It seems to me that a good philosophy of life or spirituality will stand up even if one of the main underpinnings of that philosophy is removed, or weak.
I’m thinking of this because recently I’ve been spending a lot of time in hotels. Marriott-branded hotels, to be more precise. My girlfriend works part time for a local Marriott, and they have a tremendous benefit package for their employees. (Which leads, no doubt, to the fact that they are non-union across their various brands; treat your employees well and they don’t feel the need to collectively bargain. Imagine that.)
We can get “associate rate” at tons of Marriotts, Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inn, Springhill Suites, JW Marriott, Renaissance, etc. The associate rate (Marriott employees are all “associates”) is usually a screaming deal- for example, when stranded overnight near the Dulles airport outside of Washington DC, we got a room for $35.
And in pretty much every nightstand in a Marriott brand property, you’ll find a copy of the Bible, placed by the Gideons… and a copy of the Book of Mormon, placed by the Mormons. See, the Marriott family is Mormon, so while it’s a publicly traded company now, they still do things in the family way (the family is still intimately involved in running the corporation).
Now, not to pick on the Mormons, but… well, I’m going to pick on the Mormons. Specifically, the religion itself.
I’ll start by pointing out what should be obvious and easily accepted by all people (but so often isn’t): All religions are made-up. That doesn’t mean they’re fictional, necessarily, but they’re certainly all creations of mankind. Someone, somewhere, entered into a process that kind of codified their spiritual beliefs; often this organization of ideas and ideals was written down (like in the various holy books) and sometimes it was merely a set of spoken tales (such as the various myths passed along in aboriginal cultures).
My own belief is that humans, along with everything else in the various universes, have a spiritual nature. I’ll freely admit that I don’t have a ton of proof for this; nonetheless, I think it’s true.
And I know that religions are, for the most part, an attempt by humans to put their spiritual thoughts into a framework that they can understand, relate to, talk about and take comfort and faith in.
Much has been written over the years, and again lately, about whether or not having religion is a Good Thing for humans. I believe that it is, if for no other reason than it gives billions of people some comfort and peace of mind. Sure, there’s all kinds of bad purposes that we’ve put religion to over the years- war, genocide, etc. But overall, I think it’s not a bad thing.
Getting back to it, all religons are made up. We wind up either choosing to follow a particular religion or set of spiritual thoughts, or we start our own. The Church of Paul isn’t really off to a rip-roaring start, so I’m sticking with Buddhism for now! (I can’t get enough people to donate to the CoP.)
It seems to me, though, that it’s kind of silly to have a religion that relies extremely heavily upon a particular document for its own justification. I think that a really GOOD religion is one that, if you remove whatever book or scripture or whatnot it uses, can still stand on its own as a good theory for life.
This is where the Mormon religion, for me anyway, falls down. Mormons have a bit of a problem in this regard, because the Book of Mormon is traced directly back to Joseph Smith, the founder/creator of the LDS faith. He claimed to merely have “found” the book (on gold plates), but most people (most non-Mormons, anyway) accept that he pretty much just made it all up.
Now, there’s not really anything wrong with that, per se. The problem, in my opinion, is that without The Book of Mormon, the things that make the Mormon faith particular kind of fall apart.
Compare and contrast this with the Bible, particularly the New Testament. If you pull it away, or do like Thomas Jefferson did and remove any “miraculous” themes or stories, you still have a pretty good, solid message attributed to Jesus Christ: Be kind to each other, do unto others as you would have done unto you, etc. This philosophy stands on its own as a good way to live life (and is why, despite being Buddhist, I still also consider myself a Christian in the sense of someone who appreciates and tries to follow the general tone and teachings of Jesus.)
Without the Book of Mormon, though, would anyone really jump at the things that made the original Mormon church distinct? The fact is that they were adamantly polygamous (which seems to go against the wide majority of human societies); remain adamant in their beliefs about evangelizing and recruiting members to their church; and devoutly pro-family and stand for clean living. Only the last of these things makes a lot of sense without the holy text backing it up- we should all strive to be as pro-family and live as well as possible. (Of course, one’s definition of “pro-family” can vary widely.)
It is for this reason that I don’t really buy into the LDS faith. I considered joining up or attending Mormon services, but I just couldn’t handle the whole thing being based on what I consider to be a house of cards.
And I hate to admit it, but it’s something that I have a bit of a problem with in my OWN faith, or at least within my own spiritual community. The SGI does some stuff that doesn’t really seem to be super-strongly supported in the original text, the Lotus Sutra. Oh, I know, there’s all kinds of interpretations that say we should be out there vigorously evangelizing for our faith. (SGI is one of the most evangelistic Buddhist sects out there- Buddhism not being particularly known as an evangelistic faith.)
SGI also has what’s almost hero-worship for its leader, Daisaku Ikeda. Now, President Ikeda is a heck of a guy; he’s published tons of books, has worked for decades for peace and understanding, and even his critics admit (or would, if they were really honest) that he’s done a lot of work for some pretty good causes. (They’d carp and complain that he’s done a lot of work for himself and the SGI, but he’s still wound up giving a lot of faith and comfort to a lot of people, and like I said that stands for something in my book.)
So both SGI and the LDS faith have some weaker points. The difference, to me at least (since, after all, this is a post where I’m rationalizing and self-justifying my SGI membership!) is that without the main book of the LDS church, it kind of collapses like a house of cards. Without the main book of the SGI faith, the writings of Nichiren Daishonin (who, after all, pretty much created what’s known as Nichiren Buddhism) the Buddhist faith and even the way Nichiren Buddhists practice it and our main teachings still stands as a pretty good, basic philosophy of how to live life and why things work the way they do.
(This last thing is why, I think, Buddhism really appeals to me personally; unlike my experience in a traditional Judeo-Christian upbringing, Buddhism lays out a really good explanation of WHY things work the way they do- and it doesn’t require a mystical belief in unprovable assertions.)
Of course, what this whole thing illustrates to me is that just about ANY faith that requires its adherants to believe, 100%, in a particular book or writing is a faith that just isn’t going to be able to stand up to a critical examination. (Of course, most faiths probably don’t stand up to a super-critical examination!) Basic Christianity, it seems to me, does stand up on its own- but the folks who insist on the infallibility of the Bible are treading on some pretty thin ice.
(The Bible, after all, has pretty glaring inconsistencies in the very first few pages. For example, Genesis 1:3-5 says that on the first day God created light, and then separated day and night; but in Genesis 1:14-19, the sun isn’t created until the fourth day.)
I personally believe that the end result of all of this is that I come away with a healthy dose of skepticism for anyone who declares that they have found all the True Answers. I believe that those folks have mostly only managed to half-convince themselves of their own right-ness (and all too often, they’re filled with their own self-righteousness); we must not allow them to set any kind of policy for the rest of us in any way.
Otherwise, we’re basing society upon a house of cards that’s bound to fall. Instead, we need to base it on widely held, obvious principles that stand up to a critical examination and which do not require any kind of mystical belief system for self-justification.
Fortunately for us Buddhists, our system is already like that. Nyah, nyah, nyah! 
