Do you want to build a snowman? And other conflicts between religion and modernity.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

A prominent Saudi Arabian cleric has whipped up controversy by issuing a religious edict forbidding the building of snowmen, describing them as anti-Islamic.

Asked on a religious website if it was permissible for fathers to build snowmen for their children after a snowstorm in the country’s north, Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid replied: “It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun.”

I saw this this morning and despite the fact that it is not terribly consequential, it seems to perfectly illustrate the conflict of mindsets between religious legalism and a modernity that demands justification for restriction. It is as if religious authority requires often ridiculous inconvenience so as to remind people that that authority is pervasive and impermeable. We may shake our heads at the illogic of religious bans on contraception or the sanctioned bigotry of horrendous treatment of gays, but it seems, at least to me, less about the issue itself and more about the constant reminder that religion matters.

And what better way to drive that point home to the kiddies?

It's like the woman who decided to figure out *why* cutting the end off of a roast makes it taste better. Turns out that was just what her mom told her, because *she* didn't know either. She just did it. It was her *grandmother* who started it, explaining that she didn't have a pan big enough for an entire roast at one time, so she cut the end off and all her children picked that up and rationalized it, as well as treating it as, well, wisdom of some sort that *must* be based in utility, because otherwise, they would not do it.

The prohibition in Islam was not to make representations of the Prophet, to avoid the Christian practices which were perceived by Muslims as idolatry; worshipping images instead of what they represented. Kind of sensible, actually. But over time, it's been reinforced and interpreted and re-interpreted to the point where Muslims don't make artistic representations of *people*, for any reason.

Not sensible at all, and more importantly, doesn't really reflect the original intent of Mohammed's followers. It's foolishness, as traditions can easily become, whether in families or holy doctrines.

Whenever I need a reminder of why I no longer go to church, or question if I should formally introduce my children to a religion - I only need to look to the Goodjer Book for guidance.

Robear wrote:

The prohibition in Islam was not to make representations of the Prophet, to avoid the Christian practices which were perceived by Muslims as idolatry; worshipping images instead of what they represented. Kind of sensible, actually. But over time, it's been reinforced and interpreted and re-interpreted to the point where Muslims don't make artistic representations of *people*, for any reason.

Not sensible at all, and more importantly, doesn't really reflect the original intent of Mohammed's followers. It's foolishness, as traditions can easily become, whether in families or holy doctrines.

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

My point is that, though we may very well know the original reasoning and know that it no longer applies, religious prohibitions have value to the ideology precisely because they are constant reminders of the punitive power of the institution itself. It is not important that pork is safe to eat. It is important that the religion itself has the power to tell you not to do something. It is not important that Italian fish merchants no longer need the support of the Pope. It is important that the dogma is there like a guardrail to prevent thinking beyond prescribed limitations. In many ways, it is the ultimate "broken window theory" (or as my Catechism classes would put it "avoiding the near occasion of sin").

I constantly hear the deeply religious of all stripes talk about how their dogma is the "thin veneer of civilization" that prevents society from descending into barbarism. As if making a snowman would eventually lead to folks massacring children (though the religious seem to do the latter with shocking efficiency). And in that sense, there is a perverse logic that dictates that the more ridiculous the prohibition, the greater utility it has to religious dogma. If it is against your religion to kill innocent cartoonists, no big deal. You don't need a religion to tell you that. But if it is against your religion to grant health care to your employees, that is a profession of faith.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

I think Paleo's OP was incredibly cogent, and explains a lot.

I'm not sure if I'm more comforted knowing that 99.99% of religious leaders aren't morons, they're just dictators.

complexmath wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

Any fridge should work, as long as you can set the internal light to off. The biggest issue is having a fridge that turns the light on upon opening the door.

Tanglebones wrote:
complexmath wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

Any fridge should work, as long as you can set the internal light to off. The biggest issue is having a fridge that turns the light on upon opening the door.

Back when I was kept Shabbat, I just put a piece of scotch tape over the switch. The idea of leaving the door open all day is weird, and wasteful. Sure, the fridge was always dark but there was usually enough light in the apartment that it wasn't a problem.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

I think Paleo's OP was incredibly cogent, and explains a lot.

I'm not sure if I'm more comforted knowing that 99.99% of religious leaders aren't morons, they're just dictators.

I am not sure it should be comforting either way, but it might also be worth considering that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, I suspect that the most committed dictators (secular or religious) are true believers.

Garden Ninja wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
complexmath wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

Any fridge should work, as long as you can set the internal light to off. The biggest issue is having a fridge that turns the light on upon opening the door.

Back when I was kept Shabbat, I just put a piece of scotch tape over the switch. The idea of leaving the door open all day is weird, and wasteful. Sure, the fridge was always dark but there was usually enough light in the apartment that it wasn't a problem.

The idea that a piece of scotch tape is necessary to keep good with god and safe eating is something I just can't grok. I hate Bill Maher anymore, but his segment of Religilous where he goes to the company that creates tricks or devices to get around the prohibitions for the Sabbath sticks in my mind. It just feels like loopholes to stay good with the letter rather than the intent... and something tells me god, in whatever form, doesn't mind you have safe food, no matter what you do.

Demosthenes wrote:
Garden Ninja wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
complexmath wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

Any fridge should work, as long as you can set the internal light to off. The biggest issue is having a fridge that turns the light on upon opening the door.

Back when I was kept Shabbat, I just put a piece of scotch tape over the switch. The idea of leaving the door open all day is weird, and wasteful. Sure, the fridge was always dark but there was usually enough light in the apartment that it wasn't a problem.

The idea that a piece of scotch tape is necessary to keep good with god and safe eating is something I just can't grok. I hate Bill Maher anymore, but his segment of Religilous where he goes to the company that creates tricks or devices to get around the prohibitions for the Sabbath sticks in my mind. It just feels like loopholes to stay good with the letter rather than the intent... and something tells me god, in whatever form, doesn't mind you have safe food, no matter what you do.

Part of your problem there stems from being raised (I assume Christian) in a religion that values belief and faith over specific ritual, like Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. It's a much older style of religion that's largely died out in the western world.

I don't mind certain aspects of asceticism. I think there is a sort of transcendental clarity that be reached through self denial, or through following rules that might border on OCD.

My issue is using those structures to condemn others. "I don't make snowmen because my religion forbids making any image of a human" is an ocean away from "don't make snowmen or you'll burn in hell - believe me I'm a religious leader."

Tanglebones wrote:

Part of your problem there stems from being raised (I assume Christian) in a religion that values belief and faith over specific ritual, like Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. It's a much older style of religion that's largely died out in the western world.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you're not Catholic.

OG_slinger wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Part of your problem there stems from being raised (I assume Christian) in a religion that values belief and faith over specific ritual, like Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. It's a much older style of religion that's largely died out in the western world.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you're not Catholic.

Atheist, of Jewish extract - that said, I'm talking about rituals that are performed by everyone within the faith, not priestly rituals. There's still more centrality of faith and belief in Catholicism than there is in Judaism - it's perfectly OK to be atheist and practicing Jewish. Not so much with Catholicism.

Tanglebones wrote:

Atheist, of Jewish extract - that said, I'm talking about rituals that are performed by everyone within the faith, not priestly rituals. There's still more centrality of faith and belief in Catholicism than there is in Judaism - it's perfectly OK to be atheist and practicing Jewish. Not so much with Catholicism.

Go to a Catholic mass and see two millennia of rituals at work. Everything that happens there is scripted and hammered into you from childhood.

And that's just Mass. Catholicism has rituals galore for the laypeople.

Just had a kid? Guess what? You gotta get them baptized. This is no take a dip and river and be saved forever baptism, though. This is a full on ritual with oils and special costumes for the little one. Parents have to pick out godparents who have to pledge to be the wee ones spiritual guardian (and, in the case of more hardcore Catholics, literally adopt the kid should anything happen to its parents).

When your kid hits about third grade, they go through their First Communion. Actually, First Communion is like two rituals in one because before you can actually eat the flesh and blood of Christ, you have to go through the Sacrament of Penance. That involves going into a creepy wooden box and confess all the terrible things your eight-year-old self has done to man behind a screen and doing whatever he tells you to or your soul will burn in Hell for all of eternity.

Once your kids becomes a teenager, the Church has the sacrament of Confirmation for them to go through. Basically, it's the Catholic version of a bar mitzvah. And, just like a bar mitzvah, your kid is going to have to go through special classes to make sure they don't eff things up come the big ceremony for the rest of the parish (same with First Communion).

And that's just the big ones. There's load of little rituals. Praying a rosary (hell, that thing is practically a ritual turned into a piece of jewelry). Doing the Stations of the Cross. Not eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Lent itself. The list goes on and on.

OG_slinger wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Part of your problem there stems from being raised (I assume Christian) in a religion that values belief and faith over specific ritual, like Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. It's a much older style of religion that's largely died out in the western world.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you're not Catholic.

As someone who was raised mennonite and converted to Catholicism - yeah. Going to mass was HELLA confusing the first ten or twenty times I did it. I didn't realize I was skipping the "bow when you enter a pew" and "grab some water from the water dish" steps till after I took my conversion classes.

Yeah, my wife was Catholic, I'm not unaware of these things

In a sliding scale, with Orthodox rabbinic Judaism on one side and, say, some super faithy Christian sect on the other, I'd say Catholicism still falls somewhere in the middle. Maybe middle left.

Derail in any case.

I wonder how recent this conflict between demands for religious adherence to a battery of rules and a modern demand for justification of those rules actually is. Did our collective great grandparents just not question these things? Did they do so in such small numbers that it wasn't really a threat to religious strength? Does the visibility provided by instant, cheap, international news make otherwise isolated incidents turn into a pattern?

I've a hard time believing that we've evolved beyond the need for religious control in the last half century. It's easier for me to think either we've never needed it or we still need it. If it's the former (which is how I lean)...then why were we stuck with it so long after the invention of the printing press?

Seth wrote:

I wonder how recent this conflict between demands for religious adherence to a battery of rules and a modern demand for justification of those rules actually is. Did our collective great grandparents just not question these things? Did they do so in such small numbers that it wasn't really a threat to religious strength? Does the visibility provided by instant, cheap, international news make otherwise isolated incidents turn into a pattern?

I've a hard time believing that we've evolved beyond the need for religious control in the last half century. It's easier for me to think either we've never needed it or we still need it. If it's the former (which is how I lean)...then why were we stuck with it so long after the invention of the printing press?

Good question.

I am inclined to think that religion had a role in civilizing in that a collectively agreed to body of principles and social mores is hard to create out of whole cloth. A large part of that is the creation of a Leviathan that has a virtual monopoly on the use of force for the adjudication of disputes (e.g.: the Code of Hammurabi).

All of that said, I think that, once a society builds a body of principles, laws, and social mores, the utility of religion and other obsolete methods of control are marginal or even counterproductive. Or in religious parlance:

1 Corinthians 13:11 wrote:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Seth wrote:

I wonder how recent this conflict between demands for religious adherence to a battery of rules and a modern demand for justification of those rules actually is. Did our collective great grandparents just not question these things? Did they do so in such small numbers that it wasn't really a threat to religious strength? Does the visibility provided by instant, cheap, international news make otherwise isolated incidents turn into a pattern?

I've a hard time believing that we've evolved beyond the need for religious control in the last half century. It's easier for me to think either we've never needed it or we still need it. If it's the former (which is how I lean)...then why were we stuck with it so long after the invention of the printing press?

Because people don't give up power easily.

Stengah wrote:
Seth wrote:

I wonder how recent this conflict between demands for religious adherence to a battery of rules and a modern demand for justification of those rules actually is. Did our collective great grandparents just not question these things? Did they do so in such small numbers that it wasn't really a threat to religious strength? Does the visibility provided by instant, cheap, international news make otherwise isolated incidents turn into a pattern?

I've a hard time believing that we've evolved beyond the need for religious control in the last half century. It's easier for me to think either we've never needed it or we still need it. If it's the former (which is how I lean)...then why were we stuck with it so long after the invention of the printing press?

Because people don't give up power easily.

doesn't start where I want. 1:52

Stengah wrote:
Seth wrote:

I wonder how recent this conflict between demands for religious adherence to a battery of rules and a modern demand for justification of those rules actually is. Did our collective great grandparents just not question these things? Did they do so in such small numbers that it wasn't really a threat to religious strength? Does the visibility provided by instant, cheap, international news make otherwise isolated incidents turn into a pattern?

I've a hard time believing that we've evolved beyond the need for religious control in the last half century. It's easier for me to think either we've never needed it or we still need it. If it's the former (which is how I lean)...then why were we stuck with it so long after the invention of the printing press?

Because people don't give up power easily.

And most people, on some level, want to be told what to do or want a "formula" for living. Real freedom plus an unexamined life can be existentially terrifying.

clover wrote:

And most people, on some level, want to be told what to do or want a "formula" for living. Real freedom plus an unexamined life can be existentially terrifying.

The Golden Rule is fabulous for that. Short, sweet, and too the point.

Plus it has the advantage of not making you have to worry about utterly ridiculous things like whether or not your god is going to get mad at you if you use a light on the wrong day or have fun with your kids in the snow.

Rules like that are what you get with millenniums of a socially parasitic priest class trying to justify its existence as well as maintain its monopoly on religious power.

Garden Ninja wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
complexmath wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Kind of like Jewish people not being able to flip a lightswitch or push buttons on a microwave on Saturday.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I was looking at refrigerators recently, and one refrigerator I looked at had a Sabbath mode. I guess it's a low power mode intended to help comply with this belief, as it came with a warning that leaving the door open for a prolonged amount of time would cause food to spoil. Until then, I wasn't aware that someone might choose one particular brand of appliance over another to comply with religious beliefs.

Any fridge should work, as long as you can set the internal light to off. The biggest issue is having a fridge that turns the light on upon opening the door.

Back when I was kept Shabbat, I just put a piece of scotch tape over the switch. The idea of leaving the door open all day is weird, and wasteful. Sure, the fridge was always dark but there was usually enough light in the apartment that it wasn't a problem.

My non Jewish friend who lives in a Jewish neighborhood got a fridge with a shabbat mode since it was hard to find one without it. It doesn't need to be left open all day though. There's two things practicing Jews need to avoid: activating the light and activating the compressor. A normal fridge turns on the compressor when you close the door. In shabbat mode, when you open the door the light stays off. When you close the door, it doesn't activate the compressor. Instead the compressor just turns on randomly throughout the day.

Whenever I hear the rules and regulations from religious texts I imagine a group of men sat around a table with beer and sandwiches (may not be historically accurate) answering the question "What is god telling you the rules of life should be?" with: Well we should have Saturdays off, woman should do what we tell them, no one should follow any religion other that this one...

If a God was truly the originator of all these rules we'd be growing into them and finding them endlessly more relevant rather than them becoming more and more anachronistic.

Even as an atheist I have to ask - how many threads do we need to mock religion/the religious?

I wonder too if maybe I'm wrong about humans not evolving from needing all those rules to not needing them. Not evolving from a genetic standpoint, but maybe from a social standpoint? As people accurately point out, a lot of rules we consider needless now were needed for tribes to protect themselves from inside and outside threats while at the same time multiplying. Maybe as those threats recede, the power structure reacts by adding more rules, when the better option would be to remove the rules.

This isn't the same as the concept of Progressive Revelation, but I feel like they're related.

SallyNasty wrote:

Even as an atheist I have to ask - how many threads do we need to mock religion/the religious?

42.

SallyNasty wrote:

Even as an atheist I have to ask - how many threads do we need to mock religion/the religious?

Do you feel this is mocking?