Adrian on Religious Views

So I was walking to the store to get my lunch and a thought popped up. I condensed this thought and would like to share it with you here. For the past couple of months I have turned by mind towards religious books because I felt that to have an opinion on it I should really know what IT is, i.e. know what the books are "teaching us". However, I'm not strictly comfortable with the internet as a medium for the discussion of such materials and so I'm hesitant about this but I wanted to put this up for discussion.

"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"

Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).

Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).

Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.

This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.

"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"

It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.

The day that Thatcher died

Margaret Thatcher: 1925 - 2013

I didn't write anything yesterday about the passing of the arguably very important political figure of the post-war 20th century (I'm sure there's people who'll be willing to put this in more precise words for me). The only thing I noted yesterday was that one of the first links to appear on facebook carried as a thumbnail the picture of two kids staring at the skull of a Tyrannosaurus-Rex in a museum.

I didn't comment on her passing because I didn't think it was right for me to say anything. Somebody died. It's a human tragedy whenever it happens. Let the mourners mourn their death. not only that, but I was born in 1979, in a different country. What I know of Margaret Thatcher I know in passing from media snippets and conversations with friends. It makes for a very incomplete knowledge and to be honest I've stopped listening to it because there's only so many times you can change your opinion about something before you realise that there's a lot of "shit slinging" going on either side of the fence. At some point I'll have to make a point of finding out just exactly what she did and didn't do. 

But anyway, I thought yesterday's events were noteworthy after all. They were noteworthy because of the series of events everyone easily had access to from the comfort of their own home. They happened, as many things do nowadays, on Facebook (Sorry, Margaret, you're no exception!). So here's a loose timeline of what transpired yesterday and the thoughts I have about it now. Note that items 2 to 4 are in no particular order.

1. The first media items appear telling us of the death of one of the "greats" of our time. The wildfire starts spreading.
2. The gouvernment issues a statement "officially" mourning her passing and lauding her (political) lifetime achievements. 'The nation must be upset, for we have truly lost someone great'.
3. Facebook statuses by those who supported and admired her started appearing
4. Facebook statuses by those who hated her started appearing
5. People started arguing '/enter the shit storm'
6. People started arguing over the appropriateness of arguing about somebody's life immediately after their passing
7. The media caught up with this and jumped on the band wagon

Here's what I find interesting:
If you follow the official media coverage She will appear to the uninformed outsider like the single greatest and best thing this country has seen since the invention of sliced bread, and that regardless of some of her flaws that she might have had!
If you look on Facebook there are a lot of people who don't like her. Yes, there are supporters but there are a lot of people screaming bloody murder, so surely she must have done something wrong in order to warrant such loathing?!

The media tell us how wrong it is to "throw the first stone" after someone's died and that we should show more piety and let the mourners mourn.
What I would like to know is when are we going to be allowed to criticise someone after their death? I mean, call me cynical, but I expect a BBC documentary obituary full of praise, but surely a critical view of someone's achievements and deeds would be more useful?

I mean if "officialdom" is just going to trumpet the "let the mourners mourn" and "oh how we lost a great person" until it slowly fizzles out this has a lot of similarities with the mass shootings in the US and the way "nobody's allowed to talk about gun laws out of respect for the mourners".