5 ms·

I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I do

by swombat 15y ago

I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I don't believe there is a God as described by the christians, muslims or jews, or supernatural beings as proposed by Hinduism, etc. However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid. Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences. There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied. I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature. He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion. Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.

mike-cardwell 15y ago
Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits... I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.
- theorique 15y ago
  Some examples of the "new atheists" or commentators who dismiss religion as worthless: Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens
  - etfb 15y ago
    I would rather say they dismiss it as dangerous overall. Religion is many things, and some of the things are good: it provides community, a sense of perspective above the rat race, and an answer to the questions that don't really have answers, like "why are we here". But to do so it requires obedience to a lie, and there are those who believe that truth and reality are too important to allow a comforting lie to have primacy. For them, religion is not worthless, as in "having zero worth": it's worth less than nothing; it's harmful. I can see both sides, but I think I agree with the idea that ultimately it's easier to provide community and consolation to an atheist than to replace the understanding of reality that most religions deny to their adherents.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    That is flat out untrue. All of the people you quoted are well aware that religion provides some value/worth alongside the costs. They're all highly intelligent people who are able to perform basic cost/benefit analysis like the rest of us. What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from? [edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      It's a bit of a signal in some religious/evangelical language. "new atheism" implies a few things - there's a renewed urgency, an implied "new" "attack" on religion, etc. It's not meant as an insult so much as a buzzword to signal to the faithful that there's a 'new' menace to ward against. Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.
- fusiongyro 15y ago
  > How true religion is, is the much more important discussion. I'm with you until there. The point of science is to make testable predictions, to further our knowledge of the world. It's easy to single out creation stories and point to their falsehood to dismiss religion, but religion is not limited to an explanation of how the world is constructed, and it's also not built like a proof where it all hinges on whether or not this story is more allegory or fact. It's not about creating testable hypotheses. It doesn't have to be factually accurate to enrich lives. There is a wealth of truth about humanity that has nothing to do with our physical properties. Science is tangible and real, and absolutely necessary for discovering and understanding the universe. Any emotional content or context you overlay on top of the application of the scientific method is essentially a religious experience. And that's perfectly fine; in fact, I think it would be weird to know much about science and not feel a sense of awe and wonder, but those senses, that emotional connection, is not science. I'd say Mohammed certainly got one thing right in saying "there is no compulsion in religion." Either you appreciate it or you don't, like any other form of art. There's no sense in forcing it on people but there's also no sense in talking people out of it. Live and let live.
- jacoblyles 15y ago
  I think religion is very worthwhile. It fills the holes in the human soul. However, I also believe it is not true.
dhimes 15y ago
The split among three structures (movements), art, science, and religion, is entirely a human construct. There is no split in actuality.
LinXitoW 15y ago
Aren't you describing philosophy instead of religion, in the sense that philosophy is thinking about it, while religion is extracting rules/guidelines and/or dogmas from those thoughts? Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.
- jerf 15y ago
  Philosophy and religion are really easy to draw a bright line between when viewing them from 30,000 feet. It's a lot harder to draw a bright line on the ground. Sure, there's some things that are pretty clearly one or the other, but there's a lot of really fuzzy stuff in the middle that's harder to characterize, especially down in the area of the axioms you take. In this case by religion I mean the sort of things commonly associated with religion, minus the "clearly" religious stuff. For instance, consider utilitarianism. It's a "life-guiding philosophy", which is already treading into religious waters, but the real killer is, what utility metric do you use? Many people who claim to be one or another variety of utilitarianist often try to use some sort of global metric that accounts for not just their own subjective utility, but that of others. But... why? Why not just act based on your own utility? (Including an enlightened utility metric in which one understands that harming others is generally not the right answer due to retaliation or general degradation of the local environment, so not just stereotypical selfishness.) It's awfully easy to call that a sort of non-god/non-spirit religious decision, because there's no objective rational basis for that metric. (And there's not necessarily an objective rational basis for choosing any particular metric when it comes down to it.)
VMG 15y ago
> That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Most of them are way off. Not even close.
yannickt 15y ago
"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid." We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.
- sophacles 15y ago
  There is a lot of dogma in the sciences too. To paraphrase Khun: A lot of scientific revolutions and advances happen not because everyone realized they were wrong, but because the old guard slowly ages out of relevance (and eventually die off). You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.
  - Retric 15y ago
    Progress is not the same thing as perfection. Praying does not a 3GHz CPU make, but people tend look for progress in terms of last year and ignore things that happened say before they where born. In practice a lot of published research is junk, but most religions are hundreds if not thousands of years old, on those timescales science is a wondrous new idea. On a long enough timescale we may run out of reasonable experiments to run, but should 'science' and 'religion' actually become indistinguishable it will be a lot closer to the truth than talking snakes.
  - yannickt 15y ago
    What you are describing is simply human fallibility. There is no dogma in science. Science does not mandate that anything be set in stone, never to be questioned, doubted or disputed. And when the "old guard" is made irrelevant, that happens through the scientific method itself.

by swombat 15y ago

mike-cardwell 15y ago

Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits... I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.

theorique 15y ago
Some examples of the "new atheists" or commentators who dismiss religion as worthless: Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens
- etfb 15y ago
  I would rather say they dismiss it as dangerous overall. Religion is many things, and some of the things are good: it provides community, a sense of perspective above the rat race, and an answer to the questions that don't really have answers, like "why are we here". But to do so it requires obedience to a lie, and there are those who believe that truth and reality are too important to allow a comforting lie to have primacy. For them, religion is not worthless, as in "having zero worth": it's worth less than nothing; it's harmful. I can see both sides, but I think I agree with the idea that ultimately it's easier to provide community and consolation to an atheist than to replace the understanding of reality that most religions deny to their adherents.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  That is flat out untrue. All of the people you quoted are well aware that religion provides some value/worth alongside the costs. They're all highly intelligent people who are able to perform basic cost/benefit analysis like the rest of us. What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from? [edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    It's a bit of a signal in some religious/evangelical language. "new atheism" implies a few things - there's a renewed urgency, an implied "new" "attack" on religion, etc. It's not meant as an insult so much as a buzzword to signal to the faithful that there's a 'new' menace to ward against. Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.
fusiongyro 15y ago
> How true religion is, is the much more important discussion. I'm with you until there. The point of science is to make testable predictions, to further our knowledge of the world. It's easy to single out creation stories and point to their falsehood to dismiss religion, but religion is not limited to an explanation of how the world is constructed, and it's also not built like a proof where it all hinges on whether or not this story is more allegory or fact. It's not about creating testable hypotheses. It doesn't have to be factually accurate to enrich lives. There is a wealth of truth about humanity that has nothing to do with our physical properties. Science is tangible and real, and absolutely necessary for discovering and understanding the universe. Any emotional content or context you overlay on top of the application of the scientific method is essentially a religious experience. And that's perfectly fine; in fact, I think it would be weird to know much about science and not feel a sense of awe and wonder, but those senses, that emotional connection, is not science. I'd say Mohammed certainly got one thing right in saying "there is no compulsion in religion." Either you appreciate it or you don't, like any other form of art. There's no sense in forcing it on people but there's also no sense in talking people out of it. Live and let live.
jacoblyles 15y ago
I think religion is very worthwhile. It fills the holes in the human soul. However, I also believe it is not true.

dhimes 15y ago

The split among three structures (movements), art, science, and religion, is entirely a human construct. There is no split in actuality.

LinXitoW 15y ago

Aren't you describing philosophy instead of religion, in the sense that philosophy is thinking about it, while religion is extracting rules/guidelines and/or dogmas from those thoughts? Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.

jerf 15y ago
Philosophy and religion are really easy to draw a bright line between when viewing them from 30,000 feet. It's a lot harder to draw a bright line on the ground. Sure, there's some things that are pretty clearly one or the other, but there's a lot of really fuzzy stuff in the middle that's harder to characterize, especially down in the area of the axioms you take. In this case by religion I mean the sort of things commonly associated with religion, minus the "clearly" religious stuff. For instance, consider utilitarianism. It's a "life-guiding philosophy", which is already treading into religious waters, but the real killer is, what utility metric do you use? Many people who claim to be one or another variety of utilitarianist often try to use some sort of global metric that accounts for not just their own subjective utility, but that of others. But... why? Why not just act based on your own utility? (Including an enlightened utility metric in which one understands that harming others is generally not the right answer due to retaliation or general degradation of the local environment, so not just stereotypical selfishness.) It's awfully easy to call that a sort of non-god/non-spirit religious decision, because there's no objective rational basis for that metric. (And there's not necessarily an objective rational basis for choosing any particular metric when it comes down to it.)

VMG 15y ago

> That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Most of them are way off. Not even close.

yannickt 15y ago

"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid." We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.

sophacles 15y ago
There is a lot of dogma in the sciences too. To paraphrase Khun: A lot of scientific revolutions and advances happen not because everyone realized they were wrong, but because the old guard slowly ages out of relevance (and eventually die off). You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.
- Retric 15y ago
  Progress is not the same thing as perfection. Praying does not a 3GHz CPU make, but people tend look for progress in terms of last year and ignore things that happened say before they where born. In practice a lot of published research is junk, but most religions are hundreds if not thousands of years old, on those timescales science is a wondrous new idea. On a long enough timescale we may run out of reasonable experiments to run, but should 'science' and 'religion' actually become indistinguishable it will be a lot closer to the truth than talking snakes.
- yannickt 15y ago
  What you are describing is simply human fallibility. There is no dogma in science. Science does not mandate that anything be set in stone, never to be questioned, doubted or disputed. And when the "old guard" is made irrelevant, that happens through the scientific method itself.