Religious Supremacy

If you sense there is something beyond ordinary perception and understanding and spend time contemplating and attempting to comprehend and appreciate that experience, I think that’s spirituality. If you form communities based on similar spiritual experiences and beliefs, I think that’s religion. I think spirituality and religion are very human things. I don’t think historians or anthropologists have ever discovered a human culture that was devoid of spirituality and/or religion. For instance, the early cave paintings might have some kind of spiritual significance.

Well, that’s who we are, I guess, and that’s fine, but I wish human beings would keep their spirituality on a personal level even if they share it with others and form communities of likeminded believers. I wish they wouldn’t claim to hold some kind of universal truth that supersedes everyone else’s experiences and beliefs, a truth that everyone must accept.

I strongly detest the idea that some people are favored by God (if there is one) because of what they believe or what religion they belong to. I think that this “saved” v. “unsaved” concept is pernicious, and I think that it is ego driven and has little to do with spirituality. It’s less about seeking truth and more about proclaiming yourself as the purveyor of it. It’s less about pointing to something “out there” that you’re trying to relate to and understand and more about pointing to yourself. “I’m Special. God likes me best. I’m more highly valued. You won’t be as valuable as me until you believe what I believe.” I think this line of reasoning leads to all kinds of cruelty and mischief. It divides and leads to conflict, war and mistreatment of those who hold different views.

If there is a god, I don’t think this god has revealed itself to everyone or in a way that can be understood in the same way by everyone. You can’t even prove that there is a god much less that this god has specific instructions and expectations for human beings. Human beings have difficulty figuring out the simple stuff. They certainly have difficulty understanding one another. But a shockingly large number of us claim to know the mind of God, and quite a large number are willing to try to lord that questionable claim over the rest of us. Some are even willing to harm you if you don’t go along with their claims.

I have little patience for those who say they are special and more highly valued based on their spiritual and religious beliefs, and it angers me when someone claims, either directly or in subtle ways, that their belief in things unseen and unproven trump the beliefs and experiences of those who don’t share their faith.