Calling all mystics

[drwex]

http://harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDarkly-12838838.html

Harper's has a long and thoughtful essay on the (re)rise of American Fundamentalism - what I've called our home-grown Taliban.

[The new Christ's] followers are not anxiously awaiting his return at the Rapture; he's here right now. They're not envious of the middle class; they are the middle class. They're not looking for a hero to lead them; they're building biblical households, every man endowed with 'headship' over his own family. They don't silence sex; they promise sacred sex to those who couple properly - orgasms more intense for young Christians who wait than those experienced by secular lovers.

I invite readers' comments. Personally I find this sort of things a natural outgrowth of mysticism in general. From where I sit it's a matter of degree, not kind, linking everyone from the newageist Pagans to... well, those guys.

I'm currently failing to find the link so I can properly acknowledge it, but last year someone pointed me to an essay by a person who, when asked why he didn't believe in God said, essentially:

"I don't not-believe in God - I just believe in one fewer gods than you do. If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours."

Comments

Re: To flip it around...

[dpolicar]

Sure, and then one responds by pointing to nominally materialistic, atheistic nations like the former Soviet Union and highlighting how bad that was, and then you respond by explaining that their materialistic atheism wasn't sufficient or necessary to explain their badness, and they respond by explaining that the Taliban's mysticism isn't sufficient or necessary to explain their badness, and round and round we go.

Reasoning from "There exist people who believe X and do bad things related to that belief" to anything reliable about the badness of X is tricky.

Re: To flip it around...

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I think sunspiral, who is no friend of religion, once likened religion to Mrs PiggyWiggle's magic "EverSoMuchMoreSo" which makes people be themselves just MORE so. I find that the vast majority of people use religion to justify their own view of the world: the fearful person sees a fearsome, vengeful god; the generous person sees an open-handed god, and so forth. It brings out the great in human beings, and the terrible in them as well.

The statement that "once you open the door to theism you don't have a logical stopping point until you're well past the Taliban" begs the question that ANY belief, taken to extremes, can be twisted into a damaging form.

Re: To flip it around...

[dpolicar]

Re: the everSoMuchMoreSo notion... I think there's something to that, though I don't think it's quite true as stated.

I posted a take on something similar-but-different here; I point to it rather than attempt to restate it 'cuz I'm a lazy bugger.

(Rereading it now I'm struck both by how incredibly clumsily written it is, and by all the important related things I gloss over. It appears my thinking on this subject actually has improved somewhat in the last three years.)