Conspiracies and Religion

Over the past few days, I've been surfing the web and reading a lot of things about Freemasonry. Obviously, I'd seen much of this prior to my experience last Tuesday, but I didn't dwell on it for too long, lest I see something I shouldn't.

The first part, I've already written about on my actual blog, but suffice it to say, there are many people out there are who are clueless and ignorant. They enjoy believing in the boogieman, so we Masons become the modern boogieman. Conspiracies to run the world, control the banks, control minds.... It's nothing new to me, of course; As a Jew, I've heard it all before.

The fact is, though, these people are insane. Any stupid little thing they see suddenly becomes proof of an underground conspiracy that has existed for centuries without anyone ever figuring it out (except for these idiots, of course). Cubes, pyramids, eyeballs; They're all proof of Masons behind the scenes - even though they're the most basic symbols in the world and have been used since the first moment Man used a metaphor.

Secondly, we have these fundamentalist Christians who misrepresent the tidbits of information they've gotten from oath-breakers, and state that Masonry is incompatible with Christianity, and that we all worship some false deity. Firstly, I'm not a Christian, so I don't exactly care, and secondly, I should state that I'm only a first degree, so maybe at the third degree the ugly truth is revealed - but I find it unlikely that so many religious men would stick around afterwards.

The idea is that we worship the Grand Architect of the Universe, as opposed to Jesus Christ. Many of their supporters are former Masons who left after being rebuked for saying Jesus in the Lodge during a prayer. There's actually a good article here on this, but I'll expound my own feelings, anyway.

As I see it, a rose by any other name is still a rose. If you pray to G-d, be it as Adonai, HaShem, El Shaddai, Elohim, El Elyon, or a myriad of other names we use in Hebrew, for instance, you're still praying to G-d. The idea that everyone should pray to Jesus is offensive to those of us who don't, and while I can understand their convictions, I'm pretty sure no one ever said Freemasonry was a Christian organization. Don't join and shut up.

They also seem to think that Masonry preaches salvation. I've never once heard this. It's certainly been stressed to me that one must be a good person (since they make good men better), and deeds are important, but even the fundies agree that good deeds are important. No, according to Christian theology, one cannot get into Heaven on good deeds alone, but masonry doesn't tell you to rely solely on good deeds - it tells you to have Faith, as well.

It's all very silly.