[lbo-talk] Where we stand today

[C. G. Estabrook]

This is quite an important point, I think, close to the heart of the
Abrahamic religions (and a good way to detect their decadence).  Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all hold idolatry to be the greatest sin.  In the
Hebrew bible, YHWH (a form of the verb to be/to become) is presented as a
liberator, "who brought you out of slavery -- you shall have no gods
before me." (YHWH is not a god.) Islam sees it as a sin to acquiesce to
any power short of God (a point with some importance in the resistance to
US imperialism), and Christianity says something similar: "call no one
your father on earth, for you have one father -- the one in heaven."

Of course it's always possible for the Abrahamic religions, which begin in
atheism (against the "gods of the nations") and anarchism (ancient Israel
is an anti-state movement, a rejection of priest-kings), to slip back into
being Religion, as Kierkegaard complained so bitterly.  The drama of the
Hebrew bible is provided by the unique institution of the prophet, who is
not a fortune-tellers but who demands a return to the covenant from the
worship of the gods -- the covenant that says the only proper worship is
ethics, the establishment of a just community.

Agnosticism is as important to the Abrahamic religions as opposition to
the gods.  Aquinas, e.g, insists that God is "extra omnium ordinem entium"
-- i.e., not a thing in the universe. As a good Aristotelian, he insists
that God cannot be defined (no genus or species) and cannot be known.

--CGE

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Carl Remick wrote:


> ...I've long thought that organized religion as a whole is most
> vulnerable to attack on the basis of one core religious concept:  
> idolatry.  Each religion make the same self-contradictory claim that:  
> (a) God is beyond human understanding, and (b) this particular
> religion (a human institution)  understands God very well.  It can
> thus be said that those who follow this religion, whatever it may be,
> are not worshipping God at all; they are worshipping the fallible,
> limited understanding of God that this religion serves up.  In short,
> they are worshipping the religion, not God, and that by definition is
> idolatry.
> 
> So, it can be argued that only agnostics are God-fearing people.  
> They alone respect the Almighty in all Its infinitude.  They do not
> purport to understand what is unknowable.  Hence, those who argue
> against religion are the truly religious, QED...
>