Bernie Taupin on religion

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nathan1977

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Just stumbled onto this. Thought-provoking.

Bernie Taupin :: Blog

02.23.2010
The R Word

Now let’s see here, there’s down time and then there’s time to get down, two independently differing situations, one which affords you the opportunity to execute the other. Currently I find myself locked in the former mode while musical landscapes are painted in absentia. So while the architects create and the studio gnomes scurry around patching wires and fiddling with gizmos of varying wonderment I’ll take the opportunity to travel a road strewn with sourpusses, misinformation, unnecessary damming, illogical dissection and quiet honestly because I’m a tad fed up. I’m talking about religion.

A single word, which on the human highway and in social circles of indiscriminate numbers, has taken on a mantle of averted eyes, raised hackles and much ringing of hands. Let’s take the high ground here and stand for those that inhabit the middle ground.

I’m more than a little perplexed. Why so many expend such sweat and precious breath to fluidize and demonize Christianity is simply quite beyond me. Surely there are infinitely more negative and disruptive forces at work in the universe than something that gives hope and comfort, let alone refuge, aid and medical assistance to countless millions. I imagine it’s pretty much the same old bag of rattling bones, the detractors and stone throwers bitch and whine while negativity and selfishness runs rampant in their insular worlds.

....
 
Frankly, this was so ridiculous that I didn't feel like following the link:

I imagine it’s pretty much the same old bag of rattling bones, the detractors and stone throwers bitch and whine while negativity and selfishness runs rampant in their insular worlds.
 
I'm always intrigued by people who are known more by what they hate than what they love. Whether they don't have a religion or do.

You should really read the rest of it. I don't agree with everything he says (I know some charitable atheists), but I personally appreciated much of his sentiment.
 
BBC NEWS | UK | Sir Elton: Ban organised religion

Nov 2006
Sir Elton: Ban organised religion

Sir Elton John has said he would like to see all organised religion banned and accused it of trying to "turn hatred towards gay people".
Organised religion lacked compassion and turned people into "hateful lemmings", he told the Observer.

OK, they balance each other. So.. where to now St. Peter?
 
my issue with religion, or religious people, is that many claim knowledge of absolute truth and to know what's best for everyone. it's Gandhi's whole, "i like your Christ, don't like your Christians" that is more the source of people's frustration with Christianity -- that, and the political influence wielded by Christian hate groups in the early years of the Bush administration.

it's sad that this outweighs the good work done by many Christian charity groups.
 
my issue with religion, or religious people, is that many claim knowledge of absolute truth and to know what's best for everyone.

I don't have a problem with truth claims. All religions have those. At the same time, Jesus' teachings were always meant to be counter-cultural, not the dominant order of the day.

You're dead-on in your assessment of Christian groups who seem only bent on eliminating what they hate.

it's sad that this outweighs the good work done by many Christian charity groups.

This.
 
I don't have a problem with truth claims. All religions have those.



there are different degrees of truth, though. i agree, all religions posit that they are at least correct, but i think claims of a monopoly on truth do vary a bit (Buddhism isn't terribly imperialistic about its beliefs as compared to, say, Islam and Christianity).

and i think there's also a difference between a wider truth -- "i believe Jesus is the son of God" -- vs. highly specific truths -- "i know exactly what God wants me to do with these here genitals of mine" -- making some truths more valuable than others. i'm much more comfortable with faith than i am with certitude, and that might be the difference.
 
i think there's also a difference between a wider truth -- "i believe Jesus is the son of God" -- vs. highly specific truths -- "i know exactly what God wants me to do with these here genitals of mine" -- making some truths more valuable than others.

All worldviews filtered by religion are informed by the extent to which people subscribe to that religion. Some people are content with faith in the abstract, keeping it at arms' length; others walk closely with it but still question it; still others are so deeply bathed in it that they lose all perspective on it.

i'm much more comfortable with faith than i am with certitude, and that might be the difference.

You've talked about this before, and I appreciate your perspective. At the same time, some things I know. I have no doubt, for example, that God exists. That I know -- too many experiences for me to believe otherwise. Other things I am still learning to believe. Life is a journey of faith (and faith, I suppose, is a journey of life).

Or, as Eugene Peterson put it in his paraphrase of Hebrews 11:1, "Faith ... gives us assurance about things we cannot see."
 
bernie taupin also wrote "we built this city on rock and roll"


take that as you will.

Taupin needs to repent for this.

For the record, I agree with Nathan: while I appreciate Taupin's sentiments, it's a shame that he made so many generalizations about atheists in the process.
 
(Buddhism isn't terribly imperialistic about its beliefs as compared to, say, Islam and Christianity).

In it's beliefs, perhaps, but in practice not necessarily. I've known some extremely intolerant Buddhists. For example, the grandmother of one of my students destroyed his Bible when she found he had one in the house. I think she'd disown her grandkids if they ever became Christians.

It's funny how intolerance looks the same regardless of the religion (or lack thereof) of the intolerant one.
 
In it's beliefs, perhaps, but in practice not necessarily. I've known some extremely intolerant Buddhists. For example, the grandmother of one of my students destroyed his Bible when she found he had one in the house. I think she'd disown her grandkids if they ever became Christians.

It's funny how intolerance looks the same regardless of the religion (or lack thereof) of the intolerant one.


well, sure, on an individual level. but i don't know of any Buddhists who have marched into other countries and tried to convert people, or of wars fought in Buddhisms name.

i could also be completely wrong about this.
 
well, sure, on an individual level. but i don't know of any Buddhists who have marched into other countries and tried to convert people, or of wars fought in Buddhisms name.

i could also be completely wrong about this.

My personal opinion is that ANY time ANY religion gets mixed up with affairs of state you're likely to have people marching inot other other countries, forced conversions, wars fought in the name of said religion.

In a way the theology is irrelevent--human nature is the same once power and wealth come into play.
 
There's nothing quite like the Crusades, say, in Buddhism's past. But I don't think the basic dynamics driving its historical spread are really all that different from those driving Christianity's spread in the West. Mostly, empires which were already Buddhist conquered peoples who then overwhelmingly converted (e.g. Funan conquest of the Mekong, Bod conquest of Tibet, Srivijaya conquest of Sumatra and Malaysia, Bagan conquest of Thailand and Laos, Khmer conquest of Cambodia), or else established emperors would convert then energetically commence promoting their new religion (Sui Dynasty in China, Maurya Empire in India). Also as in the West, monks became very politically powerful in most of these states (and again as in the West, Buddhist dynasties often overthrew "fellow" Buddhist dynasties with different intellectual and political alliances, then set about purging the remnants of the old order, re-codifying doctrine and abolishing "heresies," etc.). Religions, like other cultural institutions, simply don't spread that far without the concerted patronage of the powerful; it might be nice to fantasize about a Big Idea spreading like wildfire via grassroots across the globe for no reason other than its inherent beauty and undeniable truth, but that's never been how human history actually works (not saying you were suggesting otherwise). On the other hand, the alternative image of millions upon millions of cruelly intellectually suppressed individuals forced to convert at sword-point probably wasn't the typical historical reality anywhere, either; more often, people convert because they see their revered leaders convert, because it's more politically and financially expedient for them to do so, because they no longer derive significant social benefits from clinging to the old ways and affiliations, etc. etc.

Through much of Chinese history, specifically, you do find an interesting and relatively unique phenomenon of multiple official religions and philosophical systems existing quite comfortably alongside each other for many centuries on end, and at least in my experience, this remains a feature of Chinese religious life (yes, many Chinese still have 'religious lives') even today. So, maybe you worship at your ancestors' shrine this weekend, but then next weekend you'll make an offering at the local Buddhist temple, then the weekend after that it's off to see a Taoist priest presiding over your sister's wedding ceremony, and maybe on the way home you'll pause to burn some incense to the tudi (local god) of your village, whose 'shrine' is simply a tree at the edge of town. But obviously that sort of thing is a function of Chinese culture and thought, rather than of 'Buddhism'--which might or might not be inherently less absolutist than Christianity as an abstract set of propositions, but as a social and cultural institution, became a Major World Religion in the first place by doing what Major World Religions generally do, i.e., crowd out its competition over time through a variety of means, whose ethical soundness probably depends mostly on the beliefs and loyalties of the person doing the evaluating.
 
^ The Lhotshampa (Bhutanese term for those Nepalis) are actually a pretty varied lot religiously; some are Buddhist, some animist, some Hindu. Personally I'd classify that situation as an overly aggressive response to widespread illegal immigration (of poor Nepalis seeking work into Bhutan), verging on if not outright veering into ethnic cleansing. The majority of those expelled were not legitimate Bhutanese citizens; however by some estimates up to a quarter of them were.

For a recent example of 'Buddhists behaving badly,' though I'm not keen on this kind of scorekeeping, you couldn't do much better than the Sinhalese paramilitary goons in Sri Lanka's long and bloody civil war that wound up a couple years back, IMO. I wouldn't characterize that conflict as primarily religious in nature, either, but FWIW, many of the ringleaders of those paramilitaries were Buddhist monks. Motivated much more by ethnic chauvinism than religious doctrine, to be sure, but sadly their position gave them 'natural' leadership status with a certain segment of the Sinhalese community.
 
what does this have to do with anything?

A critcism of pacificism perhaps.

"It wasn't a bunch of pansy-ass peace-loving Buddhists who defeated the Nazis. No it was red-blooded American Christians not afraid of little bloodshed who got the job done!"

At least that's how I read it. I could be wrong, and if so IH is free to correct me.
 
Resisting Hirohito is less morally elevating than resisting Hitler apparently?
 
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I don't know of any Buddhists who died fighting the Nazis.

dalai+lama+with+machine+gun.jpg


There goes my idea for a line of Dalai Lama action figures.
 
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