On yesterday's program, Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewed comedian and talk show host Bill Maher and director Larry Charles about their new film Religulous, and Steve Waldman of Beliefnet about politics and religion.
Mr. Maher's comments are interesting, but I don't quite understand why he says children (or young people) of 12 or 13 "don't question" why their families follow certain religious practices. In my experience, that's exactly the age at which they begin questioning, whether or not they voice their questions. I remember all kinds of debates (and at our age we thought we were posing really deep questions that had never been asked) about the meaning of spirituality and the essence of the supernatural at the age of 12 through 16. I finally lost interest (at least for a number of years) when I went off to college, discovered that greater minds than mine had addressed the issues and couldn't answer them conclusively, or rather that many answers were and are ultimately a matter of faith. I got passionate about other things, including comparative literature, economics, and European history.
Mr. Waldman's critique of Religulous includes the traditional one that Mr. Maher criticizes religion and religious persons or groups for doing "bad" rather than always doing "good". For every example that Mr. Maher gives of "bad" religious actors, says Mr. Waldman, one could find one or many examples of "good" religious actors. That is undoubtedly true. But it misses the point. One of the great moral and spiritual arguments that religious persons make on behalf of religion is that religion is good precisely because it makes people good, or at least helps people to be good (whatever that means). Therefore, if people stray off the "good" path on behalf of their particular religious belief system, they negate the value of their religion and their religious beliefs, and they make it that much harder for others to see the value of their belief system. Whether or not that's an appropriate reaction on the part of others who observe this event is certainly arguable, and it may be unfair. But it's a human reaction, and it's one those of any particular religious persuasion should anticipate.
I also don't understand Mr. Waldman's answer to Ms. Gross' question about the "casting out of witches" ceremony in which Sarah Palin participated. Mr. Waldman indicated he was not particularly concerned about it. Apparently he doesn't think that Ms. Palin's participation in the ceremony is enough to convey her belief in it because she doesn't say anything during the proceedings. I don't understand his position. Is he suggesting that "silence is not consent"? That might be true in other circumstances, but we are talking here about a situation in which an individual presumably walked of her own accord toward the front of a church and stood while a member of the clergy said and did certain things. Is he suggesting that she was temporarily not in control of her vocal cords and her physical body? I suppose that might be possible, in that she might not be able then to disavow what was happening then, but what about later? If she did not, and does not, disavow, then, in my opinion, she consented.
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