Religion!

[Yasha]

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

[DannyK]

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

[Jack Aidley]

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.

[Eero Tuovinen]

intellectually 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".

[Christopher Weeks]

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.

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).

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.

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?

However,

To 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

[Marhault]

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. . .

[Green]

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.

[orbsmatt]

Ooo... This topic could get controversial rather quickly...

*steps back into the shadows*

[quozl]

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.

Yeah, let's talk about nationalism: the most evil religion ever invented.

[Jack Aidley]

Whenever 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?

[clehrich]

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.

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.

[Christopher Weeks]

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.

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

[clehrich]

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.

[Christopher Weeks]

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

[clehrich]

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".