Objectivity

In my Literary Analysis class my professor asked in his cute British accent, “What are some of the stereotypes about English majors?” No one raised their hands. He then asked, “Who is not an English major in here?” and three people raised their hands. He asked them the stereotypes, and their answers were things like, “pompous, nerdy, bookworms, slackers.” This made me laugh, because when he first asked the question my initial thought was, “English majors don’t have stereotypes. That’s just the engineering and Bio students.”

In my Religion and Psychology class, my professor was giving theories for the existence of religion and its origin. He gave many educated theories and then gave a fourth one, “religion exists because it’s true.” My first reaction was anger. I felt like adding that to our notes discredited everything we just learned. Sure, there were holes in each theory, but this didn’t explain anything. He then explained, “This theory is not treated as a valid theory, but a majority of people believe this. 97.5% of the world believes in some sort of divinity. Does that make 97.5% of the population crazy and the other small percentage sane?” He wants the course to be all about objectivity, which I suppose means hearing things that I don’t want to about close-minded ideas of religion. He also said a lot of religious people think he is the antichrist so he gets hell from both sides. I like that about him.

These two scenarios got me thinking about how no one is ever objective. I think people are close-minded who do not listen to my ideas, but what about when I don’t listen to theirs? It takes a great deal of patience and comfort with ones beliefs to truly listen without anger to other people’s beliefs. I have had a lot of anger at belief systems in the past year. The more I learn about religion in general the more I realize I don’t believe in one religion. They are just different forms of expressing the same spirituality that exists in everyone. I also am beginning to realize I can’t discredit people’s spiritual experiences as much as I want to. I almost want to delete this paragraph, because it is so hard to do this stuff that I don’t even want to acknowledge that I have to do it let alone that I am not good at it. When I had to listen to the crazy, shouting, Christian outside the academic buildings today, and he was calling everyone fools and using the Bible to support him, I so desperately wanted to flip him off or roll my eyes. Then I realized that he feeds off of that kind of thing. The best thing to do is let those people say what they want to, because they will do it anyway. Let them pray for you or condemn you (whatever it is they do) because it makes them feel better and in reality it doesn’t do shit to me. I just let my pride get hurt by that kind of thing, but if I were stronger in my beliefs I wouldn’t be phased by it. I think I am slowly acquiring that strength. I attribute that to the healing and maturing that took place this summer as a result of having such a variety of loving people in my life.

We also talked about a theory that gods are just idealized versions of an actual human being, especially in Greek mythology. Then he said, but it happens in every religion. The Buddha was just a man, Siddhārtha Gautama, but many Buddhist believe he was more than an ordinary man, even somewhat divine. Then as all of the self-righteous Christians thought they were free from ridicule, he brought up the Virgin Mary. He was like, “Mary was just a woman, but the church decided one day that they had a problem and Jesus’ birth needed to be “sinless” so they decided he was immaculately concepted. Many people are very offended by the thought of that, but does that discredit any of the peaceful things Jesus did because his Mom had sex to conceive him?

I was especially interested in this idealizing people, because Adam (The Atheist) and I were recently discussing his post that claimed Mother Theresa was using the poor for her own personal gain. I talked about how Mother Theresa was human. Humans do bad things sometimes. It sucks. I wish I didn’t. I wish the people I love didn’t, but everyone does. Regardless of her motives she did great things. I think she is just as worthy as any of the other Saints. Saints were all human at one point, but their lives have been idealized to make them seem unreachable for anyone. Mother Theresa’s flaws will soon be forgotten and she will be another Saint that we will never be able to be like. I blame a lot of my self-hate on the Saints. I loved learning about the Saints and it was my dream to be like them, but it is impossible because as Saints they are not human. The more I realize that I don’t really know the saints, the more I understand that I could be like them if I really knew them, but now there is nothing real to be like. Trying to be a Saint is like trying to be Jesus or some idea of God. The Saints all did good things and stood up against the church or people that had power, and that is commendable. It takes guts and not everyone can do it, but it is possible for anyone unlike the church teaches. I think exposing Mother Theresa’s flaws is a great reminder for the world to reevaluate the image of a Saint. We should all admire their courage, but not deny their faults. Let’s celebrate their life not some made-up fantasy.