The problem of Religion.
- Thread starter Jaster Mereel
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http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1158996#post1158996
Lets move this discussion to a more relevant thread
Lets move this discussion to a more relevant thread
My solution to religion is to realize the essence of it.
Not that it's fake, I think it starts well enough, with sincerity. In the beginning, religion starts as a spiritual awakening. What people do with that depends on their culture. Living according to the rules dictated by someone who really experienced this awakening is called religion. When we realize the essense of religion, we return to it's source. Pure spirituality has little to do with organized religion. That's the kind of atheist I am. It's no longer possible to believe in God, because any belief cannot approach the experience. We can't believe in God, only an idea of it. The famous religious figures, like Mohammed and Moses were just people, they were sincere in trying to communicate their experiences, but I think they fell short. They were flawed due to the culture, and the idea that their experience could be communicated.
I think this is what Jesus taught, the Buddha, Lao Tse, and many others, most recently U.G. Krishnamurti. If I were to follow the traditional path, I would concentrate on the words of these people, worship them, build churches and statues to honor them, create institutions, ect... But I think the full realization of their words is something different than religion.
The full realization of religion is atheism. It's more than atheism, it is the experience of seeing reality as it is, without cultural or religious preconceptions.
Not that it's fake, I think it starts well enough, with sincerity. In the beginning, religion starts as a spiritual awakening. What people do with that depends on their culture. Living according to the rules dictated by someone who really experienced this awakening is called religion. When we realize the essense of religion, we return to it's source. Pure spirituality has little to do with organized religion. That's the kind of atheist I am. It's no longer possible to believe in God, because any belief cannot approach the experience. We can't believe in God, only an idea of it. The famous religious figures, like Mohammed and Moses were just people, they were sincere in trying to communicate their experiences, but I think they fell short. They were flawed due to the culture, and the idea that their experience could be communicated.
I think this is what Jesus taught, the Buddha, Lao Tse, and many others, most recently U.G. Krishnamurti. If I were to follow the traditional path, I would concentrate on the words of these people, worship them, build churches and statues to honor them, create institutions, ect... But I think the full realization of their words is something different than religion.
The full realization of religion is atheism. It's more than atheism, it is the experience of seeing reality as it is, without cultural or religious preconceptions.
spidergoat
It begs the question "What processes did you apply to come to this conclusion?" - in other words the stalwart reformers of different branches of theism that you are jumping over seemed to be possessed of different undrestandings as towhether or not god can be understood, and they are credited with having actually understood and perceived something of the nature of the god .....
It begs the question "What processes did you apply to come to this conclusion?" - in other words the stalwart reformers of different branches of theism that you are jumping over seemed to be possessed of different undrestandings as towhether or not god can be understood, and they are credited with having actually understood and perceived something of the nature of the god .....
Its not clear how atheism fulfills this purpose, since it tends to cultivate a mood of animosity to the very concept of a supreme inteligence behind the cosmic manifestation
Right, hanging on to such concepts as symbols are the antithesis of real spirituality. "supreme intelligence behind cosmic manifestation" means nothing. The truth that can be told is not the eternal truth (Lao Tze). Intelligence has meaning only within the context of human thought.
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spidergoat said:
First you have to establish that what you are holding as a symbol of spirituality is merely a symbol and not a convenient means to justify your atheistic philosophy.
Since Taoism deals exclusively with the material creation (as opposed to the transcendental nature of existence) its statements don't necessarily violate what is established by monotheism
Taoism makes no disitinction between the material and transcendental, and my intention is not to promote Taoism.
I don't hold any symbols of spirituality, that is my point. True wonder and awe about existence is incompatable with such symbolic worship.
I don't hold any symbols of spirituality, that is my point. True wonder and awe about existence is incompatable with such symbolic worship.
What you're talking about is great and all, but there is a reason why symbolism is the essence of religion. Symbols last longer than conscious knowledge of spiritual experiences, in a cultural context, of course.spidergoat said:
He hasn't even established that religion ultimately operates out of symbols - in other words there are no premises for determing that the awe and reverence generally generated in theism is an artificial catergory based on something that is not intrinsically reverential
'Awe and reverence' isn't generated by theism. Awe and reverence is generated by humans and this will lead them to become scientifically or religiously inclined. I doubt you have read Dawkins' new book, in fact I'm sure you would be happy to completely dismiss it right now. But he gave an example of himself and a chaplin in his school. The chaplin described the emotion he felt as a child in which he suddenly became lucidly aware of his surroundings and he interpreted this as a religious experience. Dawkins then said that this story the chaplin told, reminded him as a child when he had the same emotion. He then asks why this emotion lead them both in different directions, one to science and one to religion.
This was the opening of his book in the chapter 'a deeply religious non-believer'.
The major problem with religion is it takes faith=truth.
I can see why the feel that the illusion of a grant deity gives people false comfort when dealing with the unknown. When you take a exalted deity and make it the absolute truth, it goes against scientific method, rational thought, and empirical evidence. Religion use faith in a imaginary deity as evidence of reality.
Most religious people are predisposed to think faith in religion as truth since birth. We have a natural tendency, due to evolution and survival, to believe our parents without question the first years of our lives.
If you take religion vs science in finding truth, improving human society and advancement of technology; science wins every time. Religion has not advance us. Science has. Science uses empirical evidence. Religion uses faith. This is the core differences in the philosophies. Religion at its core is not self correcting. Science is. Science has extrapolated theories that even challenge the scientific method.
Every time religion has been brought up as the prime authoritative standard for government and society we see a depression in human rights & human culture.
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusions, however satisfying and reassuring,” - Carl Sagan.
I can see why the feel that the illusion of a grant deity gives people false comfort when dealing with the unknown. When you take a exalted deity and make it the absolute truth, it goes against scientific method, rational thought, and empirical evidence. Religion use faith in a imaginary deity as evidence of reality.
Most religious people are predisposed to think faith in religion as truth since birth. We have a natural tendency, due to evolution and survival, to believe our parents without question the first years of our lives.
If you take religion vs science in finding truth, improving human society and advancement of technology; science wins every time. Religion has not advance us. Science has. Science uses empirical evidence. Religion uses faith. This is the core differences in the philosophies. Religion at its core is not self correcting. Science is. Science has extrapolated theories that even challenge the scientific method.
Every time religion has been brought up as the prime authoritative standard for government and society we see a depression in human rights & human culture.
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusions, however satisfying and reassuring,” - Carl Sagan.
Actually my point was that the awe and reverence alluded to in theism is not deemed false simply if one can dtermine awe and reverence to things that appear outside of theism - theism doesn't have the monopoly on awe and reverence - I would suggest however that it is the proper application of awe and reverence
CRasch
Actually the same phenomena goes down in science when they say things happen by chance
BUt that aside, the fact that faith can be correctly and incorrectly applied (that is one can have faith in something that is real as well as false, in schools of both science and religion) says nothing about the nature of whether a particular faith in a praticular circumstance is false - its a very difficult argument to present that because person A did mathmatical problem B incorrectly they will do all mathmatical problems incorrectly, particularly if you don't establish the nature of their incorrect applications in light of actual evidence - in other words to get away with your original opening statement you would have to establish exactly what it is that religious practioners are perceiving when they apparently designate something as god - just because they may feel good about it doesn't indicate anything, since if god exists it follows logically that one would also feel satisfied in such knowledge anyway
Self correcting is a proceedure of instituition - you can find evidence of "Boy's clubbing"in peer reviewing - similarly in religious practice you can find applications of constant re-examination - all this is neither intrinsically dependant on "science"or "religion"- it depends on the sincereity of the practioner, something that position in an institutiion tends to corrupt, which is why institutiions need to be internally very self aware
Not sure what you are alluding to here
Every time? Or do you mean sometimes? And even then it gets back to the topic of sincerity vs institutional prestige etc - in other words it is not apparent how science could leave civilisation out of the predictable pitfalls of existence since we tend to navigate courses in to such destinations by the vehicles of greed, lust, anger, etc
So then it raises the question what premises does one use to determine what is illusion and what is real - other wise trying to instigate some "social "revolution for the betterment of society will just be like leaving one dark chamber to enter another
Actually the same phenomena goes down in science when they say things happen by chance
BUt that aside, the fact that faith can be correctly and incorrectly applied (that is one can have faith in something that is real as well as false, in schools of both science and religion) says nothing about the nature of whether a particular faith in a praticular circumstance is false - its a very difficult argument to present that because person A did mathmatical problem B incorrectly they will do all mathmatical problems incorrectly, particularly if you don't establish the nature of their incorrect applications in light of actual evidence - in other words to get away with your original opening statement you would have to establish exactly what it is that religious practioners are perceiving when they apparently designate something as god - just because they may feel good about it doesn't indicate anything, since if god exists it follows logically that one would also feel satisfied in such knowledge anyway
Actually most people who are born into such settings (I for one was not) reach a critical period when they enter adult hood which determines the level of theistic performance they operate on - this innvolves chllenging many established values etc - hardly what you are alluding too - at the very least the perfect formula for parents to generate a similar level of religious intention in the lives of their children is a bit ambiguous - i think you give such theistic minded parents more credit than what they are actually capable of
You should understand that the moment you tag some philosophical tangent on evolution you are making steps of the same proportion of the faithful - at the very least there is no microbiological evidence for what you are advocating
lol - I guess you would have to qualify yourself by defining advancement
How would it be possible to even do the most rudimentary of scientific proceedures unless you had faith that there was order in the universe?
Self correcting is a proceedure of instituition - you can find evidence of "Boy's clubbing"in peer reviewing - similarly in religious practice you can find applications of constant re-examination - all this is neither intrinsically dependant on "science"or "religion"- it depends on the sincereity of the practioner, something that position in an institutiion tends to corrupt, which is why institutiions need to be internally very self aware
Not sure what you are alluding to here
Every time? Or do you mean sometimes? And even then it gets back to the topic of sincerity vs institutional prestige etc - in other words it is not apparent how science could leave civilisation out of the predictable pitfalls of existence since we tend to navigate courses in to such destinations by the vehicles of greed, lust, anger, etc
So then it raises the question what premises does one use to determine what is illusion and what is real - other wise trying to instigate some "social "revolution for the betterment of society will just be like leaving one dark chamber to enter another
Religion quite obviously operates through symbolism. Unless, of course, you read scriptures and take mythological stories in a literal sense. Few theists seem to do this.
Why does symbolic meaning imply artificiality?
Chance in science is really probility in science. The chance of this may happen or that may happen is really what science is about. We try to find the most likely out come.
When dealing with blind faith (which is the root of most religions) you get information that is not self correcting. You don't search for what cause the phenomena, you accept that a deity did it. There is no search for truth when you believe that this deity is your end result when searching for truth.
Funny, statistically speaking, most children at adulthood take on the religion of their parents.
Funny, I thought that the statical studies between the bond of parents and children for many social animals have shown a correlation to following, teaching, and believing what their parents tell them.
You think all animals teach their young on how to survive. But we see it more evolved species. You think this has no effect on our predisposition.
Let's take humanity as a whole.
If you took the scientific method at its core, we didn't know at the beginning. We don't deem to know the rules of the universe. We come up with theories that best fit the evidence that is presented and tested.
This is why in science we share our information openly. It is a self correcting element. We don't expect just one person to test the theories. We have one person who have a theory that shows promise, then it gets tested by our peers, even when the evidence has shown another result. Religion take faith to be truth. No testing, no review, no sharing of evidence but to blindly belive. If you don't have faith, you need to try harder. This is not the advancement to find truth?
That science even challanges its core fundementals. Unlike religion.
When those pitfalls deal with blind faith it has shown in history to cause great atrocities in human society. Especially when religius writing advocate hate and discrimination.
How about empirical evidence. Nothing about observed reality "fits together" unless its by means of science. If you depart from the empirical method, you must choose from an infinite number of metaphysical explanations with no basis to make the choice...except faith.