[Lie]

Originally Posted by sleeper

the question of what religion actually is is, obviously, central to this and everything and yet remains kind of unresolved. i think it depends on the exact usage. when we talk back and forth about "religious people" that means one thing, and what just qualifies as "Religion" is another. the meshing of those two seems to have led to some confusion. but, honestly, i dont know absolutely what it is, but i do have a good idea of what it isnt and what elements of it are essential to it, if all together incomplete

but i agree with your characterization of it as being something outside of knowledge, and thats whats both most interesting and infuriating about it. passively having beliefs or hypothetical positions about things that lie outside of knowledge, like the question of god, is fine, its when people start using that as the basis for real world action or allow it to infringe upon objective knowledge or reality, a la intelligent designers refusing to accept evolution, in spite of whatever mountain of evidence, and choosing faith instead. that is absolutely, absolutely inexcusable i think and represents the worst of what religion, or just faith in general, is capable of. everyone, to some degree or another, places faith above reason for things at some point for whatever, but i think the degree needed to entirely ignore what reality is telling your for something like that is basically the exclusive province of religion
but, yeah, i think by definition faith is apart from proof or reality and its actually a really weird feeling letting that idea run around your head for a second. every so often i allow myself to think that way and i can definitely understand the psychology of it all, and why people who have such a faith are so entirely impervious to outside claims against their belief that use objective evidence as a foundation. it can never work. its what yelling is to the deaf. but, really, it is incredibly interesting.

this is going to sound ridiculously contradictory, but i actualyl consider myself a pretty (pardon the tonnes of cheese that this word carries as baggage) 'spiritual' guy. this comes, though, 100% through connection with reality. or, exists AS a connection with reality. it exists as reality does. it seems like i cant even continue one word further without just bathing in cheese here. i dont know what to do. i think i kind of had this awakening to it last summer when i was sitting outside on a really warm windy day. if you can imagine the scene, there were squirrels running about, back and forth, here and then gone and then here again, and just trees rocking in the wind. thats it, but if you kind of eliminate every barrier that youve constructed to your perception of things, especially nature, and allow yourself to see whatever is there, you can kind of see the "order" of things. this sounds like the boring ravings of some drug addict or soemthing but its hard to escape that. its all very, i guess, buddhist at best and (oh god, im going to barf even typing these words) "new age" at worst.actually it isnt, what the fuck am i saying. its hard to avoid giving that impression, sure, but its not without substance and isnt at all so throwaway and tritel. the point is that i dont accept this idea that is sometimes put forth, that, because these thigns are "inherently unknowable" (i dont exactly agree with that anyways) that the raising of these questions is irrelevant and futile, if not damaging. i dont like that idea. i thnk there are very valid questions there

on a related note, a few days ago i read britannicas article on "religious experience" and the opening was really hilarious and interesting. enough so, i thought, to share with you:



i always marvel at how words or ideas are defined words dictionaries and the like, i think its so interesting. i was obsessed before with looking up definitions for very common ideas, things that i knew perfectly well what their meaning was. its a real heady thing to do, i found. its weird

I don't think the idea of you being very spiritual is ridiculous or contradictory. I also didn't mean to say that I think that religion is "inherently unknowable," if you thought I was, what I meant is that if you're going to delve into questions concerning knowledge of religion, you're approaching it from an entirely different angle from someone seeking spiritual guidance and you have to acknowledge that to a certain extent, otherwise there's really no point in exploring it anyway. I personally have never understood the way that "most people" relate to religion; I have no problem admitting that. When I look at religions I primarily see funtionality, not spirituality, but obviously a lot of people belonging to a religion would be insulted or confused by that.

I think what we're mainly talking about in all of this is a question of superstition, like you said, but I find that very sketchy as well in terms of where to draw the line. Greek and Roman mythology, for example, seems far more superstitious than modern-day Christianity, as many Christians don't even take the Bible or the story of Christ as literal, and yet in a lot of ways those systems of belief were less of a "worldview" than Christianity and the monotheistic religions that dominate today, as well as containing more of a concern for explanations of nature than absolute morals. What religion is changes, I think, thoughout history, and so does the idea of morals and the way people relate to both of them, so it's very difficult to pin any of them down. It could be that a thousand years from now, there will be a way of rejecting belief that is stronger and more "logical" in many peoples' way of thinking than atheism.

Faith, I think, is commodity that exists in itself. I think people can have a kind of practical faith in themselves without ever resorting to religion and yet I think it's something that can be gained from religion as well. I think there's a difference between "believing in God." and "believing in the existence of God." For my own part I see no purpose in believing or not believing in the existence of God or creationism, etc. I don't think scientific evidence or lack thereof should challenge a person's "faith" in any way whatsoever...I think that's pathetic. The fact is that I would live my life exactly the same whether I knew for an absolute fact that there was or was not a definite higher power, and if that higher power was consistent with fundamental beliefs and would chuck me into hell for dressing the wrong way or taking the name of the Lord in vain, then nothing I feel about myself or life is true and there is no center to creation, it's all random and I might as well go to hell anyway...in terms of pure spirituality it makes no difference. I think most people know this at heart and when they choose to believe or not believe in God what they are really choosing is whether they need the concept of God or not. I just don't necessarily see anything inherently wrong with deciding you do. Sometimes people need to choose their own answers for a time. It doesn't mean they have to go bothering you about it. That makes it political in a sense already, which it doesn't have to be. It doesn't mean a soldier sniffing his girlfriend's panties before going into war for good luck is a bad thing, and it's not any worse of a thing if he wears the cross his mom gave him for confirmation and asks Jesus to protect him. Possibly either of those things will actually give him the presence of mind to make it through alive. If you want to know my personal feelings about it, you need look no further than that.

If I could say anything really awful about religion, or anything about it that really annoys me in general, I think it would be that it attemps to co-opt certain phenomena and truths and names them for its own: heaven, hell, miracles, etc., these are all parts of reality that exist in an environment that does not have to supernatural in any sense, but what some people consider supernatural in concept is what I might just call normal.

I certainly think it's a good idea (besides just being fun), to de-mystify things as much as possible, but the way I see it, if any of that challenges a person's faith, then probably they should re-think the way they are living their lives in the first place.

Really, I think if you just recognized that I hate religion when used in the political sense as much as you do, but that this is entirely different from judging people who belong to a religion (even if they decline to talk about it, which is often the case), there would be hardly any disagreement at all.

When people consider themselves part of a religion but decline to talk about it or use it in argument or in relation to anything else....that is something that I entirely respect and will absolutely not judge them by that or try to figure out what's going on in their head concerning it. I think to treat that situation otherwise is to just shortchange or stress myself out for no good, practical reason I can discern.