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Inactive Forums => Forge Birthday Forum => Topic started by: Ben Lehman on April 04, 2004, 12:53:04 PM

Title: Religion!
Post by: Ben Lehman on April 04, 2004, 12:53:04 PM
Hi.

This is the new religion thread.  Post here.

I am curious as to people's religious beliefs.

I ask this because I am in a muddle about my own beliefs right now, and like to cannibalize off of others.

So what do you believe, and why?  Do you think other people are wrong?  Why your religion?
Title: Religion!
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on April 04, 2004, 01:14:30 PM
I think belief is beautiful.
I don't have a personal belief, however; I dwell in wonder instead.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Kubasik on April 04, 2004, 01:20:47 PM
Roman Catholic.

Let me be specific: American Roman Catholic, which, for many of us, means left of Marxists as far as the Pope's concerned.  Where this broo-ha-ha will end us all, I don't know.  A priest in Chicago once said to me, "The Vatican is steep in the tradition of Monarchy.  American's aren't.  There will be issues."

I believe I love going to mass.  I believe I love singing with other people. I believe that in the readings each week I get some little nugget of metaphore that lets me live a better week.  I believe just seeing familiar faces, offering my talents as a lector and having a place to go make me a better and happier person.

I have no idea anymore what I believe about the Church's fundemental supernatural concerns.

I believe that in terms of imagination the Church is fucked, because we've got a bachelor god and virgin mother, and despite Vatican II's attempts to reasure us all, "No, no, we really do like the human body -- that delight is reflected only in the Church's almost subversive history of lucious and sensual art.  It's simply not in the dogma, it's simply not an active part of the narrative.  It's simply not there in the actual *faith.*

I don't have much truck for people who think other people are *wrong.*

In fact, here's my new bugaboo: after all the self-serving nonses around Mel's movie ("No, *you're* making *me* suffer!" heard from Jews, Chrisitans and even -- wait for it -- Italians upset at the portrayal of Centurians -- I'm concerned that too much of what religion should be about is usurped by yahoos who want to know everyone else in the world is out to get them.  It feeds into the darkest, worst aspects of self-pity, paranoia and self-justified rightousness that let's folks know that they're right, others are wrong, and thank god we can all huddle together against the terrors offered by the bulk of all the rest of the world.

Feeling persecuted, I've noticed lately, is the great motivator for what some folks think of as religious sentiment.  Not mine.  I'm a happy, God made us to love each other through this world post-Vatican II kid.  I honestly see people using religion as a reactionary cover and think, "What the fuck?"

Also, this:

There seems to be this notion (not widespread perhaps, but wrongheaded I think), that Muslims are after the US because it's a "Christian" nation (you know, with a few Jews thrown in.)

I think this misses the game entirely.

I really don't think myopic muslisms are upset that we're a Christian nation.  We're a pluralistic nation.  If you compare our society to the classical pagan years in Rome and Greece, you'll see we share a lot in come with those societies when it comes to religion: People shift churches, denominations and even faith as required by their needs.  You can be a Presbiterian who owns a crystal, does yoga and reads the horoscope.... and that's cool for you.  (Others might object -- but you don't hang with them.)

We're not playing the one true god game that well here -- which, I think, explains why we're such a "religious" nation.  By allowing faith to be fluid, non-stiffling, and meeting the needs of those who need faith... it works.  It doesn't shut down commerce, social interaction, creative freedom and so on.

Now, this bothers some folks in the US.  But their born and bred americans, so it's kind of confusing... Monothesitic obsession runs counter to the democratic principles of this country so everyone worried about this is left hanging even if they can't articulate why.

Not so myopitc muslims in middle eastern nations.  A One Way is still an option.  And *that* is the problem with the US for them.  It's not that we're a Christian nation.  (We're clearly not.)  It's that we're a nation of Many Ways.  And I think *that* is the infection they're afraid we're going to bring to the world.

So, basically, I'm becoming, in temperament, a Pagan, with the Church as my main faith.  I mean, I don't know what the hell else to call it.

Christopher
Title: Religion!
Post by: Eero Tuovinen on April 04, 2004, 01:31:21 PM
Great stuff from Christopher... There's been an upsurge in Finland lately trying to explain U.S. foreign policy from the viewpoint of rapid fundamentalism (the whole "escapees from English persecution" angle). The Americans are largely simpleminded christians, it's said, and this explains why they are ready to tramble over anything good when their crazy president says so. Nice to see that someone upholds pluralism out there.

Anyway, about my religion: I'm hard line agnostic, assuming everyone who believes otherwise is a little dull of mind. On the other hand, if someone is ready to pledge allegiance and stay true to something, even fictional something, that more than counteracts the initial stupidity. Be as stupid as you wish, as long as it's accompanied by nobility.
Title: Religion!
Post by: ethan_greer on April 04, 2004, 01:45:20 PM
Atheist.

Things change.
Title: Religion!
Post by: taalyn on April 04, 2004, 02:03:28 PM
Celto-Norse Shinto-Shaman. It's complicated.
Title: Religion!
Post by: clehrich on April 04, 2004, 02:03:34 PM
I don't really have religion at all -- that's why I study it instead.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Sean on April 04, 2004, 02:14:12 PM
On my father's side, my family is Episcopalian. My father was an altar boy in his youth, but was a staunch atheist when I was growing up. Once I was in college he started dabbling in Buddhism. While he was studying and meditating he wondered: if there's no such thing as a self, then what reincarnates?

My mother's father's grandfather's grandfather was a direct assistant to Brigham Young, but he was excommunicated. The family story was that Brigham & co. had wanted my ancestor to take a second wife, but that he had refused. One never can be quite sure of the truth of such things, but when my grandfather was a little boy, his father took him to the old family cabin outside of Salt Lake, riddled with bullet holes, which my gg claimed were from shots fired by Brigham's men, trying to get rid of my ancestor. My grandfather himself was ecumenical in the extreme - he spent several years trying out different religions with all their rules for a year at a time, to see what they were like. My mother's mother was a Swedish Lutheran.

My mother was and is a member of a Yogic group out of Los Angeles, Paramahansa Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship, that believes in Jesus and Krishna both and spends lots of time meditating. That's what I was brought up in.

My best friend my senior year of high school was a Muslim, and he was one of two best men when I got married to my wife, who is Jewish.

Me? In terms of formally observed religion, I suppose I mostly practice Judaism these days - I do weekly sabbath, the High Holidays, and Passover every year, and occasionally go to schul. I almost converted, but it didn't seem right to me to finish the process - I get a lot out of my wife's faith, but ultimately I don't think it's mine, at least not now. I still do some of my mother's yoga meditation that I was trained in as a child sometimes. And sometimes I pray to a nameless god.

I'm deeply committed to humanism and liberalism in politics, which sometimes makes me think I'm really an atheist deep down. But there are certain parts of my life - most centrally my love of the beautiful and the sublime - that make it impossible for me to give up on religion completely. Something keeps drawing me back to reading a hundred different scriptures and contemplating the Ultimate in a variety of forms.

So I guess I'd characterize myself as a 'person of faith', but I don't think I'd pass muster with anyone remotely orthodox about anything. I tend to regard holy men as just people and scriptures as just stimulating writings, even though I think they're both in at least some cases speaking about something centrally important to human life and experience. On the other hand, I don't really ever stop looking at my own life and experience from a religious point of view, either, so - I suppose I have a lot of work ahead of me to figure this all out.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Simon W on April 04, 2004, 02:49:52 PM
I am yet to be convinced about any religion. This from a guy who has lived with a (ex)Jehova's Witness and a (ex)Mormon. Perhaps because of this.

I also don't believe UFO's have landed on earth, that there is such a thing as ghosts and such like, or that anyone has any psychic powers.

I guess I must be a born sceptic.
Title: Religion!
Post by: C. Edwards on April 04, 2004, 03:11:15 PM
I'm with Shreyas, except as I get older I find that I'm developing this hard crust of cynicism. I'm going to go have it scraped off next week.

-Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: Lxndr on April 04, 2004, 03:35:35 PM
Skeptical, cynical wonder with an underlying core of hope.

I believe that the best of all possible afterlives is nothing at all... the idea of the christian heaven freaks me out much more than the idea of the christian hell, and reincarnation speaks of pointlessness to me.  Oblivion, the idea that my life will simply stop when my "ugly bag of mostly water" stops moving, is comforting and safe, so I act with that hope, because all the alternatives are horrifying.

My father died when I was young.  His family was Jewish, but mom tells me he was Christian.  My mother is "Christian" - she'll happily wander into any church regardless of demonination, and once told me she'd rather see me as a member of the KKK, than as a Hare Krishna (given the choice of those two possibilities), because at least the KKK has its roots in Christianity.  Although I freely use "God" as a profanity, and might reflexively refer to him, I don't believe I believe in an entity like him.  I know for a fact it's not nearly that simple, and that "God" works best as an allegory.
Title: Religion!
Post by: coxcomb on April 04, 2004, 07:55:04 PM
A-religeous.

That is, while I think personal belief systems are good, I think history has proven organized religions to be bad.

As far as personal philosophy, I have found a lot of insight in Taoist teachings (not the religion, the philosophy).
Title: Re: Religion!
Post by: Jack Spencer Jr on April 04, 2004, 08:16:49 PM
Quote from: Ben LehmanSo what do you believe, and why?  Do you think other people are wrong?  Why your religion?

Hrm. This is the second such thread I've run into in the past week.

My religion is a lack thereof. What has happened is knowledge and experience has piled up in my life that has led to a crisis of faith similar to yours. I had been raised with christianity in the background, which eventually came foreward when my father became religious. I still didn't feel very strongly for it, but I sort of gained "beliefs" if it could be called that. But, various things have since piled up which has irreparably damaged these "beliefs." By extension, so has any possibility for belief in most other religions, especially those with any sort of deity, creator gods in particular. The whole thing strikes me as unreal and, to my point of view, founded on similar evidence. This, naturally, is not mean to be a slam at religion or those who do find faith. I just do not find anything to put my faith in. Maybe someday that will change, but I cannot see that at this point.
Title: Religion!
Post by: J B Bell on April 04, 2004, 08:47:46 PM
Welp, I'm still a Buddhist. I still swear a lot. However, I have recently renewed my subscription to the Five Precepts and am avoiding meat, pot, and booze. I need to tinker with the diet some because I'm pretty sure the no-meat business is making me overdo the carb thing.

I'm calling it "Liberation Amidism," as it's a Pure Land form of Buddhism that has a very strong "engaged" (as Buddhists call it) element, seeing Buddhism as something that properly is concerned with a better life in this world, and not merely preparing the ground for more favorable future rebirths.

I'm still helping out with the local Unitarian Universalist youth group, which is a joy and a source of continuing nervousness as they keep letting me train the kids to be radical social activists without so much as a peep. Do the parents just not notice, or is that what they want? Stay tuned.

I guess I'm also still a touch of a mystic, though I mostly don't believe in psychic hoo-ha.

I do believe that there are beliefs that are less useful and even tragic, though I'd steer clear of "wrong" if I'm thinking about it carefully. E.g., I have problems with monism--the idea that all spirit is joined by some sort of substratum such that my "soul-stuff" is somehow contiguous with and of one substance with yours. I've come to believe that real compassion and love arise not from my seeing my essential sameness with you, but rather by fully and truly seeing you as someone apart from me, with your own concerns, needs, values, and basic worth. In this way it is my self that disappears in contemplation of the other, rather than coming to non-self by some hyper-inflation of my own boundaries.

I'm considering entering seminary school to become a Unitarian minister but haven't really decided about that yet--I have a general disdain for certifications, and wonder why I would need one to do what comes naturally to me anyway: being decent to other people and acknowledging and strengthening their own compassion for themselves and others.

OTOH, there are some seriously hot babes at that school, and men are a minority. And I've sure had my fill of computer work.

--JB
Title: Religion!
Post by: joshua neff on April 04, 2004, 08:49:55 PM
Lately I've been feeling really drawn to my Jewish roots. Except I come from a family that is, traditionally (at least going back to my great-grandparents) staunchly secular Jews. (My great-grandparents were big-time Communists, so religion was "the opiate of the masses." My great-grandmother used to spit on the ground everytime she saw a rabbi.) And I just can't find it within myself to have any kind of relationship or attitude towards YHWH, God, Allah, or whatever you want to call Him/Her/It.

The attitude of Taoist & Zen stuff speaks to me. But what really speaks to me, what really reflects my worldview & moves me spiritually, are the words of Timothy Leary, Ray Bradbury, Dr. Seuss. And dada & surrealism. Which, I suppose, makes me...a Discordian. Hail Eris!

Edit: I was raised Unitarian-Universalist. In fact, my father was a UU minister throughout my childhood. But both of my parents have abandoned the UU church--my mother has started going to synagogue (despite being a firm atheist), while my father ignores religion entirely. Personally, I find the UU church a bit too bland for me. A quiet personal spirituality is great, but if I'm going to actually get up & go to church every week or so, I want baroque--I want candles & incense & chanting & singing & dancing. I want mandalas & elaborate cosmologies. & body paint & bargains with spirits.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jonathan Walton on April 04, 2004, 09:01:12 PM
Leave it to Shreyas...  Yeah, wonder and awe are good things to cultivate.  I try, but I'm not always successful.  When you're a child, it's easy.  When you're an adult, it takes practice to get through that cynicism.

I was raised super-liberal Southern Baptist, if you can believe that.  My parent's church got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for performing "holy unions" for same-sex couples.  Never been Baptised though, because I respect the ritual too much to try to make it conform to my own feelings about Jesus (if you're really interested, you can PM me; I'm always ready to talk about religion and spirituality).  I tried to do the "white guy doing Eastern religions" thing before I realized that it's really an exercise in futility, self-deception, arrogance, and appropriation (no offense to anyone else on that road, of course).  Now, I've come to terms with the fact that I have a strong Christian background, even though I don't believe in Christ (though that guy Jesus was pretty cool...).

What do I call myself?  Hmm... Eccumenical Abrahamist is about as close as I can get.  Definitely find myself resonating with Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Taiping mythology, because it's so neat (at least, most of the time).  Lately, I've been really digging the Islamic emphasis on beauty being proof of God or divine origins, like how the Qur'an is supposedly the most beautiful book ever written (in fact, it dares readers to write a more beautiful book), which "proves" that it is the word of God.  Pretty damn cool, I'd say.  Also closely related to mystic traditions in early Christianity and Judaism.

And Euro, I don't think American Christianity is less complex, in general.  But I think people who are absolutists about their politics are likely to be absolutists about other aspects of their life, including religion.  Our international face is only one aspect of American society, after all.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Valamir on April 04, 2004, 11:02:52 PM
As long as we're throwing it out there, I consider my self to be a fairly devoted (albeit sinful) Christian with little to no use for organized religious dogma.  I never cease to be astounded by various professions of faith by churches and church goers and am left wondering if they've ever actually read the book they supposedly believe in or just chose to selectively cross out all the parts they don't like.

I don't believe the bible is the unerring word of God, I think the very idea of that is ludicrous given the whole business with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis.  I think the bible is a wonderful tool to gain insight into God through those people who knew him best/earliest.

I believe the bible as we know it was created by a series of councils which were as much driven by politics and personal ambition as piety, and therefor what is and isn't canonical should be taken with a grain of salt.

I believe the Book of Revelations, while a fascinating read, is a complete and utter work of fiction invented by the early Catholic church as a way to bring the masses into line with the fear of hell fire and brimstone.  It is a weapon, not a religious text.


I think Paul is the absolute worst thing to happen to Christianity ever.  He single handedly turned a religion about peace and love and kindness into one of intolerance and cruelty.  

I think Jesus was the original hippie traveling about the countryside with a band of close friends preaching peace and love and tolerance.

I think religion and science are not only compatable, they are ultimately intertwined tightly together.  Science is not a challenge to god's will it IS god's will.  God promised Moses he'd reveal the secrets of his creation to us.  And that's exactly what he's been doing for several thousand years now...about as fast as we're able to handle it.  So all of this religious right standing in the way of stem cell reseach stuff us uttern nonsense.

I believe that God created multiple ways to worship him at the same time and for the same reasons as he created multiple ethnicities and multiple languages.  There are alot of lessons to be learned in the Tower of Babel story.  I think this is supported right within the scriptures.  Some folks like to quote the part about "I am the way the truth and the light, and the only way to heaven is through me" as license to damn everyone else.  Yet they skim over the many many many different ways Jesus is referred to and refers to himself right within the bible itself.  He's both the shepard AND the lamb.  He's the Word.  He's the Light.  He's the Son of God.  He's the Son of Man.  These depictions aren't just ancient biblical authors having fun with synonyms trying to think of how many different ways to say the same thing.  Its pretty clearly an indication that there are MANY ways to know and describe Jesus.  How many other ways did they not get around to recording.


I think Christopher Walkin makes one hell of a scary Archangel Gabriel.


I literally feel pity for agnostics and athiests.  Not out of some sense that they're doomed to be damned in the after life, but because they truly have no comprehension of what they're missing out on in this one.

Hows that.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Kubasik on April 04, 2004, 11:27:48 PM
Ralph,

I'd say you nailed my current confusions right on.  The birth contortions of the scriptures are just too violent for me -- I do believer there's God buried in there somewhere... But how many people have been actually looking?  (Which leads me back to my obsession these days -- exactly what are all those angry-I-feel-victimized-people looking for?  How can they reconcile their anger and victimization with the core nuggets of the existence of a creator-god, for crying out loud?)

Eero,

Thanks for the info.  As always, news from abroad about what people think about *me* only reminds me how little I'll ever know about what the hell's going on from specific individuals in other nations.

For the record, I think the U.S. citizens backed the war because a) we have an instinctive alergic reaction to One Way thinking and know it must be stopped; b) and a lot of people bought the "imminent threat" issue peddled by Bush.  (I'll remind all 9-11 was still kind of fresh.  A lot of folks couldn't imagine the Bush adminstration would actually lie/exagerate about these issues to their own obsessive ends -- but that's just sort of... the way a lot of people are.)  To pin it on Christianity would be just dopey... But so it goes...

Christopher
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jonathan Walton on April 04, 2004, 11:31:57 PM
You know, Ralph, I wrote this big long post where I agreed with you but came to the defense of my homeboy, Paul, but then the internet demons ate it.  Maybe it's for the best.  However, I would recommend skimming John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" for a different take on things.  I don't agree with everything the man says, but he saved Paul for me (I heard him give lectures on the text and answer audience questions a few years ago), and I was about ready to abandon him like you apparently have.
Title: Religion!
Post by: RaconteurX on April 04, 2004, 11:47:56 PM
I'm a eclectic Kierkkegardian henotheist of the Zen Pelagian school of mystical Grail Tao... with a touch of Chaos Magick for good measure.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Valamir on April 05, 2004, 12:20:31 AM
Quote from: Jonathan WaltonYou know, Ralph, I wrote this big long post where I agreed with you but came to the defense of my homeboy, Paul, but then the internet demons ate it.  Maybe it's for the best.  However, I would recommend skimming John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" for a different take on things.  I don't agree with everything the man says, but he saved Paul for me (I heard him give lectures on the text and answer audience questions a few years ago), and I was about ready to abandon him like you apparently have.

Haven't read that one.  But I do have Wilson's "Paul: the mind of the apostle"; who's also pretty sympathetic towards him.

The problem with Paul is perhaps only partially his fault, and partially the way he gets used.  But he did (assuming we stipulate that the letters attributed to him were actually authored by him) write things is a manner easily abused by absolutists.


Christopher, I don't think either Christianity or anything being "peddled" had anything to do with Iraq.  What we basically had is a vile tyrannical dictator who attempts genocide on his own people.  He'd had WMDs before, he'd demonstrated he's willing to use them, he'd demonstrated that he continued to try an obtain them, he had ties to terrorist organizations that he certainly would have provided them to and who would certainly have used them.

Whether he had any at the particular moment of invasion is entirely irrelevant and a complete and utter red herring put out by those with ulterior agendas.

There was a time when we propped him up as the lessor of two evils against the Ayatollah.  Mistake?  Maybe, maybe not.  No telling where Iran would have gone if they hadn't been stymied by Iraq for years.

There's 3 groups of people who are leading the rabble rousing against Iraq.

1) Those European Powers who stood to make a ton of money off of their relationships with Saddam and didn't want to see those arrangements threatened.

2) Those people who believe in handing the riegns of world government over to the UN (including many Americans) who are furious that we dared finally give up on their ineffectiveness and do it ourselves.

3) And those Europeans who felt the opportunity to throw their weight around and score points by being as vocal as possible about "not following the U.S".  For these people the issue had nothing to do with Iraq or WMDs or anything.  It was completely a question of demonstrating their independence from us by going left when we asked them to go right.


All the rest about what the intelligence agencies did or didn't know, or whether Bush did or didn't exaggerate is just a bunch of stuff and nonsense put out by the above 3 groups to conceal their real motives for being upset.

Bottom line #1: the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power.
Bottom line #2: the death toll stands at 600 American servicemen.  While any death is a tragedy, over 30,000 Americans were killed in just 3 months invading Normandy.  Iraq represents the single quickest and lowest casualty conquest of a territory that size in history.  That the news keeps harping on "terribly mounting casualties" just proves how skewed and fundamentally groundless criticism of the war really is.

At any rate, it has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  Any "anti muslim" references must be interpreted primarily as the American penchant for finding any convenient label to slap on a bunch of people we're currently considering enemies.  Its not (for the vast majority anyway) grounded in any kind of theological issues at all.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 05, 2004, 12:59:33 AM
I'm the opposite of Eero, I tend to find atheists, more particularly the self-professed "skeptics," to be rather intellectually dull in their fantacism...they're honestly as bad as religious fundamentalists in both fervor and ignorance. Regarding the latter trait, generally in their broad generalizations about religion and religious people, the motivations and behaviors of these, and history.

Now, I'm not pointing fingers at Eero, since I don't know that he conforms to this, just putting it on the table because judging from ignorance is a huge pet peeve of mine and rubs me raw when I see it, especially from people who should (or proclaim they do) know better.

That said, I don't honestly care if a person is religious, atheist, or agnostic...they just better have a good damn reason for their choice, and not some unstudied, unexamined fluff backing it up. Unfortunately, few people believe their choices are unstudied or unexamined, usually the people who need to do so the worst. So, it isn't just "atheists" who draw my ire, but the "religious" as well.

I personally don't believe anything I haven't experienced and/or studied first-hand (or try not to)*, and even then, I still maintain my reservations. I'm generally skeptical and cynical when it comes to "the truth" (whatever that may be), which should tell everyone something about my own choice, given that I have a ministerial license. And, no, none of the alternative explanations I've examined make any sense in context, so there I am.

* This, BTW, is an attitude picked up from Bhuddist philosophy, which (tangentially) is a religion I'm surprised more scientifically-minded individuals do not follow. I'm not Bhuddist, however. Still the same as last year, and not likely to change: unaffiliated modern pagan, with a healthy influence from Zen Bhuddism, and Norse heathenry (Asatru).

What, exactly, I believe is probably the most open to debate. All I can say is that there's something to it all, even though I can't say for certain what exactly it is; so I have to go with my ideas of what it might be and refine as I go. Ultimately, for me, religion is about betterment of the self emotionally & intellectually and helping others, growing in empathy, knowledge, and depth.
Title: Religion!
Post by: talysman on April 05, 2004, 01:46:16 AM
Quote from: Jonathan WaltonYou know, Ralph, I wrote this big long post where I agreed with you but came to the defense of my homeboy, Paul, but then the internet demons ate it.

I thought you guys were talking about Paul Czege for a moment, and I was about to say "what did he ever do to you, Ralph?" but then I remembered:there's more than one Paul.

me, I'm a pantheist. plain and simple. read a lot of other stuff, though.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jason Lee on April 05, 2004, 02:12:27 AM
Quote from: ValamirI literally feel pity for agnostics and athiests.  Not out of some sense that they're doomed to be damned in the after life, but because they truly have no comprehension of what they're missing out on in this one.

Hows that.

You can pity me and I'll pity you, and we'll both end up loving our neighbor and shit.

Seriously though, it'd be worth it not to lump atheist and agnostic together.  Considering that one denies the existance of spiritual, and the other may even acknowledge it.  There is also a big difference between theistic agnosticism (the nature of God is unknowable) and atheistic agnosticism (whether God exists is unknowable).

*****

Ok, as for personal views, you guessed it - agnostic.  My only spirituality is some superstitions (like karma), and prophetic dreams/déjà vu/intuitions (The agnostic point of view being that it might just be my neurons misfiring.  But if that was true you think I wouldn't be able to change things.  Who knows?).  I think that qualifies me for crazy on some tests somewhere.  Sigh.  Oh well, slap me with the crazy stamp.

I've got all sort of intellectual reasons for why I think X is wrong or Y is right.  However, there are some things I think are just silly.  That's it, no lofty philosophical reasons, I just think they're silly.

A literal interpretation of creationism.  I mean, biology is really messed up and full of unpleasantness, you think He could have done a better job.

I also think that hell (the suffering version, not the time-out version) and God 'testing' you are loads of crap.  We don't torture convicted criminals.  Entrapment is illegal.  Shit, that makes humanity more moral than God.  That just seems silly too.  Don't see how you could believe in the Christian God and a 'lake of fire' hell at the same time.  Makes no sense to me.

There are of course more.  I'm apparently not the only one that thinks they're silly.  There seems to be plenty of debate in Christian circles about these issues. Consequences of trying to integrate medieval morality into modern civilization, I suppose.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Ben Terry on April 05, 2004, 03:04:03 AM
I am an atheist.  I was a very sciency kid, and in kindergarden I wanted to be either an astronaut or a chicken farmer (the kind that just collects eggs and plays with baby chicks in incubators, not the kind that cuts chicken heads off).  I also had this thing where I would scold other kids for laughing at Wily E. Cyote's misfortune, which I don't know if it was empathy so much as just learning from what my parents had taught me and taking it to heart all of the way.  I loved to read books that answered kid questions about "Why is the sky blue" and so forth, and it was all super amazing and awe inspiring to me at the time (and still is).  

My parents are Christian, but not church going, though my Grandmother on my Mom's side was, so I would go to church occassionally because of that.  As a kid, I didn't really accept it or overtly deny it, but there was a big vibe of seriousness about it and it didn't make a lot of sense to me, so I preferred not to be there, and just endured it.  In the mid-80's I remember when AIDS was making big news, and my Mom said or agreed with the sentiment some people expressed at the time that AIDS was a curse from God for the horrible lifestyle these people were living and so on.  I was somewhere between 8-10, but at the time I remember thinking that it wasn't right, and that it made no sense.  For one thing, it sounded cruel and without reason.  Later on, there was the Satanism scare of the 80's where I remember she didn't want to buy Jif Peanut Butter because she heard the CEO was a Satanist, and later on with RPGs she got a little the same way.  So, you can see how with that background, I wasn't too hot on Christianity.  It was giving me this oppressed feeling of tradition you couldn't reason with, and don't tell your Grandmother you don't believe because it would devestate her, and a bunch of other emotional dysfunction and superstitious assertations.

 So, with that, I took it back to basics:  We have the stuff we can get closer to knowing through science, and it is amazing.  On the people side it was just a simple "How would you feel if they did that to you?" kind of thing.  Throughout Middle School I sort of maintained a belief in or hope for psychic powers or maybe ghosts, or at least I gave them a try, because everybody wants to be able to change things by just thinking it, or praying it, or whatever, though I finally gave it up as wishful thinking.  So I stayed in that zone until I got out of High School.  Standard atheistic Secular Humanism.  At the time I had this opinion that parents teach kids good things, but that it is expected that we will grow up and ignore all the good advice, and lose our wonder and so on.  I had this idea of "I'm not going to smoke or drink, because obviously it is stupid, and everyone knows it, but they do it anyway" or "parents say kids shouldn't drink coffee, but then they are addicted to coffee" and this kind of thing.  On one level it was "goody two shoes I'm a smart kid following the rules", but on the other hand it all made sense to me and still does, and I don't like rules or any ideas that come from tradition without explanation.  Basically I tried to heed what I percieved as the warnings from adults that made sense to me.  If they said I would lose my curiosity or imagination when I grew up, well maybe I wouldn't then.

 So, now we get to college age.  I blew off college.  I stayed awake at night and slept during the day.  At some point I got interested in basic post-modernism stuff, then later on philosophy, psychology, and some Taoistic and Buddhist things.  Through that I got to be a little familiar with mysticism, and got to where I did not automatically write off all religious people as "irrational needy scared of the dark" or "I just go along with my cultural upbringing unthinkingly" folks.  Now I'm at a point where I am still a Secular Humanist, but I recognize the importance of myth and also really like Buddhism when stripped of its supernatural trappings.  I also think it is important not to reduce and devalue our subjective experiences to merely objective physical occurances, which is something maybe some atheists do, or religious people think they do.  I am a Secular Humanist because I believe that by definition nature is everything, and that while mythic stories can resonate deeply with us and help give us direction in our lives, their "inner truth" is as far as we know only an inner psychological truth, and can not be assumed to mean more or be taken to say anything much about the nature of external objective reality (though maybe there are connections, and there are definitely insights to be had).

As far as the frustrations of being a Secular Humanist, I would say that it is sometimes frustrating that you are percieved as a heartless cold mechanistic party-pooper.  That as a non-theist you don't have profound deep resonating moments where you feel connection with other things.  That perhaps you are shallow and "too literal".  I think many of us have these spiritual feelings, even atheists, but perhaps some atheists don't pay them much mind or try to flatten them into some empirical framework, and others allow themselves to follow the feeling, but just describe it from a different background in a way that doesn't strike a chord with those coming from a theistic background.

Too much typing!
Title: Religion!
Post by: Brian Leybourne on April 05, 2004, 05:16:48 AM
edit: Hmm.. if you're strongly religious, and/or easily offended, you might just want to skip this one.

You know, once I would have said I was Atheist, or maybe Agnostic, but these days, I think I have decided that I'm actually strongly anti-religion.

I'm sick of evangelists sucking money out of the poor and the desperate. I'm sick of fundamentalists blowing themselves up to kill others to make a point. I'm sick of the catholics and protestants in Ireland slaughtering each other needlessly. I'm sick of women and homosexuals being treated as inferior because a 2000 year old book says they are (the same book that says the earth is flat, square and held up at the corners by Angels). I'm sick of being told I'm a bad person because I don't go to church and praise god. I'm sick of the rediculous hypocrisy that is organised religion. I'm sick of the pope, who still will not let his followers use condoms in this overpopulated world that is strife with sexually transmitted diseases. I'm sick of foreign (and domestic) policies being decided based on the religious views of leaders and not common sense. I'm sick of religion governing what we can or cannot teach our children in school.

I have no problems with personal belief. Believe what you like. I'll fight for your right to that. But once you start imposing those views on others, you have stepped into their personal space and taken choice from them. You have stolen from them. That's wrong. Just leave them be - you can believe in what you like, please allow me the same courtesy. (I'm not specifically targeting anyone here, btw, that was a general comment).

Apologies for any toes I have stepped on. If you're pissed, I'll buy you a beer at GenCon and we can discuss it.

Brian.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jack Spencer Jr on April 05, 2004, 05:54:39 AM
Quote from: Ben TerryI am an atheist.  I was a very sciency kid,...*snip*
That's an interesting juxtaposition of phrases. I have been thinking of science as yet another religion for a while now.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Ben Lehman on April 05, 2004, 06:03:38 AM
Quote from: Jack Spencer Jr
Quote from: Ben TerryI am an atheist.  I was a very sciency kid,...*snip*
That's an interesting juxtaposition of phrases. I have been thinking of science as yet another religion for a while now.

BL>  Don't mean to pick on a fellow Ben, but I've always found the athiest's obsession with science strange to the point of puzzling and, when I was more actively a scientist, it really irked me.  It was like some sort of strange cargo cult.

To come forward with my own beliefs -- I have been, for a long time a "fundamentalist agnostic," by which I mean "I don't know, there is no way of knowing, and it makes no difference anyway," with a lot of influence from Eastern philosophy.  But recently I've come to terms with a lot of things from my past, including some things which can really only be described as mystical experiences, and I've also become more enamored of the "Abrahamic" traditions of community and personal understanding of religion.  So now I'm in a crisis of faith about my agnosticism.  :-)  Ah, well.

yrs--
--Ben
Title: Religion!
Post by: contracycle on April 05, 2004, 08:42:15 AM
Quote from: Jack Spencer JrThat's an interesting juxtaposition of phrases. I have been thinking of science as yet another religion for a while now.

I find that claim pretty hard to swallow, myself, and it implies to me that the speaker has not even bothered to do the most cursory investigation into what science is and how it works.  I agree with Valamirs view of science even though I think his beliefs are wrong: if you are confident that your beliefs are true representations of the world as it is, science holds no threat to you, for all it would ever be able to achieve is to verify that your expectations were correct.

But the argument that science is "just like religion" concedes much ground; it concedes a recognition that religious views on the reality of the world are doctrinal, normative, and based on heirarchical authority by whatever means that is determined.  It is in fact a projection of the religious methodology of Truth onto science.

But science does work on fundamentally different principles, cares nothing for your belief nor mine, and doesn't make such comprehensive positive claims as religions commonly make.  In fact, I think it is the lack of an easy, emotional narrative that makes science feel alien to many.  Sure, science can and does have its vehement advocates, but this does not make science anything remotely like a religion.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Ben Lehman on April 05, 2004, 09:05:47 AM
Quote from: contracycle
Quote from: Jack Spencer JrThat's an interesting juxtaposition of phrases. I have been thinking of science as yet another religion for a while now.

But science does work on fundamentally different principles, cares nothing for your belief nor mine, and doesn't make such comprehensive positive claims as religions commonly make.  In fact, I think it is the lack of an easy, emotional narrative that makes science feel alien to many.  Sure, science can and does have its vehement advocates, but this does not make science anything remotely like a religion.

BL>  As a scientist (with the caveat above):  You're both right.

 Science, as a practice, is not a religion.  It is a way of discovering things about the behavior of the world, no more and no less.

 But there are a lot of people in the world who take science and try to make it a religion.  And, for these Athiests (capital A), it really is a religion, because they are trying to draw morality, divinity and infallibility out of science, which are things that it, quite clearly and distinctly, cannot provide at a fundamental level.  Apparently, this works for them, but it's really frustrating to scientists.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  Can you call yourself for drift in your own thread?  You can on the Birthday forum!
Title: Religion!
Post by: lumpley on April 05, 2004, 10:02:31 AM
When I was little, they promised me that when I die, someone will answer all my questions.  No sense asking today whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or if lambeosaurs really used those crests as trumpets, what life is like elsewhere than on Earth (if anything), how brains work - just wait until you're dead.  All your questions will be answered.

I can't speak for any other atheists, obviously, but my obsession with science is because where else am I gonna find out about stuff?

It also makes me a little sad.  I'm going to live my entire existance, beginning to end, without knowing whether lambeosaurs really used their crests as trumpets, for example.  What a letdown that is after all their promises.  I wish they'd been honest with me.

-Vincent
Title: Religion!
Post by: quozl on April 05, 2004, 10:22:32 AM
I believe in loving God and loving people and Jesus said if you do that, you get to go to Heaven.  I hope to meet all of you there and play some really cool games.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Eero Tuovinen on April 05, 2004, 10:54:09 AM
Well, as cruciel already said, there's really a world of difference between an atheist and agnostic. The first has chosen a belief, while the second has not. As far as Reason goes, the agnostic definitely has good chances of trumping both the theist and atheist. "My axiom is that something is untrue if not proven true." says the atheist, and agnostic answers "Well, why is that?"

My own religious development has largely been premeditated by philosophy. I was born and raised as a lutheran, but the departure was quite painless and natural when I realized one by one how indefensible the christian notions were. And I'm not talking about cosmology or epistemology, either; the standard refusal of religion, while based on the said disciplines, isn't enough for anyone who actually considers the matter seriously. It's only stupid to refute christianity based on empirical proof, when the main point isn't in any way cosmological: if you disprove god but fail to disprove christian morality, you have gained nothing and lost all.

The linchpin of my agnosticism was then moral theory, ethics. After careful consideration I came to see that christian morality is inherently immoral in the kanthian sense; no doubt a simple fact in itself, but it takes time to truly penetrate, time and experience of true morality not predicated by social or metaphysical rewards.

Viewed apart from their moral pretensions it's simple to relegate all kinds of religion to their place as ultimately matters of faith; if you need it, good for you. Without moral dimension religion is singularily irrelevant to life on earth: why should I care what some all-powerful being might or might not do to me, apart from the moral ramifications of my own actions? Whether my road be towards heaven or hell, I walk there in peace with myself, certain of being right myself (or of being wrong, as it might be). Or if there is no afterlife, why, then there's all the more reason to judge fairly and without theological interference in the matters of life on earth.

Thus I come to the abovementioned conclusion: I've yet to come face to face with intellectually true religion, and thus all religious faith is suspect intellectually. Being that my own ethics approve of being true to your beliefs, I hold many religious people to high esteem simply because of their morals, despite their foolishness.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on April 05, 2004, 11:03:25 AM
Eero, I don't think it's appropriate to require intellectual truth, as you call it, of any mystical, mythological belief system. Religions are the sediment of culture; they accrete through the ages, collecting stories, beliefs, and laws of behavior, some of which become obscured by later or more salient items. A religion doesn't require consistency or rationality of itself because that would be denying its humanity.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Ben Terry on April 05, 2004, 11:07:31 AM
Replying to 2 posts at once here.

I think Ben Lehman may be confusing me for what he thinks of as "capital 'A' Atheists", or using my childhood amazement of the world and science as a jumping point where he can discuss this particular type of atheists he dislikes or disagrees with.  As for morality, as described, I am a Humanist, and while science has a lot to potentially say about human behavior I think it is a mistake to say that science can lead to iron clad value judgements by saying things like "Humans are genetically predisposed to this, so we should accept it and not work against nature" etc.  The place where I can see a lot of this is "evolutionary psychology" that tries to explain things like the way our romantic relationships work and the different attitudes of men and women are a result of some evolutionary strategy to maximize successful breeding and survivial and all of this.  Even if it was solid science (which I do not think it is at this point), it would not therefor mean we should act in any particular way.  Science attempts to describe, it does not proscribe.

So, I just had to clarify that I don't think I am trying to make science more than it is.

Now for Jack.  I think that science is quite a different thing from religion in many aspects.  One notable aspect is that science does not have the same ceremonial structure relating to major life events.  Parents don't take babies to the science temple and promise to raise him as a warrior for science, I never had a puberty mitzvah where we reverently discussed the biological process of puberty as a rite of passage, there are no science weddings (May these 2 individuals, who have shown strong pair bonding, live a long life due to successful evolutionary strategies, praise science", or science funerals (My dear friend was blessed with elegant genetics, and was raised in such an envioronment that his behavior was aesthetically pleasing to me.  I will engage in the tell tale mouning phase of the human as his body proceeds along the path of decomposition, praise science).  Also, another aspect of many religions is an emotionally supportive community, and there really is not a "science as religion" equivilent to that.  I think that this is because science is dealing with a whole different set of concerns.  Science does not try to console, or explain the existential "Why am I here?" stuff, though some people look no further than science for it.  Traditionally religion has been the place a lot of people look for that sort of thing, and philosophy addresses it sometimes in a less warm way.  There are probably a lot of different other ways people go about dealing with it also.  Personally, I find the religions I grew up with too full of crufty stories about violent and barbaric nomadic tribes and supernatural fictions to use any one of them as a base that I could extract the meaningful "good parts" from.  Much of it seems unnecessarily obfuscatory, and leads to a lot of people crediting a supernatural God with happenstance events, or trying to draw moral conclusions from events where you really can not (like people I work with who saw 9/11 in part being a result of America falling away from God, and this sort of thinking).  As I mentioned before, Buddhism stripped of its supernatural trappings has struck me as pretty nice so far, but is is mixed in with some other things.  Science is not my religion, but I do use it as a guide in that I will not believe something that contradicts it.  Also, science has been part of what has made me think that it is important to realize when you do not know something, and that you don't have to fill up the empty spaces with guesses or hopes or attribute it to anything in particular, but just be at peace with it.

I am a sucker for these kinds of threads...
Title: Religion!
Post by: contracycle on April 05, 2004, 11:18:40 AM
Quote from: Shreyas SampatEero, I don't think it's appropriate to require intellectual truth, as you call it, of any mystical, mythological belief system. Religions are the sediment of culture; they accrete through the ages, collecting stories, beliefs, and laws of behavior, some of which become obscured by later or more salient items. A religion doesn't require consistency or rationality of itself because that would be denying its humanity.

All of these seem to me like good reasons for chucking the lot in the Marianas trench.  I don't want to live in a society that incorporates nostalgic exceptions to rationality, just because we did it that way in the past.

I also strongly disagree with the claim a religion needs neither rationality or consistency or it would deny its humanity.  Fine, humans are not relentlessly rational animals, but we certainly can achieve high degrees of rationality and over all I feel the progress we have made has demonstrated its worth.  If its going to be a moral code, it has to be consistent or its worthless.  If its going to be a description of the world, it has to be rational or its useless (possibly even dangerous).  It is not un-human to try to understand our world better, deal with it better, it is in fact IMO very human indeed.

Its also very human to seek dominance over others, and the obscurantism and irrationality of religion have made it a remarkably effective tool for doing so.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on April 05, 2004, 11:37:09 AM
My point isn't that rationality and consistency aren't compatible with religion; it's that expecting accumulated religion to meet these requirements is like expecting the thickness of a tree's rings to match the Fibonacci Sequence. It's really, really unlikely, and doesn't make the tree any less valuable. It just doesn't make it a very good Fibonacci Sequence (or moral code) reference.

Requiring rationality and consistency of these things basically assumes you are willing to revise them and turn them into synthetic, codified items. This sucks. Synthetic mythologies are weak. Personally, I don't expect the texts of religion to be either a literal description of the world or a moral code to be taken at face value; either of those approaches are patently ridiculous. Religion still has worth as mythology, even if you discard the things that can be extracted from it through a willingness to resolve inconsistency through introspection.

I also happen to think that rationality is overrated, particularly by crotchety philosophical types who have nothing better to do than to write books to each other. It's only as much a tool as, say, a fork is; without injecting some creativity and emotional investment into the equation, you are not going to sculpt a David out of your mashed potatoes.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 05, 2004, 11:42:46 AM
Quote from: Eero TuovinenAs far as Reason goes, the agnostic definitely has good chances of trumping both the theist and atheist. "My axiom is that something is untrue if not proven true." says the atheist, and agnostic answers "Well, why is that?"

I'm not certain that I'm parsing this correctly, but if I am, then I disagree strongly.  I'm an atheist, not because the presense of the divine has not been proven, but because there is not a single shred or iota of evidence to support it in any way.  

I do use science to help me determine likely truth.  And science doesn't prove things.  It never has and never will.  That's not part of the game.  All it can do is disprove things.  As a hypothesis gathers supporting evidence, it becomes more likely to be adopted as a small-T truth, more widely.  To my experience, no evidence for a divine experience of any kind has accumulated.  Nor has it been disproved.  It remains an interesting theory except for the untestability of it.  I suppose there might be a creator, but it seems pretty unlikely given no evidence whatsoever.  We could also be living in a VR penal colony where our meat is slowly harvested to feed the burgeoning population of sentient rats from Alpha Centauri.  But with absolutely no evidence to support that hypothesis, it remains an interesting  -- if bizzarre, notion.  I find it also interesting to note that if someone insisted that the latter of these two equally plausible unsupported hypotheses were true, and behaved daily as if it were, that person would be very likely to find themselves incarcerated in a rubber room.  You Christians have it easy.

Christ                                ...opher
Title: Religion!
Post by: Rich Forest on April 05, 2004, 11:45:15 AM
It's strange that I find myself in the position as the defender of religion as an alternative to science, given that I'm a skeptic and an agnostic and a science fan.

I'm more concerned by intolerance. And I constantly see the same kind of intolerance of religion by my fellow science fans that they are accusing religion of perpetuating. It's a bit pot/kettle, frankly. It's the same kind of superior attitude that led to all kinds of imperialist programs to help improve "the natives." Science is hardly blameless, as much as it makes sense to me and has a good system of "truth seeking"--emphasis on the seeking. Truth is a pretty slippery issue, but that's never stopped people from claiming a monopoly on it. Religion and science can both be used and misused for that. Flat out dismissal of competing viewpoints, to the point of claiming that the world would be better with them rooted out and destroyed? Religion fans? Check. Science fans. Yup.

Meh.

Rich
Title: Religion!
Post by: Shreyas Sampat on April 05, 2004, 11:46:38 AM
I find myself saying this a lot. Great post, Rich.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Rich Forest on April 05, 2004, 11:50:44 AM
Thanks Shreyas. I know what you're saying. I think I need the sentiment written on a shirt or something.

Heh, we're beating the Iraq thread by at least a page. So take that, Iraq thread. (Sure we had a head start, but let's keep that little detail hush-hush.)

Rich
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jonathan Walton on April 05, 2004, 11:55:32 AM
Yeah, Rich, you officially rock in all sorts of ways.  

(I mean, he's this hip dude living in Hong Kong who loves coffee and playing the Street Fighter RPG. Holy fah-sniggle! If I'm in Nanjing next year, I'll definitely take a train down so we can sip some joe, talk about Chinese politics, and HADUKEN! each other into submission.  I'm so there.)
Title: Religion!
Post by: Rich Forest on April 05, 2004, 12:07:16 PM
Jonathon, Street Fighter and coffee are on. And we love to talk Chinese politics in Hong Kong. When you get to Nanjing, let me know. My wife and I need, need a good excuse to go up there.

(Meanwhile, I am quietly planning a trip to Beijing where another certain... I'll go with "Forgista"... lives. Oh, he doesn't know it yet. But that isn't slowing my plans any.)

Hm, topic drift is endangering the flames of war! We're going to lose our lead on Iraq if this keeps up. Group hugs always fade away more quickly than wars. A shame, that.

Rich
Title: Thelemite
Post by: BPetroff93 on April 05, 2004, 12:08:26 PM
I am a Thelemite.  Essentially this means I follow the Law or Thelema (or at least try to )  It can be found in the signature of my posts.  This is not a lisence to engage in every passing whim or fancy but rather an instruction to discover the true purpose of your existence and follow it.  I am a member of the largest and oldest Thelemite group in existence, the OTO.  More information can be found at: http://oto-usa.org/ or feel free to email me: Bpetroff93@hotmail.com
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jonathan Walton on April 05, 2004, 12:23:31 PM
Sweet, Brendan!  I didn't even know such a thing existed.  My brother and I picked up a copy of "The Book of the Law" at a used book store several years ago, and really enjoyed flipping through it.  Not the path for me, but really interesting stuff.  

Why can't there be a mainstream gnostic denomination these days?  That's what I want to know.  Anybody want to come found the Gnostic Church of America with me?  Come on, anybody?  If I were God, the first thing I'd do would be to bring back the Gnostic Christians and the Taiping and then make Sufism the main branch of Islam.  Abrahamism would be so much cooler with a bit more more mysticism, especially in the mainstream.  None of this touchy-feeling New Age Unitarian stuff either.  Old school "Sophia, the Wisdom of God" mysticism.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 05, 2004, 12:31:20 PM
Quote from: Eero Tuovinenintellectually true religion
Would you describe the beliefs of, or the workings of, an intellectually true religion?

I ask because I'm not getting what you're claiming (all) religions lack or fail to deal with intellectually/logically just from what you've said so far on the subject.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Eero Tuovinen on April 05, 2004, 12:35:39 PM
I agree fully with Shreyas' sentiment, and don't think anyone else has said anything awfully incorrect. Really, it's a losing proposition to argue religion with these people; there's just too many opinions correct in their own way.

Shreyas: I'm fully in agreement that religions have a crucial and important part in the aesthetic and "soul" of humanity. I'd think world were a much less interesting or desirable place without the follies and nobility engendered by religion. At the same time we'd probably have remarcably less hassles with everything, but that's the price we pay for freedom and interesting times. I'm not trying to deny the aesthetic, just the ethical relevance religions claim. Actually my own aesthetic theory has for a couple of years explained religious experience as primarily aesthetic. Thus I can only say that I don't "believe", as I ascribe only aesthetic, not cosmologic, epistemologic or ethical relevance to religion.

Christopher: What you describe as scientific atheism is as close to agnostism as one probably ever gets. See why I deem it the only defensible position? You cannot prove the existence or non-existence of gods (or rats from Alpha Centauri), and thus are forced to come to one of two conclusions: either there is no supernatural, or you take the nominal, scientific stance of "there is no supernatural - so far". And that's agnosticism, as differentiated from atheism, the belief that there is no supernatural. Essentially you are calling atheism what I'd call agnosticism, so there doesn't seem to be a disagreement.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 05, 2004, 12:37:38 PM
Quote from: Brian Leybourneif you're strongly religious...I'm actually strongly anti-religion.
Brian, Brian, Brian...didn't you read my rant last year?
You're strongly anti-fundamentalist is what you are. You aren't anti-religion, at least not based on the reasons you give in your post, because you aren't describing religion...you're describing Western Judeo-Christian religions, with strong fundamentalist overtones. But not all religion.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 05, 2004, 12:42:18 PM
Quote from: Eero TuovinenAnd that's agnosticism, as differentiated from atheism, the belief that there is no supernatural. Essentially you are calling atheism what I'd call agnosticism, so there doesn't seem to be a disagreement.

But I do believe that there is no supernatural.  Just like I believe that I'm not alien rat chow.  And I'll say that I'm open to being shown that I'm wrong, but at the same time, I have spent serious time trying to figure out what evidence I'd accept as supportive and I can't think of any.  I think open-minded atheism is the only rational response to my life experiences.  (Also, I can't be in anyone else's mind of course, but I'm highly dubious of those who come to a different conclusion, even though many of them are clearly smarter than me.)

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 05, 2004, 12:44:58 PM
Quote from: greyormBut not all religion.

What are the fundamental defining attributes of religion?  I'll admit to being largely unstudied, but off the cuff, I consider faith in unsupport(ed/able) notions as a prime attribute.

Chris
Title: Gnostic Church
Post by: BPetroff93 on April 05, 2004, 12:47:53 PM
Hey Jonathan, did you by chance read The Law is for All.  It's the Book of the Law with the only authorized commentary (ie: Crowley's) it clears up alot.  By  the way, The Religious arm of the OTO is the EGC or Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica  (universal gnostic church) its not Christian but was inspired by the Russian Orthodox rite.  Here is a small sample, the statement of faith:

"I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.

And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET.

And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA.

And I believe in the communion of Saints.

And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.

And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom whereby we accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation.

And I confess my life one, individual, and eternal that was, and is, and is to come.

AUMGN. AUMGN. AUMGN."

Anyway, I hope you dig.
Title: Re: Religion!
Post by: Anonymous on April 05, 2004, 12:52:35 PM
Quote from: Ben LehmanHi.
So what do you believe, and why?  Do you think other people are wrong?  Why your religion?

I don't have a religion per se (if you mean religion as in a practice).  However, I describe myself as animist because after examining how I truly interact with reality.  It is, of course, more complicated than it initially seems, but I will try to put it succintly.  

I believe (for lack of a better term) that all physical phenomena are a manifestation of spirit.  I don't believe all spirits have bodies, nor do I believe that bodies are necessary for spirits.  I don't worship spirits so much as acknowledge and respect them as I would any creature of nature (mostly by leaving them be).  I have no idea if bodies are needed for most spirits to interact with the world.  I do not know if there is a grand cosmic scheme for all this.  I do not distinguish between sacred and profane in the same sense that Judeo-Christian ideologies do.  I think rationality is a great tool, but not the only one we have for understanding reality.  

As such, I don't make a habit of killing things just because they are in the way or because I am afraid of them.  I do, however, take measures to keep my home and person free from parasites and creatures that carry pestilence.  I don't go digging into realities that I do not understand unless the situation truly warrants it.  Basically, I strive to understand and appreciate things for what they are and not for how I think they should be.  This does not mean I don't have ethical standards or that nothing angers, frustrates, or frightens me.  Yet, I do try to give things the room to be, insofar as it does no harm, but you won't see me trying to play superhero/supervillain and campaigning to spread good/evil.  Instead, I tend to try to mind my own business and pursue my own goodness and understand my own capacity for evil.  In other words, I don't try to change everybody else's nature, but seek to understand and express my own.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Green on April 05, 2004, 12:57:24 PM
Sorry.  I forgot to log in when I posted before.  Guest = Green.
Title: Re: Gnostic Church
Post by: Jonathan Walton on April 05, 2004, 01:26:22 PM
Quote from: BPetroff93Anyway, I hope you dig.

I can dig it.  Not such a big fan of Crowley (he was a real nutjob), but I'll definitely check the book out.  Personally, when gnosticism goes down the "Occult Road" and I feel like it becomes obscured and less cool, generally.  I mean, mystery cults are all well and good, but they apply a heirchary to things, which doesn't make sense if truth and wisdom are supposed to be obtainable by all.  Stuff like "The Hypostasis of the Archons" is hard enough to understand without people claiming some elitist "true understanding" or turning to numerology or overly-complex symbolism or other traditional tools of the occult.
Title: Shure
Post by: BPetroff93 on April 05, 2004, 01:47:38 PM
I can understand your sentaments Jonathan, even if I disagree :)
Title: Religion!
Post by: Matt Wilson on April 05, 2004, 02:04:12 PM
I'm without religion. I don't know for certain that there's nothing out there, that there isn't some "higher power," but it isn't a concern for me.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jason Lee on April 05, 2004, 03:34:58 PM
I just have to comment on the science equals religion thing.

Broader definitions of 'science' must be at work here, 'cause that just seems wrong to me.

In science, for something to be a fact it must be observable and replica-table.  Even if biologists generally consider rejection of evolutionary theory tantamount to rejection of reason (that's a quote from by zoology book), it is still a theory (scientific definition), not a fact.

Faith (I'm going to say faith instead of religion, to separate belief from the trappings of religion) is all about believing something is true that you cannot see.

Logically, they are opposites.  Science is believing through observation.  Faith is believing without observation.
Title: Religion!
Post by: RaconteurX on April 05, 2004, 05:33:20 PM
Quote from: Brian LeybourneI think I have decided that I'm actually strongly anti-religion.

Amen, brother. Institutionalized ideologies in any form are a thorn in the collective side of humanity. Pretty much every war in human history can have its origin traced to one or another. Religion alone is not at fault, as nominally secular ideologies have caused plenty of grief all their own.

The chief problem, in my opinion, is when people accept what others tell them without question. Belief is not a bad thing, but unquestioning belief has lead to the sorts of atrocities we have come to associate with Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden and Milosevic. Political or spiritual, dogma is dogma.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Scourge108 on April 05, 2004, 09:05:59 PM
I try to follow the 3-fisted path of "Bob."
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 05, 2004, 10:56:06 PM
Heya Christopher,
Quotefaith in unsupport(ed/able) notions as a prime attribute
But that wasn't what Brian was objecting to, in the main. Note all of his examples are actions undertaken on behalf of specific religious groups that all fall under the Judeo-Christian family, and its attendant demands and behaviors, which are not shared by all world religions.

But to follow that tangent, as for religion being based on faith (which requires unsupported/able notions), I can see that. However, I disagree that faith, religion, and spiritually necessarily have anything to do with each other.

For example, I have faith in a lot of things...religion (or more correctly, spiritual realities) isn't one of them, however.

Am I going to discuss why I know there's something beyond human, something that I can really only describe as "spiritual", that exists? Not really, it's personal, private, and not for public consumption. My wife knows, and my closest friends know -- so maybe five people in the world, total, including myself.

Will I discuss why I say "know" as opposed to "believe"? Briefly.

Honestly, in standard parlance, I would be forced to admit that I know nothing and only believe what I know. But if we're talking reasonable doubt, then I can use know.

Given the experiences I've had, and one in particular, there are no other reasonable explanations that do not require additional unlikely assumptions in order to work -- that means other explanations exist, yes, but none of them are as reasonable given Occham's Razor and all that. I also don't expect anyone to understand that, given that I've not provided the experiences for examination.

All I can say is that, yes, something is "out there" -- I don't know what it is or why it is, but it's there.

However, my religion is about ethics, not ritualized behaviors or beliefs. The gods exist, whether "for real" or "imagined" -- as signposts and goals by which to judge one's own life, as great idols to be emulated.

But whether real or imagined simply doesn't concern me much in actual practice, as Bhuddist philosophy concerning "that which cannot be proven" is that it is not relevant to the here and now, and self should not be concerned with it. If the gods are real, if the afterlife is real, one is to deal with that when one enters the afterlife, not worry about it here and now.

Why? Becauses it's like worrying where the river comes from, or why water is wet, when you're trying desperately just to swim across it.

(You non-mystic types shouldn't try to read too much into (ie: overanalyze) that analogy, BTW)

Quote from: Christopher WeeksI'm open to being shown that I'm wrong, but at the same time, I have spent serious time trying to figure out what evidence I'd accept as supportive and I can't think of any. I think open-minded atheism is the only rational response to my life experiences.
Interestingly, I'm the mirror image of you, Chris. My thoughts are all the same, but my conclusions differ, based on my own life experiences.

I also find myself nodding in agreement with Rich's statements about the attitudes and behaviors (and suggestions) of certain scientists and other "men of modern times" as-it-were being as bad as those of the institutions they decry or turn their noses up at.

However,
Quote from: Christopher WeeksTo my experience, no evidence for a divine experience of any kind has accumulated.
I would say the opposite, that there is overwhelming evidence of the divine historically and culturally. If every individual and culture throughout history has reported that the sky is blue, then there's a good chance that the sky really, actually is blue. Certainly there is enough evidence that the concept of the divine, stripped of specific religious overtones, cannot be dismissed out of hand, even if "what it is, really" is entirely unknown.

Rather like knowing there's something causing fluctuations in the light spectrum given off by a distant star, but not knowing what the cause is. You can't dismiss the fluctuations just because you don't know the cause, and just because there are wildly competing theories. (Again, I caution this is an analogy, it does not map 1:1 to the real, actual situation, and if it did, would be full of easily exploited holes. As such, don't waste my time with those and overanalyzation of such. It's an example.)

Anyways, my problem with Brian's statements is that he's talking about the problems and foibles of a specific religion, then mapping his dislike of those things to all religions. Synedoche.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Yasha on April 06, 2004, 12:35:07 AM
I'm a Christian Gnostic.  I attend services at the local chapter of the Ecclesia Gnostica, which is Christian and has nothing to do with the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica mentioned above.  I've been attending mass since the 4th Sunday of Advent and will be baptized this week on Holy Saturday.

What I believe is mostly irrelevant to my religion (which has a mythos but no required dogma or creed).  At minimum, I believe that humans are hardwired for religion.  I believe that our minds are complex, and that deep down have components that speak and understand the language of religious imagery and mythic content.  I believe that, in order to become a whole person,  we need to nourish those subconscious parts of our minds through spiritual practice as much as we need to nourish the rational parts with study and problem-solving. From skimming Penrose, I believe that consciousness is like mathematics in that it's linked to this world but ultimately resides in another realm -- this allows me to keep a more open mind about the possibility of a collective unconsciousness or divine beings within a purely spiritual realm.

Beyond that I probably believe lots of other contradictory things, changing according to context.  I mean, I used to pray to my muses while bowling.

I would say that a religion is wrong to the extent that it becomes harmful to its believers and especially to its non-believers.  If a religion is responsible for the loss of human rights, that's no good.

I have chosen my religion because:
- It has all the things I like about Christianity (and more) and little of the bad.  I'm not told to worship the god that did all the petty stuff in the old testament, because that's not even the true god.  There's no eternal damnation.  There's no concept of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which never made any sense to me.  There's no original sin.  There's no one way to interpret scripture and there's not even an official set of scripture.
- The emphasis is on personal religious experience, not secondhand experience through a book.  The eventual goal is to wake up, which resonates a lot for me.
- Mass is beautiful.  I experience awe and wonder, and afterwards I feel great.
- I am much more in touch with the passage of time through the year because of the liturgical calendar.  I'm excited this year to experience the holy days for the first time.  (This week is going to be a megadose, with services for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter.)
- I'm the spiritually slow person in my congregation, so I feel like I have so much more to learn.

The thing is, I don't know anyone outside of church to whom I would recommend it, but it works for me.  I think the challenge in the 21st century is to find a way to trick your rational mind into accepting a spiritual path, without succumbing to a viral belief system (name your fundamentalism) that takes over your rational mind.

-- Yasha "James" Cunningham
Title: Religion!
Post by: DannyK on April 06, 2004, 03:17:35 AM
Quote from: Yasha
What I believe is mostly irrelevant to my religion (which has a mythos but no required dogma or creed).  At minimum, I believe that humans are hardwired for religion.  I believe that our minds are complex, and that deep down have components that speak and understand the language of religious imagery and mythic content.  I believe that, in order to become a whole person,  we need to nourish those subconscious parts of our minds through spiritual practice as much as we need to nourish the rational parts with study and problem-solving. From skimming Penrose, I believe that consciousness is like mathematics in that it's linked to this world but ultimately resides in another realm -- this allows me to keep a more open mind about the possibility of a collective unconsciousness or divine beings within a purely spiritual realm.

Hey, those are some very interesting points.  Actually, I think the congruence of mathematics with the physical world is a strong clue that mind may be more than just an accidental emergent property of matter.  

I'm Jewish despite everything, in part because Judaism has a robust tradition of wrestling with God.  Also, once you include several millenia's worth of editing, commentary, and retcons, the Old Testament is truly a thing of beauty.  

I've noticed that I relate most positively to religions through their aesthetics, and most negatively through their influence on politics.
Judaism: Psalms=good, Yesha council=bad.
Islam: Qawali singers=good, Taliban=bad.
Christianity: Bach & C.S. Lewis = good, Moral Majority=bad.

That's not very coherent, I know, but I try to focus on the good part of things.

Danny
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jack Aidley on April 06, 2004, 05:23:03 AM
I am profoundly Atheist. I believe there is a real world, and that that world corresponds in a meaningful fashion to our senses.

I came from a Christian family, and was 'born-again' for a while in my teens - my mum is now an ordained priest in the Church of England.

I consider fundamentalism or, indeed, any ideologically driven world view to be harmful, but more moderate religions (like those I was raised) with to be broadly neutral in general, and highly beneficial to some individuals.

I find the association of capital 'A' Atheism and Scientism in this thread somewhat bizarre.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Eero Tuovinen on April 06, 2004, 07:07:32 AM
Quote from: greyorm
Quote from: Eero Tuovinenintellectually true religion
Would you describe the beliefs of, or the workings of, an intellectually true religion?

I ask because I'm not getting what you're claiming (all) religions lack or fail to deal with intellectually/logically just from what you've said so far on the subject.

As has already been noted, religion as cosmology is a contradiction in terms: there's no religion to it if you know without faith that it's true.

There has also already been allusions to the fact that humans tend to believe in things anyway; this is not to be taken as a proof for religion, but rather as an indication about human condition. I believe in many things not fully supported by logic, none of them just happen to include so elaborate metaphysical trappings as things that are called religion. Could be my beliefs are just as nebulous, however; I'd say we have some here who'd think believing in God more sensible than believing in the possibility of successful communism, for example, and still I refuse to believe in first and believe tentatively in the second. Belief is hard-wired, religion is not.

As far as intellectually true religion goes, it's highly unlikely because the adherents would have to believe only in "true" things. Not many of those, is there? "Intellectually true" means mainly accomodating of logic and consistency in it's axioms, qualities totally irrelevant to religions. Religions are myths priests try to explain, not something "intellectually true".
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 06, 2004, 10:30:06 AM
Quote from: greyormGiven the experiences I've had, and one in particular, there are no other reasonable explanations that do not require additional unlikely assumptions in order to work -- that means other explanations exist, yes, but none of them are as reasonable given Occham's Razor and all that. I also don't expect anyone to understand that, given that I've not provided the experiences for examination.

Obviously it'll be tricky to circle your specific experience, but when I say that I can't think of evidence that would support the hypothesis that there is something out there, what I mean is it supports some other hypothesis better.  My mother believes in lots of modern American mystic pseudo-pagan stuff.  She has boatloads of "evidence" for paranormal events.  And I've had close friends that were similarly inclined.  Growing up with her and her friends, and my own, I got to "experience" lots of supposedly paranormal events (lucid dreaming, hypnosis, past-life regression, witchcraft, channelling, object reading, broadly characatured Amerind mysticism, psychic surgery, out of body experiences, magik, poltergeists, etc.).  And there were times when I belived some of what was happening.  But I can think back through all that now and there are simply better, more plausible explanations that do not require any faith.  If Jesus woke me up tomorrow morning and taught me to walk on water, I'd certainly hold open the door in my mind for that being a possibility, but I think that I'd suspect another explanation as more plausible (insanity being prime).

Quote from: greyormI also find myself nodding in agreement with Rich's statements about the attitudes and behaviors (and suggestions) of certain scientists and other "men of modern times" as-it-were being as bad as those of the institutions they decry or turn their noses up at.

Well, there are certainly scientists who leave science to pursue political agenda.  And I disagree with them sometimes.  And some of them pursue bad science, by which I mean they espouse unsupported findings and doink with their data to falsify results.  That's way bad.  But what do you mean specifically?

Quote from: greyormHowever,
Quote from: Christopher WeeksTo my experience, no evidence for a divine experience of any kind has accumulated.
I would say the opposite, that there is overwhelming evidence of the divine historically and culturally. If every individual and culture throughout history has reported that the sky is blue, then there's a good chance that the sky really, actually is blue. Certainly there is enough evidence that the concept of the divine, stripped of specific religious overtones, cannot be dismissed out of hand, even if "what it is, really" is entirely unknown.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that people tend to seek explanations for observed phenomena that fits their observations.  Prior to the invention of science as a method of inquiry, other methods had to be used.  I consider that these mostly amount to making shit up and letting the most plausible tales gain momentum.  Note that the religious belief of each age is laughable to the next.  The "concept of the divine, stripped of specific" isn't very meaningful.  I don't see any evidence for such a presense other than as a mental (perhaps useful!) construction.

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: Marhault on April 06, 2004, 10:49:09 AM
I'm what I like to call a practicing agnostic.  That is, I know there's something more to existence that I haven't quite figured out yet and I'm actively (at least, on and off) trying to figure out what it is.

My problem with straight "scientific" type atheism?  There must be an exception to the Law of Conservation, otherwise the existence of the universe is impossible.  Based on this, I wonder what it is that my understanding lacks, and search. . .
Title: Religion!
Post by: Green on April 06, 2004, 11:41:41 AM
Weird observation:

Whenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?  Not saying I have a particular problem with people being atheist, agnostic, or Christian, but it always seems that these are the only voices being heard.
Title: Religion!
Post by: orbsmatt on April 06, 2004, 11:42:50 AM
Ooo... This topic could get controversial rather quickly...

*steps back into the shadows*
Title: Religion!
Post by: quozl on April 06, 2004, 11:46:55 AM
Quote from: GreenWeird observation:

Whenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?  Not saying I have a particular problem with people being atheist, agnostic, or Christian, but it always seems that these are the only voices being heard.

Yeah, let's talk about nationalism: the most evil religion ever invented.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jack Aidley on April 06, 2004, 11:48:27 AM
QuoteWhenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?

Because these are the most likely beliefs to be held by educated english-speakers with internet connections?
Title: Religion!
Post by: clehrich on April 06, 2004, 11:50:29 AM
Quote from: GreenWhenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?  Not saying I have a particular problem with people being atheist, agnostic, or Christian, but it always seems that these are the only voices being heard.
Because mainstream public rhetoric defines Christianity -- specifically mainstream Protestant Christianity -- as "normal" religion.

For example:
Separation of church and state.  As Talal Asad pointed out in Genealogies of Religion, the Koran is quite specific that these should not be divided.  Similarly Judaism, before the fall of the Second Temple, cannot make this division.  So therefore Islam is not "normal" religion.  Justifies our attacking Islamic countries.

Faith.  Everybody knows that faith is the central point that defines religion, right?  Bullshit.  Until quite recently, Judaism for example had nothing much to do with faith.  It was about Law: read the Gospels some time, and see what Jesus has to say about the Law.  And what about Catholicism, with its doctrine of works over faith?  Well now, it's all about faith in your own home, in private.  That's called Protestantism, folks.  While I'm at it, let me point out that Buddhism has nothing to do with faith; that's the point.  And what about religions of tribal peoples, where very often faith is simply not at issue?

When people start attacking religion these days, it's usually about believing in unscientific things.  But you can't disprove a metaphysical claim, folks -- that's why it's metaphysics.

And I'm not even going to get into definitions of religion as a problem in the History of Religions as an academic discipline, except to say that we discarded faith, gods, and everything like it long ago in the face of actual evidence from studies of religious behaviors around the world.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 06, 2004, 12:00:14 PM
Quote from: clehrichAnd I'm not even going to get into definitions of religion as a problem in the History of Religions as an academic discipline, except to say that we discarded faith, gods, and everything like it long ago in the face of actual evidence from studies of religious behaviors around the world.

Come on....give us a little more.  I was serious when I asked about what religion is.  I never had it and never studied it.  I'm not ashamed of my ignorance, but that doesn't mean I want to keep it.

Are you saying that the only thing your discipline uses to classify and define religion is behavioral traditions?

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: clehrich on April 06, 2004, 12:09:31 PM
I'm not sure what you mean by "behavioral traditions," I'm afraid.

Basically what we've done is to go and look at a whole hell of a lot of things that sort of look like what we tend to think religion is.  And we've found that there are very, very few broad consistencies, if any.

Gods?  Nope.
Faith?  Nope.
etc.

By some pretty broad definitions, at least, you do find myth and ritual pretty much always.  By some rather broader definitions, you also find a kind of theology, as in ways of interpreting a given mythic and ritual canon in terms of present situations.  You pretty much always find political jockeying and power-structures using the rhetoric of what we're rather loosely calling religion here.

In short, what we find is that religion isn't a thing.  It's not "out there" to go find.  You have to construct a category based on some examples, and then go see what else falls into it.  And what you find is that human ingenuity has come up with a lot more and more complicated things than you'd normally think of as religion, and if you go and include those as part of what religion "is," you find that your initial sense of a neat category has gone out the window.

One problem was always that people wanted to figure out where religion came from; this is called the "origins" problem.  Tylor thought it was basically animistic projection of spirits.  Frazer thought it was the realization that magic doesn't work.  Durkheim thought it was misrecognition of social bonding effects.  And so on.  But in the end, we came to realize that there's no way of answering this question intelligently, because you have to define religion first, then figure out where it came from, and that ends up with circular logic.

In the end, it's rather odd, but scholars of religion generally are about the only people who refuse to define religion!  These days, in fact, we're generally unwilling even to define ritual and myth, though I think that's going too far.  But even those definitions won't look much like you think they will.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 06, 2004, 12:15:45 PM
Interesting.  It makes me wonder though, if it wouldn't be (at least sometimes) more productive to force "religion" into a smaller category by establishing criteria that a thing must meet to be considered religion and then making your observations based on the subset.  You'd obviously have to have a defensible limitation and a reason for choosing that place to draw a line, but it seems like it'd be easier to study.

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: clehrich on April 06, 2004, 12:18:09 PM
Oh sure, that's commonly done.  But you can't make universal statements on that basis, that's all.  So if you define "religion" as monotheism, for example, you can certainly make some interesting bounded studies.  But you have to throw out all non-monotheistic "religions" from the outset, and that's sort of a problem if you want to make larger statements about what religion "really is".
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 06, 2004, 12:24:41 PM
Yeah, but you aren't going to make any larger statements about what religion really is anyway because you can't define it!

Does religion always try to illustrate appropriate behavior?

Does religion always try to explain phenomena?

It's interestng that you note religion commonly includes a power structure.  I would have thought surely there are egalitarian lay religious traditions that subvert that as a distinction.

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: Sean on April 06, 2004, 12:36:52 PM
Jack Aidley wrote: "I believe there is a real world, and that that world corresponds in a meaningful fashion to our senses."

This turns out to be hard to prove. I believe it too though.

Chris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'? I can think of two plausible answers:

1) They 'seem like religion' even though they don't fit one or another traditional definition. What's the basis of the seeming, then? It seems that here you've got to assume there's some underlying concept of religion that hasn't been analyzed well enough to receive a clear formulation, or else that religion is too 'out there', if the seeming in question is to have any basis other than whim.

2) The ol' Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance' line: well, there are these things that are sort of like these other things and those are sort of like these other things, and so on, and gosh, where would you draw a non-arbitrary line? I guess there isn't one...


The status of (2) is unclear at best. Many intelligent people consider this kind of line an abication of intellectual or theoretical responsibility more generally; of those who do not, the best tend to be very astute at comparing different particular cases in illuminating ways. On the other hand, you might also think the argument, like so many others, just shows the hopelessness of being an empiricist about everything, and the importance of keeping certain concepts fixed on 'rational' or 'a priori' grounds (at least until the needs of research show that it's time to replace them with better ones) so that you can make progress with your investigations.
Title: Religion!
Post by: clehrich on April 06, 2004, 12:50:18 PM
Quote from: SeanChris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'?
Well I don't think we do, actually.  The sticking point is usually tribal religions, and there are an awful lot of those.  To treat the customs of non-literate peoples as borderline is problematic in its own way, right?
Quote2) The ol' Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance' line: well, there are these things that are sort of like these other things and those are sort of like these other things, and so on, and gosh, where would you draw a non-arbitrary line? I guess there isn't one...
Bingo.  It's like pornography: in a sense, I can't define it but I know it when I see it.  But these days, we usually don't worry about absolute definitions because it seems pretty clear that we're not going to settle on any.
QuoteMany intelligent people consider this kind of line an abication of intellectual or theoretical responsibility more generally; of those who do not, the best tend to be very astute at comparing different particular cases in illuminating ways. On the other hand, you might also think the argument, like so many others, just shows the hopelessness of being an empiricist about everything, and the importance of keeping certain concepts fixed on 'rational' or 'a priori' grounds (at least until the needs of research show that it's time to replace them with better ones) so that you can make progress with your investigations.
Well, I quite agree with you in a lot of ways.  As far as I'm concerned, it's comparison that offers any sort of reasonable hope of coming to greater clarity about this category, "religion."  

On the subject of empiricism, we have a basic problem there, in that there are ethical problems with determining what's religion on a priori grounds.  If it were entirely true that everyone simply thought of "religion" as a useful category and no more, then it would be just fine to say that X people have religion and Y people don't.  But the reality is that the word "religion" has exceedingly strong valuations in our own culture, and thus to announce that X has a religion and Y doesn't ends up being a statement of some sort of value.  And since we're trying to study people, we're generally trying to be wary of imposing valuations on them.  

My students tend to take this to extremes: they're so anxious not to have to say anything definite about other peoples' religions that they end up thinking theorists about religion are proposing theories of how religion should be rather than trying to formulate descriptive categories of how religion is.  And then they say that so-and-so is wrong because religion shouldn't be X way.  I put it very bluntly at them: if Frazer argues that savages believe in magic because they're stupid (he doesn't, actually, but they always think he does), you can certainly say that you don't believe this because you don't believe the savages are stupid.  But that's only a statement of opinion: if you accept his definition of magic, and you accept that only stupid people believe in it, then what are you going to say about people who believe in magic?  You can find it unethical to say they're stupid, but the syllogism hasn't been challenged.

I don't know if that clarifies matters, of course.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Valamir on April 06, 2004, 01:09:47 PM
Quote from: clehrich
Quote from: SeanChris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'?
Well I don't think we do, actually.  The sticking point is usually tribal religions, and there are an awful lot of those.  To treat the customs of non-literate peoples as borderline is problematic in its own way, right?

Interesting.

But if tribal religions are the sticking point, what is lost by not trying to define "Religion" and instead defining "Tribal Religion" over here, and "Non Tribal Religion" over there.

I mean if trying to define them together prevents one from being able to define anything conclusively at all, then it seems to me you just narrow down the range a little bit and start defining categories.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jason Lee on April 06, 2004, 02:03:06 PM
Quote from: GreenWeird observation:

Whenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?  Not saying I have a particular problem with people being atheist, agnostic, or Christian, but it always seems that these are the only voices being heard.

According to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey the top two brackets are:

76.5%  Christianity
14.1%  Nonreligious (Almost double what it was in 1990, btw.)

UK figures from the 2001 census are:

72% Christian
15.5% Nonreligious

So, that's why they're the only voices heard.  They're most of the voices.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 07, 2004, 01:23:25 AM
QuoteAs far as intellectually true religion goes, it's highly unlikely because the adherents would have to believe only in "true" things. "Intellectually true" means mainly accomodating of logic and consistency in it's axioms, qualities totally irrelevant to religions. Religions are myths priests try to explain, not something "intellectually true".
"Religions" are not myths priests try to explain. Myths are a part of religions. Myths are events priests try to explain, at least in some religions. In many other religions, myths are parables to be meditated upon, not "the infallible truth of things" or "the way the world works because."

Modern paganism, Asatru, and the Mystery Cults of ancient Rome are just some examples of religions where myth was/is understood as sacred symbolism, not actual truth or an "explanation of events."

Religion, in fact, might best be described as the passing on of data deemed important, and the performance of specific actions in a specific context. That is, a religion is a collection of "myths" and "rituals."

And I don't even like to use the word "myths" because "supernatural stories" is only one of the things I mean to refer to: folk wisdom, social laws, natural or societal observations, etc. are other things that it could be instead (or in addition to).

And "rituals" could as easily be observances or behaviors.

So, quite honestly, we're talking about wholly seperate things, here, because I'm aware of religions which where logic and consistency in axiom are not totally irrelevant qualities, and one specific case where such are central features of the religion.

Hence, two probabilities present themselves: when I say "religion" I am referring to something completely different than what you call "religion," and your understanding of what the term "religion" encompasses is incomplete.

Also, when I refer to my religious beliefs, I refer to things I "know" and not things I simply "believe." I'm not much of one for faith. I prefer empiricism. What I can see, what I can feel, what I can actually know (reasonably). So, again, we are talking about different things, and I'm not sure that your premises are strong enough to necessarily support the conclusion you've come to.

Quote from: Christopher Weekswhat I mean is it supports some other hypothesis better.
That's exactly what I said, though, Chris...that there was no hypothesis supported better by the evidence. I went over it again and again. It certainly wasn't a "need" to believe...I'd been, and still do, go through stages of agnosticism, and I constantly question myself, but I keep coming back to the irrefutable facts of my experiences, and have to say, "Fuck it. There's nothing else reasonable."

Why? All the "more reasonable" possibilities are less reasonable, less plausible, because they require belief (faith) in something equally (or more) absurd than a divine presence or spiritual dimension to the universe.

QuoteThat's way bad.  But what do you mean specifically?
Alright, look at some of the statements posted on this (and related) threads, or commonly posted as "truisms" by self-proclaimed atheists. "Religious people are stupid," "Religions are the opiate of the masses," "Religion is nothing more than people trying to gain power over others," "Religion should be wiped out," "Every war in history is because of religion," etc.

That's what I'm talking about. They talk and sound just like, just exactly like the religious fantatics. Further, they even have their own modern myths passed from individual to individual, memes -- that "religion is or requires or does or is responsible for X" when such is provably not the case. A specific example is amount the naturalistic fallacy (examples being "in nature the strong rule the weak" or "in nature, it is survival of the fittest") is used as support of logic.

And yet they pride themselves on "logic, objectivity, and being above ignorance" when it is clear that they are not, and are definitely ignorant in many regards, particularly in those areas closest to examination of their own supporting premises.

They call for a sort of cultural genocide, deride and dismiss anyone not like them, and so forth. Sounds like a religious cult.

This is why I rant about modern atheists and ignorance and fanaticism...because, damnit, they go hand in hand. "Religion is evil!" is the cry, and then a long list of Western Judeo-Christian atrocities follows.

I strongly believe that the reason atheism, agnosticism, and Christianity are the main things discussed in religion threads are not because they're what educated white males know, but because the majority of educated white males are ignorant about anything else.

They've decided "THIS is religion, and THIS is bad, hence religion is bad" so they keep talking about this "thing" as though it's real, basing their decisions and facts off of that belief, and never bother sticking their heads out the door of their own culture and history.

When you examine religion, faith, and spirituality from a global, non-Western perspective, much of the "Atheist" argument against "the evils of religion" becomes transparent or falls apart.

QuoteNote that the religious belief of each age is laughable to the next.
This is true in specific, individual cases, but is not valid as a generalization.

In fact, the same can be said of social institutions, or medical knowledge. "The medical knowledge of each age is laughable to the next." So what does that mean, that medicine is all crap? Because our modern medical knowledge and beliefs are going to be laughable in a century? Like last century's are to us?

QuotePrior to the invention of science as a method of inquiry, other methods had to be used...I consider that these mostly amount to making shit up and letting the most plausible tales gain momentum.
If that were true about the formation of religious mythologies, I would agree. Of course, it isn't quite that simple.

What gets me most about this and similar arguments is the assumption of the truth of modern man's great error: "we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

Seriously, humanity hasn't changed THAT much in thousands of years. We're fundamentally the same beings; and our ancestors weren't morons, which is what this line of logic always silently hinges on.

It relies on putting forth facts that are absurd upon consderation, because for them to be true, our ancestors would have to have been blind and unthinking, unquestioning and without reason. It assumes that they would mistake fiction for truth, and never even wonder or argue about such matters despite their own experiences.

Bullshit. Our ancestors were as smart as modern man -- performing tasks we are only slowly figuring out how to do with their "crude" tools (and in some cases, until recently, had no idea how it was done without technology).

Our ancestors studied the patterns of the stars, created calendars, knew the earth was round, calculated the effects of gravity and pressure, worked with some very high-level mathematics (and without 0!), performed surgeries, knew how to find food and water, made lasting protective shelters, created systems of social government, pondered morality, philosophy, and ethics, created and reveled in art, and numerous other incredible accomplishments -- and not simply through dumb luck.

Survival requires the seperation of falsehood and truth, requires the ability to discern favorable actions that encourage survival from those which hinder or do not contribute to it. And life was much, much harsher back then...you had to be able to think on your feet in order to survive, had to know your environment intimately, and be far more aware of the state and changes in the local world, the seasons, and similar things than modern people are.

By studying phenomena and noting correlations -- via what would be referred to today as "the scientific method" -- they carved out lasting societies and self-sustaining communities, gained an understanding of the cycles of the natural world, eventually expanded their borders, engaged in trade, and made advancements in knowledge and technology.

And yes, just like today, it didn't always reveal the truth, or someone took the wrong data to mean the wrong thing, and it was perpetuated for years or decades without correction. Look at what passed for scientific truth just forty years ago...laughable, right? "We're so much smarter today!" Whatever.

They weren't huddled savages praying to the "scary lights in the sky" for help, running about grunting, fighting, and cowering to superiors -- despite the modern myth of "our stupid, unmodern, uncivilized, uncultured" ancestors. Ancient man behaved just like us, just without toasters.

So, no, I don't believe in the "advances in modern thinking allowed us to outgrow all those silly superstitions we made up to explain things cause we were drooling morons back then" argument. Logically, it doesn't fly.

The priests and magicians of ancient times were well-educated in the sciences. To think they would perpetrate obvious myths for no reason other than tradition is to do a disservice to the human mind...no, as with modern versions of the same religions, there are deeper meanings to the stories than the surface details. Religious myths are purposefully full of symbolism and mysticism.

And no, I'm not talking about Judeo-Christian religion, which is different from most other religions in its insistence that its stories are infallibly true history and events, rather than sacred myths. (And yes, I know that's not even true for all versions of Christianity and its cousins)
Title: Religion!
Post by: contracycle on April 07, 2004, 04:41:17 AM
Quote from: greyorm
The priests and magicians of ancient times were well-educated in the sciences. To think they would perpetrate obvious myths for no reason other than tradition is to do a disservice to the human mind...no, as with modern versions of the same religions, there are deeper meanings to the stories than the surface details. Religious myths are purposefully full of symbolism and mysticism.

Hmm, well I feel it was not that they merely duplicated myth for no reason, but for the very particular reason that it constructed a pretext for them to be fed and housed by others without having to work.  And I suggest they are full of alleged symbolism as a form of deliberate obscurantism, a trade secret.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Brian Leybourne on April 07, 2004, 06:11:41 AM
Quote from: greyormBrian, Brian, Brian...didn't you read my rant last year?
You're strongly anti-fundamentalist is what you are. You aren't anti-religion, at least not based on the reasons you give in your post, because you aren't describing religion...you're describing Western Judeo-Christian religions, with strong fundamentalist overtones. But not all religion.

My examples would seem to say that, you're right. Of course, since those are the only religions I have good knowledge of, that's where I draw my examples from.

But OK, I'll bite.

Perhaps if I shift my stance slightly and say that I'm opposed to fundamentalism, I'm opposed to any form of belief when it's used as an excuse for intolerance, and I'm opposed to any form of belief when it draws lines between those who do and those who don't believe (whether those lines involve name calling or suicide bombing). Actually, I suppose that falls into the "intolerance" box anyway.

Better? :-)

Brian.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Jack Aidley on April 07, 2004, 07:19:33 AM
Quote from: SeanJack Aidley wrote: "I believe there is a real world, and that that world corresponds in a meaningful fashion to our senses."

This turns out to be hard to prove. I believe it too though.

Hard? Try impossible, I think - Kant and all that.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Green on April 07, 2004, 08:20:59 AM
Quote"we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

LOL.  Greyorm, we should do lunch.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Rich Stokes on April 07, 2004, 09:18:49 AM
I used to think of myself as non-religious, and then as anti-established-religion but more lately I'm just a plain old Secular Humanist.  I don't and can't believe in a god, it's just utterly preposterous.  But that doesn't mean I have no faith.  Like many folks here I have absolute faith in there being no god.  I often find myself trying to explain the difference between no belief and a belief in nothing to religious types and they usually fail to see a distinction, but that's ok by me.

I used to be fairly fundamentalist about Atheism, but lately I find I really don't care what other folks think.  It's everyone's right to be believe what they want, even if it's wrong.  And yes, I think that people who have any faith in any god are wrong, but that doesn't mean I think they're wasting their time in church.  Churches and the act of worship can be great for people.  As I don't believe in any kind of afterlife or higher purpose, I see the meaning of life as living and enjoying it.  If folks get something out of the experience, then that's good, right?  I enjoy RPGs, they enjoy worship, some people really dig watching 20+ hours of TV a week, who's to judge?  If it's fulfilling, go for it.  I only pity them if their beliefs are making them or others unhappy.

A very close friend once asked me why, if I didn't believe in a god or any kind of divine retribution for sins, I didn't just act like an arsehole the whole time.  I couldn't get my head around that: Did he really need the fear of god to scare him into being a morally sound person?  His parents were religious types too, so I guess he'd never had to formulate his own morality.

I was raised an Atheist in a largely secular country (the UK).  Even though there were prayers at school, I guess I was about 14 when I realised that there were people who ACTUALLY BELIEVED all this stuff.  I'd assumed that everyone knew it was poppycock and just kinda went along with it up until then, and it was really weird for me to see that, no, there really were people who MEANT IT when they said the words of the lord's prayer.  I thought it was like Santa or the Easter bunny: Nobody really believes, right, but we go along with it anyway?  So i guess you could say I've never had a crisis of faith, I've always been true to my beliefs and I've never doubted them.

I still take issue with anyone who preaches their beliefs, and I find myself being even more annoyed if their beliefs do not agree with mine (ie, they are wrong), but fundamentalist Atheists who cannot see that religion and (more accurately) belief can actually do a lot of people a lot of good wind me up a good' un.  You don't really have a great tradition of Jehovah's Didn't-see-anything-guv's, who might come around to your house and tell you that there's no god and you're not going to hell.  We do have a tradition of people who come round to your house and tell you about double glazing and that you're going to be cold if you don't have any and they piss me off too.  But anyone who tells me I'm going to hell because I don't go to church is going to get laughed at, loudly.

Oh well...
Title: Religion!
Post by: Christopher Weeks on April 07, 2004, 09:33:06 AM
Raven,

I'm not familiar with the body of atheists that you're referring to.  I haven't read prominent atheist writers.  I don't get together with other atheists to make fun of the poor unwashed masses.  I don't know that they sound like religious fanatics, but at least the way you're painting them, they do sound silly.

I definately overgeneralized the appearance of past religions.  I think my point is valid in many western cases, but not a global phenomena.  But I'm not sure the comparison of evolving religion to medicine makes sense because medecine essentially didn't exist before say 200 years ago while religion of various flavors has a much longer history.

QuoteWhat gets me most about this and similar arguments is the assumption of the truth of modern man's great error: "we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

I don't think that.  And I don't think my argument is predicated on it in any way.  If any fault is to be hilighted in my assertion, it is that science can be boiled down to a similar process.  I just think it is provably better at getting to the truth, faster and more reliably.  I assume you know that the scientific method is more than "studying phenomena and noting correlations."

QuoteLook at what passed for scientific truth just forty years ago...laughable, right? "We're so much smarter today!"

Uh, no.  I'm not sure what "scientific truth" is, but if you mean the hypotheses that were best supported by the available data analysis, then no.  It's not laughable.  Some of it was wrong, but more of it just needed little tweaks.  Forty years ago we had a strong foundation on which to build, just like today.

QuoteSo, no, I don't believe in the "advances in modern thinking allowed us to outgrow all those silly superstitions we made up to explain things cause we were drooling morons back then" argument. Logically, it doesn't fly.

Don't you see that you're fighting a straw man by making that stance up and sort of debunking it?  Specifically, the invention of the scientific method increased our ability to search for truth.  No drooling morons were involved.  But that doesn't mean that silly (once you have better-fit hypotheses) superstitions (explanations of how and why things happen or once happened) weren't made up.  It just means that they didn't have the tools to do better.  And not just the tools, but the foundation.  Every single discovery (and even incorrect hypothesis) today is made by someone standing on the shoulders of giants.  

A contemporary example of the silly superstition thing is the "debate" between competing hypotheses of the origin of species.  On the one hand, we have "the" theory of evolution and on the other, biblical creation.  The creation myth of God and the seven days was a fine story for explaining something that a people had absolutely no way to investigate.  I mean, I guess it's hard to imagine that people would have agreed with it so fully when there's not way to verify it, but whatever...there was no contradictory evidence.  Now there is.  The people who made up that creation story, originally, were not drooling idiots because they were not rejecting reason.

Chris
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 07, 2004, 10:07:33 AM
Quote from: contracycleHmm, well I feel it was not that they merely duplicated myth for no reason, but for the very particular reason that it constructed a pretext for them to be fed and housed by others without having to work.  And I suggest they are full of alleged symbolism as a form of deliberate obscurantism, a trade secret.
lol...I should have predicted that one from you, Gareth.
I'd agree, if it made sense upon examination. That is, for this to be true, one would have to believe there was a generational conspiracy in the priesthoods of all world religions created specifically to support the priesthoods as the society's "fat cats." That would mean that everyone who ever became a priest did so for selfish, rather than spiritual, reasons -- which is so difficult to believe that it is preposterous.

This would be as ridicuous as claiming that your quests for social justice, and your desires to see communist economic structures put in place is an attempt by yourself to increase your own social standing and power, rather than via any real or primary concern for those issues. Or as ridiculous as claiming as those who were doctors or healers in ancient (or modern) times became such and perform such solely for the prestige and money, rather than out of any real or primary concern for the welfare or health of others.

Now, I do not doubt abuse of one's position undoubtedly occurred in individual cases, but perpetration of such a scheme for social dominance across the ages (to say nothing of cultures), requires one to believe the absolute worst of millions of individuals throughout time, that every priest everywhere ever was less interested in spiritual, ethical, and societal concerns than in their own personal welfare. And that's a lot of bullshit to try and swallow, given that it has usually been those interested in social justice and community welfare who are attracted to the priesthood and its mysticism.

(To say nothing of its hinging on the idea that, again, ancient man was so stupid that they couldn't see it occuring in front of their faces, every, anywhere.)

Fact is, the priests in most societies worked quite hard and gave back a great deal to their communities. They were the engineers, architects, judges, and counsellors (among other things) to their people. They certainly didn't sit around getting free housing and food for doing nothing, let alone for reasons of personal greed. Priests in many cultures also had to perform lengthy public rituals...strenuous and demanding, and if solely for the purpose of keeping, alot of work when other options would have been avilable to achieve the same.

And of course, the idea of priest as social beneficiary isn't even true in all cultures. As an example: Norse gothi were priests in addition to whatever it was they did for a living. They only existed for social functions, not as spiritual authorities, because for the Norse, what is between a man and the gods is between a man and the gods.

I could go into the practices and social realities of shamans and medicine men in various Native American tribes as well, but I should hope the one example is sufficient to expose the flaw.

Your explanation also would not account for the variety of mystic religions that exist whose practitioners and priests are not on top of their social totem pole. And I can guarantee those didn't develop "later" from established religious traditions -- they've been there since the begining, right along with the more secular priesthoods in various societies.

So, sorry, no dice.

Also, why do I get the feeling you would call Zen Bhuddism "deliberate obscurantism"? (when, I'd hope you know, that isn't its function or point at all)
Title: Religion!
Post by: Muggins on April 07, 2004, 10:41:37 AM
I definitely think I am coming in late here (blames me for being new around here), but here goes:

Having had far too many years to think about things, I have made some conclusions on religion. In background, I am an Anglican (Episcopalian for our American brethren). I was schooled in a private Catholic schools. I did two years of Comparative Theology in one of my many forays into academia. By trade I am a scientist, a geologist in fact. But the only label I can apply to myself is (and i discovered philosophical arguments don't do it for me):

Agnostic Christian.

Why Agnostic: Because God would really ruin my life and all other aspects of our day to day life if He could actually intervene in the world. Consider that if God defied the Law of Gravity just once, Gravity would become null and void, owing to the empirical principles of observation. Basically, provided God does not affect my physical existence, His existence can be be accepted. The life of the soul, the afterlife, all of which is perfectly acceptable, while miracles and divine intervaention would simply make a mockery of all human endeavour for the last 150 years.

Why Christian: because all my moral and ethical stances are informed by my very Christian upbringing. I find nothing more offensive than the fundamentalist Christians who get bogged down in the technical fluff of the testaments and miss the basic truth of the matter: Love one another as you would be loved. Respect. And forgive those who trespass against you. I find the inability of most "Christians" to forgive their most heinous crime. The death penalty, pre-emptive strike, racial and religious intolerance, all these are anathema to the core precepts of Christianity. Nothing is worse than a self-righteous bigot, who fails to remember that humility and tolerance are God's most valued commodities.

Of course, I could be wrong...

James
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 07, 2004, 10:42:18 AM
Quote from: Brian LeybourneI'm opposed to any form of belief when it's used as an excuse for intolerance...Better? :-)
Works for me. Heck, that's my stand on the issue as well!
In fact, I don't disagree at all with anything you stated as problems or atrocities in your posts -- just the ascription.

Quote from: GreenLOL.  Greyorm, we should do lunch.
If we both make it to Indy this year, you're on.
Title: Religion!
Post by: contracycle on April 07, 2004, 11:40:14 AM
Quote from: greyorm
lol...I should have predicted that one from you, Gareth.
I'd agree, if it made sense upon examination. That is, for this to be true, one would have to believe there was a generational conspiracy in the priesthoods of all world religions created specifically to support the priesthoods as the society's "fat cats." That would mean that everyone who ever became a priest did so for selfish, rather than spiritual, reasons -- which is so difficult to believe that it is preposterous.

Thats not precisely how I see it.  My view is that we start out with a bunch of Just So stories to explain how things work... but then, being the person, the dedicated specialist, who is the gatekeepre of this information (note: it doesn't actually matter whether the infomration is true or not) can be leveraged into substantial benefits.

This does not need a conspiracy; it only needs self-interest.  but when you combine it with the fact that there is no mechanism for challengeing or testing these claims, its not too hard to see the opportunity for power-brokering.

QuoteNow, I do not doubt abuse of one's position undoubtedly occurred in individual cases, but perpetration of such a scheme for social dominance across the ages (to say nothing of cultures), requires one to believe the absolute worst of millions of individuals throughout time, that every priest everywhere ever was less interested in spiritual, ethical, and societal concerns than in their own personal welfare.

Furthermore, religions have a long history of rationalising/endorsing prevailing governmental systems, which means that the benfits they accrue may be much broader than just food and drink, as society becomes more complex.

It seems to me normal that people seek to maximise their opportunities.  I do not find this to be 'thinking the worst' of people.  Furthermore, I happily concede that the priests are consciously convinced of their faith as much as any lay worshipper, but mere conviction does not make their views true.

QuoteThis would be as ridicuous as claiming that your quests for social justice, and your desires to see communist economic structures put in place is an attempt by yourself to increase your own social standing and power, rather than via any real or primary concern for those issues.

Actually, its to protect my own life and Get More Stuff.  My view is that the prevailing socio-economic order constantly creates discord and violence, and that the balance of power has tipped to the lowest sectors of society (however un-apparent that may be).  I just want to stop creating reasons for other people to hate me and try to kill me.  Furthemore, I want to keep the value of the stuff I make and not have it stolen by capitalists; theres nothing much altruistic in this agenda.  As I see it, if the next Newton or Mozart dies in a slum at age 3, we all lose out.

Quote
Or as ridiculous as claiming as those who were doctors or healers in ancient (or modern) times became such and perform such solely for the prestige and money, rather than out of any real or primary concern for the welfare or health of others.

I think having a public identity as a caring person is a form of prestige.  But additionally there is a difference, in that medicine is procedural, and I would actually rather have a venal and mercenary, but skilled, surgeon, than one who means well but knows nothing.  Thenintebntnwith which the prascitioner enters the practice is irrleevant to me; but I also assert that it is dangerous to assume that everyone who professes to feel your pain actually does so.  I donlt need a universal conspiracy to explain my thesis, I need only a few bad apples in a context in which their claims cannot be challenged.

Quote
(To say nothing of its hinging on the idea that, again, ancient man was so stupid that they couldn't see it occuring in front of their faces, every, anywhere.)

But as has already been pointed out, thats a straw man: becuase they had no tools with which to determine whether or not the sun morved around the erath or the earth around the sun.  I simply cannot agree that stupidity and ignorance are the same thing.


Fact is, the priests in most societies worked quite hard and gave back a great deal to their communities. They were the engineers, architects, judges, and counsellors (among other things) to their people. They certainly didn't sit around getting free housing and food for doing nothing, let alone for reasons of personal greed. Priests in many cultures also had to perform lengthy public rituals...strenuous and demanding, and if solely for the purpose of keeping, alot of work when other options would have been avialable to achieve the same.

Quote
And of course, the idea of priest as social beneficiary isn't even true in all cultures. As an example: Norse gothi were priests in addition to whatever it was they did for a living. They only existed for social functions, not as spiritual authorities, because for the Norse, what is between a man and the gods is between a man and the gods.

And that ideology fell before the doctrine of the bloody dead god,

I could go into the practices and social realities of shamans and medicine men in various Native American tribes as well, but I should hope the one example is sufficient to expose the flaw.

Quote
Your explanation also would not account for the variety of mystic religions that exist whose practitioners and priests are not on top of their social totem pole.

Thats not quite what I mean.  I mean, for someone to be supported they have to fulfill some broader need, deliver some good or service.  Religions are great for this; the product is trivially easy to produce, it never runs out, and the demand to be reassured that frex, there is life after to death, can never be fulfilled.

So whether we are talking about an itinerant preacher, barefoot and living on charity, or a bishop surrounded by gold, the mode of production these people employ is the selling of necessarily fictional accounts of reality.  Its a snake-oil scam.

QuoteAlso, why do I get the feeling you would call Zen Bhuddism "deliberate obscurantism"? (when, I'd hope you know, that isn't its function or point at all)

Yes and no; becuase I think that while religion is by and large the perpetration of fraud, I acknowledge that that some insights have been produced from this endeavour.  I'm not 100% sure Zen has anything to do with the supernatural, much, which is my bugbear.  I would rather use this as an example in which you can have a doctrine, a philosophy of lie and society, and professional practitioners, withouit having to make dramatic claims of virgin birth, all-seeing gods and life after death.
Title: Religion!
Post by: Green on April 07, 2004, 11:55:53 AM
Quote from: greyormIf we both make it to Indy this year, you're on.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to make it.  Strapped for cash and all.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 07, 2004, 02:04:43 PM
Heya Chris,
Quote from: Christopher WeeksI'm not familiar with the body of atheists that you're referring to.
Surprising. Maybe I just look in all the wrong, dark corners of the 'Net, and in the wrong newsgroups and chatrooms, but I've noticed a couple others here have noted the same sorts of people, or the same sorts of behaviors, so it isn't all that rare. Heck, I worked with a guy who was one of these types (I quote, "Religion is for weak-minded, stupid people...I'm a scientist.").

QuoteBut I'm not sure the comparison of evolving religion to medicine makes sense because medecine essentially didn't exist before say 200 years ago while religion of various flavors has a much longer history.
Actually, I disagree with that. Medicine and surgeons (and I'm not talking leeches) have been around much longer than you might think. Ancient Roman doctors invented many of the techniques and tools still used in surgery today -- and even formed the basis of what became today's understanding of the human body.

Chinese medicine, and the use of similar herb-based medicine in other cultures, has been practiced successfully for thousands of years. The local Ojibwe, as an example, have an herbal mixture their women used for self-sterilization.

I could go on, but its tangential.

QuoteI just think it is provably better at getting to the truth, faster and more reliably.
I'd argue that the reason we can get to the truth much quicker today is two-fold: our technology allows us to gather data we never had any access to before, and our base of knowledge (and ability to disseminate it) is much broader and deeper.

I don't believe the increase has anything specifically to do with the scientific method (observe, explain, test, refine, rinse, repeat). That is, you could go back and give the scientific method to the Romans or Greeks or Aztecs, and I don't believe it would fundamentally change how quickly they were able to discover truth. The shoulders of giants, as you say.

Now, I could be wrong about that, but I'd still give more weight to other aspects of our modern age (as listed above) in terms of what is giving us the most benefit.

QuoteI assume you know that the scientific method is more than "studying phenomena and noting correlations."
Your assumption is correct.

QuoteI'm not sure what "scientific truth" is, but if you mean the hypotheses that were best supported by the available data analysis, then no.  It's not laughable.  Some of it was wrong, but more of it just needed little tweaks.  Forty years ago we had a strong foundation on which to build, just like today.
Well, in some areas...yes. In others, not so much.
But I digress. The point is that the same can be said of religious evolution.

QuoteSpecifically, the invention of the scientific method increased our ability to search for truth.
That's what I said, however: that I disagree with that particular statement.

QuoteA contemporary example of the silly superstition thing is the "debate" between competing hypotheses of the origin of species.
Right. But again, that's presuming Judeo-Christian "realities of myth" behavior, rather than one of "mystical observance."

QuoteI mean, I guess it's hard to imagine that people would have agreed with it so fully when there's not way to verify it, but whatever...there was no contradictory evidence. The people who made up that creation story, originally, were not drooling idiots because they were not rejecting reason.
Even without evidence, man could see how the world worked in his own day...those who thought about such things surely considered that it wasn't any different before. After all, gods weren't striding the landscape (as far as we know), creating mountains and making seas, and anyone with eyes and a brain could see that. Of course, much of this is now deep into the realm of the hypothetical.

On the other hand, I do agree that they were not rejecting reason, having no evidence to the contrary. However, I don't think that changes my point much regarding the development and utilization of mythologies by religions in non-Western cultures specifically as vehicles of mystic revelation rather than as "just so" stories.

This isn't to say that no one in, or even the majority of individuals in a culture, didn't assume some actual, physical truth to the stories...but, as I said, we're into the realm of the hypothetical at this point, since none of us actually live in ancient times. I can only go on what I know about the practices, statements, and beliefs of various religions, especially as contrasted with our culture's dominant Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Title: Religion!
Post by: greyorm on April 07, 2004, 02:30:16 PM
Gareth,

Well-argued, I agree with a number of your points, but I think some of what you're saying now drifts away from your original statement, which (paraphrased) I read as "Religion was developed and maintained for social reasons dealing with the power of the priest caste." That's what I disagree with.

Quote from: contracycleFurthermore, I happily concede that the priests are consciously convinced of their faith as much as any lay worshipper, but mere conviction does not make their views true.
Right, and I'm not arguing that it does. Just maintaining that I don't believe the agenda of the priests was primarily one of maintaining their social over society power. I'm sure, for the most part, their concerns really were spiritual, and the fact that they recieved social benefits because of it was nice, but secondary to the other concerns.

Given a choice between a loss of that power and maintenance of their spiritual duties, I'm betting most of them would have taken the loss of power, as would most priests today.

QuoteActually, its to protect my own life and Get More Stuff.
Capitalist pig! (Heh. Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Ok, interesting, but I argue that it isn't entirely without altruism as you state...after all, you're talking about not depriving society. Obviously your concern isn't just for yourself.

Altruism doesn't require the rejection of personal benefits in order to qualify as altrusim, much as some might argue the opposite for what I perceive to be suspect reasons.

QuoteI think having a public identity as a caring person is a form of prestige.
Exactly...but is it perceived as the primary concern of the individual? Or merely as a benefit of the position?

QuoteBut as has already been pointed out, thats a straw man: becuase they had no tools with which to determine whether or not the sun morved around the erath or the earth around the sun.  I simply cannot agree that stupidity and ignorance are the same thing.
Sorry, I guess I should have been clearer. Here, I meant gross abuses of power by the priest caste. That is, as you stated, doing no work yet reaping the benefits of society -- I doubt that such a scenario would have lasted very long, as the people wouldn't have been blind to such selfish use of their labor.

QuoteReligions are great for this; the product is trivially easy to produce, it never runs out, and the demand to be reassured that frex, there is life after to death, can never be fulfilled.

So whether we are talking about an itinerant preacher, barefoot and living on charity, or a bishop surrounded by gold, the mode of production these people employ is the selling of necessarily fictional accounts of reality.  Its a snake-oil scam.
Of course, as I pointed out, in ancient cultures, the priests were not simply snake-oil salesmen selling fiction. They were architects, engineers, mathematicians, inventors, judges, scribes, and accountants...they were today's men of science and learning.

QuoteAnd that ideology fell before the doctrine of the bloody dead god,
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it existed and was followed for a thousand or more years by a thriving culture.

It definitely has nothing at all to do with my response to your initial statement about how priesthoods used their societies for power, which clearly proves that such was not always the case in all cultures...this utterance from you does not remotely disprove or even deal with such, and I fail to see what the cultural genocide inflicted upon the North has to do with the subject at hand.