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I agree. Like many people, I draw a distinction between religion (read: organized religion) and spirituality. From what I can see, religion can have the effect

I agree. Like many people, I draw a distinction between religion (read: organized religion) and spirituality. From what I can see, religion can have the effect of hardening the ego, by creating an us-vs-them mindset. As an American, I see this as perhaps the fundamental dynamic driving our country at a national level, both in domestic politics and foreign policy. On a personal level, I was raised in a very religious household. In our particular fundamentalist Baptist church, there were strains of ego minimization, in the sense of subordinating the individual to the identity and outlook of the group. But within that identity, I saw ego maximization, in the sense of the feelings of superiority of our creed. As I became alienated from organized Christianity and its dogma, I've found that I am thankful for many of the ego minimizing aspects. And now, as a parent, I'm interested in the ways in which I can raise my children to have these benefits, without all the harms I experienced and see from organized religion. Incidentally, I just read all of the books from Arbinger Institute: Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace, and The Outward Mindset. The Arbinger Institute was founded by Latter-Day Saints folks, and while I definitely register the vibes of Christian thought, they are fundamentally secular books, devoid of dogma. I do think it's very possible to draw from the more positive, ego-dissolving parts of religious spirituality and teaching, while rejecting the divisive parts. Completely aside from the ego conversation, another thing I have noticed about raising kids outside of a church is that my family lacks the same community that the Baptist church my household growing up attended. I think this is one of the major functions of organized religion. Provided you can remain in good standing with the church, you get a community, which serves all sorts of useful functions. Outside of a church, you have to manually find this, through friendships and other organizations. But there's big replacement cost to everything a church community gives you "batteries included". I'm very pro secular society, but I don't think we've come up with great answers to this problem, leading to potentially catastrophic levels of social fragmentation and susceptibility to cult-like online movements.

xisthesqrtof9 4y ago
I also grew up in a very strict Muslim household and this is very close to where I see religion’s place in the future of my (potential) family. A couple of questions that have been in my mind, that id like to ask. How do you choose which parts to share with your kids and which ones to omit? Have you found a community that your family can use to replace the church? For me I’d think they would be people from my back home, as a visible minority that’s quite easy but I do feel that if you don’t follow the religion entirely, you’d get judged and ostracized.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  My wife's family is also Christian (but Catholic, in comparison to my Baptist family) and so my kids get incidental exposure to Christian ideas. But I don't tell them that the ideas are true. I kind of hope they see them like all of the other stories they know: as stories, with useful ideas. I try to as much as possible demonstrate humanitarianism in how I treat them and others. I try to teach them self-reflection and gratitude, which I think are some of the most important aspects of prayer. I also try to give them perspective on differentials in privilege. But this is all a lot to try to create and teach independently. We have a lot of friends and relatives we see often, but I wouldn't say we have anything quite like what you get with a church. I've considered trying out a Unitarian Universalist church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism). But there's not one that's close enough to me to motivate me to make it part of my routine.
brightball 4y ago
It’s more a matter of finding a church that’s a good fit for you than “organized religion” as a whole. There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. It’s just something they were told and repeated. There’s also a lot that non-Christians claim about Christians which also has no basis. The internet amplifies the controversial falsehood without requiring that retractions be published (and circulated) at the same level. This leads to a lot of crazy talk. The only filter anyone has for this stuff is to actually read the Bible to know what is in there. Otherwise you’ll have no basis for questioning the weird things that people tell you. I even started a blog of interesting things I’ve come across when reading just to try to encourage people to read it themselves. As somebody who grew up in church, became agnostic, then atheist and am now a devout Christian again I think there’s a lot of people like yourself who may be able to relate. My most recent post was creating an “is it Christian?” litmus test. https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-test https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-t...
- mgh2 4y ago
  Maybe cross reference religious claims with the scientific method Ex: https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale...
  - brightball 4y ago
    Cross references like that article are sort of the basis for a lot of what I'm talking about. You're citing it as an examination of using the scientific method on religious, but it's making religious claims that don't exist with metrics that it's made up. To but it mildly, nothing in this article holds water. Simple points: The article discusses belief in free will while using the basis of it to cite societal outcomes from hard work creating wealth or success. This is a regular topic, but it has no basis at all in Christianity. I certainly can't speak for all religions. Free will: You are responsible for making your own choices and decisions. Reality: Your circumstances will sometimes force you to make choices that you don't want to make to survive. If you read the Bible, you will find pretty quickly that it repeatedly reinforces contentment, humility, charity, love and above all else: faith. It does not equate any of these with material wealth aside from the prosperity of Israel itself. Every person has the free will to be thankful for what they have. They have the free will to have faith in God. They have the free will to love their neighbors and to be kind. They have the free will to give of themselves, whether it be their time and skills or their money. Reading the Bible is eye opening specifically because you get beaten over the head with themes that are discussed over and over, through centuries while your eyes are also opened to topics that are barely mentioned at all yet amplified in culture to attempt to make a point. Free will is ultimately a big part of the discussion of what people often call God's plan. It's where questions like "why do bad things happen to good people?" come from...because the Bible never says bad things aren't going to happen. There's also never a point where it describes God as some type of puppet master who is in constant control of every detail that happens in the world. What you do see, is God periodically intervening. If you read, you'll eventually notice a pattern to the circumstances where God intervenes. That revelation is best left for people to discover themselves.
affgrff2 4y ago
In theory, I like the mindset of unitarian universalism and would like to be part of a community based on the their principles, however, but these basically do not exist in Europe in the wild.
anonporridge 4y ago
As someone who was also raised deeply religious but has since abandoned the belief, I echo your feeling that there are very valuable ego disillusion and ethics lessons that need to be extracted from the dogma of religion. It's to the point where I'm sometimes shocked by the extreme ego and lack of moral framework in some of my friends and peers who were raised purely secular.
azth 4y ago
That's a false dichotomy, because nonreligious people find some other ways to create an "us vs them" mindset. We see it all the time. It's also a fallacy to group all religions under one banner and claim that they all say the same. Even among what you call "organized religion", while there is some overlap between say Islam and Judaism/Christianity, once you start looking at things deeper, you'll see how Islam comes out different, and as a Muslim, I'd say on top.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  Totally agree that nonreligious people can be just as factional. But I see organized religion as a catalyst of sorts for factionalism and objectification of outsiders. It's not the only such catalyst. I'm always interested in learning more about the history and spirituality of different religions, but I believe I'm permanently over thinking that anyone has the best or most correct religion.
zigzag312 4y ago
I think that us-vs-them mindset you're describing is not a distinctive feature of religion, but really of a human nature. Anywhere people are organizing in groups us-vs-them mindset can form. It doesn't matter, if it's a football team, a chees club, a business, a nation or just a group of music fans... It can literally appear anywhere. Organized religion is no exception.
immigrantheart 4y ago
You can have us vs them mentality without religion…
Teelemii 4y ago
Most people with religious beliefs and churches themselves don't reevaluate the things you mentioned. Otherwise the world would be a totally different place. Just because you can see ego min and max things in theory it doesn't mean it has a real influence in people. Religios people lifing a 'good' life and as soon as someone needs help all is gone. Plenty of sexual abuse have happened and is probably still happening. You yourself brought it up. And then we have the other extreme devoted religious people not question anything. I think we need real thinking education which is independent of religion. Learning mental biases, learning how group dynamics work etc. The social fragmentation was always here. Nothing changed. There were plenty of very racist people in a time were religion were much stronger. Right now thanks to education we gain a global more social get-together than ever before. People are less racist, woman have more rights and are more independent, homosexual people are less in danger than before.
jononomo 4y ago
Over the last few years I have begun to describe myself as "religious but not spiritual" because it seems that religion actually offers a path forward and some principles to live by along with community, whereas spirituality is just a wishy-washy term that means basically nothing. Obviously some religious people are very bad, but, the religious people who are good do far more for the world than really anyone else. There was a period of a couple hundred years (1750 - 1950?) in which almost every hospital in the world was founded and run by Christian missionaries.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  Billions of people are spiritual, but not religious. It's not like a "fake" thing. In fact, the Abrahamic religions have been fairly unique in their claim to universal dogma (i.e. orthodoxy) since at least Second Temple Judaism. The Jews of the Hellenistic and Roman periods were seen as peculiar for their rigid monotheism, practices demanded of the entire community, and hostile internal sectarianism. Many of us in Western societies, dominated by Abrahamic monotheistic thought, don't see that there are other paradigms of being religious or spiritual that have served other cultures for millenia.
  - mos_basik 4y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with anything in your comment, but I did want to stress that @jononomo's comment was about being "religious but not spiritual" and yours was largely about being "spiritual but not religious". As you point out, being "spiritual but not religious" is a pretty common thing and has been for thousands of years. But I think this is the first time I've heard someone flip that phrase around to pithily describe an approach/perspective/whatever that I've noticed being mentioned more and more over the past ~5 years: that some structures, community, moral frameworks, practices, etc. frequently associated with organized religion have intrinsic value even when separated from the spiritual justifications/motivations that usually underpin them in those organized religions. Taking things a step further: To use an example from your comment, @jononomo could be (I'm not claiming they are) saying that the concept of "practices demanded of the entire community" (something you named as something the "religious" Jews did that was peculiar to the "spiritual but not religious" Romans) is something that could benefit modern communities - maybe by bringing them together, helping coordinate collective action problems, whatever. And the justification for this would NOT be a spiritual reason, but rather for the very corporeal reason of improving human communities (ergo, "religious but not spiritual", if you like).
unity1001 4y ago
> pro secular society In a secular society, all those functions must be already provided by the state in the form of social and welfare services.

xisthesqrtof9 4y ago

I also grew up in a very strict Muslim household and this is very close to where I see religion’s place in the future of my (potential) family. A couple of questions that have been in my mind, that id like to ask. How do you choose which parts to share with your kids and which ones to omit? Have you found a community that your family can use to replace the church? For me I’d think they would be people from my back home, as a visible minority that’s quite easy but I do feel that if you don’t follow the religion entirely, you’d get judged and ostracized.

acjohnson55 4y ago
My wife's family is also Christian (but Catholic, in comparison to my Baptist family) and so my kids get incidental exposure to Christian ideas. But I don't tell them that the ideas are true. I kind of hope they see them like all of the other stories they know: as stories, with useful ideas. I try to as much as possible demonstrate humanitarianism in how I treat them and others. I try to teach them self-reflection and gratitude, which I think are some of the most important aspects of prayer. I also try to give them perspective on differentials in privilege. But this is all a lot to try to create and teach independently. We have a lot of friends and relatives we see often, but I wouldn't say we have anything quite like what you get with a church. I've considered trying out a Unitarian Universalist church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism). But there's not one that's close enough to me to motivate me to make it part of my routine.

brightball 4y ago

It’s more a matter of finding a church that’s a good fit for you than “organized religion” as a whole. There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. It’s just something they were told and repeated. There’s also a lot that non-Christians claim about Christians which also has no basis. The internet amplifies the controversial falsehood without requiring that retractions be published (and circulated) at the same level. This leads to a lot of crazy talk. The only filter anyone has for this stuff is to actually read the Bible to know what is in there. Otherwise you’ll have no basis for questioning the weird things that people tell you. I even started a blog of interesting things I’ve come across when reading just to try to encourage people to read it themselves. As somebody who grew up in church, became agnostic, then atheist and am now a devout Christian again I think there’s a lot of people like yourself who may be able to relate. My most recent post was creating an “is it Christian?” litmus test. https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-test https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-t...

mgh2 4y ago
Maybe cross reference religious claims with the scientific method Ex: https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale...
- brightball 4y ago
  Cross references like that article are sort of the basis for a lot of what I'm talking about. You're citing it as an examination of using the scientific method on religious, but it's making religious claims that don't exist with metrics that it's made up. To but it mildly, nothing in this article holds water. Simple points: The article discusses belief in free will while using the basis of it to cite societal outcomes from hard work creating wealth or success. This is a regular topic, but it has no basis at all in Christianity. I certainly can't speak for all religions. Free will: You are responsible for making your own choices and decisions. Reality: Your circumstances will sometimes force you to make choices that you don't want to make to survive. If you read the Bible, you will find pretty quickly that it repeatedly reinforces contentment, humility, charity, love and above all else: faith. It does not equate any of these with material wealth aside from the prosperity of Israel itself. Every person has the free will to be thankful for what they have. They have the free will to have faith in God. They have the free will to love their neighbors and to be kind. They have the free will to give of themselves, whether it be their time and skills or their money. Reading the Bible is eye opening specifically because you get beaten over the head with themes that are discussed over and over, through centuries while your eyes are also opened to topics that are barely mentioned at all yet amplified in culture to attempt to make a point. Free will is ultimately a big part of the discussion of what people often call God's plan. It's where questions like "why do bad things happen to good people?" come from...because the Bible never says bad things aren't going to happen. There's also never a point where it describes God as some type of puppet master who is in constant control of every detail that happens in the world. What you do see, is God periodically intervening. If you read, you'll eventually notice a pattern to the circumstances where God intervenes. That revelation is best left for people to discover themselves.

affgrff2 4y ago

In theory, I like the mindset of unitarian universalism and would like to be part of a community based on the their principles, however, but these basically do not exist in Europe in the wild.

anonporridge 4y ago

As someone who was also raised deeply religious but has since abandoned the belief, I echo your feeling that there are very valuable ego disillusion and ethics lessons that need to be extracted from the dogma of religion. It's to the point where I'm sometimes shocked by the extreme ego and lack of moral framework in some of my friends and peers who were raised purely secular.

azth 4y ago

That's a false dichotomy, because nonreligious people find some other ways to create an "us vs them" mindset. We see it all the time. It's also a fallacy to group all religions under one banner and claim that they all say the same. Even among what you call "organized religion", while there is some overlap between say Islam and Judaism/Christianity, once you start looking at things deeper, you'll see how Islam comes out different, and as a Muslim, I'd say on top.

acjohnson55 4y ago
Totally agree that nonreligious people can be just as factional. But I see organized religion as a catalyst of sorts for factionalism and objectification of outsiders. It's not the only such catalyst. I'm always interested in learning more about the history and spirituality of different religions, but I believe I'm permanently over thinking that anyone has the best or most correct religion.

zigzag312 4y ago

I think that us-vs-them mindset you're describing is not a distinctive feature of religion, but really of a human nature. Anywhere people are organizing in groups us-vs-them mindset can form. It doesn't matter, if it's a football team, a chees club, a business, a nation or just a group of music fans... It can literally appear anywhere. Organized religion is no exception.

immigrantheart 4y ago

You can have us vs them mentality without religion…

Teelemii 4y ago

Most people with religious beliefs and churches themselves don't reevaluate the things you mentioned. Otherwise the world would be a totally different place. Just because you can see ego min and max things in theory it doesn't mean it has a real influence in people. Religios people lifing a 'good' life and as soon as someone needs help all is gone. Plenty of sexual abuse have happened and is probably still happening. You yourself brought it up. And then we have the other extreme devoted religious people not question anything. I think we need real thinking education which is independent of religion. Learning mental biases, learning how group dynamics work etc. The social fragmentation was always here. Nothing changed. There were plenty of very racist people in a time were religion were much stronger. Right now thanks to education we gain a global more social get-together than ever before. People are less racist, woman have more rights and are more independent, homosexual people are less in danger than before.

jononomo 4y ago

Over the last few years I have begun to describe myself as "religious but not spiritual" because it seems that religion actually offers a path forward and some principles to live by along with community, whereas spirituality is just a wishy-washy term that means basically nothing. Obviously some religious people are very bad, but, the religious people who are good do far more for the world than really anyone else. There was a period of a couple hundred years (1750 - 1950?) in which almost every hospital in the world was founded and run by Christian missionaries.

acjohnson55 4y ago
Billions of people are spiritual, but not religious. It's not like a "fake" thing. In fact, the Abrahamic religions have been fairly unique in their claim to universal dogma (i.e. orthodoxy) since at least Second Temple Judaism. The Jews of the Hellenistic and Roman periods were seen as peculiar for their rigid monotheism, practices demanded of the entire community, and hostile internal sectarianism. Many of us in Western societies, dominated by Abrahamic monotheistic thought, don't see that there are other paradigms of being religious or spiritual that have served other cultures for millenia.
- mos_basik 4y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with anything in your comment, but I did want to stress that @jononomo's comment was about being "religious but not spiritual" and yours was largely about being "spiritual but not religious". As you point out, being "spiritual but not religious" is a pretty common thing and has been for thousands of years. But I think this is the first time I've heard someone flip that phrase around to pithily describe an approach/perspective/whatever that I've noticed being mentioned more and more over the past ~5 years: that some structures, community, moral frameworks, practices, etc. frequently associated with organized religion have intrinsic value even when separated from the spiritual justifications/motivations that usually underpin them in those organized religions. Taking things a step further: To use an example from your comment, @jononomo could be (I'm not claiming they are) saying that the concept of "practices demanded of the entire community" (something you named as something the "religious" Jews did that was peculiar to the "spiritual but not religious" Romans) is something that could benefit modern communities - maybe by bringing them together, helping coordinate collective action problems, whatever. And the justification for this would NOT be a spiritual reason, but rather for the very corporeal reason of improving human communities (ergo, "religious but not spiritual", if you like).

unity1001 4y ago

> pro secular society In a secular society, all those functions must be already provided by the state in the form of social and welfare services.