kirisutogomen: (NGC 4631)
kirisutogomen ([personal profile] kirisutogomen) wrote2008-12-30 01:04 pm
Entry tags:

Obama and Religion

This is the sort of thing [livejournal.com profile] dpolicar usually posts, rather than me, but it was my mother who pointed me at it, and I figured people might be interested anyway: Obama and Religion.

Also, I saw the movie Traitor and it was better than I expected. It wasn't precisely the genre the ads had suggested, either, which had something to do with my pleasant surprise.

[identity profile] kirisutogomen.livejournal.com 2008-12-31 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I find it a lot easier to understand a Catholic who doesn't believe in God than an atheist who does. The self-identified Catholic considers himself a member of a cultural grouping, with social functions, various shared rituals and customs, etc. The beliefs are mostly irrelevant.

And I'm not too troubled by that. It's slightly inconsistent, but no more so than many other things we commonly do, and I think it highlights some of the reasons religion appears to persist, and makes it clearer that despite our first inclination, treating a religion as equivalent to its dogma is missing most of the picture.