Fraud, truth, and platitudes.

[MoreCoffee]

The other day I was chatting with an atheist acquaintance on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and while we were chatting he mentioned that religion and political atheism make people say and do things they ought to be ashamed of. I agreed because my most fundamental maxim with regard to religion is that I refuse to allow my religion, the holy scriptures, papal decrees, and the fathers of the Church to be an excuse or the cause of doing things that are harmful to others.
I know full well that in day to day living it is well-nigh impossible never to hurt another. I reason that such hurts are unintended, without planned malice, and their chief fault is ignorant or stupid bigotry leading to careless harm. It is hard to be careful of your words and deeds all the time and it is likely that everybody harbours bigoted views about somebody or some group or something in this world.
So after some discussion we got around to thinking of ways - both religious and non-religious - of influencing people to do good rather than evil. I suggested that religion tends to have two effects on morals and moral teaching.

• The first is to ossify it. That happens with written revelation and church rules and other things related to structure and the maintenance of it.
• The second is to preserve it. That too happens with written revelations and to a lesser degree with rules and traditions and such things.

The first effect appears to be negative but it may not be totally so. Sometimes having a fixed rule or a fixed written authority can be helpful because if it is available to everybody and is not too complicated for ordinary people to understand it then it can create a “level playing field”, as people say.
But the second effect is valuable because preservation of moral teaching and the frequent repetition of it in organised meetings frequently helps to keep moral lessons to the fore and for those who take the lessons to heart injecting some of their own compassionate love into them it also tends to make the world a little bit better.

So I proposed writing a new revelation - not to be handed down as something holy and something from God - to see if it could be preserved without becoming ossified. I doubt it is possible. So there's an idea but it is built on a fraudulent revelation that may or may not have some value.

Yet I am left wondering if fraud can every bear good fruit. Our world is in part built on frauds. Our politics is built in part on frauds posing as moral leaders. Our religion is in part infiltrated by frauds posing as moral teachers. Our home life is built in part on fraudulent stories about ourselves.

One view of the last judgement is that it will be the great assize in which truth will be told willing or not. Nothing will be hidden. All that is most shame inducing and all that is most agreeable will be exposed for what it truly is. What truth ought we to tell one another here in this life before the last judgement?

Shall we try to tell the truth unvarnished as we see it even if what we see is not exactly the truth as it really is; yes I think so. What else can we do unless we decide to join the frauds and tell stories that we know are not true.

Shall our theology be presented unvarnished even if telling it may provoke others? Maybe.

Let's see.

This is my little rant for the evening. I don't think it is worth much. But since I typed it and proof read it a little I am going to post it in theology and see what happens.