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Not a European, but an American lapsed Catholic. I mean... it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? I'd love to believe it, but I've never seen

Not a European, but an American lapsed Catholic. I mean... it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? I'd love to believe it, but I've never seen one iota of evidence for beliefs of the church. Basically there was no reason to keep going once I realized that, other than to make my parents happy.

jawns 3y ago
> it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? If it were that self-apparent, wouldn't we expect Kant, Kierkegaard, Anselm, Anscombe, Heidegger, Gödel, or the countless other philosophers and heavy thinkers of the past several centuries to have not even wrestled with the question? Heck, even Antony Flew, a contemporary philosopher of religion who was a staunch advocate of atheism for much of his career, later declared himself a theist. Did he simply fail to realize that it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe? What do you know that they didn't? What did they know that you might not?
- silverquiet 3y ago
  It's because the implications suck - our consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomenon; we are the meat in our heads. Once that meat dies, we're gone forever. It's not an easy thing to deal with.
  - rimunroe 3y ago
    > It's because the implications suck - our consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomenon; we are the meat in our heads. Once that meat dies, we're gone forever. It's not an easy thing to deal with. I've heard both theists and atheists express similar feelings about the implications of physicalism (I think that's the term, but I'm not a philosopher), but I've never understood why in anything other than an abstract sense. I can understand why someone would be concerned by things ending so finally, but it's not like you'll be around afterward to feel bad about it. If anything I find it very comforting. I can understand wanting to be around for other people, but afaik there are plenty of religions where people aren't able to intervene after death and I don't hear the same concerns about those.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      It goes beyond the fear of death. Much of western society is built on the Christian notion of divinity of man. The Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable right[s]." There is an internal logic to this statement. It starts with the premise that God created man, and proceeds to assume that, in doing so, he endowed man with "unalienable rights." Supposedly secular western people invoke the same basic concept. For example, they talk about things like "human dignity": https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/definitions-what-is-human-dignity/ https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/definitions-what-i... ("At its most basic, the concept of human dignity is the belief that all people hold a special value that’s tied solely to their humanity."). That papers over God as the source of "human dignity" but it's expressing the same basic belief. That assertion makes no logical sense if you abandon the underlying metaphysical notion and posit that humans are actually just meat.
  - silent_cal 3y ago
    No, it's not just because of the implications. It's because materialism is illogical. If materialism were true, you would not have any immaterial concepts. But clearly you do.
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      There's no such thing as a truly immaterial concept. The most implausible, logically contradictory or essentially abstract thought exists only insofar as there is a material configuration of state representation, and it is this physical representation with which other concepts, also configurations of physical matter, interact through the medium of energic exchange, all driven by the universal pull of entropic degradation. Abstract concepts, even ones considered materially 'incomprehensible' like love, or ones considered materially inconsistent or impossible like taking the square root of a circle, are names - very long, patterned symbol sequences condensed from salient features of the far more complex structures they reflect, objects that would be otherwise inconvenient to discuss or contemplate on human time scales and within human constraints. Abstract information, any information, is the result of an energetic compromise necessary for our relatively insubstantial chunk of brain tissue to be able to play-manipulate objects far greater in scale, scope and remoteness then it physically could interact with. But it is still physically manipulating them, or rather the lightest of lightweight representations of them, at the mechnical, physical matrix of neurological energy exchange processes.
      - silent_cal 3y ago
        Immaterial concepts are abstracted from the physical world, but they in themselves are immaterial. You can hide this plain fact in all the mumbo-jumbo you want, but it remains a fact. Even a simple concept, like the definition of a circle, is not material in itself.
- atq2119 3y ago
  There have always been a number of reasons for why somebody might believe in the supernatural, the sibling comment points out one of them. Two important reasons have declined substantially over the last 200 years. First, the "God of the gaps" has basically disappeared. All natural phenomena in our personal experience are understood well enough that we can say with confidence that nothing supernatural is required to explain them. That doesn't mean that every individual understands them well enough, and while it's not a hard binary distinction, there is certainly a correlation between spirituality / belief in the supernatural and lack of understanding of natural science. Second, religion is to a large extent social glue. As humans increasingly live in large cities, social glue in general is disappearing, and religion is just one facet of that.
silent_cal 3y ago
You can be an atheist, but if you think religion is "obviously make-believe" than you're just being dishonest. The majority of the greatest minds to ever live were religious. You don't gain any IQ points by dismissing it altogether.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  Which religion did the majority of the greatest minds believe in?
  - silent_cal 3y ago
    I'm not referring to any specific religion. I'm just saying they were religious. Which religious tradition has the most great minds is a separate question and I don't know the answer, but I would suspect Christianity. But all I'm saying here is that most great minds throughout history were religious.
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      And if all the greatest minds of history could not agree on one religion, then what might that imply?
      - silent_cal 3y ago
        It implies that they wouldn't all agree on religion, just as they would not agree on virtually any other subject
        silverquiet 3y ago
        Do you not believe in objective truth?
        silent_cal 3y ago
        I do, but it's hard for a single man's mind to comprehend the whole truth. I think generally you can only master a few aspects of it. I believe Catholicism is the correct religion, but I still admit that there have been many great minds from different religious traditions. This is actually an integral part of the Catholic intellectual tradition, which is why Catholic philosophy (see St Thomas Aquinas for example) can incorporate insights from pagans, Muslims and Jews. Hans Urs von Balthasar took inspiration from an even wider variety of thinkers. I could go on but hopefully I've made my point.
holyc 3y ago
When you get right down to the brass tacks of any system, science, philosophy, mathematics, all of them require you to take a leap of faith. What came before the big bang? And why does it seem that all matter came from one location in space? Seems to break the second law of Thermodynamics even. We don't know. Will you put your faith in the idea that the system of science CAN EVEN know eventually? Can set theory prove everything? We know that it cannot prove a number of things, thanks Turing. Those things end up being pretty important to proving everything evidently. Science rests on mathematics. Why should you believe in a particular philosopher's revealed truth? Well it seems consistent with the rules of logic. Seeing as set theory is the most concrete, repeatable form of logic we've ever come up with, see the above for why thats maybe not the best stance to put your faith in. Maybe believe in nothing? But you will believe in something, even by accident. The nature of human heart is to make idols. All require leaps of faith at the bottom of them. Either in systems or individuals.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  I don't think the whole postmodernist, nothing means anything take really adds any support to the Catholic church being fundamentally right. As a kid who caught a condition that causes me disability and chronic pain to this day, all I can say is that if god exists, he's a fucking dick.
  - holyc 3y ago
    I believe you, it sounds like you're living in a form of hell on Earth as it stands. My two cents, before thinking about the Catholic Church or any Church's claims for that matter, form a relationship with Jesus/God. You seem like a pretty tuned in person, I feel that you will find your answers. If we are made in His image, and He gave his only Son up to be tortured and killed for us, there is no way your suffering goes unnoticed. Without that relationship, every Church is just a bunch of rules to follow, and ya, that would really suck to be involved with. God bless you on your journey.
- pg_1234 3y ago
  Science - is mostly empirically verifiable Philosophy - is backed by reasoned arguments and open to debate Mathematics - is our construction, how can we not believe in our own invention Religion - requires that you buy into an archaic fairy tale, with no empirical proof or reasoned argument, to the extent that you will sanction wars and oppressive gender inequality on the basis of unsubstantiated belief ... One of these things is not like the others
rayiner 3y ago
Religion is—quite concededly—about faith and belief. What I find interesting, however, is how many non-theists resort to essentially theistic or metaphysical thinking. When it comes to “individual rights,” for example, supposedly secular people sound like “each person has inherent human dignity because they are created in God’s image!” What the evidence shows is that we are meat, with sentience being an illusion of complex chemical reactions. What “rights” does meat have? Why can’t we, for example, kill drug dealers, if that would make life on earth—the only kind of life there is—better for all the other meat sacks? The Chinese communists at least practiced atheism correctly and followed it to its logical conclusions. I think a more accurate characterization would be that European Christianity has evolved into a different religion which retains the notion of the divinity of the individual, but drops explicit references to God.

jawns 3y ago

> it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe, right? If it were that self-apparent, wouldn't we expect Kant, Kierkegaard, Anselm, Anscombe, Heidegger, Gödel, or the countless other philosophers and heavy thinkers of the past several centuries to have not even wrestled with the question? Heck, even Antony Flew, a contemporary philosopher of religion who was a staunch advocate of atheism for much of his career, later declared himself a theist. Did he simply fail to realize that it's pretty obvious that religion is make-believe? What do you know that they didn't? What did they know that you might not?

silverquiet 3y ago
It's because the implications suck - our consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomenon; we are the meat in our heads. Once that meat dies, we're gone forever. It's not an easy thing to deal with.
- rimunroe 3y ago
  > It's because the implications suck - our consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomenon; we are the meat in our heads. Once that meat dies, we're gone forever. It's not an easy thing to deal with. I've heard both theists and atheists express similar feelings about the implications of physicalism (I think that's the term, but I'm not a philosopher), but I've never understood why in anything other than an abstract sense. I can understand why someone would be concerned by things ending so finally, but it's not like you'll be around afterward to feel bad about it. If anything I find it very comforting. I can understand wanting to be around for other people, but afaik there are plenty of religions where people aren't able to intervene after death and I don't hear the same concerns about those.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    It goes beyond the fear of death. Much of western society is built on the Christian notion of divinity of man. The Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable right[s]." There is an internal logic to this statement. It starts with the premise that God created man, and proceeds to assume that, in doing so, he endowed man with "unalienable rights." Supposedly secular western people invoke the same basic concept. For example, they talk about things like "human dignity": https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/definitions-what-is-human-dignity/ https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/definitions-what-i... ("At its most basic, the concept of human dignity is the belief that all people hold a special value that’s tied solely to their humanity."). That papers over God as the source of "human dignity" but it's expressing the same basic belief. That assertion makes no logical sense if you abandon the underlying metaphysical notion and posit that humans are actually just meat.
- silent_cal 3y ago
  No, it's not just because of the implications. It's because materialism is illogical. If materialism were true, you would not have any immaterial concepts. But clearly you do.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    There's no such thing as a truly immaterial concept. The most implausible, logically contradictory or essentially abstract thought exists only insofar as there is a material configuration of state representation, and it is this physical representation with which other concepts, also configurations of physical matter, interact through the medium of energic exchange, all driven by the universal pull of entropic degradation. Abstract concepts, even ones considered materially 'incomprehensible' like love, or ones considered materially inconsistent or impossible like taking the square root of a circle, are names - very long, patterned symbol sequences condensed from salient features of the far more complex structures they reflect, objects that would be otherwise inconvenient to discuss or contemplate on human time scales and within human constraints. Abstract information, any information, is the result of an energetic compromise necessary for our relatively insubstantial chunk of brain tissue to be able to play-manipulate objects far greater in scale, scope and remoteness then it physically could interact with. But it is still physically manipulating them, or rather the lightest of lightweight representations of them, at the mechnical, physical matrix of neurological energy exchange processes.
    - silent_cal 3y ago
      Immaterial concepts are abstracted from the physical world, but they in themselves are immaterial. You can hide this plain fact in all the mumbo-jumbo you want, but it remains a fact. Even a simple concept, like the definition of a circle, is not material in itself.
atq2119 3y ago
There have always been a number of reasons for why somebody might believe in the supernatural, the sibling comment points out one of them. Two important reasons have declined substantially over the last 200 years. First, the "God of the gaps" has basically disappeared. All natural phenomena in our personal experience are understood well enough that we can say with confidence that nothing supernatural is required to explain them. That doesn't mean that every individual understands them well enough, and while it's not a hard binary distinction, there is certainly a correlation between spirituality / belief in the supernatural and lack of understanding of natural science. Second, religion is to a large extent social glue. As humans increasingly live in large cities, social glue in general is disappearing, and religion is just one facet of that.

silent_cal 3y ago

You can be an atheist, but if you think religion is "obviously make-believe" than you're just being dishonest. The majority of the greatest minds to ever live were religious. You don't gain any IQ points by dismissing it altogether.

silverquiet 3y ago
Which religion did the majority of the greatest minds believe in?
- silent_cal 3y ago
  I'm not referring to any specific religion. I'm just saying they were religious. Which religious tradition has the most great minds is a separate question and I don't know the answer, but I would suspect Christianity. But all I'm saying here is that most great minds throughout history were religious.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    And if all the greatest minds of history could not agree on one religion, then what might that imply?
    - silent_cal 3y ago
      It implies that they wouldn't all agree on religion, just as they would not agree on virtually any other subject
      - silverquiet 3y ago
        Do you not believe in objective truth?
        silent_cal 3y ago
        I do, but it's hard for a single man's mind to comprehend the whole truth. I think generally you can only master a few aspects of it. I believe Catholicism is the correct religion, but I still admit that there have been many great minds from different religious traditions. This is actually an integral part of the Catholic intellectual tradition, which is why Catholic philosophy (see St Thomas Aquinas for example) can incorporate insights from pagans, Muslims and Jews. Hans Urs von Balthasar took inspiration from an even wider variety of thinkers. I could go on but hopefully I've made my point.

holyc 3y ago

When you get right down to the brass tacks of any system, science, philosophy, mathematics, all of them require you to take a leap of faith. What came before the big bang? And why does it seem that all matter came from one location in space? Seems to break the second law of Thermodynamics even. We don't know. Will you put your faith in the idea that the system of science CAN EVEN know eventually? Can set theory prove everything? We know that it cannot prove a number of things, thanks Turing. Those things end up being pretty important to proving everything evidently. Science rests on mathematics. Why should you believe in a particular philosopher's revealed truth? Well it seems consistent with the rules of logic. Seeing as set theory is the most concrete, repeatable form of logic we've ever come up with, see the above for why thats maybe not the best stance to put your faith in. Maybe believe in nothing? But you will believe in something, even by accident. The nature of human heart is to make idols. All require leaps of faith at the bottom of them. Either in systems or individuals.

silverquiet 3y ago
I don't think the whole postmodernist, nothing means anything take really adds any support to the Catholic church being fundamentally right. As a kid who caught a condition that causes me disability and chronic pain to this day, all I can say is that if god exists, he's a fucking dick.
- holyc 3y ago
  I believe you, it sounds like you're living in a form of hell on Earth as it stands. My two cents, before thinking about the Catholic Church or any Church's claims for that matter, form a relationship with Jesus/God. You seem like a pretty tuned in person, I feel that you will find your answers. If we are made in His image, and He gave his only Son up to be tortured and killed for us, there is no way your suffering goes unnoticed. Without that relationship, every Church is just a bunch of rules to follow, and ya, that would really suck to be involved with. God bless you on your journey.
pg_1234 3y ago
Science - is mostly empirically verifiable Philosophy - is backed by reasoned arguments and open to debate Mathematics - is our construction, how can we not believe in our own invention Religion - requires that you buy into an archaic fairy tale, with no empirical proof or reasoned argument, to the extent that you will sanction wars and oppressive gender inequality on the basis of unsubstantiated belief ... One of these things is not like the others

rayiner 3y ago

Religion is—quite concededly—about faith and belief. What I find interesting, however, is how many non-theists resort to essentially theistic or metaphysical thinking. When it comes to “individual rights,” for example, supposedly secular people sound like “each person has inherent human dignity because they are created in God’s image!” What the evidence shows is that we are meat, with sentience being an illusion of complex chemical reactions. What “rights” does meat have? Why can’t we, for example, kill drug dealers, if that would make life on earth—the only kind of life there is—better for all the other meat sacks? The Chinese communists at least practiced atheism correctly and followed it to its logical conclusions. I think a more accurate characterization would be that European Christianity has evolved into a different religion which retains the notion of the divinity of the individual, but drops explicit references to God.