12 ms·

Existential Comfort Without God

32 points by dnetesn 5y ago

torstenvl 5y ago
I'm not really sure this particular bit of culture war is a good fit for HN, is it? I have a hard time imagining that dismissing people's deepest heartfelt beliefs as "a belief in magic" can be anything other than flame bait. Surely there's an article talking about Harvard's new chaplain (assuming that itself is even in topic...) that doesn't engage in IRC-15-years-ago type invective?
- chownie 5y ago
  Fortunately there's a lot more to it, the linked article discusses the difference between believing in something and thinking it's true, juxtaposing that with questions of what offers us most comfort in the face of existential dread. I've just read the entirety of the article looking for the culture war flamebait invective you've described and I'm not really finding it, what in particular is an issue? Conflation of belief in the supernatural with belief in magic?
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    You can't bring me existentiality on a plate or show me its molecular structure under an electron microscope. It is just as supernatural as anything else. Which means that the "magic" talk is not about drawing a line between things that are subject to the natural laws and things that are beyond natural laws, it is solely about looking down on another group of people. I happen to be of the opinion that looking down on people shouldn't set the tone around here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- mcswell 5y ago
  Seems like one of the typical arguments of the form "change the denotation, but retain the connotation." I had an on-line discussion with a pro-abortion person a few months ago, in which the central point turned into a debate over the meaning of "parasite." The other person's claim was that a fetus/ unborn baby was a parasite, by (her) definition. My reply was that defining a connotation-laden term like "parasite" so as to include fetuses was evading the real question. And in this example, it's defining a term that more or less all of us agree is fakery ("magic") to include belief in a higher power. (And without any reference to Clarke's third law.) So yes, flame bait.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    > "change the denotation, but retain the connotation" This would also probably be the most pithy characterization of the heresy of modernism I have come across.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  It's not really a culture war topic. The article is asking what a humanist/atheist can do to extract meaning given this study finding: "participants only had to moderately agree that a religious explanation was true to find it as emotionally, morally, and personally good as a scientific explanation that was strongly agreed to be true."
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  I agree that the specific sentence you highlight ("a belief in magic") was badly chosen, but that aside, I didn't think the rest of the article was condescending on insulting to people who have those beliefs. As to "is it a good fit for HN?", I'm not sure it is. But it's it engaging in 15-years-ago inversive? I don't think so. Rather than insult those with beliefs, it's simply saying that those without religion can be as happy and philosophically wholesome as those with.
proc0 5y ago
Religion isn't just about comfort as the article presumes. Article is very naive from the perspective of any serious practicing believer. It's really about Truth. Let's use a more modern story as an example: The Simulation Theory. We are in a simulation etc., etc. If reality is a like a video game, and we're characters being 'rendered' by the Universe client, how could anyone probe into what the nature of the simulation is? How can any process or group of people ask the right question to find out what exactly is the substrate on which the simulation is being simulated? Many ancient religions are attempting to do just this. They are trying to peek at the true nature of reality. The words and stories are written in ancient vocabulary, but this doesn't mean ancient peoples were talking nonsense. Even if parts of it are wrong, the main premise of all religions is that the supernatural exists. Something that science is by design unable to probe, just like someone inside the simulation will not be able to look at its own source code. If you want to dismiss the supernatural, first you must define the true nature of reality.
- akomtu 5y ago
  One of my hobbies is to study the "ancient philosophy" if we may call it this way. One of my favorite pearls I've found so far is one saint's thoughts on the nature of reality and the power of numbers. He said something along this line: every thing has a number, chance is just the lack of knowledge and time is a sequence of numbers, one is the number of spirit and zero is the number of matter, so together they form 10 which is the number of existence and the origin of duality. Apparently, the concept of super determinism and simulation was known well before Christianity was a project.
  - proc0 5y ago
    Interesting. Which saint is that?
    - goto11 5y ago
      Apparently an ancient saint which used the decimal system.
coldtea 5y ago
>But the most striking results emerged when participants were asked to generate existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind. There's a whole great difference between "generating existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind" and actually having "existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind". In the first case, the participants wrote some explanations that they thought should offer comfort and peace of mind (key word: should). In the second case, those explanations actually offered them comfort and peace of mind. The first case, explanations that you can up with that oughta offer comfort and peace of mind, are a dime a dozen. The second case, things that actually offer comfort and peace of mind are orders of magnitude rarer (and historically religion has been found effective in this). And it's easy to fool one's self (especially given the culture we're in, where it's a faux pass to be religious in "polite company") that, "this god-less scientific explanation should be fine for the purpose of meaning", as if people are logical machines satisfied with mere technical explanation, or as if those explanations arrive at some ultimate meaning, when all they offer are the mechanics of the thing. I'm not saying the scientific explanations are wrong, and the religious ones are right. I'm saying that the religious ones (a) are based on faith (so they command, assuming you do believe, a larger part of your inner commitment than mere objective reasoning), and (b) are specifically structured to answer the meaning/why part, not just the how part. Sure, religious explanations can be innefective, if you don't believe in them. But scientific explanation can not be as effective as belief, because you don't really believe in them: they're proven and broken down for you (as to how they work), so you don't have to believe in them. So, it's somewhat like the difference between trusting someone blindly (like a kid does with their parents), and "trusting" someone because they do trustworthy things. In the latter case, you don't really trust them: you weight what they do (and are always vigilant that they might fail to be worthy of your trust). Both cases involve trust, but one is an inherent belief, and the other is an observation based on past performance. Never mind which is more correct: which one do you think offers more "comfort and peace of mind"? I'd say blind trust wins hands down - and likewise belief-driven explanations.
015a 5y ago
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur Clarke It may be useful to rephrase this idea of religion as supernatural or magic, into something that's far more likely (though obviously not guaranteed) to be true or possible: it doesn't speak of magic, it speaks of technologies which we just aren't familiar with. Turning water into wine is cool, but I can sit in my American house and instantly enjoy a conversation with my friend in Japan. Somehow, only the former is "magic"... whether or not something is magic clearly has nothing to do with how absolutely complex it is, but rather how well you understand it. Well, I'm not sure anyone reading this actually has a "I could rebuild it" understanding of how the global cell phone system works (I certainly don't), so maybe it has nothing to do with understanding; its more to do with desensitization and ubiquity. Arthur didn't mean "all that technology around you is magic"; he meant: Envision what you think of as magic, as just potentially yet-uninvented technology. I don't read it as a statement about how advanced technology is or can be; I read it as a statement about how everything, including magic, can eventually be understood. Any sufficiently ubiquitous magic is indistinguishable from technology. God created the universe in seven days. In other words, we're living in a simulation, and it took them seven days to code it. More broadly, one side can argue that gays shouldn't marry, while the other says religion is a farce and science is the only path forward. If there's one thing humanity is great at, its taking it way too far. What if the third option is just to say, there's something more out there. Maybe you're being judged; maybe you're going to heaven, or maybe you're a simulated A/B test that isn't doing so hot.
- Saptarishi 5y ago
  >"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur Clarke I think this would be an interesting place to discuss. When Arthur Clarke made that statement, technology wasnt as ubiquitous as it is today. I've always wondered about the converse of that statement - "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology"
mbfg 5y ago
Are we really saying that how a belief makes you feel somehow justifies it as good or true? That's ridiculous. Beliefs are our intentions to model the real world. We act in accordance with our beliefs because we hope this will accurately accomplish whatever we are trying to do. It doesn't matter how a belief makes you feel, if that believe is not based on evidence. Delusions can make you feel good as well, but they also allow people to be dangerous. We should be judging beliefs on whether or not they are true, regardless of how good or bad they make us feel.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
It seems in the atheist world, post dawkins/harris/hitchens, we have had a huge increase in atheism. I approve. We seem to have lost something however(the opium). The now atheist folks seem to be constantly falling into or creating new religions. These atheists who gave up on christianity seem to be seeking for something. I think that religion has grasped onto something and dominated it. If you leave the church you end up losing that thing. What is that thing? Wokeism is a new religion deriving from Marxism. Even more interestingly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."[5] Wokeism is often confused with being aware of unfairness of how others are treated. It's not that, it's about destroying the religious class but in doing so they themselves break that opium. Marx wanted to break the opium to reveal the corruption of classes, capitalism and exploitation. However, it's clear right now that Marx didn't understand what that opium actually was however. The removal of that opium seems to have destabilized the woke and empowered those they want to overthrow. Mind you, socialism died in 1989. The entire movement is dead right now, they are just giving it their last horrah.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  If you think the Catholic faith (or Christianity broadly) is opium, then you have not understood Catholicism. I blame modernism for selling a counterfeit that "feels good" in order to appeal to modern sensibilities and the false supreme virtue of being nice and palatable even at the cost of the truth. Any authentically educated Catholic knows that eternal damnation is exceedingly easy to achieve. All it takes is one unabsolved mortal sin to enter through the wide gate. If there ever was an opium, atheism is the closest you get to one. No ultimate justice means your sins are of no ultimate consequence. (This reminds me of Aldous Huxley's frank admission about why his generation was willing to destroy meaning, and it was to try to escape the guilt that would otherwise result from their program of sexual liberation. This is so common. Human pride will foolishly oppose truth and reason, deny things like human nature, the existence of God, and what is objectively good and objectively evil to satisfy some desire that's taken possession of a man. If reason tells you that some desire should not be satisfied, then reason be damned!) A Christian, on the other hand, awaits his final judgement. He awaits the making public of his every sin and believes that his fate shall be sealed by them and by the authenticity of his faith (trust). That kind of moral austerity is not exactly my idea of opium.
silent_cal 5y ago
People who don't understand religion really should stop writing about it. Anyone with any familiarity with religion knows it's more sophisticated than a belief in "magic". The fact that the author references metaphysics and magic as if they belong to the same category reveals how ignorant she is. Metaphysics is a field of philosophy. The fact that they've given an atheist authority over real religious representatives at Harvard is an outrage, and does nothing but show how much they hold the richness of religious traditions in contempt, which should be obvious to anyone with any respect for religious people.
- manapause 5y ago
  Religion is not just Vaticans and Osteen. It's also deeply personal often for the benefit of the wielder; a source of comfort in a path they've carved for themselves that has given them peace - I had very good atheist friends; friends that I loved who were intelligent and kind but had no religious backgrounds and when they would ask to engage in religious discourse and the platform they preach doesn't make sense....it's just disheartening because this behavior is one of petulance and anger. Are you spreading a religion or a personality disorder don't understand that when they are hating on God-based religions, they are actually practicing a form of deep adoration and commitment to God in their lives. You have to find a positive to rally around and you have to be authentic about understanding that it's ok to see someone praying for something in their life and hope that they will be ok in your own secular way. How many atheists do you know who would make fun of that person as soon as they were around the corner?
manapause 5y ago
Existential comfort has nothing to do with God. It is the ability to appreciate uncertainty of purpose as being a side affect of free will. Spirituality is bigger than God; Religious practice in the past of an atheist who is dismayed by their own existence within an atheistic framework needs to take a leap of faith I think. Spirituality/Shamanism, org Religion, Monastic/ZEN Buddhism are paths to spiritual awakening, but I would argue heavily that absurdism i.e. understanding that there is so much to think about wrt the universe and me being here - but that's the universes fault. All of you reading this because a protein bumped nasties with another protein, fast forward to your parents and now here we all are together...at the pinnacle of existence from the protien's point of view.
mactavish88 5y ago
Given that we don't totally understand reality, is it not a little premature to be taking the "magic" out of it? I mean, what if the base substrate of all that is (underlying subatomic particles, at the tiniest levels we don't have the technology yet to explore) is actually what we commonly consider to be "magic"? :-D In my nearly 40 years of being alive, I've personally encountered 3 broad "categories" of people so far: 1. Religious types, who are super uncomfortable with the unknown and wave it away by pointing to "God". 2. Scientism adherents, who are also super uncomfortable with the unknown, and wave it away with, what looks to me like, a magical belief in science ("science can't explain this, but I totally trust that it eventually will"). They like to denigrate people in category (1) without realizing they're guilty of a similar kind of magical thinking. 3. Mystics. They appreciate science and its shortcomings and don't resort to magical thinking. They're capable of non-dualistic thinking. They don't resort to "God" or "science" to wave away the unknown. They're comfortable with being uncomfortable as just yet another part of the human experience. They accept their personal limitations and make no declarations about the existence or non-existence of things about which they could not possibly know. 1, 2 and 3 also roughly model the various stages of individual development outlined by M. Scott Peck in "Further along the road less traveled" [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_four_stages_of_spiritual_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_four_stages_...
- amriksohata 5y ago
  This is great, the individual development stages are also listed in the Hindu Vedic texts, which are not dogmatic like modern religions. They clearly state everyone has a path and they sometimes have unfinished business before they can develop their mind, soul and ego, all which are different entities.
- Ajef 5y ago
  I think 1. and 2. are very similar as you describe in that they believe what they pick up and have a difficult time challenging concepts the deeper these sit in their belief system of everything physical and otherwise. The difference I see with 3. is that people that might identify with this will try to challenge their views in ways that most people won't and in the process often realize how much of their views are based on belief. I disagree with the choice of the word "mystic" greatly because anyone religious, spiritual or not can fit this description. I'm not sure I agree with you on the being comfortable or not part. In my opinion challenging yourself on emotions and feeling comfortable and reflecting on that is a part of this too. Regarding belief and challenging your views: I believe the milky way is a spiral galaxy. I have not done mathematical calculations of the position of stars or the densities of light in the night time sky. Even if I had, these would only be indicators. So far I have only the words of others to base this belief on. I was originally going to go with the example of the earth being round where my only own observation might be the curvature of the earth in an airplane. But I assumed for many this might push them into category 2. so I put it here to challenge those that read this far. [edit/addition]: The examples are supposed to challenge what you consider absolute knowledge/truth and how close it might be to belief.
lcall 5y ago
I have learned for myself that God is real, our choices matter, justice and mercy are real things, and we can find good things that last forever, if we want. There is so much good there, that it makes everything else seem to me shallow by comparison: not just peace, but also progress, stability, all kinds of top-notch life helps, enjoyments, refinements, etc. For many things, one can see the scope of it, top to bottom, after studying for a while. This is endless, expanding goodness that earns trust, answers questions, and yields joy that lasts. Edit: minor wording improvements. And thoughtful comments appreciated w/ any votes; thanks.
- Qi_ 5y ago
  I love the conviction of your comment! Thank you for sharing that testimony. It is often overlooked in discussions like these.
  - lcall 5y ago
    Thanks. To clarify what I said earlier (for possible future readers): Life is still hard at times. Those things make it also good. (More info if desired.. :)

32 points by dnetesn 5y ago

I'm not really sure this particular bit of culture war is a good fit for HN, is it? I have a hard time imagining that dismissing people's deepest heartfelt beliefs as "a belief in magic" can be anything other than flame bait. Surely there's an article talking about Harvard's new chaplain (assuming that itself is even in topic...) that doesn't engage in IRC-15-years-ago type invective?

chownie 5y ago
Fortunately there's a lot more to it, the linked article discusses the difference between believing in something and thinking it's true, juxtaposing that with questions of what offers us most comfort in the face of existential dread. I've just read the entirety of the article looking for the culture war flamebait invective you've described and I'm not really finding it, what in particular is an issue? Conflation of belief in the supernatural with belief in magic?
- torstenvl 5y ago
  You can't bring me existentiality on a plate or show me its molecular structure under an electron microscope. It is just as supernatural as anything else. Which means that the "magic" talk is not about drawing a line between things that are subject to the natural laws and things that are beyond natural laws, it is solely about looking down on another group of people. I happen to be of the opinion that looking down on people shouldn't set the tone around here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
mcswell 5y ago
Seems like one of the typical arguments of the form "change the denotation, but retain the connotation." I had an on-line discussion with a pro-abortion person a few months ago, in which the central point turned into a debate over the meaning of "parasite." The other person's claim was that a fetus/ unborn baby was a parasite, by (her) definition. My reply was that defining a connotation-laden term like "parasite" so as to include fetuses was evading the real question. And in this example, it's defining a term that more or less all of us agree is fakery ("magic") to include belief in a higher power. (And without any reference to Clarke's third law.) So yes, flame bait.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bobthechef 5y ago
  > "change the denotation, but retain the connotation" This would also probably be the most pithy characterization of the heresy of modernism I have come across.
1123581321 5y ago
It's not really a culture war topic. The article is asking what a humanist/atheist can do to extract meaning given this study finding: "participants only had to moderately agree that a religious explanation was true to find it as emotionally, morally, and personally good as a scientific explanation that was strongly agreed to be true."
raffraffraff 5y ago
I agree that the specific sentence you highlight ("a belief in magic") was badly chosen, but that aside, I didn't think the rest of the article was condescending on insulting to people who have those beliefs. As to "is it a good fit for HN?", I'm not sure it is. But it's it engaging in 15-years-ago inversive? I don't think so. Rather than insult those with beliefs, it's simply saying that those without religion can be as happy and philosophically wholesome as those with.

proc0 5y ago

Religion isn't just about comfort as the article presumes. Article is very naive from the perspective of any serious practicing believer. It's really about Truth. Let's use a more modern story as an example: The Simulation Theory. We are in a simulation etc., etc. If reality is a like a video game, and we're characters being 'rendered' by the Universe client, how could anyone probe into what the nature of the simulation is? How can any process or group of people ask the right question to find out what exactly is the substrate on which the simulation is being simulated? Many ancient religions are attempting to do just this. They are trying to peek at the true nature of reality. The words and stories are written in ancient vocabulary, but this doesn't mean ancient peoples were talking nonsense. Even if parts of it are wrong, the main premise of all religions is that the supernatural exists. Something that science is by design unable to probe, just like someone inside the simulation will not be able to look at its own source code. If you want to dismiss the supernatural, first you must define the true nature of reality.

akomtu 5y ago
One of my hobbies is to study the "ancient philosophy" if we may call it this way. One of my favorite pearls I've found so far is one saint's thoughts on the nature of reality and the power of numbers. He said something along this line: every thing has a number, chance is just the lack of knowledge and time is a sequence of numbers, one is the number of spirit and zero is the number of matter, so together they form 10 which is the number of existence and the origin of duality. Apparently, the concept of super determinism and simulation was known well before Christianity was a project.
- proc0 5y ago
  Interesting. Which saint is that?
  - goto11 5y ago
    Apparently an ancient saint which used the decimal system.

coldtea 5y ago

>But the most striking results emerged when participants were asked to generate existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind. There's a whole great difference between "generating existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind" and actually having "existential explanations that offered comfort and peace of mind". In the first case, the participants wrote some explanations that they thought should offer comfort and peace of mind (key word: should). In the second case, those explanations actually offered them comfort and peace of mind. The first case, explanations that you can up with that oughta offer comfort and peace of mind, are a dime a dozen. The second case, things that actually offer comfort and peace of mind are orders of magnitude rarer (and historically religion has been found effective in this). And it's easy to fool one's self (especially given the culture we're in, where it's a faux pass to be religious in "polite company") that, "this god-less scientific explanation should be fine for the purpose of meaning", as if people are logical machines satisfied with mere technical explanation, or as if those explanations arrive at some ultimate meaning, when all they offer are the mechanics of the thing. I'm not saying the scientific explanations are wrong, and the religious ones are right. I'm saying that the religious ones (a) are based on faith (so they command, assuming you do believe, a larger part of your inner commitment than mere objective reasoning), and (b) are specifically structured to answer the meaning/why part, not just the how part. Sure, religious explanations can be innefective, if you don't believe in them. But scientific explanation can not be as effective as belief, because you don't really believe in them: they're proven and broken down for you (as to how they work), so you don't have to believe in them. So, it's somewhat like the difference between trusting someone blindly (like a kid does with their parents), and "trusting" someone because they do trustworthy things. In the latter case, you don't really trust them: you weight what they do (and are always vigilant that they might fail to be worthy of your trust). Both cases involve trust, but one is an inherent belief, and the other is an observation based on past performance. Never mind which is more correct: which one do you think offers more "comfort and peace of mind"? I'd say blind trust wins hands down - and likewise belief-driven explanations.

015a 5y ago

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur Clarke It may be useful to rephrase this idea of religion as supernatural or magic, into something that's far more likely (though obviously not guaranteed) to be true or possible: it doesn't speak of magic, it speaks of technologies which we just aren't familiar with. Turning water into wine is cool, but I can sit in my American house and instantly enjoy a conversation with my friend in Japan. Somehow, only the former is "magic"... whether or not something is magic clearly has nothing to do with how absolutely complex it is, but rather how well you understand it. Well, I'm not sure anyone reading this actually has a "I could rebuild it" understanding of how the global cell phone system works (I certainly don't), so maybe it has nothing to do with understanding; its more to do with desensitization and ubiquity. Arthur didn't mean "all that technology around you is magic"; he meant: Envision what you think of as magic, as just potentially yet-uninvented technology. I don't read it as a statement about how advanced technology is or can be; I read it as a statement about how everything, including magic, can eventually be understood. Any sufficiently ubiquitous magic is indistinguishable from technology. God created the universe in seven days. In other words, we're living in a simulation, and it took them seven days to code it. More broadly, one side can argue that gays shouldn't marry, while the other says religion is a farce and science is the only path forward. If there's one thing humanity is great at, its taking it way too far. What if the third option is just to say, there's something more out there. Maybe you're being judged; maybe you're going to heaven, or maybe you're a simulated A/B test that isn't doing so hot.

Saptarishi 5y ago
>"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur Clarke I think this would be an interesting place to discuss. When Arthur Clarke made that statement, technology wasnt as ubiquitous as it is today. I've always wondered about the converse of that statement - "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology"

mbfg 5y ago

Are we really saying that how a belief makes you feel somehow justifies it as good or true? That's ridiculous. Beliefs are our intentions to model the real world. We act in accordance with our beliefs because we hope this will accurately accomplish whatever we are trying to do. It doesn't matter how a belief makes you feel, if that believe is not based on evidence. Delusions can make you feel good as well, but they also allow people to be dangerous. We should be judging beliefs on whether or not they are true, regardless of how good or bad they make us feel.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

It seems in the atheist world, post dawkins/harris/hitchens, we have had a huge increase in atheism. I approve. We seem to have lost something however(the opium). The now atheist folks seem to be constantly falling into or creating new religions. These atheists who gave up on christianity seem to be seeking for something. I think that religion has grasped onto something and dominated it. If you leave the church you end up losing that thing. What is that thing? Wokeism is a new religion deriving from Marxism. Even more interestingly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."[5] Wokeism is often confused with being aware of unfairness of how others are treated. It's not that, it's about destroying the religious class but in doing so they themselves break that opium. Marx wanted to break the opium to reveal the corruption of classes, capitalism and exploitation. However, it's clear right now that Marx didn't understand what that opium actually was however. The removal of that opium seems to have destabilized the woke and empowered those they want to overthrow. Mind you, socialism died in 1989. The entire movement is dead right now, they are just giving it their last horrah.

bobthechef 5y ago
If you think the Catholic faith (or Christianity broadly) is opium, then you have not understood Catholicism. I blame modernism for selling a counterfeit that "feels good" in order to appeal to modern sensibilities and the false supreme virtue of being nice and palatable even at the cost of the truth. Any authentically educated Catholic knows that eternal damnation is exceedingly easy to achieve. All it takes is one unabsolved mortal sin to enter through the wide gate. If there ever was an opium, atheism is the closest you get to one. No ultimate justice means your sins are of no ultimate consequence. (This reminds me of Aldous Huxley's frank admission about why his generation was willing to destroy meaning, and it was to try to escape the guilt that would otherwise result from their program of sexual liberation. This is so common. Human pride will foolishly oppose truth and reason, deny things like human nature, the existence of God, and what is objectively good and objectively evil to satisfy some desire that's taken possession of a man. If reason tells you that some desire should not be satisfied, then reason be damned!) A Christian, on the other hand, awaits his final judgement. He awaits the making public of his every sin and believes that his fate shall be sealed by them and by the authenticity of his faith (trust). That kind of moral austerity is not exactly my idea of opium.

silent_cal 5y ago

People who don't understand religion really should stop writing about it. Anyone with any familiarity with religion knows it's more sophisticated than a belief in "magic". The fact that the author references metaphysics and magic as if they belong to the same category reveals how ignorant she is. Metaphysics is a field of philosophy. The fact that they've given an atheist authority over real religious representatives at Harvard is an outrage, and does nothing but show how much they hold the richness of religious traditions in contempt, which should be obvious to anyone with any respect for religious people.

manapause 5y ago
Religion is not just Vaticans and Osteen. It's also deeply personal often for the benefit of the wielder; a source of comfort in a path they've carved for themselves that has given them peace - I had very good atheist friends; friends that I loved who were intelligent and kind but had no religious backgrounds and when they would ask to engage in religious discourse and the platform they preach doesn't make sense....it's just disheartening because this behavior is one of petulance and anger. Are you spreading a religion or a personality disorder don't understand that when they are hating on God-based religions, they are actually practicing a form of deep adoration and commitment to God in their lives. You have to find a positive to rally around and you have to be authentic about understanding that it's ok to see someone praying for something in their life and hope that they will be ok in your own secular way. How many atheists do you know who would make fun of that person as soon as they were around the corner?

manapause 5y ago

Existential comfort has nothing to do with God. It is the ability to appreciate uncertainty of purpose as being a side affect of free will. Spirituality is bigger than God; Religious practice in the past of an atheist who is dismayed by their own existence within an atheistic framework needs to take a leap of faith I think. Spirituality/Shamanism, org Religion, Monastic/ZEN Buddhism are paths to spiritual awakening, but I would argue heavily that absurdism i.e. understanding that there is so much to think about wrt the universe and me being here - but that's the universes fault. All of you reading this because a protein bumped nasties with another protein, fast forward to your parents and now here we all are together...at the pinnacle of existence from the protien's point of view.

mactavish88 5y ago

Given that we don't totally understand reality, is it not a little premature to be taking the "magic" out of it? I mean, what if the base substrate of all that is (underlying subatomic particles, at the tiniest levels we don't have the technology yet to explore) is actually what we commonly consider to be "magic"? :-D In my nearly 40 years of being alive, I've personally encountered 3 broad "categories" of people so far: 1. Religious types, who are super uncomfortable with the unknown and wave it away by pointing to "God". 2. Scientism adherents, who are also super uncomfortable with the unknown, and wave it away with, what looks to me like, a magical belief in science ("science can't explain this, but I totally trust that it eventually will"). They like to denigrate people in category (1) without realizing they're guilty of a similar kind of magical thinking. 3. Mystics. They appreciate science and its shortcomings and don't resort to magical thinking. They're capable of non-dualistic thinking. They don't resort to "God" or "science" to wave away the unknown. They're comfortable with being uncomfortable as just yet another part of the human experience. They accept their personal limitations and make no declarations about the existence or non-existence of things about which they could not possibly know. 1, 2 and 3 also roughly model the various stages of individual development outlined by M. Scott Peck in "Further along the road less traveled" [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_four_stages_of_spiritual_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_four_stages_...

amriksohata 5y ago
This is great, the individual development stages are also listed in the Hindu Vedic texts, which are not dogmatic like modern religions. They clearly state everyone has a path and they sometimes have unfinished business before they can develop their mind, soul and ego, all which are different entities.
Ajef 5y ago
I think 1. and 2. are very similar as you describe in that they believe what they pick up and have a difficult time challenging concepts the deeper these sit in their belief system of everything physical and otherwise. The difference I see with 3. is that people that might identify with this will try to challenge their views in ways that most people won't and in the process often realize how much of their views are based on belief. I disagree with the choice of the word "mystic" greatly because anyone religious, spiritual or not can fit this description. I'm not sure I agree with you on the being comfortable or not part. In my opinion challenging yourself on emotions and feeling comfortable and reflecting on that is a part of this too. Regarding belief and challenging your views: I believe the milky way is a spiral galaxy. I have not done mathematical calculations of the position of stars or the densities of light in the night time sky. Even if I had, these would only be indicators. So far I have only the words of others to base this belief on. I was originally going to go with the example of the earth being round where my only own observation might be the curvature of the earth in an airplane. But I assumed for many this might push them into category 2. so I put it here to challenge those that read this far. [edit/addition]: The examples are supposed to challenge what you consider absolute knowledge/truth and how close it might be to belief.

lcall 5y ago

I have learned for myself that God is real, our choices matter, justice and mercy are real things, and we can find good things that last forever, if we want. There is so much good there, that it makes everything else seem to me shallow by comparison: not just peace, but also progress, stability, all kinds of top-notch life helps, enjoyments, refinements, etc. For many things, one can see the scope of it, top to bottom, after studying for a while. This is endless, expanding goodness that earns trust, answers questions, and yields joy that lasts. Edit: minor wording improvements. And thoughtful comments appreciated w/ any votes; thanks.

Qi_ 5y ago
I love the conviction of your comment! Thank you for sharing that testimony. It is often overlooked in discussions like these.
- lcall 5y ago
  Thanks. To clarify what I said earlier (for possible future readers): Life is still hard at times. Those things make it also good. (More info if desired.. :)