Thoughts on faith and religion

I just finished Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven", which details the events leading up to the killings of a woman and her baby in Utah by two fundamentalists Mormons, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who believed god ordered that they "be taken care of". The book also gives background regarding the development of Mormonism and the various sects that have since broken off from the church, particularly the polygamist sects. It's a fascinating and at many times creepy book, detailing polygamist practices such as some men marrying women with children and then later taking on their stepdaughters as "plural wives", but more than anything for me it was thought-provoking regarding issues of faith and the lengths to which people do and should go to obey god, even when obeying involves going against the law and government.

p. 252, words of John Taylor, Brigham Young's replacement:

"God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different...Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations on earth combined; these are my sentiments and all of you who sympathize with me in this position will raise your right hands. I defy the United States; I will obey God."

My immediate response to the above quote was to feel a twinge of panic at the possibility of the US one day being overrun by people who will infringe on my rights and the rights of others in the name of piety. I thought back to my own upbringing as a Catholic and how seriously I took the tenets of my faith, as well as my parents telling me about passages of the bible that indicated people may one day be ordered to wear "the mark of the beast" (this was taken to refer to perhaps bar code tattoos for identification) and how we would have to defy this order, even if it meant serious consequences. As a child I also considered whether I would be able to affirm my faith in god if doing so meant death, perhaps like in the case of that school shooter -- I forget which one -- who asked a student whether she believed in god, and then shot her after she answered yes.

I am no longer a religious person, an today waver somewhere between agnosticism and atheism, but as I reread the quote I realized that if the word "god" were substituted for something else -- say, human rights -- I too would agree with it. And when I think about my willingness to oppose my government if it chose to create laws that ran contrary to my definition of right or just, this quote doesn't seem frightening but honorable. So I suppose my problem is not with the speaker's zeal, but with the cause they seek to defend.

Now I will include some more quotes, taken from the section of the book dealing with the prosecution of one of the killers, who the defense attempted to show to be mentally unfit for trial but was eventually determined to be sane.

p. 295

"Theologians mulled other potential consequences of the Tenth Circuit's ruling [that the killer was mentally unfit], as well. As Peggy Fletcher Stack, a highly regarded religion writer for the Salt Lake Tribune, pointed out, 'Saying that anyone who talks to God is crazy has enormous implications for the whole world of religion. It imposes a secular view of sanity and means that all religions are insane.' "

re psychiatrist's testimony, p. 301

"Later, Gardner [the psychiatrist] expounded further on the distinction between believing in preposterous religious tenets and clinical delusion. 'A false belief,' he reiterated, 'isn't necessarily a basis of a mental illness.' He emphasized that most of mankind subscribes to 'ideas that are not particularly rational...For example, many of us believe in something referred to as trans-substantiation. That is when the priest performs the Mass, that the bread and wine become the actual blood and body of Christ. From a scientific standpoint, that is a very strange, irrational, absurd idea. But we accept that on the basis of faith, those of us who believe that. And because it has become so familiar and common to us, that we don't even notice, in a sense, it has an irrational quality to it. Or the idea of the virgin birth, which from a medical standpoint is highly irrational, but it is an article of faith from a religious standpoint.' "

p. 305

"When Esplin continued to press Golding, arguing that Ron's brand of religious zealotry was so excessive that it must be considered a symptom of psychological instability, Golding stated, 'I do not believe that zealots are mentally ill, per se.' He explained that there were 'zealots of all stripes and colors' in the world -- political, religious, and otherwise [...] '...For example, the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas. Hamas means 'zeal'....I guess my actual point, to try and say it again, is the existence of an extreme religious, personal, or political belief system is not, per se, an indication of mental illness.' "

And some closing thoughts.

p. 259 quote from Anthony Storr, "Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus":

"...Religious faith is an answer to the problem of life...The majority of mankind want or need some all-embracing belief system which purports to provide an answer to life's mysteries, and are not necessarily dismayed by the discovery that their belief system, which they proclaim as 'the truth', is incompatible with the beliefs of other people. One man's faith is another man's delusion...

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it."

p. 250 quote from R. Laurence Moore, "Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans":

"Civil libertarians have consistently insisted on America's sacred duty to make the country a place of unprecedented religious tolerance. Faced however, with the realities of religious pluralism--multiplying sects and excessiver fervor for seemingly bizarre religious tenets--they have reacted with something short of enthusiasm."