May 18, 2008

• religion

  Yes, I’m still trying…

  I don’t believe in God. I don’t attend church. I think organized religions in their current forms are extremely dangerous. And I doubt I’ll ever believe differently.

  There. How’s that? Flameworthy?

  I guess I really should explain a little. The big problem with religious debate in general is that we end up merging everything all together and start talking all over each other. Nobody ends up agreeing cuz nobody is really talking about the same things.   So I want to be very careful in explaining myself and defining my terms so that we are all on the same footing.

  First of all for the remainder of this document when I say “God”  what I mean is, specifically any form of higher than human super powerful force, entity, group, or power that both A. makes choices, and B. gives meaning to our existence.  The “higher than human” part is very important. The entity or whatever has to be beyond our capacity to achieve in our current state as a species.

  So this means that by God I could mean the Greek Pantheon or I could mean Jesus, or  I could mean The Force from StarWars, or some great merged sentient consciousnesses that our spriits join after we die. The key here is making our lives meaningful in some way and being at least sentient enough to be able to make decisions.

  By religion for the remainder of this document I mean organizations that meet on the basis of like spiritual beliefs. This can be anything from the mighty catholic church, to a group of boneheads who meet in their garage to worship the aliens who are going to take them back home to their destined methoerland.

  Now the biggest problem I find in religious debate is that we waay too often confuse belief in God with belief in Religion.  In reality these two things vary *completely* independently.

  You see, you can have people who are even high ranking officials in the church of whatever denomination they belong who deep down in their heart of hearts don’t believe in *any* God let alone the God to whom they assert their loyalty. It’s very easy for people to lie about that and some of these Priests and whatnot have good incentive to do so. Powerful organized religions can be a strong lure for those seeking power and influence over others. And once you have that power, it’s easy to abuse it.

  But also there are those who don’t really believe who are less sinister about it. They just haven’t really thought that much about it. Many refuse to really give real thought to whether or not God exists. But they love going to church! It’s a social experience for them that brings great value to their lives.

  Or there are others who because of life experiences they’ve had, hardships they’ve been in and whatever, refuse to believe in God any longer. They can no longer accept the idea that there is a decision making power that is Good that could create such hardships in their lives.  But again, that might not have a damn thing to do with whether or not they believe in Religion.

  Likewise, there’s those who believe strongly in God who reject religion entirely. They find the whole idea of meeting once a week to be a farce or a waste of time or maybe they are just bored by it all. They may not get anything out of the experience and they find themselves disagreeing so often with the preacher or whoever that they’d rather in their own time establish their own personal beliefs about God.

  There are even those who are *in* organized religions, even in positions of power who don’t believe in it. Again, they might just be *using* religion as a means for them to further their goal of spreading belief in God which they would do through whatever means happens to be available to them. They don’t think the religious institutuion has any value in and of itself. It’s just a means to an end.

  And that’s just scratching the surface of the many possible variant views people can have on religion and God. They really don’t have to coincicde at all.

  Of course there are plenty of people who believe strongly in God and Religion. Just as there are quite a few athiests who strongly reject both the idea of God and the institution of Religion. They believe that religion is a farce and belief in God is just plain absurd.

  I’m not quite like them. But I get where they are coming from. I’m pretty close.

  So where exactly do my opinions lie? It’ll take a bit to explain. 

  First with regards to belief in God.

  I’ve always considered myself to be an Agnostic. That’s a lovely little word that will get you nice and ridiculed by both true believers and athiests alike.  People think that the agnostics are the ones who can’t make up their damned mind and try to play both sides at the same time. Panderers. Flatterers. Pansies.  Sometihing like that.

  Of course, such lovely scorn! That’s why I absolutely *had* to be one!

  No… I kid. I’ve been an agnostic for as long as I’ve known the term and I can’t imagine myself being anything else.

  The athiest believes, basically, that the matter of the existence of God is subject to the scientific method. That is to say, we don’t believe in flying unicorns until we have empirical evidence of flying unicorns. In the absence of such evidence we believe and assert fairly and justly that flying unicorns DO NOT exist. We don’t say “I neither confirm nor deny the existing of flying unicorns”. That’d be absurd.  We, scientists, reassess our opinions as additional evidence is presented to us but hold to the best model describing reality that we are able to form given the evidence avaialble.

  In contrast, the believer believes in a higher power, largely because they feel they *must* believe. They believe in it, in the absence of evidence or due to evidence that is unconfirmed by the scientisfic community.  And they do so because it fulfills them to believe. It is a matter of what brings their lives meaning.

  And I feel I lie somewhere inbetween. I certainly do not want to believe that there is nothing more to this existence than what can be confirmed through empriical observation. No.. that’s not eactly true. I really *don’t* believe that.  And I don’t want to ahve a wait and see approach. I’m not very scientifically minded at heart.  I don’t filter knowledge and only see what is there before my eyes, discarding all the rest as irrelevant until confirmed.  I think, and feel strongly there there are a lot of things out there that we don’t have the faintest clue about right now. I don’t think we’ve reached some near end of where physics can take us or some such bullshit that some writers are now claiming. I believe that the set of things that can be understood is vaster beyond imagination than the size of those things we happen to understand right now. And I think and I hope that out there somewhere is something that can justly be called the meaning of our existence. Ala, a God of some sort.

  But there might not be.

  I don’t care for delusional belief just to make myself feel better either. I’m fully aware that even in the vast size of all that is left to be known, there might not be anything remaotely resembling the idea of a God.  Our lives really very well might *not* have any meaning beyond there here and now. And if that’s the case then so be it. It sucks.

  So I neither confirm nor deny the existence of God. I’ll really wait and see. Could very easily be that I’ll have an experience in my life time that will convince me. It’s very much possible. It might not be an experience that will hold up to the stricted scientific rigor but I could still see myself swayed.  I don’t believe right now. I really don’t. But I very easily good.

  I also think Scientists are a little too myopic when it comes to matters of faith. I feel like we haven’t aas a society done nearly enough investigation into matters of supernatural phenomena as we should. I think we tend to dismiss rather than seek out an explanation of the supernatural experiences people have claimed to have. Well in part this is not just the scientists fault but also the fault of those who have claimed supernatural experiences who don’t want to give up their beliefs even as reasonable evidence to explain it arises making scinetists less than enthusiastic to enter into a waste of time debate with such irrational people.  And likewise because of the fear of being labeled irrational, many who have had supernatural encounters are too afraid to speak up about them meaning the evidence gets suppressed.

  Still, there are soo many people I’ve met who have very sincerely stated that they have experienced things that beyond the ordinary in their lives. And theyse are, for the most part otherwise, reasonable and rational down to earth people.  I don’t believe in dismissing their assertions on some absurd principle that ghosts and spirits and whatnot “can’t possibly exist”. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know if they do or don’t. Both those people had some sort of expeireince. I don’t believe that they are all liars. So I believe that the scinetific community should give them more credence. I believe that these things should be studied in more depth and the truth disovered.  I believe there is a truth and I believe there is an explaantion and I believe it is within our power to understand.

  Actually I need to make a small aside here. That idea that it is within our power to understand is really pivotal to my belief system. So in a very real sense I actually don’t believe in God at all and am a hardcore athiest. Why? Because I refuse out of shear stubborness to believe that there is *anything* that is truly and completely *beyond* humanity.  I think that even if there is a God, even if it’s the classical Christian God, I  don’t see why we can’t one day evolve to the level where we can have a chat with good old God as equals.  Yeah that’s arrogant. But I like to believe in limitless potential. Why should we bother with thinking of ourselves as limited? What good does that do us?

  OK, phew, now on to the idea of Religion.  Really that’s the thing that most Athiests really have a beef with. Religion. They don’t serioeusly give a damn about whether people in their spare time pray to a Christian God or their pet rock or whatever they feel like. No what they despise is these nstitituions that have arisen in the name of God that as they will clearly be willing to tell you in great depth  are “fucking up society”. They’ll talk about how they brainwash people. They’ll talk about how they corrupt children. They’ll talk about how they instigate wars and  pervert social institutions and hold back the development of science etc etc etc

  The arguments aren’t bad and once you get into the details you pretty much *have* to acknowledge that the athiests make good points unless you are just being stubborn about it. Indeed I pretty much agree. But I don’t think it’s the whole story about religion by a long shot.

  The problem is, it’s extremely difficult to say whether a large institution ought or ought not exist.  Should it be altered or should it be destroyed? Are we better off with it or without it? What’s the metric we use to decide that?

  We have decided as a society that certain institutions are just morally wrong and should be wiped out. The big example is Slavery. That’s sort of the epitome of an evil institution. Slavery takes away people’s freedom and puts them in service of other human beings. It’s clearly unjust no matter how you look at it.

  So is organized religion like slavery? Well, I could talk about all the good that organized religions have done. The chariities they take part in. The people they help. The good that it makes so many people feel on a daily basis being part of a group, a community of like minded individuals. I mean, let’s face it, some religions are downright fun! Basically they are an excuse to one day a week get together and have kind fo a party of singing and clapping and hugging and having a good old time.  I could point to those things and say “See! How could *anyone* in their right mind say that religion was like slavery?”

  But if you are sharp you’ll see that an argument like that is insufficient. Why? Because slavery undoubteldy had its good points too. One could, and many did back when it was a matter of contention, argue that slavery was “good for soceity”.  But that didn’t matter. It was unjust and had to be dismantled anyway. It was the right thing to do to get rid of slavery even if a lot of people were made happy because of its existence.

  Is religion like that? Well, some would argue precisely that. They’ll say that most religions take away people’s freedom of belief. They indoctrinate children at a very young age int oa set of principles and behaviors that have no real basis in any kind of reality and implore them to believe in those principles without examination or contemplation. And worse, those principles are rigid and set and unable to be changed by the populace even should beliefs or circumstances change. This unity of false belief is then used by the people in power to further their own ends that may or may not have anything to do with the populace that enables their power.

  In short, organized religion, they argue has been for the most part a Totalitarian Regime throughout it’s history. Just as Slavery is too .

  An you know what, I pretty much agree.  Most religions have been totalitarian and most religions still are pretty totalitarian. But you know what? Not all totalitarian systems need to be dismantled! It isn’t enough to say that a system is totalitarian that it must be wiped from the planet. It also has to be unjust the way that slavery is unjust. That is far from proven from the arguments we’ve asserted thus far. Because the people under this totalitarian system, don’t for the most part reject it. They aren’t yearning for freedom and they don’t feel as if their opportunity for happiness and their ability to forge a life for themselves is fully suppressed by the institituion of religion. It’s very different from salvery in that regards.

  Rather, I’d say it resmbles something more like a great many totalitarian but not dictatorial Governments. (It also resembles institutions like Corporate Capitalism, but that’s an argument I’ll leave for another day)

  And that means, in my opinion, there is room to remake religions into better entities without wiping them out!  We managed to morph most of our totalitarion governments into representative democracies. This was not done by bringing on an era of anarchy but by slowly morphing governemtns, tearing down old regimes and putting down different regimes that were nevertheless based in large part on the ones that came before. Except that they had more freedom.  And there’s still lots of room to improve these governemnts, to make them even more free.  We are constantly evolving them to give the people more input and make the systems more just.

  Why can’t it be that way with most religions? We already see in more modern soceities how religions do tend to turn toward more and more democratic systems. And that has a huge influence on how their belief systems evolve. It’s a good thing. But it’s very very slow going. I really think most religions really have to evolve much faster. They are lagging waaay behind and they are dangerous to the development of society as it is. The reason they lag behind is quite explicable though. The people who disagree are not for the most part sticking with these institutions and fighting for change within them. Instead they are opting out either be spirtiual on their own or rejecting religion altogether. The result is, increasingly religiosn are populated with the more fundamentalist thinkers who feel besieged by an outside world that fully rejects them. Rather than evolve, we’ve seen a lot of religions dig their heels in. Even to the point that they fight with tooth and nail over absolutely *absurd* principles like the hubbub over gay marriage.  And I think that situation is really really dangerous.

  Totalitarian institutions are always dangerous. We always have to remember that. Even if you have a government ruled by the nicest guy in the world who manages to retain power through his totalitarian policies, it’s still very dangerous. Because you never know who might come after that person. The next person he apponints to be in charge either might not be as good or might not be as strong as he is. And the government could very easily fall under sway of a dictator, a madman, or a thief (or more likely someone who is all three!).  Heck even your nicest guy in the world might one day hit his head in the bathtub and turn into a geneocidal maniac. You just can’t win with totalitarian systems no matter how good an idea they might seem.

  That’s the thing with religion too. No matter how beneficial and good most organized religions might seem to you. No matter how much you love them and want them to persist and don’t want them to change, understand that they are very very dangerous tools that can be abused. The people there, no matter how many titles they might have are still people. They are fallible. They can turn to the darkside. And the systems of most religions are not setup to really give adequate protections agaisnt that.  They are too totalitarian. The populace has too little influence over the decision making process of the leadership. There aren’t enough checks and balances. And it’s too big of a pulpet, to storng a megaphone for the few to impsoe their view points on the many.

  That’s why, I say I think organized religions are dangerous.  I don’t think they are bad or good. I think there are good points and bad points and I certainly don’t blame anyone for going to church regularly and enjoying that expeirence. IF that is something that gives you joy and puts value in your life, you absolutely should do that! But while you’re there, please let me implore you! Use a little of your influence to push your church bit by bit toward more democratic principles. To be more open and understanding. To give credence to other view points. Don’t let the fundamentalists foist their demands that you have to listen to the letter of the law of some rules in some damnable book.

  Religion is about morality. And we all have our own moral compass that is just as valid as anyone elses. If the God someone is peddling you tells you something is wrong  and deep down you don’t believe it, don’t automatically think that you are a bad person! Think that that person is trying to pull a fast one on you! Cuz he or she probably is! So fight back!! Convince the religion to change it’s view rather than trying to conform to it! Religion can evolve to become a good and productive part of people’s lives without the risk of bringing darkness to others.

  We don’t need to wipe out religions like we did slavery we just have to be smarter about how we run them.

  So that’s my opinion on God, Religion, and Everything like that.

  Come on! Let me have it!

  • 7:00 pm
  • 3 Comments