Religion
Related: About this forumIs Religion A Consolation Worth Having?
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail a band identifies itself as the “Knights who say ‘Ni’”, and thereby cement their identity as a separate group. The thing seems absurd, but the arbitrary designation of a place as holy, or a text as unquestionable, or a date as that on which some ceremony must be done, does the same.
Trouble then arises, since we – who do this – are now separate from them – who do not. Furthermore the status accorded to the otherwise arbitrary symbols, whereby they demand obedience and deserve veneration and worship, requires belief of some kind in some power or some invisible spirit to sustain it, and so spring up unreason and dogma to give the theory behind the symbols, and then a whole caste of priests and magi, licensed to interpret the divine in whatever way commends itself to them.
If I were a religious person, I would suppose that theology, with all these claims to knowledge and authoritative interpretation of divine will, is essentially blasphemous. Anything even approximating to the god of the monotheistic religions cannot be known, or interpreted, or touched or pictured. The idea that such a thing (or non-thing, outside space and time) exists affords no inferences about what to do, how to behave, how to dress or eat or conduct your sex life. The blasphemy is to anthropomorphize it, make it like ourselves, jealous, angry, needy, vengeful, or even loving.
It is, surely, the height of arrogance to claim an ability to interpret its will, even if doing so were more sensible than trying to work out what any other non-spatial, non-temporal, abstract necessary being, such as the number three, wants for humanity.
So we are on our own. I do not find that threatening, or a cause for lamentation. We have problems, but then we have institutions and experience to help us to solve them. We need ethics – and have ways of implementing ethics, by way of language, law, government, stories, examples and – for children, smiles and frowns and carrots, if not sticks. They work, at least until things start to unravel, but then they are also our best hope for stopping things from unraveling.
http://www.science20.com/the_conversation/is_religion_a_consolation_worth_having-149777
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phil89
(1,043 posts)are not good. Using religion as a crutch is a dishonest way to live.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)It's just not neccessary. We can lift each other up without help from an imaginary being. We can have morals and ethics that everyone can observe without belonging to a sect with its own form of punishments.
Trillo
(9,154 posts)thanks. I'm reminded of the biblical phrase, "Man was made in the image of god", meaning, like looking in the mirror, it's human's law, not gods.
It's comforting to believe something comes after, whether it does or not, for me at least. Might help with keeping those last few minutes one of calmness and peace, instead of angst. Other than that, the competing beliefs, etc., just seem to be another cause for continual war.
Perhaps it is just as well to believe the end is the final end. If you're wrong, you'll be pleasantly surprised, and if not, then you won't ever have the opportunity to say, "neener neener, told you so." Perhaps the atheist view is the braver one.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Trillo
(9,154 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)My Mom is currently in hospice care. She has dementia among other problems. If there is an afterlife and her demented self is what persists, that would be hell indeed. So again, which "you" of the many "yous" that we each are over the course of our lives, is the "you" that persists after death?
trotsky
(49,533 posts)If someone has a traumatic head injury, and their personality changes, which personality will survive? Their "original" one, or the "altered" one?
Trillo
(9,154 posts)Is consciousness solely a function of our brain? Or is our brain what allows our physical animal to perceive consciousness?
Your questions regarding the personality show a lack of understanding of the difference between external and internal. You have no idea whether their inner experience changes, all you observe are their outer changes. Thus, you misunderstand the nuance of inner versus outer.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Just one example, that's all I ask. We can get around to talking about how stupid I am later.
Trillo
(9,154 posts)Seems highly similar to the inner versus outer nuance.
I do not enjoy these kinds of debates, they seem characterized by a lack of respect. Do you allow others to believe differently than you?
I simply do not know the answer to the consciousness question. Is that satisfactory to you, insofar as debating with me, and my belief of not knowing is concerned?
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I believe I have been respectful. You have questioned my ability to understand and made it personal. I am merely asking for an example, and you are attacking me. I don't have any way to control what others believe, or prevent them from believing. But I believe I am allowed to ask questions.
But if you don't know about this either, you should probably refrain from making definitive statements like you did in post #13.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Trillo there was no disrespect evidenced in this dialog until you took umbrage at the dialog itself. Questioning statements made is the essence of discourse, it is the Socratic Method:
Socratic method (also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate), named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and discussion between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas.
it has been for 2500 years or so, how rational humans explore ideas. It is not disrespectful, although as in the case of Socrates, it can be downright dangerous.
Why is it that believers run away from discussions about their beliefs?
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)If you take a human being and cut the corpus callosum, either through accident or on purpose for example because of life threatening seizures, the left and right sides of the higher order brain become two semi independent consciousnesses. They no longer share the same information inputs and they "fork" into two different consciousnesses. Regardless of "is conscious physical" (I claim it is you disagree) it is demonstrably dependent on and contained by the higher order brain functions.
mr blur
(7,753 posts)Means nothing beyond "I don't know but at least I believe something"
Only visible, I imagine, via "other ways of seeing".
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
edhopper
(33,575 posts)That it's 80% or 90% that what you believed wasn't true, do you think you would still hold on to them?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)I know that my religions ideas did not come in a clean envelope.
If it wasmade clear to me my religion was a fraud then I would bd upset but I would survive.
It was just a question that occurred to me.
Thanks for the answer.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Both in isolation of how it just impacts you personally, and also, in general of how it affects humanity worldwide?
(Edit: I am extending EdHopper's question to the max setting, to establish an idea.)
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)If i felt it untrue but still clung to it then it would be ridiculous.
People without religion live perfectly happy lives.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)It leaves unresolved what we do about ills that come part and parcel with a general social acceptance of the main idea that the supernatural exists at all, but for a starting point, fair enough.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)Others, who experience the world differently, will naturally come to different conclusions.
Iggo
(47,552 posts)There comes a point in life where a rational human being should shed his/her belief in fantastical beings. Five years old sounds about right. Took me a little longer, but I was always a late bloomer.