Atheists who don't hate religion

[JaysonR]

It's not a fixed constant.
It's a consequent potential.

 

[Donn]

This is part of what I was getting at. Religiosity is a natural set of human behaviors and experiences that, at one time, served a function in our everyday lives. There is no reason to fear or despise it, or regard it an error or disease. Rather, we should try to understand it and see what we can do to work with it.

Yes, I tend to agree. I don't like "religiosity", but I can't recall another word — there's "spiritual" and "meta-blah" and so on. They all suck. Our emotional natures that Dennet explored so well in Breaking the Spell. Have you read that Frozen? It's pretty good.

While I don't hate religion, I also feel that religion is not the only way these behaviors and experiences can manifest. Art can serve the same purpose as religion, and accomplish the same things as religion, without all the bigotry, prejudice, and abuse that's often associated with religion.

Both religion and art have endured for so long because they organize cooperative behavior. However, religion sometimes teaches us to be ******** to one another, while art does not.

I dunno. The appreciation of art can be intense - like, I assume some parts of a religious experience can be. I'm not sure of how art could be a 24/7 enough stand-in for the whole religious system (churches, pastors, imams, nuns, hymns, bibles, faith, prayer, sin, guilt, fear, awe).

I can only stay entranced by Radiohead for so long before I fuse-out.

Another off thing about art is all the law that shrouds it. Copyright, DMCA, anti-piracy and so on. You can't really start a movement to appreciate and share existing "art" without being slaughtered by lawyers.

Oh, and, My little Pony, Caspar the ghost, Archie comics and oil-paintings of sunsets make me want to kill stuff!

 

[marplots]

I don't think object permanence quite captures the depth of what's happening when we think of the dead being "present" in some way.

I have models of the world in my head and can manipulate them. I might mentally construct or modify some imagined thing to see (in my mind's eye) how it might work out. (Will this sweater fit me? Is that nail too long?) I do this whenever I take some action toward some desired result, but also do it to test and reject other actions.

So too, I have mental constructs, like golems, of those I care about and interact with. The question, "What would your dad think of this?" is the same whether my dad is away traveling, or in the next room, or long dead. It feels to me as if I actually question the mental image and get answers.

The difference between object permanence and more detailed models is that the models can respond and evolve, and are likely to do so when the referent is permanently inaccessible. The checking mechanism of having a real person to interact with isn't needed. I can tell you, with some authority, how Bugs Bunny might react, even though I understand Bugs is entirely fictional. I know Spock wouldn't say that, but Kirk might.

So, in a very real sense, the dead and departed are still here - since the feeling of interaction, and the model I use can be identical to that when they are present. Frodo does indeed live.

 

[JaysonR]

Marplot,

Exactly!!

 

[Donn]

Perhaps. I guess it takes different twists. I can't conjure my dead without a wrenching pain that threatens to send me into grief that I can't face, so I quickly force myself to stop trying.

Fictional characters. I dunno. One says Spock this, Kirk that, Frodo the other - but one knows this is to make a funny or a point and not to claim fiction for reality.

 

[marplots]

Perhaps. I guess it takes different twists. I can't conjure my dead without a wrenching pain that threatens to send me into grief that I can't face, so I quickly force myself to stop trying.

Fictional characters. I dunno. One says Spock this, Kirk that, Frodo the other - but one knows this is to make a funny or a point and not to claim fiction for reality.

I think believers know they are doing it too. And I think it takes some practice to seriously consider "What Would Jesus Do?" But even so, the question still makes sense to me.

I find a parallel in descriptions of "lucid dreaming" and astral projection - to create a model so realistic we can dwell in it. I think of it as both the key boon and bane defining Homo Sapiens.

I see the evolutionary advantage of "the hypothesis dies in my stead," but I also see the disadvantage of doing it too well. I wonder if we could graph access to pornography against birth rates to see if there's an inverse relationship and reveal the impact of the vicarious.

 

[marplots]

Marplot,

Exactly!!

I read a story I wish I could cite but cannot.

A man meets a ghost on a bridge and the author tells us: The spirit wanted the only thing that every ghost always wants. "Remember me," he said.

 

[JaysonR]

Perhaps. I guess it takes different twists. I can't conjure my dead without a wrenching pain that threatens to send me into grief that I can't face, so I quickly force myself to stop trying.

Fictional characters. I dunno. One says Spock this, Kirk that, Frodo the other - but one knows this is to make a funny or a point and not to claim fiction for reality.

Yes, but one also has said, Hercules this, Thor that, Gabriel the other...

 

[JaysonR]

I read a story I wish I could cite but cannot.

A man meets a ghost on a bridge and the author tells us: The spirit wanted the only thing that every ghost always wants. "Remember me," he said.

Oh it's an old and common human tale that gods need human awareness to live.
Even lesser mythical creatures are given this boundary at times.

 

[marplots]

It works the other way too. If I cannot model you, I can see you as less than human. So, for example, we have the case of the mother who drowns her five children, one after the other in the bathtub. What am I to make of this "other," this alien I cannot model in my head? Try as I might, I cannot construct a mental golem who will murder, with such calm and steadfast intent, her own children.

The resolution is to cry "insane" or "animal" and put the forbidden actor down. In essence removing them from reality, as they have already been removed mentally. So it isn't just that remembering keeps the fires burning, forgetting or being unable to form the model can put fires and lives out.

There is a kind of recognition of this element I have seen among believers. It's the idea of avoiding mental taint. Two methods are offered up. The first is to "dwell in the word" but the second is more interesting - to avoid a kind of pollution that comes from exposure to what we might call "modern secular life." By avoiding contact, you keep those things out of the mental mix and hopefully, they won't exist to bedevil (literally) the believer's mind.

What I found interesting about it was that they recognized they were doing it and promoted the method, while simultaneously ignoring the same psychological ploy of making their religious beliefs more significant/real by immersion. Manipulating your own mind-space in this way to obtain something you value strikes me as the worst sort of inauthentic, the opposite of what they claim is a pursuit of ultimate truth.

That said, I do a bit of it myself - avoiding exposure to things I think will "taint my mind." The most recent example is dodging video of beheadings because they upset me. I am pre-editing out an uncomfortable reality to keep my mental landscape a more pleasant place.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Well, your strawman's on fire there.

Maybe. How is generalizing to a large demographic from a small, atypical sample not stereotyping?

If they tolerate the crazy they're part of the problem.

I assume you're referring to the Episcopelians. I hear a lot about not tolerating fundamentalists, but what does that look like? How do YOU not tolerate them? Because if all you do is complain about them, the Episcopelians are pretty caught up on that. What intolerant measures do you think we should take against the fundamentalists? What's the final solution?

 

[Mister Agenda]

I think there is a difference in there though and I'll try my best to work through it.

First off, whether smoking cannabis causes harm is an objective claim and we can investigate it. If smoking X amount causes no harm and smoking Y amount makes you disfunctional then we can (at least in theory) determine that.

Is religion the same? Does believing X irrational things but not Y cause no problems? How do we then determine X from Y I don't think its as simple as 'amount'. Or is it about methodology? Do we teach that the Bible is a source of truth but it depends how you interpret it? who then decides what is the right interpretation?

For me this is the problem about religion...it's not a question of how much..its a question of basic approach. If you say that the Bible has truth in it then one interpretation has as much credibility as another. If you insist that ancient books don't yield truth there is no problem.

To stretch your drug analogy its like saying 'Drugs are OK' because you don't have a problem with cannabis use....but that also means Heroin, crack and everything else are OK too.

I think a psychologist would tell you that it's hard to find a human who doesn't believe some irrational things, but for it to be considered a disorder, it has to impair their ability to function in multiple major life areas and/or cause distress for the person experiencing the symptoms.

There wouldn't be many people not in counseling or on mood-affecting drugs or psychotropics if we treated every eccentricity as a disease.

I have trouble envisioning a society with zero tolerance for religion that wouldn't be terribly sick. We can easily see that zero tolerance policies for knives in school that leads to expelling a 7-year-old for brandishing a plastic butter knife to cut his PBJ with.

 

[Mister Agenda]

That wasn;t really my point though...my point was that it takes some belief in some 'other' and a supporting infrastructure to promote these beliefs and arguments and to have them enacted into law.

Yes some religions don't share some unpleasant beliefs with some other religions

As for Christians who don't share the beliefs of other Christians... fine, but where is the rationale behind it? If its one interpretation vs another then how do you decide? if its secular rational reasoning vs biblical interpretation then please stop pretending its 'one religious view vs another'

What's the rationale behind expecting average people raised to believe something is true that pretty much all their loved ones assume is true to make a giant step to rejecting it entirely instead of a baby step to conforming it to modernity?

Meeting on a weekend morning to hear a talk about morality or charity or compassion and the like while your kids are occupied in another room, there's a sing-along with your neigbors, network with people you don't otherwise usually interact with, have marriages and funerals there, with a committee to help out members who have difficulties like job losses or illnesses and opportunities to team up for charity work...that's useful.

Why would someone who likes all that choose to give it up and replace it with nothing?

Until people who value that kind of community have a viable alternative, most of them will stick to what is working for them. None of that requires religion, but it does require some organization. Such a thing, and there's no reason it would have to be founded on dogmatism, in the long run...decades...do way more to move our demographics in the direction of less religion than whatever 'not tolerating people being religious' is.

If you're serious about changing things, UUs are congregationally governed: each congregation has it's own take on things. If your local UU is too wooish, it just means it doesn't have enough skeptics in the congregation. My minister is an atheist.

If Unitarian and Ethical Culture centers are scarce, it's because we don't support them. That would be a much more concrete way to affect change than talking vaguely about how we should not tolerate people being religious.

 

[Mister Agenda]

To stretch your drug analogy its like saying 'Drugs are OK' because you don't have a problem with cannabis use....but that also means Heroin, crack and everything else are OK too.

Wouldn't it be more like: Heroin and crack are bad, so cannabis is bad, too? If you're describing the zero tolerance approach to religion being advocated by some here?

 

[Mister Agenda]

I still wouldn't go so far, as people like Dawkins have done, to attribute religion to neurological misfirings. I would compare religion more to a vestige of something that once served a vital purpose, but is no longer necessary in the same capacity. Like our vestigial organs, religion has evolved and its function has been altered. It still serves some function, like how the human appendix is no longer used for digestion but now acts as a reservoir for beneficial gut flora in case something wipes them out, but you can certainly live without it. And yes, I know that sometimes it gets inflamed and needs to be removed lest it pose a threat to one's life.

I think we can replace it with a new 'organ' that performs the same useful functions without the tendency to get inflamed. In a country with (probably) over 15 million atheists, the US has only 25 Ethical Societies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_Culture#Key_ideas) and barely over a thousand UU fellowships (less than 700,000 members). The Humanist Society is barely a blip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humanist_Association#Humanist_Society).

We don't even have to start from scratch to have institutions that can replace religion. It would only take another 10% of US atheists participating with these groups for them to be seen as taking off in a big way, and if they weren't majority atheist before, they would be then. We've got power, but it's too diluted to be useful without organization.

 

[Donn]

That said, I do a bit of it myself - avoiding exposure to things I think will "taint my mind." The most recent example is dodging video of beheadings because they upset me. I am pre-editing out an uncomfortable reality to keep my mental landscape a more pleasant place.

Oh boy, am I with you there. So far zero beheadings for me.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

The easiest pick in history is the French Revolution - that was powerfully fueled by an artistic revolution.
The second easiest art movement infusion into a social revolution which sparked violence is the "Hippie" movement of the United States.

The primary difference in the revolutions, at their violent variations, is that non-religious art movements tend to arrive from an increase in education across the population and consequent some unrest with the current status quo of government, while the religious (art) movements tend to arrive from an interest in preservation at the expense of diversity and tolerance.

So an art movement can lead to violence, but when it does we look at them as expressing something great about humanity - fighting some injustice and pushing social awareness forward.

Meanwhile, when religion leads to violence we look at them as expressing the worst - instituting duress of justice and arresting social awareness' rate of progress.

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess that's one more point in favor of art then. Not all violence is unjustified.

Religion is at its best when it is entirely removed from political capability within a society, or when it is such that it is the Theocracy by willing want of the entire demographic for which it serves.

Agreed completely. Religion and politics do not mix. Or to put it another way, keeping religious crap out of political crap keeps the overall stench down. When religion gets into politics, you get a theocracy that abuses people's rights (which isn't a good thing for religious people either). When politics gets into religion, you get violent extremists and terrorists (which also isn't a good thing for religious people).

The latter is ever so very rare, and typically only happens in very small populations of people.

Do you have any examples of this?

Yes, I tend to agree. I don't like "religiosity", but I can't recall another word — there's "spiritual" and "meta-blah" and so on. They all suck. Our emotional natures that Dennet explored so well in Breaking the Spell. Have you read that Frozen? It's pretty good.

No, I haven't. I've read plenty of Dawkins and Harris (and grown disillusioned with them) but not Dennet.

I dunno. The appreciation of art can be intense - like, I assume some parts of a religious experience can be. I'm not sure of how art could be a 24/7 enough stand-in for the whole religious system (churches, pastors, imams, nuns, hymns, bibles, faith, prayer, sin, guilt, fear, awe).

I can only stay entranced by Radiohead for so long before I fuse-out.

That's the experience of consuming art. The experience of creating art is on an entirely different level. If you haven't, you should try it sometime.

Oh, and, My little Pony, Caspar the ghost, Archie comics and oil-paintings of sunsets make me want to kill stuff!

But I happen to like ponies.

Actually, I had a similar initial reaction to the show as you. But then I read up on Lauren Faust's political views and saw how subversive the show can be, and came to appreciate how clever it is. It's a well-written show, but stay away from the fandom, as it's one of the worst.

I think a psychologist would tell you that it's hard to find a human who doesn't believe some irrational things, but for it to be considered a disorder, it has to impair their ability to function in multiple major life areas and/or cause distress for the person experiencing the symptoms.

There wouldn't be many people not in counseling or on mood-affecting drugs or psychotropics if we treated every eccentricity as a disease.

Everyone has some irrational beliefs. I have them, you have them, and calling oneself an atheist doesn't grant immunity from them. We all have to be wrong sometime, because we can't know everything at once. To be wrong is to be human.

I have trouble envisioning a society with zero tolerance for religion that wouldn't be terribly sick. We can easily see that zero tolerance policies for knives in school that leads to expelling a 7-year-old for brandishing a plastic butter knife to cut his PBJ with.

I would add that a lack of tolerance for anyone who doesn't think like you is exactly what religious fundamentalists have, so I see no reason for me as a skeptic to make the same mistake.

I think we can replace it with a new 'organ' that performs the same useful functions without the tendency to get inflamed. In a country with (probably) over 15 million atheists, the US has only 25 Ethical Societies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_Culture#Key_ideas) and barely over a thousand UU fellowships (less than 700,000 members). The Humanist Society is barely a blip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humanist_Association#Humanist_Society).

We don't even have to start from scratch to have institutions that can replace religion. It would only take another 10% of US atheists participating with these groups for them to be seen as taking off in a big way, and if they weren't majority atheist before, they would be then. We've got power, but it's too diluted to be useful without organization.

This probably isn't a bad idea.

 

[Delvo]

What's the final solution?

Subtle.

 

[JaysonR]

I think we can replace it with a new 'organ' that performs the same useful functions without the tendency to get inflamed. In a country with (probably) over 15 million atheists, the US has only 25 Ethical Societies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_Culture#Key_ideas) and barely over a thousand UU fellowships (less than 700,000 members). The Humanist Society is barely a blip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humanist_Association#Humanist_Society).

We don't even have to start from scratch to have institutions that can replace religion. It would only take another 10% of US atheists participating with these groups for them to be seen as taking off in a big way, and if they weren't majority atheist before, they would be then. We've got power, but it's too diluted to be useful without organization.

Yes, this works wonderfully well on Vulcans, but we are working with Humans who have Human neurology, not Vulcan neurology.

Make more institutions all you want, but don't fool yourself into believing religion will just be wiped out.

 

[David Mo]

It's not a fixed constant.
It's a consequent potential.

These are two different things.

I mean by “fixed constant” an immutable function of the brain. (You have mentioned massive lobotomy, but massive lobotomy is actually unfeasible, ergo impossible in practice. So, it remains immutable). : “Humans will continue to fabricate, modify and adhere to religous constructs until the species' neurology grossly alters and refuses embuement an affect upon analysis”. ( #145 ; #160 for lobotomy).

The potentiality of the brain basis is another issue that would be the consequence of these fixed processing of the brain you claimed for. I don’t know what you mean by “potential”. I have asked you what do you mean with this concept ( #229), but I haven’t got any answer.