god on current affairs

One of the biggest current affair program here in Finland, Ajankohtainen Kakkonen, had set up a discussion panel on god, faith, fundamentalism and tolerance, and it came out on Tuesday. It's in Finnish, of course, but the fortunate ones can watch it here.

The topic was large, but so was the set of representatives. They had people from atheist free thinkers, through Green League of Finland's representative from the parliament, Imam from the muslim community, archbishop of the Lutheran church in Finland, to the leader of the fastest growing charismatic revival movement inside the lutheran church, to name a few - altogether around 20 people, and 2hours to go...

As expected, the debate did not reach any significant depth. It reached one heated climax when the imam got mad at cartoons. (this time it was a finnish satire comic about scared artist in Finland, according to the author, unintended to upset anybody... but it apparently did.)

I can't help but think that the shallowness of the discussion was deliberate to some extent and it did strengthen the standpoint of the mainstream ideology of "religiously neutral" humanism, what would be the standpoint of the program itself. When the religious standpoints were not given a proper time to make their cases, it came out natural to judge them all to share the same fundamentalist spirit - the one that makes folk to blow up themselves in metro station, as well as go distribute food in public parks. (it's quite a remarkable flexibility to the spirit, if it's just one...)

The discussion just got worse when it reached the lutheran schism on blessing the samesex marriages. It's a hard piece because the government in Finland directs a portion of the tax income to the lutheran and orthodox churches, and it would be natural to expect that these communities share the values of the government. However, they don't, especially on this very topic.

I was hoping the discussion to move deeper towards this issue of shared values, and the autonomy of religious communities on the doctrinal issues. There, i would have been really interested to hear where the muslim community would be standing on this topic. But, to my disappointment, they did not talk about these, but the ones representing the active christian groups (Markku Koivisto from the charismatic lutheran movement, and a youth leader couple from Elävä Sana "a living word" church) just stated (and re-stated) their faith in bible, and how they apply it on this issue - and the "neutrals" expressed their dislike.

The outcome was to me as mournful as always. It was obvious that they had not common ground to discuss from, which to me would be the foundation to any significant debate - mournfully more, nobody tried to look for it either. I doubt that anybody watching gained any helpful insight to the Bible-believing-christian reasoning, which I would have set as a goal if I'd been invited to discuss. Now they talked a lot and hot, but on different issues.

To me the show worked to strengthen to points that I've previously belived. First, the society should not be Christian, muslism, or formed after any other faith community, but it should be aimed to provide freedom and peace to all it's incredients. I think church and state should separated, but I would expect that to give freedom for any faith community independently to state their doctrines according to their believes and values as far as they won't threathen the peace of others.

The other point would be, never ever go discuss publicly on tricky issues as homosexuality, unless you make sure you are sharing the terms and the logic with your opponents. Besides making fool of yourselves, you also take hundred steps further from getting your real point across.