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I see people saying "it's just water that made the rock crack, nothing is goign to happen". While I understand this point of view, I personnaly think religion,

I see people saying "it's just water that made the rock crack, nothing is goign to happen". While I understand this point of view, I personnaly think religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one give much more flavor and diversity to the world than what rational thought will ever produce. Religious people made magnificent temples, cathedrals, songs, paintings and so on : what if this way of thought was in fact beneficial for societies, in some aspects?

deleted 5y ago
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MildlySerious 5y ago
Hardly anyone with some nuance thinks of religions and related beliefs as exclusively bad, I think. That doesn't mean that there is not plenty of surface area for people to be overexposed to the negative aspects of these beliefs, leading to cynical takes and the perceived need to shoot down any semblance of it. Regardless of the side one is on, those comments rarely add something of substance to a given conversation, though.
- packetlost 5y ago
  I think there are some religions that are a net-negative on society, their members, etc. Most religions are probably not in that category though. I only say this because I grew up in a cult that has had lasting impacts on my social and mental health despite leaving almost a decade ago and I have nothing good to say about that particular organization.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    They absolutely are. They have been used for thousands of years to hold back the populous and abused by leaders who manipulate it to get what they want. I'm not saying atheists don't do bad things either, it's just they don't justify it as "the will of God(s)”. I think by and large religion has an awful track record down through history and has actively attempted to retard human progress and learning, they want to be the only source of “truth”
    - sacrosancty 5y ago
      For most of history, there was no progress to make and nothing to learn. Religion provided stability. That's pretty good if you're going nowhere. Who, 1000 years ago, could have predicted the industrial revolution or anything remotely like it? Science had almost no relevance to real life until maybe 100-200 years ago. Before that it was pretty much just imagining stuff for fun. Who could have expected that to lead anywhere useful?
- drewcoo 5y ago
  And nuanced does not mean more correct.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    Whether the nuanced view is more or less correct depends entirely on whether your view of correctness is black-and-white or more nuanced. Suppose I spill a bunch of puzzle pieces on a table and ask two friends to tell me what picture is on the puzzle. My friend Alice blurts out "Elephant" because she has seen a lot of grey pieces. My friend Bob spends more time and looks beyond just the color, at the shapes and the other colors present and determines the image is Fort Knox. In this case does it matter what is actually on the puzzle? Even if Alice gets it right, she's basically just guessing in the dark. She's ignoring all kinds of other evidence and reaching a conclusion. Does she deserve a reward if she happens to have guessed correctly despite not developing an understanding of what she's actually seeing? (Put another way, is real life like a gameshow?) Conversely, is Bob 'less correct' for having taken the time to understand other details of the image? I say, no. I don't think Alice can be correct here. Her view can only align with truth coincidentally. That she got lucky this time has no meaning.
- olivejun 5y ago
  Honestly I thought the same thing about your comment tbh lol I don’t understand what’s negative about the folklore. I feel as if you’re conflating this folk tale to an organized religion or something.
  - MildlySerious 5y ago
    > I feel as if you’re conflating this folk tale to an organized religion or something. The comment I replied to reads "religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one".
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Sorry man I've lived long enough to see very bad people use religion to explain what they do or to forgive themselves for awful things that they do. I have met very few "saintly" people over the course of things. Luckily most people (at least in the west) don't give religion that much time in their thoughts and general don't shape their lives around it.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    The nicest people I've met and the strangers who helped me when I needed it were religious. I don't think anecdotes can be used to accuse a massive group of people of wrongdoing. Religious people are people, judge the individual. And I don't think forgiving yourself is a bad thing. The only other options are kill yourself or wallow in guilt for the rest of your life. Just because you forgave yourself doesn't mean there wasn't consequences or guilt felt.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
> Religious people made magnificent temples, cathedrals, songs, paintings and so on Non-religious people may not have made temples or cathedrals, but I can promise you they have made songs, paintings, theaters, other random impressive looking buildings, and so on. The only things that really prevents the existence of more massive, impressive looking buildings is current worry about sustainability, safety, accessibility, and not having the budget of the entire Catholic/Christian/Other church to build them.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I'm not a religious person and demand scientific facts for anything I want to understand and believe that there is a rational explanation for everything even we do not yet agree on the science behind it. While different religions all still agree on the idea of a higher power to explain the unexplained, my believe system is the most radical of all. Because it leaves no room for any other gods except science. I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion.
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact that the majority of people historically identified as religious, without examining the number of confounding reasons for that (like it being the best theory previously, or the threat of being put to death for not identifying as the regions majority religion, etc). I think this is basically an appeal to authority argument no?
    - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
      > I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might have been historically or currently been agnostic, atheist, or anti-theist. > this is basically an appeal to authority argument no? I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority". The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in order to decide the validity of the argument is already a scientific process. Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree would be an important element of religious belief systems. In scientific process this trust is only temporary until we either managed to learn enough about this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up on it and trust that those specialists who know (your appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it for us.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
toyg 5y ago
You personally hold the same views exposed in the XIX century by the Romantic movement.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  You have a lot of karma, so I imagine you're not a troll, but I would love to know more information about what you've said here. I imagine it carries with it some deep, meaningful info.
  - toyg 5y ago
    My karma is an accident of history, but that wasn't an attack - if you are not familiar with Romanticism, I suggest you explore it, because it aligns with parent's sentiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism Spoiler alert: it's not about love.
    - t-writescode 5y ago
      When you said it, what were you intending to carry forward to the parent comment? I don't especially want to read several essays to try and glean what you hypothetically meant by it.
      - toyg 5y ago
        The Romantic movement was all about valuing the "irrational" elements of the human being - religion, tradition, animal instinct (in opposition to the rationalistic Enlightenment wave that preceded it). That's what the parent comment basically went for, so I just pointed it out. One might take my point of citing the century as a statement on the (lack of) originality of such thought, but tbh I mostly meant as a resource: other people, out there, have already thought and reasoned about those issues for literally hundreds of years at this point, so parent might find some solace (and some critical developments) in their production. This is not restricted to Romantic issues, btw - most of the stuff we pass for original in places like this, are likely to have already been discussed ad nauseam in philosophical circles all the way to the 1970s (at which point academia kinda ran out of stuff to talk about, and started focusing on the meta -- but I digress).
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Religion is poison to the mind. It shuts down your ability to consider things rationally. Thinking Putin is a demon possessed dictator is going to be a much worse frame of mind than simply considering him a deranged despot who needs to be treated as such. Religious people didn't make those things, crazy rich people abused the poor and took their money, labor, and time to build those "magnificent temples and palaces" when instead they could have lived up to those elements of their religions about being compassionate and generous to each other and looked out for humanity's welfare. Instead they built monuments to their pride and abused the trust of the religiously devout. The golden rule is great advice except those in power never really pay any attention to it.
devwastaken 5y ago
Confirmation bias, religion was the dominant thinking for a long time, therefore people built things in its name. Now we build cathedrals of engineering every day simply to explore the universe. Constructs far more complex and diverse in people.
- w-j-w 5y ago
avz 5y ago
> give much more flavor and diversity to the world than what rational thought will ever produce. I don't know. The religious and mythological concepts such as punishment, judgment, sacrifice, angels, daemons and elves look like a derivative reflection of humans and their society. By comparison, the concepts from science and technology such as force fields, wavefunctions, wormholes and black holes seem genuinely novel and weird. Personally, I would certainly not give up on the scientific truth - often in conflict with religion and mythology - to enjoy some of that mythological flavor.
posterboy 5y ago
The false dichotomy of rational and irrational thought is aggrevating. Point one, it's not the irrational that makes religions stupid. Point two, the more usual collocation is rational decision. Like, there are more and less rational ways to deal with problems. Religion is just one of them and it's often not much of a decision. If you believe you will live forever in heaven blowing yourself up might be an entirely rational decision. The premisse is irrational, and people would usually maintain a sense of ultimate uncertainty ... this fails catastrophically in case of fear. That's not irrational in face of better judgement. It's just not rational, so it's useless to bring up that word, unless to stress the western philosophical angle, which you have carefully avoided.
- scaredtheorist 5y ago
  "it's not the irrational that makes religions stupid" - AGREE! Thoughts on the two clocks? https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ https://longnow.org/clock/ https://longnow.org/clock/ Ironic?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MildlySerious 5y ago

Hardly anyone with some nuance thinks of religions and related beliefs as exclusively bad, I think. That doesn't mean that there is not plenty of surface area for people to be overexposed to the negative aspects of these beliefs, leading to cynical takes and the perceived need to shoot down any semblance of it. Regardless of the side one is on, those comments rarely add something of substance to a given conversation, though.

packetlost 5y ago
I think there are some religions that are a net-negative on society, their members, etc. Most religions are probably not in that category though. I only say this because I grew up in a cult that has had lasting impacts on my social and mental health despite leaving almost a decade ago and I have nothing good to say about that particular organization.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  They absolutely are. They have been used for thousands of years to hold back the populous and abused by leaders who manipulate it to get what they want. I'm not saying atheists don't do bad things either, it's just they don't justify it as "the will of God(s)”. I think by and large religion has an awful track record down through history and has actively attempted to retard human progress and learning, they want to be the only source of “truth”
  - sacrosancty 5y ago
    For most of history, there was no progress to make and nothing to learn. Religion provided stability. That's pretty good if you're going nowhere. Who, 1000 years ago, could have predicted the industrial revolution or anything remotely like it? Science had almost no relevance to real life until maybe 100-200 years ago. Before that it was pretty much just imagining stuff for fun. Who could have expected that to lead anywhere useful?
drewcoo 5y ago
And nuanced does not mean more correct.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  Whether the nuanced view is more or less correct depends entirely on whether your view of correctness is black-and-white or more nuanced. Suppose I spill a bunch of puzzle pieces on a table and ask two friends to tell me what picture is on the puzzle. My friend Alice blurts out "Elephant" because she has seen a lot of grey pieces. My friend Bob spends more time and looks beyond just the color, at the shapes and the other colors present and determines the image is Fort Knox. In this case does it matter what is actually on the puzzle? Even if Alice gets it right, she's basically just guessing in the dark. She's ignoring all kinds of other evidence and reaching a conclusion. Does she deserve a reward if she happens to have guessed correctly despite not developing an understanding of what she's actually seeing? (Put another way, is real life like a gameshow?) Conversely, is Bob 'less correct' for having taken the time to understand other details of the image? I say, no. I don't think Alice can be correct here. Her view can only align with truth coincidentally. That she got lucky this time has no meaning.
olivejun 5y ago
Honestly I thought the same thing about your comment tbh lol I don’t understand what’s negative about the folklore. I feel as if you’re conflating this folk tale to an organized religion or something.
- MildlySerious 5y ago
  > I feel as if you’re conflating this folk tale to an organized religion or something. The comment I replied to reads "religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one".
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Sorry man I've lived long enough to see very bad people use religion to explain what they do or to forgive themselves for awful things that they do. I have met very few "saintly" people over the course of things. Luckily most people (at least in the west) don't give religion that much time in their thoughts and general don't shape their lives around it.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  The nicest people I've met and the strangers who helped me when I needed it were religious. I don't think anecdotes can be used to accuse a massive group of people of wrongdoing. Religious people are people, judge the individual. And I don't think forgiving yourself is a bad thing. The only other options are kill yourself or wallow in guilt for the rest of your life. Just because you forgave yourself doesn't mean there wasn't consequences or guilt felt.

xboxnolifes 5y ago

> Religious people made magnificent temples, cathedrals, songs, paintings and so on Non-religious people may not have made temples or cathedrals, but I can promise you they have made songs, paintings, theaters, other random impressive looking buildings, and so on. The only things that really prevents the existence of more massive, impressive looking buildings is current worry about sustainability, safety, accessibility, and not having the budget of the entire Catholic/Christian/Other church to build them.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I'm not a religious person and demand scientific facts for anything I want to understand and believe that there is a rational explanation for everything even we do not yet agree on the science behind it. While different religions all still agree on the idea of a higher power to explain the unexplained, my believe system is the most radical of all. Because it leaves no room for any other gods except science. I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact that the majority of people historically identified as religious, without examining the number of confounding reasons for that (like it being the best theory previously, or the threat of being put to death for not identifying as the regions majority religion, etc). I think this is basically an appeal to authority argument no?
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    > I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might have been historically or currently been agnostic, atheist, or anti-theist. > this is basically an appeal to authority argument no? I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority". The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in order to decide the validity of the argument is already a scientific process. Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree would be an important element of religious belief systems. In scientific process this trust is only temporary until we either managed to learn enough about this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up on it and trust that those specialists who know (your appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it for us.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

toyg 5y ago

You personally hold the same views exposed in the XIX century by the Romantic movement.

t-writescode 5y ago
You have a lot of karma, so I imagine you're not a troll, but I would love to know more information about what you've said here. I imagine it carries with it some deep, meaningful info.
- toyg 5y ago
  My karma is an accident of history, but that wasn't an attack - if you are not familiar with Romanticism, I suggest you explore it, because it aligns with parent's sentiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism Spoiler alert: it's not about love.
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    When you said it, what were you intending to carry forward to the parent comment? I don't especially want to read several essays to try and glean what you hypothetically meant by it.
    - toyg 5y ago
      The Romantic movement was all about valuing the "irrational" elements of the human being - religion, tradition, animal instinct (in opposition to the rationalistic Enlightenment wave that preceded it). That's what the parent comment basically went for, so I just pointed it out. One might take my point of citing the century as a statement on the (lack of) originality of such thought, but tbh I mostly meant as a resource: other people, out there, have already thought and reasoned about those issues for literally hundreds of years at this point, so parent might find some solace (and some critical developments) in their production. This is not restricted to Romantic issues, btw - most of the stuff we pass for original in places like this, are likely to have already been discussed ad nauseam in philosophical circles all the way to the 1970s (at which point academia kinda ran out of stuff to talk about, and started focusing on the meta -- but I digress).

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Religion is poison to the mind. It shuts down your ability to consider things rationally. Thinking Putin is a demon possessed dictator is going to be a much worse frame of mind than simply considering him a deranged despot who needs to be treated as such. Religious people didn't make those things, crazy rich people abused the poor and took their money, labor, and time to build those "magnificent temples and palaces" when instead they could have lived up to those elements of their religions about being compassionate and generous to each other and looked out for humanity's welfare. Instead they built monuments to their pride and abused the trust of the religiously devout. The golden rule is great advice except those in power never really pay any attention to it.

devwastaken 5y ago

Confirmation bias, religion was the dominant thinking for a long time, therefore people built things in its name. Now we build cathedrals of engineering every day simply to explore the universe. Constructs far more complex and diverse in people.

w-j-w 5y ago

avz 5y ago

> give much more flavor and diversity to the world than what rational thought will ever produce. I don't know. The religious and mythological concepts such as punishment, judgment, sacrifice, angels, daemons and elves look like a derivative reflection of humans and their society. By comparison, the concepts from science and technology such as force fields, wavefunctions, wormholes and black holes seem genuinely novel and weird. Personally, I would certainly not give up on the scientific truth - often in conflict with religion and mythology - to enjoy some of that mythological flavor.

posterboy 5y ago

The false dichotomy of rational and irrational thought is aggrevating. Point one, it's not the irrational that makes religions stupid. Point two, the more usual collocation is rational decision. Like, there are more and less rational ways to deal with problems. Religion is just one of them and it's often not much of a decision. If you believe you will live forever in heaven blowing yourself up might be an entirely rational decision. The premisse is irrational, and people would usually maintain a sense of ultimate uncertainty ... this fails catastrophically in case of fear. That's not irrational in face of better judgement. It's just not rational, so it's useless to bring up that word, unless to stress the western philosophical angle, which you have carefully avoided.

scaredtheorist 5y ago
"it's not the irrational that makes religions stupid" - AGREE! Thoughts on the two clocks? https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ https://longnow.org/clock/ https://longnow.org/clock/ Ironic?