A doctrine, a system and a way to relate to the world.

Right, last night I think I unfortunately managed to offend one of my friends when I made a few comments about religion being rotten to the core. I think this comes from the misguided, but ultimately good, cultural value in the US of tolerance - especially towards racial and religious groups. It's very commendable and it is one of the best things about the United States, but it does tend to create a few problems that get in the way of critical thinking; the fear of being called intolerant. But is there really a difference between tolerance and critique? The enlightenment philosophers didn't believe that, that's for sure, and right now I feel close to their school of thought and their way of looking at the world (just like the stoics of the ancient world and the Marxists).

Now, let's consider what I mean by the phrase "rotten to the core". You should both take it literally and not so literally. Imagine that we have a doctrine or a philosophy with five core tenets, A, B, C, D and (gasp) E. These five might be things like "All men are your brothers", "Don't let the man keep you down" or something along the lines of "Take pride in your nation". For some Christian values, let's consider a sample (an incomplete one, however) to be "There is an intrinsic value in human life", "We are sinners, but there is forgiveness to be had" "God is great and God is good", etc, etc. Now, we all carry around hidden premises in our way of thinking, influenced by deep-rooted cultural feelings based on when we come from, where we come from, what we have experienced and so on and so forth. Many of these are completely irrational, and though we can combat them they are not so easy to get rid of. We carry around feelings like "I am worthless" or things that cannot be said so lucidly, like a feeling of intense alienation or a deep-rooted wish for justice. They are good and bad, but they have one thing in common. Without examining ourselves and analyzing our behaviour we will never come to realize them, they guide our knee-jerk reactions and they spawn a series of options for us.

When we face a situation we will have a number of choices before us. These are categorized by our deep-sated beliefs or opinions, no matter how irrational. We have primary and secondary choices. Primary are the ones that are realistic - that is to say, they're things like "Buying the hamburger" and "not buying the hamburger", and secondary are the ones that are not at hand - for example most of us won't really consider the option "Beating up the hamburger vendor and taking a burger", but some of us will. Then the would-be criminal would have a structure of primary choices that was different from the "regular" persons category of choices.

Generally we create theories by having a pile of data before us, and then something grows out of our analytical ability, but it is generally formed by deeper-lying categories (philosophical frameworks that are more rational than emotions in themselves, but which are often based on emotions underneath) that will shape the way the theory looks. This is how subjectivity works, really. We have the power of our minds to both investigate to see if our categorization scheme is actually realistic when we meet the world head on (categories are weakened, if not disappearing alltogether when you have a longer time to reflect on them and work on pure, a priori knowledge like mathematics in most cases) and we can sometimes realize that we are biased in ourselves; so we are not exactly caught by this frame of reference, we can expand it and make it come closer to reality. Because that is honestly what it mirrors, reality - but it fills in blanks, sometimes in a wrong, but sometimes in a right way.

Now, your average theory or philosophical system, to get back to the main point, consists of a number of axioms (which usually function like the hidden philosophical frameworks that I mentioned before; generally realistic but not always completely right), definitions, a range of beliefs and concepts of A + (B, C, D, etc, etc) and supporting parts. A scientist, a philosopher or anyone who cares about something actually being true will make investigations through this scheme. They'll look at if everything follows naturally, they will make sure there is a logical connection, they will look at the world and at the consequences, at contrafactuals - and especially philosophers will look at underlying premises. It's unfortunately a sad thing that many philosophers have very little empirical basis and thus they're easily caught in this trap of categorizations and subjective theories. But they know this and can work with it, because they know they're just giving a theory. One that might -feel- true to them, and one they care about, but a theory nonetheless.

So what's the crux with religion? Religious belief and philosophy is based on the same way as philosophical theory is (philosophical theory just really being a formalized way of creating a framework just like we all do all the time, even if we never give a second thought to Plato or Aristotle). The crux with it is this - the refusal to back down from nonsensical beliefs. The philosopher, scientist or the intelligent person will realize that parts of his theory do not hold under the sway of logic, empirical reality and mounting evidence of whatever other kind can be mustered. It might not be tough, it might not be easy and we don't always do it. But we will at least respect the model and sometimes we get our bearings and swallow the bitter medicine - we were wrong. But the religious fellow cannot, for this reason. He cannot move away from holding the beliefs that his or her religious following has laid down for her, because then she is deserting the word of god that has the highest lexical order in their system of belief. And why shouldn't it? What happens when you move away from that? What happens if you would begin accepting reason in part? I am not so sure that you can any longer honestly call yourself a Christian, a Muslim or a Buddhist afterwards. When you begin to look at the dogma and pick away the parts you don't like, why not do away with it alltogether and become a deist, or believe that Gods word isn't honestly produced through the many religious writings of the world?

I think what you're looking at are three main options.

A) Belief in religious dogma (defined as holy scriptures, instructions from prophets and official interpretations) and never giving that up, even in the face of reason.
B) Retreat and cut your losses - homosexuals aren't bad, even though the Bible says you shouldn't lay with a man like you should with a woman. Reliance of personal reason, but overarching belief in selected parts.
C) Complete reliance of reason but continued belief in God as an apersonal abstract, maybe with the added points of "who loves us lots" and/or "Who is revealed through the lenses of various cultures".

There's also some other options, secondary options which the religious person will not be so soon to choose generally - atheism and perhaps deism comes to mind, but I think these three are the main points.

Now, I am not against C whatsoever. I think it's the best one there is. If you choose A you're just being unreasonable, but consistent with your main idea - the holy dogma (please don't read anything necessarily negative into my use of the term) is right, what other way could there be? Really, B is the worst version I feel. I fear I must agree with the Pope (imagine that) - in the West there's now a tradition of "pick and choose" religion. But that's just like having the cake and eating it. It's not rational whatsoever, neither from a scientific perspective nor from a religious one.
C on the other hand might be the most attractive to us. We'll do away with what seems amoral, silly, outdated and whatnot and just have our belief - based on, for example, personal religious experience (wherever that might come from is an entirely different matter). Tolerance comes from the fact that I, without ill will, can make analysis like these. I can call someone irrational, I can lay out a schema of how I think things really work in their minds and how things should look without this feeling of ill will. I think religion is deeply rooted with underlying premises and beliefs that hold up a great deal of extremely harmful thoughts - for example, our subservience to God that is both an important pillar of Abrahamic religions as well as an outspoken dogma. If you are religious you will either have to accept that as in option A, or you will begin having to go to option C (or renouncing religion or whatever). Option B only opens the way for buffet religion. Pick and choose in a disturbingly subjective manner. Either accept what (to us who don't buy the holy dogma) is irrational and even downright inhuman and harmful, or reject it alltogether. I think even religious folks will agree with me for the most part here, even though they might not want to state it in the same way as they.

Now - lastly - emphasis on various parts in a religion can both be permissable, and not permissable. You can focus on militarism or pacifism (which tends to exist in all religions in their philosophical history) - but you really do have to accept both of them as existing. Contradictions are paradoxal, and part of the irrationality of dogma but theologians can try to make their apologies - and sometimes it even works. But even they come dreadfully close to buffet religiosity.