Religion. Delusion or Empowerment?

My dad became a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 10 and the family was torn to shreds. Needless to say, I’m not fond of religion. :tongue: A friend of mine in high school let me borrow a book on Buddhism, and I loved it. It seemed to all click.

I don’t know what I would call myself in terms of religion nowadays (and nights), but I consider myself a Pisces INFP who meditates, lucid dreams, and has no fear whatsoever of death, among other things. I think if (a/your) religion is the source of suppressed feelings and/or vice-gripped happiness, then it’s not right at all.

I have to say though, without meditation, I might not be typing this right now. Depression just about had me if not for meditation. By the way, Jehovah’s Witnesses think that meditation opens up your mind to demons. If that’s true, then I’d like to take time to say thanks to all the demons that cured my depression. :grin:

I’m an agnostic with mostly Christian tendencies… (Christian morals, that is… I guess)

I became agnostic a while ago because up until then I realized I was simply being brainwashed.

Another reason I left Christianity was because although I was surrounded by “loving” people of a “loving” religion, I felt completely alone in my church. Barely anyone in my Sunday School could remember my name. No one ever bothered to invite me to the teen get-togethers (except the teacher herself). And anyone I attempted to greet on mornings would seem to avoid looking at me.

I know they didn’t treat me this way on purpose, but it was obvious they were comfortable with the people they had been with since they had first come to the church and were not very loving of newcomers.

Now that I am agnostic, I feel that my mind is very open. I love to learn about every religion out there… Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoisn… but when I was Baptist, I felt alone in my religion. Many of my friends were raised Catholic and whenever religion popped into conversation, they became different people, they became snobs.

I try to avoid the subject of religion when I am around my close friends.

I am very happy with my beliefs. I cannot and never will say that what I believe is right and should be followed by everyone.

Religion is private not public.

they are naturally, in your head, just like an LD. If we say no to religion on these grounds, surely we should say no to LDs as well? a thorny issue.

Do I smell arrogance? Mixed with…is that ignorance? Nothing like fresh athiesm in the morning!

Let me say two thing here:
Friday night, and the means by which I did this shall remain a mystery, I saw God. I existed at all times and all places at the same time. I toyed with the building blocks of life and the laws of nature and the universe. I was transported to vast interdimensional jungles, and huge voids filled with blackness and swirling waves of energy. This was the clear light, the self, Satori enlightenment, etc. This lead me into the second thing I have to say. With reports of direct contact with the divine, with the majority of the world belonging to tons of different religions, which at heart are all very similar, it must take as much faith as it does to believe that there is a God to believe that there is not a God. Personally, due to my direct experience with the sacred, it would take more faith to convince myself there is no God. So religion - delusion or breakthough? Neither. Religion is what life revolves around.

There are many different religions in the world today. More than I know of, undoubtedly. But that doesn’t mean that parts of each religion aren’t correct, or that it’s pointless to live your life with a strong belief in something greater than yourself.

What gets me, though, is the first sentence I quoted. Sure, most peoples’ religions are false. Can it be possible that everybody’s afterlife is what they believe it will be? Probably not. But who’s to say that Atheism is any more correct than anything else? Couldn’t we turn the question around… Do you understand that, in the back of your mind, your beliefs are false? You can’t target all religions and beliefs without targeting your own as well.

I really am not a religious person. Not at all. I’d call myself spiritual. But in the end, I possess beliefs just like any religious person does, and to a great many people on this planet, they are wrong. But they aren’t wrong to me, and that’s what’s important. They wouldn’t be a part of my life if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in them and found them to be true.

Does this mean I’m deluding myself? Does it mean that I only seek solace and comfort from my spirituality?

Who are we to question peoples’ motives or morality anyway? We can’t all be right and we can’t all be wrong, so it’s rather hypocritical to stand back and judge other peoples’ beliefs and their (conscious or unconscious) reasons for holding them. :smile:

I think this is the statement which could cause a flamewar. Generally Genkai, religious people believe in things that they belive, and think them true. To say that they are false without question is, well, offensive. Maybe you ought to edit.

As for me, I created my own religon and don’t believe it entirley, because it COULD be false. This keeps me more open to new ideas. The problem with religon is the fighting and the rules.

Though religion has been and is used to keep populations at bay (more in the past, though), not all religions in the world are Bigoted American (or any other country in which they threat people with hell at everything they do) Christianity.

Thought I’d clear that up.

Yes, if the afterlife is like a dream.

As an athiest, i too find it difficult to believe that all religious people do not have that same doubt at the back of thier minds. but i have many christian friends and know for an UNQUESTIONED FACT (im not afraid to use the ter because its true - and not really offensive in this case) that all religious people wonder that we athiests do not similarily doubt that the notion of a godless, or spiritless universe is anything but a cruel and silly paranoia. the truth is that we have no ideas about what other people truly believe, and what seems simple to us is ludicrous to another (check my ‘faithfullness - society is wrong’ thread, its simple enough but those whacks… :tongue:)
we can of course, ignore what you said as a lot over-zeal, and treat your question as a hypothetical, but all to difficult question.

Thank you for pointing that out, Shatter, Paradise. I edited it but still hopefully preserved the point.

I was considering picking a religion based on what I would enjoy believing in rather than something that was “true”. I was curious about whether that was a moral thing to do.

its really not moral at all, is it? even you want fun, LD. you dont follow a religion unless you really believe. otherwise you are just a hypocrite filled with a satisfying knowledge of an afterlife which you have no faith in anyway

As a Christian, even I have doubts in the back of my mind. I have fears that what I believe in is wrong. Of course I do. Who doesn’t? I have no idea what death will be like, and I don’t know what will happen when I die. It is only natural to have doubts such as this. All atheists and all religious people have these doubts. The only difference between everybody here is the willingness in which they admit their doubts to others. I am intensely curious as to see what death is like. Will I go to Heaven? Will I go to some other existence, form of life? Who knows. All I know is that it is something that everyone on Earth must face alone eventually. Hopefully I go to Heaven. Hopefully the existence in the next life is meaningful and peaceful. Hopefully it is good. But really, what I think actually happens when we die is as much of a guess as anyone else. The only difference is I put my faith in it. Is it truly correct? I don’t know. No one knows. That is, yet.

I’m an atheist. I acknowledge one cannot prove or disprove the existence of a God of any sort, and prefer that they don’t exist myself. I believe organized religions to be nice as far as “people gathering because they share beliefs,” but also know of some cases in which they started developing social functions which were, at best, only tangential to “reaching the transcendental.” I believe in respect to the social establishment on behalf of religious organizations, and in the respect of free thought (including religion) and the right to gather (including for religious ends) on behalf of society.

Hell yes, but ain’t that what we do? That’s what all of us do: politicians, economists, the military— or, we: individuals, families, groups, nations— or even we: teachers, artists, philosophers… Power is the matter here: as long as “power over other people” is coupled with your subjective beliefs of what’s better for those people, there is no Justice.

There’s a discussion concerning Democracy in another topic in which I expose that same reasoning in an attempt to demonstrate how Democracy can (and usually does) decay into a “Dictatorship of the Majority” which has little to do with how we dream of democracy. But sure, this works for religion too: and lets never forget strong atheism is a religion in that it makes metaphysical assumptions (that God does not exist) which cannot be proved and are passionately—as opposed to logically—defended.

Once again, you talk about religion, but you could be just as easily be talking about: philosophy, democracy, liberty, capitalism, chocolate. Think about it. :smile: This matter does not concern only religion. It’s far broader than that.

Aww, the atheist wondering about the meaning of life. :tongue: I have that, sometimes, too. :yes: Atheism fits where religion in general fits: theoretically, that means away from politics. What does it mean, to say a republic should be secular? It means the government should be atheistic, right? Wrong. It means the politics are supposed to be lead in spite of religious beliefs.

Therefore, it is immoral to get yourself a seat in the parliament to defend Islamic morals. It is immoral to massively kill Jews. It is especially immoral to invade countries, take over their governments and kill & torture people not really based on how “guilty” they are, but plainly based on suspicious behaviour due to (allegedly) Christian morals and Democracy. There’s a fabulous paper on the subject, by Richard Rorty, it’s called “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality.”

/me :hugs: Hamedo :smile:

Exactly! :clap:

:rofl: Dan you rule. :tongue:

Hm, sounds like something I’ll like to hear about in detail when we meet again over [size=100]MSN[/size]. I’ve had similar experiences (for reasons that shall remain mystery, but which were definitely different from the means by which you did), very similar indeed—yet very different in terms of how the quality I experienced came about in terms of words later.

You mean religion is what your life revolves around, white man. :razz: Mine definitely doesn’t.

Having said a lot about it being perfectly possible (and sometimes desirable) to live your life in spite of religion, I should say I fully agree with that. It’s also perfectly possible (and sometimes desirable) to life with a strong belief in something greater than yourself, I agree with that. :yes:

Why not, perhaps you are; you are the one to tell us what is it you’re trying to get. :smile: If it’s just solace and comfort, just solace and comfort it is, that’s a valid position. If it’s more (and it usually is more) or some unspecific quality or sentiment there is to this or that particular belief, then hell, that’s just as valid, right? :wink: What’s dangerous is tricking yourself, I think. Like saying you believe that religion “in order to go to heaven.” Because then in ain’t religion, don’t you think? I don’t know…

Same goes for “fear of God” versus “love for God.” If you believe your religion because you fear your God won’t be happy otherwise, that’s just a wee excuse and you probably don’t really believe the damned thing for real, or don’t get it. But if you say you believe your religion because you love God… Sounds completely different, doesn’t it? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being prejudiced, what do you think? :eh:

I agree with that applied to religion as an isolated phenomenon, but when it comes to religion and society, or when it comes to morality in general, I think it’s trickier. This is not the topic for it, but consider the question: is honour killing moral? What about abortion? Terrorism? Invasion of Iraq? Democracy?

The problem with Religion is Politics, you mean, then! :tongue:

Really? My religious friends don’t seem to mind it all that much. “You an atheist? Cool. Myself I’m Protestant.” Don’t you ever get that?

No. It’s a simple question: what if there is a God? Or a soul? Or an underlying sense to all this? What if. Do you admit that possibility? If you don’t, you’re just as blind as the person who refuses to admit God might not exist. In that sense, Moogle’s words (in another topic, and a long time ago) are enlightened: “I know he might not exist, but I know he exists.” :smile: Religion, and Atheism is a religion, is an irrational, passionate set of beliefs. You cannot prove God exists, you cannot prove the nirvana, you cannot prove karma, but you cannot disprove them either. Just try and see. :wink:

Aah, now I see what you’re trying to do! Hey. Have you heard about a philosopher called Gabriel Marcel? He was a French atheist who, fascinated by the power of faith, decided to try and experience that himself. So he became a pretend–Catholic: not in that he started to attend masses, but in that he started to trust his life and soul to a God he didn’t believe in. There’s a book on his account. Eventually, what he experienced was so pure and overwhelming he decided to convert to Christianity. Marcel is one of the preeminent philosophers in Christian Existentialism. You should take a look on his books.

Wait. We agree at some points here, but you’re being uncannily arrogant! I think it’s moral as far as it’s immersing, as far as you’re really willing to give yourself entirely to the religion and see what happens. I think people who support a religion without believing it for the sake of going to heaven are tricking themselves, but hypocrites? Come on. Fearing a God you were supposed to love is a tad bit more serious and complex than mere hypocrisy.

Fully agree with you here! :yes:

Brilliant. :content:

I’m an Atheist/Nihilist and I believe that belief in a religion is delusional because how they explain things make no sense at all to me and most of it has benn proved to be wrong by science. As far as I can tell religion has harmed the world in more ways that it has done good, would there have been a Holocaust if there had been no religion? No.Would Muslim extremists become suicide bombers if there was no religion? No. Religions also condones many bad things like sexism, and tells you that we should kill people, for example In the bible it says we should kill people who work on the sabbath (a bit contradictory as the bible also says we should not commit murder). Now i’m not saying that religion does nothing good, there are quite a few Charities run by religous people, but one thing I cannot stand is how some people argue that we need religion for the morals it teaches us, I hate this because I am not religious (you may have guessed that already) and my morals are usually better than most people around me and that If someone needs a religion to tell them that killing people is wrong, and that they should be kind to others, and help people who are in need is mentally wrong in the head. I also believes that choice over some of our morals is important as well, If someone does not want a child but has become pregnant and there religion says it is wrong to murder and that having an abortion is wrong so they have to bring an unwanted child into the world is this right, also many religious people get angry at the ways people treat animals in medical science for testing new medicines but some people are in desperate need of these medicines and i’m sure no religious person who need it would turn it down because of the way it was made. If the really think it is wrong why don’t they step in to take the place of these poor animals, it would even make the process quicker as the medicine wouldn’t need to be tested on people again. Now I really hope noone gets angry at me as I am only stating my point of view.

Whew! Care to quote that one? I think I missed it in all the discussions of the Bible I’ve ever come across.

Concerning the question brought at the beginning of the topic, I ask why does religion matter? I don’t quite see the connection between religion and morality. There are many people in the world that I have met of all kinds of religions, and they all (mostly) adhere to a strikingly similar set of moral codes. Why?

I’m going out on a huge limb here (whose branch is not even backed by other published authors!) and argue that most people today act moral because of evolution. Think about it. How could a community thrive if everyone in said community were selfish? Certain individuals may be better off, but as a whole, the community would most certainly die! Then consider a community that cooperates and has “moral character”. The moral character allows one another to build trust. Trust allows certain individuals to trade (i.e. markets). Trade allows individuals to specialize in certain areas in order to benefit more from trade. Everyone specializes, everyone benefits more, and the community thrives.

My argument is essentially that religion has nothing to do with morality. The question is moot to me. Religion was not a “delusion” to get people to cooperate, because people were already cooperating as it was. People don’t need religion to have good moral character. Additionally, religion is not empowerment in the sense of moral character either for the same reasons.

And so what if “evolution” is not the correct answer to the “morality question”? Look at everyone around you! A lot of people act moral! Why? They don’t do it for their religions (usually)! They do it for the community! You don’t hold the door open for an old lady in the hopes that a divine creature will see your deeds and therefore grant you happiness! You hold the door open because her hands are full!!

And you can combine this post with 98 cents to get yourself a soda from the vending machine. :wink:

Exodus 31:15
Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.

Thanks daylight It would of taken me forever to find that.
youtube.com/watch?v=HVuw1wEuaAQ - This is quite an interesting vdeo which is well related to this topic that I found.

See, now you’re not making any sense at all yourself. :eh:

First, you can’t be an atheist and a nihilist at once. Atheism is a faith in no God, and nihilism is the denial of all faith—including that in no God.

Second, I’d really like to see you show us your reasoning when you say religion explains things in a way that makes no sense. If you have indeed found such a stream of reasoning, congratulations, you have just brought all humankind to the next paradigm shift: you’re the biggest revolution in the history of mankind. If you can’t prove it, though, and I believe you can’t, then don’t state it as if the thing was granted. :wink:

Third, science doesn’t prove things. This is the gravest mistake people make in our time: thinking science proves anything. It doesn’t. It can’t. What it can do—at best—is, given a couple of premises which you will never question, tell you if a model is valid or invalid. For instance: if we accept the methodology of metrics, we can pretty much prove that the Newtonian model of Physics is invalid; so if the metrics are indeed correct, the model is wrong.

As for our mainstream model today—Relativity Physics—we can only tell it is valid as of what we know today. That is, even if we manage to prove metrics are correct, the model might still be wrong.

So, sure. You can get yourself a copy of the Bible or the Qur’an and circle all the logical fallacies with a red pen. You’ll show us they don’t pass the test of scientific soundness, which means, in scientific terms, they’re not models worth testing because you can’t make logical derivations from them.

Now look at Atheism. It is sound: it has few premises, and all the conclusions are logical derivations of the premises. But it’s still not scientific. Why is that?, you ask. Because it’s not relevant: which means that Atheism, albeit logical, is a model for which no methodology can be developed (i.e., you can’t test it), so it’s not worth (or even possible) studying.

Scientific theory doesn’t have tools to say which model is best. It might be that the world is illogical. It might be that the Qu’ran is right, or Atheism, or Newtonian Physics, or neither. Science can’t tell which has better odds of being true. What it can tell you is what’s possible to study, and what’s worth studying.

Science, in fact, is such a weird thing that it isn’t a relevant model itself: that is, you can’t check whether or not science is true via science. So science, like atheism, is no more than a logically based form of creed: a logical religion, if you will.

Now. A couple of centuries ago, a bunch of philosophers started to realize something daft about philosophy. Firstly Kant and Schopenhauer started to question the millennial logics all other philosophers had used, and realize how logics itself can’t logically prove that logics is of any relevance or proves anything. Then Nietzsche, and later Heidegger, pointed out that, indeed, all logics did was bring humankind to a narrow–minded situation in which we blindly believe things only because they’re logical, and kill any possibilities of new ideas with the massiveness of logics.

So they started to question the validity of human thought itself. Heidegger was an optimist, and tried to build a theory in which human knowledge would make sense. Nietzsche, on the other hand, decided it was best to deny the institution of knowledge, because it was a big blatant lie, an irrelevant set of theories which pretended to be good enough to tell what’s relevant and what’s irrelevant. The guys who followed Nietzsche’s denial are called Nihilists.

So I’m having trouble seeing where you fit here. You call yourself an atheist, but then you say you’re also a nihilist—and then you start advocating science and saying religion makes no sense, when science is (as demonstrated) as valid as religion. :bored: So I don’t know where you stand anymore! Perhaps you’re just one big contradiction. :tongue:

And you sound very religious about your own moral values (e.g. those concerning abortion): how can you be so absolutely sure they’re right? That sounds like religion to me—as it happens, ethics too are pretty much another set of beliefs which depend on faith, for no matter how logical your conclusions are, you have to elect premises (in this case, values) for starters.

Muzzius, I don’t mean to offend, I seriously don’t, but man. I really think you should chill out your thoughts: you wrote a very passionate post, somewhat aggressive even, and reading it made me feel not like you were joining the discussion and trying to make your point, or even just exposing your beliefs on the matter, but rather trying to force them upon us. :neutral:

also the clown doesnt help us.

and you seem to be falling into the common trap of taking seemingly religious conflicts at face value and laying the entire weight of blame of god and his minions. The Holocaust would certainly have happened without religion, and was not religious at all. the Jews were an immigrant population in germany (i use the term lightly, they were there for centuries before the idea of ‘National Socalism’) who were very easy to make scapegoats of. they were as far from arayianism as you could get so they had to be exterminated in a racially motivated genocide. religion had nothing to do with it. (actually judaism is a bit of a cultural anomaly - both a religion and a race)
You talk about there being no sucide bombers without religion, but i ask you this. would thier be suicide bombers without the british empire? would thier be suicide bombers without globalisation? would thier be suicide bombers without the cold war? probably not. yes, without the promise of a bethy of maiden beauties in paradise, people would think twice about blowing themselves up. this doesnt mean that these things were caused by religion, there jsut one hell of a moral boost.

like i said in a different thread, these problems arent the fault of religion, they are simple human nature. so we should stop looking for scapegoats and sort ourselves out. as a certain, certainly contreversial, wise man once said 'first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. ’

I am strongly reminded by a passage in one of Kurt Vonnegut’s works of fiction. As I am not an encyclopedia, I must paraphrase:

An Alien visiting from another planet took it upon himself to figure out just what was wrong with Earth’s most popular religion; Christianity. He came to the conclusion that upon Jesus’ hanging, readers were obliged to think, at least on some level, “They sure picked the wrong person to hang”. This was inherently flawed in that it suggested there was a RIGHT person to hang.

The alien proceeded to re-write the bible making the proper adjustments, and the world largely lived happily ever after.

I apologize if anyone was offended by that blasphemy, but I believe it illustrates a relevant point. Although as Bruno so eloquently puts it, we cannot pinpoint such things as relevance.

However, Bruno, I think you made a small mistake. Atheism is not a faith in no god. It is a faith in no theology. The literal translation is without religion. Although the term has certainly been diluted.

I believe a better term for Muzzius would be ‘weak athiesm’, since he seems to believe in at least some of science.

And although your are right, strong athiest is a faith in the non-existance of god, weak athiesm is the assumption that we should believe what makes sense to us. This means science.

More in line with the original question; Most of what humans believe is delusion. Most people fail to realise that nothing we sense, by whatever manner, can be completely trusted. We could be hallucinating, we could be decieved, and more importantly there’s the possibility that we’re completely detached; that our minds exist but that everything around us, our reality, is a figment of our imagination. (See Philosophical basis of The Matrix)

Nihilism of more like denying everything for the time being, just until you cease to exist/are able to verify your reality. At least, this is my take. A blanket term seldom works properly, since people are so often so different.

On my computer(currently broken) I have a link to a wonderful article concerning the evolution of morality as separate from religion.

The only purpose served by religion in modern society is to fill a gap. I have never known an athiest who did not wish for something to answer their questions about the universe. And indeed, religion is the ultimate answer for it’s subscribers. People are angered by the argument that “God did it”, but this is the whole basis of religion, that God did indeed “do it”.

So, in my opinion, it is most likely delusion. However it is also empowerment in that it gives one the power to be happy. The French philosopher Bruno mentioned is a wonderful example.

In the dark ages, religion was used as a weapon, because of it’s flaws. But in this age, science has forced most people to rethink their religion, at least to he point of reading the spirit, not the letter, of the Good Book.

Disclaimer: Capitalization of words such as “God”, “Jesus”, and “Good Book” are signs of respect for english grammar, not signs of personal belief.