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Agreed. This was a major component in my switch from Protestant/Baptist to ("Greek"/Eastern) Orthodox. Having thousands of years of prior religious & philosophi

Agreed. This was a major component in my switch from Protestant/Baptist to ("Greek"/Eastern) Orthodox. Having thousands of years of prior religious & philosophical discussions to draw from, as well as the experiences of people living under all manner of political regimes provides a much-needed grounding against whatever may be the current, trendy topics. And a direct result of that history is that the Church mandates certain practices to shape one's willpower: fasting (roughly half the year, in total, though "fasting" here means small vegan meals), some form of tithing &/or charitable work, explicit self-examination (not only standard prayers, but also Confession with a priest, who helps make a plan against bad habits, as well as an annual event where everyone in the parish asks forgiveness of each other) etc.

ur-whale 6y ago
This approach, "religion as an operator's manual to living one's life" is one of the very rare arguments in defense of religion I can vaguely resonate with. Unfortunately this argument entirely fails to support all the rest of the luggage, especially the metaphysical hokum: you can perfectly chose to live your life according to a set of rules that will help you (and others) without having to justify it via the existence of some bearded dude sitting on a cloud.
- eszed 6y ago
  You're right, but there is value in the community of accountability that churches provide. Fasting, tithing, charity work, and self-examination are objectively worthwhile, but not things I'm likely to muster up the will-power to do on my own, at least not regularly. It's like physical exercise: easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym with a friend, or join a regular class. Also, even though I don't really believe there's any "metaphysical hokum" going on behind it, I'm still moved (aesthetically, and -- dare I say? -- spiritually) by liturgy and church architecture. I'm sitting in the same place, while seeing and smelling and saying the same things that people have for hundreds or thousands of years. That's pretty cool, and I always feel better afterwards. So, even if I'm rationally convinced that it's a psychological (rather than metaphysical) effect, it's still worth doing.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    > easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym Yeah, I hear you, but this is where we part ways: to me it's not a matter of willpower, but rather one of - a sin, I know - pride: I can't bear the idea that I'm walking the path of my life using the equivalent of moral crutches. As to your second argument: no argument there, not everything about religion is bad, even if, in the case of beautiful churches, you could argue that the way they were erected wasn't necessarily "ethical".
- redsummer 6y ago
  Of the hundreds of communes that have been started in the US, those that were just secular or political never lasted. And the only ones which flourished were religious. People need to believe in a higher power, rather then just themselves, otherwise their communities just dissolve.
- hudon 6y ago
  > bearded dude sitting on a cloud That's a strange straw man. No God-fearing person I know believes in such a thing. God is not a being, but rather is _being itself_. In fact, when Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". If you prefer an Aristotelian frame, he is the "unmoved mover" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
  - today20201014 6y ago
    God is a being in Genesis. He walks through the Garden.
    - joshuacc 6y ago
      And when someone is in love we say they "walk on clouds." That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them.
      - today20201014 6y ago
        > That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them. Exactly, it's figurative language. My point is that when we read in scripture that > Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". the notion of Moses asking God may also be figurative.
      - Smoosh 6y ago
        I always assumed that the "God/Heaven in the clouds" meme came from the same source as Greek gods dwelling atop Mt Olympus being obscured by clouds.
    - rbp 6y ago
      Some Christian commentaries interpret this as God in the person of Jesus Christ: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2017-Gen/Gen-3.cfm https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2...
  - deergomoo 6y ago
- joshuacc 6y ago
  > some bearded dude sitting on a cloud You do realize that this idea is explicitly condemned by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam?
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    You do realize that, when talking about a bearded man on a cloud, I was making a point about the fact that most of what the three monotheistic religions you mention (BTW 3 out of many, many equivalently deluded things) are essentially fairy tales designed to control the minds of men? If at one time the bearded man on a cloud was the useful tool of the day to manipulate crowds and was later "condemned" because better ways were devised to keep the flock believing, in what way does that affect my argument that 90% of religion is utter, unprovable, fairy-tale BS? [EDIT]: and yeah if you insist on plowing the dirt of literal interpretation, I'll point you to this argument made by another poster : please take a look at the first image that pops when querying google for "god" and come back and tell us that the argument has no basis. https://images.google.com/search?q=god https://images.google.com/search?q=god
- exporectomy 6y ago
  That's a naive view that assumes people are rational but we're not, not even you. Our minds seem to need some amount of hokum (imaginary beings) to remain sane. Children who grow up with a supportive parent who reliably takes care of them carry the feeling of being cared for and the confidence that comes from it for the rest of their lives even after the parent is dead. A dead person is no more real than God, yet they're very influential in helping people cope with life. I think they serve similar purposes. Just think how much people who are not present with you still influence your feelings every day. Until we meet them again, these people effectively don't exist either. It's all in our heads, just like God. There's even a psychological technique to build confidence by imagining a supportive person helping you. That's even closer to God or Jesus than a real but absent person.
  - rcoveson 6y ago
    > A dead person is no more real than God... I'm unconvinced that remembering dead parents amounts to believing in imaginary beings. Reality is less relative than you're making it out to be. Dead people are "real" because I can reliably predict observable effects their past actions would have had on the world and then confirm them with observation. For example, if I wanted to track down some college essays written by my grandparents, I might actually be able to find some, even though I don't have them in my memories. Or, more practically, I can ask a mutual friend, "remember when {dead person} said X?" And they will say, "yeah, and then they said Y", and I will say, "yeah". The fact that dead people are dead doesn't make them "hokum" in the way that Zeus or Thor or Moroni are hokum. It's fine to doubt your own mind's relationship with reality, but don't doubt it so much that you become totally disconnected and consider all the people in your memories who you can't immediately re-confirm the existence of to be as immaterial as God.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    So, in summary: we're not rational beings, therefore improvement through self-delusion? I'm sorry, but I have two problems with that approach: 1. Knowing I'm willingly drinking snake oil believing it'll somehow improve me makes it very hard for me to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. On a good day, I'd call myself an idiot, and on a bad one a pathological liar. 2. Once you open the door to being told fairy tales in hope of improving yourself, you also open the door to letting yourself being manipulated into believing *any* kind BS by other, manipulative people. This is precisely the kind of mental attitude that has given us all the "interesting" byproducts of religion: religious wars, religious persecution, faith-based terrorism, death cults, debasement of arbitrary category of people (eg women, gays) etc ... (the list is long and extremely gruesome). Nope, none of that for me, thank you.
- cjameskeller 6y ago
  Sure, but some folks like me also believe the ontological claims are true. For example, here's a sort of summary argument based mainly on the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfItu3Hm94okBn0dCJfRTjX6zJV9EfjUyFMp674Dou4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfItu3Hm94okBn0dCJfRTjX6...

ur-whale 6y ago

This approach, "religion as an operator's manual to living one's life" is one of the very rare arguments in defense of religion I can vaguely resonate with. Unfortunately this argument entirely fails to support all the rest of the luggage, especially the metaphysical hokum: you can perfectly chose to live your life according to a set of rules that will help you (and others) without having to justify it via the existence of some bearded dude sitting on a cloud.

eszed 6y ago
You're right, but there is value in the community of accountability that churches provide. Fasting, tithing, charity work, and self-examination are objectively worthwhile, but not things I'm likely to muster up the will-power to do on my own, at least not regularly. It's like physical exercise: easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym with a friend, or join a regular class. Also, even though I don't really believe there's any "metaphysical hokum" going on behind it, I'm still moved (aesthetically, and -- dare I say? -- spiritually) by liturgy and church architecture. I'm sitting in the same place, while seeing and smelling and saying the same things that people have for hundreds or thousands of years. That's pretty cool, and I always feel better afterwards. So, even if I'm rationally convinced that it's a psychological (rather than metaphysical) effect, it's still worth doing.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  > easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym Yeah, I hear you, but this is where we part ways: to me it's not a matter of willpower, but rather one of - a sin, I know - pride: I can't bear the idea that I'm walking the path of my life using the equivalent of moral crutches. As to your second argument: no argument there, not everything about religion is bad, even if, in the case of beautiful churches, you could argue that the way they were erected wasn't necessarily "ethical".
redsummer 6y ago
Of the hundreds of communes that have been started in the US, those that were just secular or political never lasted. And the only ones which flourished were religious. People need to believe in a higher power, rather then just themselves, otherwise their communities just dissolve.
hudon 6y ago
> bearded dude sitting on a cloud That's a strange straw man. No God-fearing person I know believes in such a thing. God is not a being, but rather is _being itself_. In fact, when Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". If you prefer an Aristotelian frame, he is the "unmoved mover" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
- today20201014 6y ago
  God is a being in Genesis. He walks through the Garden.
  - joshuacc 6y ago
    And when someone is in love we say they "walk on clouds." That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them.
    - today20201014 6y ago
      > That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them. Exactly, it's figurative language. My point is that when we read in scripture that > Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". the notion of Moses asking God may also be figurative.
    - Smoosh 6y ago
      I always assumed that the "God/Heaven in the clouds" meme came from the same source as Greek gods dwelling atop Mt Olympus being obscured by clouds.
  - rbp 6y ago
    Some Christian commentaries interpret this as God in the person of Jesus Christ: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2017-Gen/Gen-3.cfm https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2...
- deergomoo 6y ago
joshuacc 6y ago
> some bearded dude sitting on a cloud You do realize that this idea is explicitly condemned by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam?
- ur-whale 6y ago
  You do realize that, when talking about a bearded man on a cloud, I was making a point about the fact that most of what the three monotheistic religions you mention (BTW 3 out of many, many equivalently deluded things) are essentially fairy tales designed to control the minds of men? If at one time the bearded man on a cloud was the useful tool of the day to manipulate crowds and was later "condemned" because better ways were devised to keep the flock believing, in what way does that affect my argument that 90% of religion is utter, unprovable, fairy-tale BS? [EDIT]: and yeah if you insist on plowing the dirt of literal interpretation, I'll point you to this argument made by another poster : please take a look at the first image that pops when querying google for "god" and come back and tell us that the argument has no basis. https://images.google.com/search?q=god https://images.google.com/search?q=god
exporectomy 6y ago
That's a naive view that assumes people are rational but we're not, not even you. Our minds seem to need some amount of hokum (imaginary beings) to remain sane. Children who grow up with a supportive parent who reliably takes care of them carry the feeling of being cared for and the confidence that comes from it for the rest of their lives even after the parent is dead. A dead person is no more real than God, yet they're very influential in helping people cope with life. I think they serve similar purposes. Just think how much people who are not present with you still influence your feelings every day. Until we meet them again, these people effectively don't exist either. It's all in our heads, just like God. There's even a psychological technique to build confidence by imagining a supportive person helping you. That's even closer to God or Jesus than a real but absent person.
- rcoveson 6y ago
  > A dead person is no more real than God... I'm unconvinced that remembering dead parents amounts to believing in imaginary beings. Reality is less relative than you're making it out to be. Dead people are "real" because I can reliably predict observable effects their past actions would have had on the world and then confirm them with observation. For example, if I wanted to track down some college essays written by my grandparents, I might actually be able to find some, even though I don't have them in my memories. Or, more practically, I can ask a mutual friend, "remember when {dead person} said X?" And they will say, "yeah, and then they said Y", and I will say, "yeah". The fact that dead people are dead doesn't make them "hokum" in the way that Zeus or Thor or Moroni are hokum. It's fine to doubt your own mind's relationship with reality, but don't doubt it so much that you become totally disconnected and consider all the people in your memories who you can't immediately re-confirm the existence of to be as immaterial as God.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  So, in summary: we're not rational beings, therefore improvement through self-delusion? I'm sorry, but I have two problems with that approach: 1. Knowing I'm willingly drinking snake oil believing it'll somehow improve me makes it very hard for me to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. On a good day, I'd call myself an idiot, and on a bad one a pathological liar. 2. Once you open the door to being told fairy tales in hope of improving yourself, you also open the door to letting yourself being manipulated into believing *any* kind BS by other, manipulative people. This is precisely the kind of mental attitude that has given us all the "interesting" byproducts of religion: religious wars, religious persecution, faith-based terrorism, death cults, debasement of arbitrary category of people (eg women, gays) etc ... (the list is long and extremely gruesome). Nope, none of that for me, thank you.
cjameskeller 6y ago
Sure, but some folks like me also believe the ontological claims are true. For example, here's a sort of summary argument based mainly on the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfItu3Hm94okBn0dCJfRTjX6zJV9EfjUyFMp674Dou4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfItu3Hm94okBn0dCJfRTjX6...