On Comparative Religion

When I was in college I took a comparative religion course because it
covered both the eastern and western humanities requirement. It was
rather pleasant. The teacher was a retired Methodist minister who had
converted to Eastern Orthodox. He was an opinionated man and always
peppered his lessons with comments about what he thinks the different
religions get right and wrong.

What made this interesting to me is that his opinions were not always
what I expected. My family tradition is Roman Catholic, but my parents
switched to evangelical Protestant when I was a teenager. As a result
I was subject to many explanations of why Catholicism is not True
Christianity, no better than any of the other "heathen" religions. I
expected my Protestant-to-Orthodox convert teacher to turn the course
into an exploration of why his brand of Christianity was objectively
correct and why all other religions of the world were objectively
false.

And he did this to an extent. He did not try to hide his biases. The
segment on Christianity was largely filled with poking fun at
evangelicals for not believing in purgatory or the transubstantiation
of the communion elements. However, other than this he actually
demonstrated a rather open mind. He expressed a strong respect for the
monistic philosophies in Hinduism and Buddhism. He ridiculed agnostics
but congratulated atheists for at least being able to commit to some
kind of a belief system.

So while it may have not been the most balanced education on world
religions, it was much more open than anything I'd been exposed to up
to that point. In some ways I think it may have been better for me at
the time than a course taught by some liberal arts type. Like his
sense of humor somehow disarmed my sense of religious superiority and
gave me the chance to learn the real point.

Discordianism was never brought up in the course. No surprise there:
it was one semester and only really covered the major world religions.
Some years later, when I found and read the Principia with a feverish
joy, I remembered my comparative religion teacher and wondered what he
would have thought about its blend of parody and repurposing of
various religions. Maybe he would have gotten the point, maybe not. I
would like to think that, if nothing else, he would find the claim
that "reality is the original Rorschach" agrees with his own point
that cultures and religions form a feedback loop which defines a
people.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. I don't need his validation. But if I
did, I would have at least one reason to hope: after a student
presentation on Scientology he said (paraphrasing here), "I'm
surprised. At first I thought it was just going to be a joke, but
there are a lot of things they get right."