board members. The strong social justice/learning about the world program of the retired minister is gone.

Thanks for posting this--I couldn't articulate what exactly bothered me about the touchy-feely creepiness of the current milieu there. It's not introspection, it's self-absorption.

[intheflow]

6. Exactly the problem I have with UUism, as well.

But you know Chris Hedges (article's author) was heavily influenced by arguably the greatest UU theologian of the 20th century, James Luther Adams. Hedges studied with Adams at Harvard seminary, where Adams taught. I find Hedges' conclusion that churches must survive to be an echo of Adams' writings on the worth of voluntary associations (about 1/3 down the page). In short, churches can provide an organizational structure, independent of state control and with strong moral imperative, in which positive social change could be brought about.

I think your congregation needs a reminder of its' mission, particularly called in the 5th and 6th principles which guide our denomination, to wit: "UU congregations affirm and promote... the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; {and} the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." You could always volunteer to fill the pulpit one Sunday reminding them of this history and asking what they wish to leave as a legacy for future generations. :hi:

[MisterP]

7. JP2's "If you go to war with Iraq, you go without God" seemed pretty strong to me

:shrug:

[Enthusiast]

11. He was a very different pope than

the current one. He seemed genuine. Maybe the very best of the popes. If he recognized the wrong in the Iraq War why did our elected leaders fail to tell Bush he was wrong?

They knew there was no justification for the war. It was like "Hey everyone, we have this spoiled brat of a president that has always had his own way. He wants this war with Iraq so he can feel like a big boy. We have to let him have it."

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. kick and recommend!! another great article by Chris Hedges that must be read in full

[RainDog]

9. I think Hedges offers a false choice

it's not falsehoods or nihilism. those aren't the choices.

science is not at fault with the oil disaster. unrestrained capitalism and a failure of this government to lead in a way that creates the greatest good for the greatest number is at fault. thinking about the short term and denying the future for present gain is at fault. not science.

there are various beliefs that allow you to acknowledge a spirituality to life that has nothing to do with an organized hierarchical institution like a church.

if you define the world in material terms, the miracles are the ways that events unfold, not the intervention of some otherworldly figure.

ethics provide a basis for our laws. they provide the way to correct our errors that religion does not.