3 ms·

Religion is an interesting one. It's certainly a cement. It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrain

Religion is an interesting one. It's certainly a cement. It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not.

bobthechef 6y ago
> It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not. Perhaps for you, but in any case, "religion" is not a single thing and not all religions are equal. Besides, every society has a religion. Every person has a faith. In the US, it is liberalism. In the Soviet Union, it was the Marxism/Leninism/whatever and the State. In medieval Europe, it was Catholicism. For Richard Dawkins, it is scientism. And the only measure worth discussing is whether the religion in question is true. Your phrasing suggests you see it as some purely instrumental fiction. I reject that view because holding to a faith for its purported "benefits" is an act of bad faith. You believe things because you have reasons to believe they're true, not because you think they'll produce some desired result.
- XorNot 6y ago
  I have absolutely no idea why this comment was downvoted so heavily.
- lootsauce 6y ago
  Faith, I would argue includes the urge toward something on a deep/spiritual/fundamental level that you may certainly have doubts of and even contrary evidence for. I would posit that it is in the face of such doubt that faith is exercised the most. The faculty is as much one of hope in something because you know something else points to it being true in the absence of easy confirmation. Being certain of something a-priori naturally requires little faith thereafter. There are practical goods that flow from from faith that certainly bolster that sense that it is good and thus it is true. So I would not discount the value of these practical goods as motivator for faith nor would I treat that as an indictment thereof.
082349872349872 6y ago
"The Art of Conversing With Men" (an 1805 translation of a 1788 work by Knigge) has two chapters: XXIX. On conversation with devotees, puritans and hypocrites. XXXI. On conversation with deists, freethinkers and scoffers at religion. in which he suggests that neither godbotherers nor militant atheists (who are united in their emphasis on orthodoxy over orthopraxy?) are likely to produce stimulating conversation. https://books.google.ch/books?id=PtQGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA90#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.ch/books?id=PtQGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA90#v=onep... original available at https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/knigge/umgang/chap005.html https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/knigge/umgang/chap005.html §§ 27-28. (note that in §26, Knigge says "Die Erde ist so groß, daß eine Menge Narren nebeneinander Platz darauf haben" which is to advise against wasting time with fools who are Wrong on the Earth. I'd hope that, like angels on the medieval pinhead, we could easily make room for an infinite number of fools who are Wrong on the Internet, and still have place left over here and there for reflective conversations.)

bobthechef 6y ago

> It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not. Perhaps for you, but in any case, "religion" is not a single thing and not all religions are equal. Besides, every society has a religion. Every person has a faith. In the US, it is liberalism. In the Soviet Union, it was the Marxism/Leninism/whatever and the State. In medieval Europe, it was Catholicism. For Richard Dawkins, it is scientism. And the only measure worth discussing is whether the religion in question is true. Your phrasing suggests you see it as some purely instrumental fiction. I reject that view because holding to a faith for its purported "benefits" is an act of bad faith. You believe things because you have reasons to believe they're true, not because you think they'll produce some desired result.

XorNot 6y ago
I have absolutely no idea why this comment was downvoted so heavily.
lootsauce 6y ago
Faith, I would argue includes the urge toward something on a deep/spiritual/fundamental level that you may certainly have doubts of and even contrary evidence for. I would posit that it is in the face of such doubt that faith is exercised the most. The faculty is as much one of hope in something because you know something else points to it being true in the absence of easy confirmation. Being certain of something a-priori naturally requires little faith thereafter. There are practical goods that flow from from faith that certainly bolster that sense that it is good and thus it is true. So I would not discount the value of these practical goods as motivator for faith nor would I treat that as an indictment thereof.

082349872349872 6y ago

"The Art of Conversing With Men" (an 1805 translation of a 1788 work by Knigge) has two chapters: XXIX. On conversation with devotees, puritans and hypocrites. XXXI. On conversation with deists, freethinkers and scoffers at religion. in which he suggests that neither godbotherers nor militant atheists (who are united in their emphasis on orthodoxy over orthopraxy?) are likely to produce stimulating conversation. https://books.google.ch/books?id=PtQGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA90#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.ch/books?id=PtQGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA90#v=onep... original available at https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/knigge/umgang/chap005.html https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/knigge/umgang/chap005.html §§ 27-28. (note that in §26, Knigge says "Die Erde ist so groß, daß eine Menge Narren nebeneinander Platz darauf haben" which is to advise against wasting time with fools who are Wrong on the Earth. I'd hope that, like angels on the medieval pinhead, we could easily make room for an infinite number of fools who are Wrong on the Internet, and still have place left over here and there for reflective conversations.)