Hello, Adam. Your questions are intriguing and sound
like a lot of my own that I never seem to get around
to asking.
Unlike you, I was raised in a Protestant family, not
totally devout but not too light-hearted, either. I
went to church on a weekly basis without question; I
didn't really mind, because what else is there to do
on a Sunday morning? I don't think I'd discovered the
NFL at that point... However, I was never pressured
into accepting any beliefs associated with the church.
I was raised with Western morals, but I never
attatched them to religion. They were my parents'
morals, not God's. In addition, I never made a very
good Sunday school student. I could learn the stories
of the Bible, but they didn't differ in my mind from
the fairy tales I was read before bed. As a result, I
never fully understood the concept of "absolute truth"
or "absolute morality" that has been so widly accepted
by Western religion.
I agree with your criticism on Western religion,
because it relies so heavily on SOM. I also believe
that Western religion can be classified by Pirsig's
MoQ as a group of static social patterns. They are
quite linear; they exist in order to achieve a final
goal. This also explains much of Western
civilization's history, and Pirsig mentions this in
his expanation of Victorian morality in Lila.
Basically, in both society and religion alike, I
believe that when you accept a set of beliefs (morals,
values, etc.) you create static social patterns that
"think for you." Therefore, I would ask, for an
example, any believer of a Christian sect, do they
simply follow the ten commandments because they are
divine law? I find it interesting that by using the
MoQ, one can live by the same moral standards that
most Western religions create laws for. "Thou shalt
not kill." That's one thing a MoQite and a priest
might agree on; the first can find it immoral based on
allowing the higher levels of quality to dominate over
lower ones, and the second because God said "no." Any
thoughts?
Raymond
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