The "What should replace religion?" question

[deaman]

Well, if you can come up with idealistic phrases like these all on your own, you definitely don't need a god. However, a god makes it so much easier to believe in them:
We all have value. And if it's hard for us to find this value in the real world, we know that it is true anyway because the value is to be found in the eyes of the Lord ...
The alternative to religion that Deaman offers us is a kind of secularised religion, Christianity without God.

Wow Dann, you've got everyone all figured out just like the christians. No need to avoid your pre-judgement of all people, since you, just know.

Maybe you should write a book that people can refer to, you know, so they will know how to live.

Dann, all there are in these threads are human beings, living on present day planet Earth.

Humans arguing, in order to increase there own sense of self-worth, is common.

Offer solutions, or offer dissonance, whichever makes up your JREF personality.

I accept that life has/needs no solid meaning, other than what I give it, but reality is, many people cannot.

There is no god. Just us being conscious towards ourselves. Awake to our situation.

 

[wrs]

Why do you go to a job you hate? Can you not take action to find work you like, or can you not change you attitude about what you have in your life?

It's a rhetorical question, I used to try to find things I liked about my job. Eventually I started my own company. However, for a long time, I thought that religion did seem to offer the reason for being. It was after I lived long enough that I realized it really doesn't.

Why do you need someone to be beaten and punished for you? You need a blood sacrifice? Sounds almost ancient Mayan, or Aztec. Pagan really.

Even as a religionist I thought it didn't make sense. I was more interested in having a reason for being and doing a better job of being a person. Those two things don't really go together. So I can live without a real clear reason for being other than improving on myself but from my viewpoint as opposed to some moral or external standard.

I mean, can you not imagine a better brand of "God of Love" than one that would punish its creations for being created.

You are a human being. Wake up.

Surely you have meaning, and value yourself and others, don't you?

Not sure of the meaning any of us have but I do think that we probably have value to one another and ourselves in some ways. Does that mean we have any real value in existing? No, there is no way to demonstrate the value of individual existence or that of humanity as a whole. That is what religion strives to do and whatever replaces religion needs to do that, IMO.

 

[deaman]

It's a rhetorical question, I used to try to find things I liked about my job. Eventually I started my own company. However, for a long time, I thought that religion did seem to offer the reason for being. It was after I lived long enough that I realized it really doesn't.



Even as a religionist I thought it didn't make sense. I was more interested in having a reason for being and doing a better job of being a person. Those two things don't really go together. So I can live without a real clear reason for being other than improving on myself but from my viewpoint as opposed to some moral or external standard.




Not sure of the meaning any of us have but I do think that we probably have value to one another and ourselves in some ways. Does that mean we have any real value in existing? No, there is no way to demonstrate the value of individual existence or that of humanity as a whole. That is what religion strives to do and whatever replaces religion needs to do that, IMO.

It seems to me the best I can do is to roll with things as they are, and accept them, for my own peace, which of course, rubs off on others.

Some however will always need to argue a point. Humans seem so self destructive? We'll probably end up taking ourselves out of history if we do not change.

And if we do.........so what? We have our chance.

 

[tsig]

No god needed, I agree. However, I disagree about the common sense aspect of it because meaning and purpose for life are what drive people to get up in the morning and go to work beyond a subsistence level. I think it takes more than common sense to cause someone to get up and go do a job they hate every day.

In my case it was a desire to live in a house and shop the front of grocery stores instead of dumpster dining in the back.

 

[tsig]

Well, if you can come up with idealistic phrases like these all on your own, you definitely don't need a god. However, a god makes it so much easier to believe in them:
We all have value. And if it's hard for us to find this value in the real world, we know that it is true anyway because the value is to be found in the eyes of the Lord ...
The alternative to religion that Deaman offers us is a kind of secularised religion, Christianity without God.

What value do you have for god? Does he enjoy watching our blind struggles to learn while he refuses to enlighten us?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

A common critique levelled against the "new atheists" is that they don't put forth a replacement for religion. For some reason this critique appears to be more common among atheist critics than religious critics.

Dawkins briefly deals with it in The God Delusion. How would you answer that question? If it is a bad question, then how would you explain it?

Coming in late, but I have to ask "Why do we need to have something to replace religion?"

 

[dann]

Coming in late, but I have to ask "Why do we need to have something to replace religion?"

You're not really late, Gawdzilla, you just forgot that you were already here.
And you are right, of course: Religion shouldn't be replaced - Religion is one of the things that most people don't tend to miss when they lose it - but you should ask why so many people need it, and do away with the things that makes them need it.

 

[dann]

What value do you have for god? Does he enjoy watching our blind struggles to learn while he refuses to enlighten us?

"He" exists only in the imaginations of believers and thus has whatever "value" they attribute to him.

 

[dann]

In my case it was a desire to live in a house and shop the front of grocery stores instead of dumpster dining in the back.

... the latter being wrs's "subsistence level".
I tend to agree, and that's probably the motivating factor for most people, not religion or moral scruples. They come upon religion only as a means to make "a job they hate every day" (and a ditto life) seem to have a meaning beyond what it actually is.

 

[dann]

Dann, all there are in these threads are human beings, living on present day planet Earth.

Wow, you're telling me that no interplanetary aliens, sea monkeys, dead (or unborn) people participate in these discussions? That's a little disappointing ...

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You're not really late, Gawdzilla, you just forgot that you were already here.

I do tend to ignore these threads.

And you are right, of course: Religion shouldn't be replaced - Religion is one of the things that most people don't tend to miss when they lose it - but you should ask why so many people need it, and do away with the things that makes them need it.

I'll make it a perfect world and get right back to you.

 

[deaman]

Coming in late, but I have to ask "Why do we need to have something to replace religion?"

Because change is hard for Human Beings (Sheeple).

The need to have a sense of the familiar is like a stepping stone to discarding that which is useless.

Nonetheless, I agree with you.

For me, it like asking what can we replace myth and fantastic stories with, if not reality?

 

[deaman]

Wow, you're telling me that no interplanetary aliens, sea monkeys, dead (or unborn) people participate in these discussions? That's a little disappointing ...

LOL!

Based on the writing and reasoning invovled, I cannot verify this, as fact, for you.

 

[Humes fork]

It's been a while, but here goes:
As if the people in the congregation meet every Sunday morning in order "to explain how the universe works." But, of course, your bizarre idea of what consitutes religion (or "part of what a religion does") needs this fiction to come up with the 'replacement' you pretended to be asking about in the opening post: If (!) religion were a failed attempt at explaining how the universe works, science would be solution to, and thus the replacement of, religion.
Now the only problem is that it never really was ....

You keep prattling about that people "need" religion. Do you have any evidence for it? Do people "need" belief in Nessie or Bigfoot as well?

As much as I would enjoy throwing you out in the Somalian wilderness with no property other than the clothes on your body, it is beyond my means, so let's all celebrate the mighty Humes fork and his superior hard wired brain rendered impervious to any belief for which there is no evidence. (That there is absolutely no evidence of his belief in the way that his brain would work in the Somalian wildernes is a minor detail that doesn't seem to bother him.)

How about your belief that I would "need" religion?

And which "hypothesis" would that be??!

Your hypothesis about how religion is "needed" obviously.

Now you just need to find someone who does and ask him, but that also should not bother you. You already seem to be quite content with you strawman definition of religion ....

What strawman definition? Religion claims to explain how the universe works. Its explanations are wrong.

 

[deaman]

Basically, it is being said that fantastic myth and make-believe shouldn't be replaced at all. Rather, our focus should be to concentrate consciousness of ordinary, day-to-day reality on Earth and it's inhabitance.

You know, what's really going on, not some smoke and mirrors magic tricks.

 

[dann]

Strawman #1:

You keep prattling about that people "need" religion. Do you have any evidence for it? Do people "need" belief in Nessie or Bigfoot as well?

No, unlike you, I don't keep prattling on, and I don't talk about people needing religion. From the very beginning I've stressed what people really need and why they resort to religion to comfort themselves when they can't get it:
"If you have things like irrigation and proper housing, that is if you don't expect to become a victim of the elements on a regular basis, you don't need to pray to a god for protection against rain, drought, hurricanes etc.
If you have proper food on the table (due to irrigation etc.), you don't have to ask a deity for your daily bread.
And if you have proper health care, you don't need to see a witch doctor."
That you, Humes fork, seem to be incapable of understanding this very simple argument and therefore have to resort to your strawman isn't something that you can blame me for.

Strawman #2:

How about your belief that I would "need" religion?

How about your strawman? He's your problem, Humes!

Strawman #3:

Your hypothesis about how religion is "needed" obviously.

See #1.

Strawman #4:

What strawman definition? Religion claims to explain how the universe works. Its explanations are wrong.

Most believers today state that they don't think that e.g. Genesis should be taken literally, i.e. apart from a few fundamentalists they don't actually believe in Genesis, i.e. they don't think that it explains "how the universe works". Many of them even state that science explains "how the universe works.
Consequently it's studid to identify religion with its ancient attemps at explaining the world and even more stupid to look for a replacement for an outdated aspect of religion. It was replaced hundreds of years ago.

 

[Quinn]

Most believers today state that they don't think that e.g. Genesis should be taken literally, i.e. apart from a few fundamentalists they don't actually believe in Genesis, i.e. they don't think that it explains "how the universe works". Many of them even state that science explains "how the universe works.
Consequently it's studid to identify religion with its ancient attemps at explaining the world and even more stupid to look for a replacement for an outdated aspect of religion. It was replaced hundreds of years ago.

I have a Mr. Ham on the line. He says he'd like to have a word with you about your characterization of the number of his fellow young-earth creationism believers (somewhere between 30 and 46% of the US population according to a recent Gallup polls) as "a few."

 

[dann]

I have a Mr. Ham on the line. He says he'd like to have a word with you about your characterization of the number of his fellow young-earth creationism believers (somewhere between 30 and 46% of the US population according to a recent Gallup polls) as "a few."

Most believers today state that they don't think that e.g. Genesis should be taken literally, i.e. apart from a few* fundamentalists they don't actually believe in Genesis, i.e. they don't think that it explains "how the universe works". Many of them even state that science explains "how the universe works.
Consequently it's studid to identify religion with its ancient attemps at explaining the world and even more stupid to look for a replacement for an outdated aspect of religion. It was replaced hundreds of years ago.

*If you live in the USA, this should read: "a considerable minority". Unlike most civilized countries with education and somewhat secure living conditions, Christian fundamentalists in the USA are a thriving segment of the population.

.... which only serves to prove the point that I've been making the whole time in this discussion against Quinn's "answer" to the problem of religion.

PS I wonder why Quinn is still so interested in the points I make ....

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Because change is hard for Human Beings (Sheeple).

The need to have a sense of the familiar is like a stepping stone to discarding that which is useless.

Nonetheless, I agree with you.

For me, it like asking what can we replace myth and fantastic stories with, if not reality?

I think we could transition via Saturday morning cartoons.

 

[deaman]

I think we could transition via Saturday morning cartoons.

Distinct possibility!

Might need at least a PS3 to go with, though.