Walking on Water?

Religion. It's a collection of stories about Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddah, whoever. A lot of people like to ask, "Are the stories true?"

The answer I like best is, "It doesn't matter." But how can it not matter?

Let's do some teaching by example. Take the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. For anyone behind on Torah, here's the recap: Sodom and Gomorrah are two cities of which the inhabitants have sinned. G-d wants to destroy them, but Abraham pleads with G-d that if he can find some good people, would G-d please not destroy the cities? Ultimately, G-d agrees that if Abraham can find but one good person, the cities will be spared. Abraham fails to do so; the cities are destroyed.

Take a look a how this story can be interpreted. One person might look at this and say, "Aha! According to the bible, G-d was willing to spare thousands of guilty men if there could be one innocent man! Clearly, this teaches that capital punishment is immoral; on the chance of there being innocent people executed, we must spare the guilty from death!" Another person might turn right around and counter, "Nonsense! The cities were destroyed - there were no innocent people - so that's not what it teaches! More importantly, do you realize what the people there were guilty of? The bible implies homosexuality! Clearly, being gay is wrong!"

Interesting. The same passage, but two different conclusions. What changed? The person reading. So, in a way, perhaps religion does less to teach a person than it does to allow that person to manifest his preexisting values. Does the passage persuade a conservative to oppose the death penalty, or a liberal to object to homosexuality? Of course not. In other words, the person shapes the religion to match his views; the religion does not shape the person. Perhaps. Then again, perhaps each person's views come from the way they were taught, when younger, perhaps from parables like this one.
But really, this has all been a big distraction, and it would appear that you fell for it. What did I distract you from? My original question, of course. "Are the stories true?" So, is this Sodom and Gomorrah thing legit? Did it happen? Perhaps you see, now, that it doesn't matter. Maybe it really did happen. Maybe it didn't. But that will never change it's practical purpose; the story exists for people to use. It exists to teach lessons, or, more cynically, to have lessons forced into it. Either way, it serves a purpose. It will never matter if it were true.

It's possible that some religions were started from ancient storybooks which were misinterpreted as factual accounts. I would be very interested to observe the development of Potterism, the religion which will develop 600 years in the future, when the next civilizations unearth millions of manuscripts carried around by human beings across the globe, translated into every ancient language: the Harry Potter series. They will learn of the magical boy and his fight against evil, and it will teach them all sorts of wonderful symbolic messages, like how it's not nice to favor pure-bloods over people of mixed lineage, how house-elf servitude is animal cruelty, or how broomsticks were used for flight in ancient times (this will puzzle them greatly as they fail to understand how to get the damn things to work). Point being; truth or fiction, religion is about lessons.

Take, as a different example, something from literature. Mark Twain works fine. In Huckleberry Finn, Huck makes some tricky choices. He does things that are against the law, but things that, in his mind (and the minds of many modern individuals) are morally correct. So, is he right? Is he wrong? Should he have freed Jim (a slave)?

Look, there you go again! Caring about the morality of a story. It's fiction! There is no Huck! But so what? That didn't make his choices less real. That doesn't make the morals less important to debate.

It's all about interpretation, and that goes both ways. If Allah is your inspiration for starting a soup kitchen, more power to you. But if Jesus inspires you to start the Inquisition, I'm going to have to stop you. It has nothing to do with whose religion is right, or true, or real. It has everything to do with interpretation, and morals, and choices. It's not the god you believe in, it's what you do with that belief.

So, did Moses part the sea? Did Jesus walk on water? It doesn't matter. What matters is what you make of the stories, be they truth, fiction, or something in between.