RisiaSkye
Artistic
- Joined
- May 1, 2000
- Posts
- 4,387
Credibility and Hypocrisy
I may be going out on a limb here, but I don't think that this satire is really directed at all religious people. Nothing of the sort, in fact. I think that the author is trying to get at the fact that Dr. Laura's calls for "personal responsibility" rely heavily on religous dogma and thus assume that religion is the only answer to society's ills. And not just religion, but the particular interpretation of religion offered by Dr. Laura herself.
Under a selective viewing of any one among many religious foundational texts, it is possible to find advocacy for and against nearly anything. It's a question of changing social mores and evolving belief systems. The holy texts are not "always already" documents. They pass through millions of hands, translations, edits, suppressions, etc. over a span of millenia. To assume that such a document can ascribe to one individual The One Right Path is not only arrogant, but obscenely hypocritical. To wit: If (insert claim here) has ALWAYS been the law, why isn't all of The Law followed today? And just because something has been or currently is, should it necessarily continue? Based on the fact that Dr. Laura herself advocates sweeping societal revision, I doubt that the answer would be yes.
And the reliance on text as the only source of faith, or the moral inspiration that faith can inspire, walks on dangerous ground--particularly when the text itself is riddled with contradiction. Ultimately, its between you and your god/God/goddess/deity/etc; it certainly isn't between you, your television set, and Dr. Laura.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I don't think that this satire is really directed at all religious people. Nothing of the sort, in fact. I think that the author is trying to get at the fact that Dr. Laura's calls for "personal responsibility" rely heavily on religous dogma and thus assume that religion is the only answer to society's ills. And not just religion, but the particular interpretation of religion offered by Dr. Laura herself.
Under a selective viewing of any one among many religious foundational texts, it is possible to find advocacy for and against nearly anything. It's a question of changing social mores and evolving belief systems. The holy texts are not "always already" documents. They pass through millions of hands, translations, edits, suppressions, etc. over a span of millenia. To assume that such a document can ascribe to one individual The One Right Path is not only arrogant, but obscenely hypocritical. To wit: If (insert claim here) has ALWAYS been the law, why isn't all of The Law followed today? And just because something has been or currently is, should it necessarily continue? Based on the fact that Dr. Laura herself advocates sweeping societal revision, I doubt that the answer would be yes.
And the reliance on text as the only source of faith, or the moral inspiration that faith can inspire, walks on dangerous ground--particularly when the text itself is riddled with contradiction. Ultimately, its between you and your god/God/goddess/deity/etc; it certainly isn't between you, your television set, and Dr. Laura.
