Is there a Chewers vs Spirituality/religions thing going on here? - Page 2

What I believe?

I also believe in a deity beyond movies, music and sports. I believe in the sacrifice that was made for mankind. And I also know that there is a contradiction of profound proportions in that set of beliefs. My mind is not subject to my faith. God doesn't want me to be a brainless follower/robot. There's no benefit in that for anyone.

I also believe teen daughters are the debil.

And to forestall the comments regarding "believing in something you can't prove is pretty brainless, guy" I rebut with this: When the Spanish went in to the Mayan civilization, they had rifles. The Mayans hadn't seen anything like that before, and figured they killed men just by the sound. Magic boom sticks. They eventually learned better, but until that information was given to them the whole of that technology was lumped in the "magic/gods" category.

I think there's enough about life, the universe and everything else that we don't understand that there's room for God to be in the details. We can't know for sure one way or the other. So I'm going to take it on faith and go by the evidence I've experienced within my own life and choose to believe there's a Will and Purpose in the end.

And I'll agree with the previous poster in thinking that the best aspect of living a Christ-like life isn't the "eternal reward" crap at the end of the day. Living a good life for whatever reason is its own reward. There's strength and wisdom to it, and makes for a life worth remembering after you're gone. And you don't have to believe in God to do it.

BTW...original poster....the second part of your question hasn't been dealt with too much. I, personally, tend to like spirituality/belief themes in movies. Contact is one of my faves for that. It's a little less spiritually literal than a lot, but as long as those themes aren't the whole point of the movie and are treated as a part of the character, I'd have to say go for it.

These sorts of discussions on the boards are cool by me, too. We gots smart folk here. I like reading what they have to say, even if I don't respond a whole lot of the time.

It's interesting you frame the argument in terms of rational vs. irrational, because I agree that it's these two perspectives at the heart of the discussion. The first mistake you make is in assuming that rationalism is always a good and irrationalism is always a bad. That's a value judgment.

The second mistake is in assuming that people with faith are irrational beings who haven't had the same education you've had in "the rational," simply because they're theists. I'd wager there are plenty of believers who have 100 times the education you've had in the natural sciences, accept the scientific discoveries of man as demonstrably true, yet continue to believe in some sort of religious (irrational) belief.

To which, of course, I cynically ask, "WHY?"

Myself, I blame brain chemistry. And Bush, if I can work him in there somehow.

Compartmentalization. It's what allows me to fully acknowledge that all art is just frivolous bullshit from a rational, survival-of-myself-and-the-race standpoint, yet embrace it as if it were the very point of life from an irrational one. Or what allows Graynadian to criticize religion because it's irrational and scientifically dismissable, but to "believe in goodness, in the biological impulse of altruism" as if either of those things has been held up to scientific scrutiny and judged as sound (I wonder which great scientist will be the one to isolate and examine "goodness").

Reason is great at "how"s, but it's not always so good at "why"s. I think the misunderstanding is that faith always provides answers to those "why"s. Surely it does for some, but for others, it simply provides a medium in which to contemplate them. And it doesn't necessarily involve dismissing those physically-tested and scientifically sound "how"s in the process.

I've said it here plenty of times before, but reason and faith answer to two entirely different needs. It's not contradictory for a rational person to have religious beliefs, and it's not contradictory for a religious person to embrace reason. The ones you have to look out for are those who don't know how to compartmentalize.

repreprepREPrep

Oh come on. There are perfectly good reasons to appreciate art. It's perfectly reasonable to pursue those things we find pleasurable. And art has many virtues beyond just being pleasurable. I seriously doubt compartmentalizing has anything to do with your very human enjoyment of art. Compartmentalization is what happens to people who take sports seriously (of which I can be one from time to time).

As for goodness and altruism, I think you unfairly oversimplify the conversation when you limit rational thinking to the scientific method. Sure, a biologist is not going to isolate and examine "goodness". But what do you think ethical philosophers do? Go read some Derek Parfit, it's good stuff.

I think most here unfairly oversimplify the conversation when they limit religion to something accepted as literal that naturally comes into conflict with the rational, rather than entertaining the idea that it might be something that exists independently of it.

Ethical philosophy tends to involve using reason to approach abstract concepts. Just because these philosophers give us new ways to talk about these concepts doesn't mean that the concepts are rational in and of themselves. Incidentally, religious philosophy (especially post-Enlightenment) works on pretty much the same basis.

One might say that religious mythology, itself, uses irrational, abstract means (symbolism, fantastical narratives) to talk about irrational concepts (love, justice, etc.). It's very close to what art does, but most art tends not to be didactic, and it isn't meant to suggest a holistic philosophy of life as religion does.

I've heard that before. I see no reason to draw a line in the sand like that. "No no no! You can apply reason to the question of the Yeti or Leprechauns or ghosts, but not our man God! No no no!" It makes no sense. Saying 'God's different' is just a copout that allows believers to carry on believing in something for no other reason than because they want to. There is no reason to give religious claims any more of a free pass than is enjoyed by people who insist they've been abducted by aliens. I do not honor the Get Out Of Thinking Free cards religions try to pawn off on the world.

Hypothetical situations and thought experiments are a far cry from religious beliefs. I can talk about the ethics of causing one death to save ten lives by pulling a switch on a train track without thinking the train is real.

One might. Is this a reason to pretend religious claims are somehow special claims that one must not examine too closely?

Yeah. I know. I have to say it every fucking time this argument comes up on this board, and I'm not even religious. It just seems so plainly obvious to me that a lot of you have huge chips on your shoulders when it comes to religion and religious people that you're incapable of dealing with it and them in an evenhanded or intelligent manner.

It's all contextual. You can apply reason if your buddy tells you he has a pet leprechaun in his house. You can't apply reason if your buddy tells you a story about an ages-old story about a leprechaun that happens to have cultural and emotional resonance. That story may not be a religion, but it's the same general principle.

The events of the Old Testament don't need to have occurred any more than the myths of Ancient Greece had to have occurred for them to have had profound and important cultural resonance that transcended simple storytelling and got to something more primal about the "why?"s of man's existence.

So, yeah, if someone tells you he's had actual, no bullshit, back-and-forth conversations with God, I don't think it's out of line to evaluate what he says on purely rational terms. If someone tells you he gets a profoundly spiritual feeling by keeping Kosher, I don't think he's any more subject to rational evaluation than the guy who says he gets a profound feeling of brotherhood and cameraderie by watching football every Sunday. It just is what it is.

Right! It makes no rational sense. It's not supposed to.

Are the aliens literal or figurative? Are the aliens supposed to be an allegorical or metaphorical means by which we seek to achieve meaning in life? No? Well, then, religion is different. Incredibly different.

That's still just applying reason to things that ultimately confound reason. There's no reason in the world that can determine what "good" is or what "evil" is. It's entirely subjective.

No, you can examine them all you want. But if you find that they don't hold up in a literal fashion, be aware that a lot of religious people got to this conclusion centuries before you ever did.

I'll try to keep this brief. I am a Christian, though hesitate to identify myself as one because of the clusterfuck that is the modern christian religion. I was raised in a christian home, questioned it alot in my teenage years and sort of left the church, and recently have come back around to it.

I think the modern christian movement is mostly awful, and a huge detriment and barrier to "real" christianity. I have been loved and accepted more by athiests and agnostics than I have been by the "church." This goes doubly for my brother, who is gay.

The largest problem I have with modern christianity is that is has become a machine, rather than a message about a man. Jesus presented life as nothing more than a love relationship between a divine being and man, and between men.

One might disagree with some of the tenants or laws of a religion, but if that religion is teaching unconditional love and personal responsibility I don't see that too much of a fuss should be made. But when that religion is twisted into a political and social hammer to beat those who are different or don't believe, well that pisses me off.

I read an interview with a Muslim woman concerning 9/11 and she said something like, "It was more than the planes that were hijacked that day. My religion was hijacked and I don't know that it can ever recover in the eyes of the world." I feel the same way about christianity.

That being said, I have recently discovered a pretty awesome college age bible study where they teach nothing but love and acceptance. I've been going there a few months and they've asked me to speak. I talked to them about what I'm going to speak on, and they are cool with it - instead of preaching from the bible, my message is coming from the lyrics of a Pink Floyd song.

And, finally, I do think that there is an extreme lack of tolerance for the religious (or specifically christians) on these boards. I feel that the athiests and agnostics would be much more respectful of Muslims or Buddhists, and that christianity is barely a step above Scientology. However, since most of the posters here live in America and have been faced with the modern perversion of christianity all their lives, I suppose a bit of vitriol is to be expected.

Actually one more thing - I can't logically explain every step of belief or christianity, but I can say that I feel I am designed to believe in some higher power. I feel that there is something in me, something that sometimes defies logic, that compells me to believe.

You might think that makes me a weaker person, or that I should be stronger and more independent and not need some belief system to buoy me, and perhaps you're right, perhaps it does make me weaker... But there are concepts, concepts of beauty, art, music, love, the need for acceptance, that funnel me towards a belief in something greater than man.

I think this is a good thread and thanks for the lack of a barrage of asshole comments.

Why?

Is that so?

I am completely evenhanded in this matter. Ruthlessly so. You're the one saying religious beliefs are special, not me.

I manage to deal with religious people just fine, thanks. That includes most of my devout, matriarchal Catholic family, the Catholic priest who married my sister and buried my father, the devout Muslim who told me he'd make me a millionaire and came reasonably close, and my hiking partner and fellow jazz fan, who's jewish. The only person I have trouble with in these threads is you, and you're not religious. I don't sit at my family's many, many weddings and sneer. I like churches. They're very clean, and sound nice. And when I'm approached by strangers who naturally assume I share their beliefs I'm the very soul of politeness. I'll repeat myself: the worst thing I have to say about nice religious people is that I think they're wrong; I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

But I see no reason to compartmentalize, as you put it. That's turning part of your head off. Not the part that enjoys music or good scotch, the part that models how the world works. This absolutely befuddles me, and you seem to be confusing my befuddlement for contempt. I save that for the awful people who use their religion to justify their contemptible behaviour and those who try to argue that their religious beliefs should be the basis for laws under which you and I also have to live. If there's a decent argument against gay marriage or shopping on Sunday, they should make it. Because they think their God wants it that way does not cut it.

It is not all contextual. I can if he thinks it really happened, or that it didn't but the characters are real. The moral of the story is not the point. How it makes one feel is not the point.

That being?

So what? When people use them to stifle medical research or education in the sciences or argue that members of my family should be treated as second-class citizens, they are bringing those events out of the storytelling realm and into the physical world. So they'd better back their shit up. Besides, the reasons they come up with seem to hinge on the behaviour of supernatural beings. I'm allowed to argue that they're wrong on the grounds that supernatural beings don't exist, yes? There is no 'why'? We're lucky to be here at all, both individually and as a species. We're here as a species because nature resulted in our existence, same as hydrogen. We're here as individuals due to random chance.

Me too. So what's the problem?

Everything is. What happens to the brain during sex, the origin of religious customs, how Caramilk bars are made, everything.

Yes it is. If not literally, than within its own context. That means that if the point of a given sermon or tale is supposed to outline my behaviour, than it had better be a behaviour that I find rational. 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you' constitutes rational behaviour because to do otherwise causes trouble.

According to the abductees, literal. Upon further examination, abductions turn out to be either outright lies or a sleep-related phenomenon.

They don't confound reason, they just avoid it.

Not good and evil, right and wrong. And whether or not to pull the switch is only subjective in the long term. Right now, at this time, we all pretty much agree on what's right and what's wrong. We did 1000 years ago as well, but it was a different agreement.

I should hope so. And yet they still believe in it. It's strange. It's a facet of human nature I don't really understand. I get the need for community and so on, but I don't get the willingness to lie to oneself.

Especially when it comes to hardcore fundamentalism. I wasn't being sarcastic when I said I believing in the literal truth of the bible must be like a concussion or a drug fugue, I really can't grasp believing in the literal truth of the earth being created in six days or the Great Flood.

Okay, the morphine thing was hyperbole. Fundamentalists couldn't drive or get dressed with a spinal column full of morphine.

You can't just leave us hanging there. Which song? I'm envisioning a somber recitation of Run Like Hell...

Because the dismissals are generally accompanied by a tone of smug superiority that offends me in the same way that racist or homophobic comments offend me. Just because I'm not black or gay doesn't mean I'm not going to respond to those, and just because I'm not religious doesn't mean I won't respond here.


I don't approach a symphony the way I approach a textbook. I don't think that means I regard one as "special."

I don't care. In these threads, there's a streak of militant atheism that's a lot less "I don't share your beliefs," and a lot more "you're a stupid, stupid person believing in those ridiculous fairytales." I'm not holding you personally responsible for it, so no need to to list your religious family and friends.

Guilty as charged. Whatever your intentions, it comes across as contempt.

Okay... now here's the problem. This thread is about spirituality/religion, not about political wingnuttery that manifests from the absolute worst that spirituality and religion have to offer. But we can't help slipping into that mode of thought. To me, that implies there are some loaded feelings that go beyond the clear rationalism supposedly being espoused. You weren't the first to do it here, but it recurs over and over again.

How it makes one feel is often the point when it comes to religion.

The resonance, not the scientific accuracy, of the story is a measure of its usefulness.

To stifle the sciences, etc. is to cross that line into literalism, something I'm certainly not arguing for. In fact, I keep saying that the biggest problem is when people don't compartmentalize religion and reason. You've just provided examples in which people don't.


Nothing. I was leading to my next point.

And what does rational inquiry tell us about the nature of good and evil or the meaning of life?

Define "trouble." It seems to me that you could make a solid argument that screwing others over leads to great personal success. There's something more subjective underlying the ethical codes we tend to embrace, religious or not.

But, yeah, I'll concede that the religions that work successfully confirm certain observable actions. I think the terms "rational" and "irrational" are getting confused here a little. The Noah's ark story, for instance, has a plot that follows a rational chronology, interpretations that follow some manner of rational inquiry, etc. However, when we apply strict, scientific (rational, in one sense) criteria to it, we find that it didn't really happen in any literal sense. Why do we devalue its importance or effectiveness on these grounds? Does the much-easier-to-confirm story of the Boston tea party automatically have more to tell us about humanity than a story from the Bible?

That was meant to be rhetorical, but, yes, I meant from the abductee's POV. The abductee doesn't seek to impart some greater point about mankind's place in the universe via his anal-probe anecdote. There's nothing figurative about his story.

Oh? Then please provide a universal definition of "good" that we can all agree upon.

Right. It's subjective. Just because a consensus exists doesn't mean that something's not subjective.

It's not really lying to oneself, though, but embracing a multiplicity of sorts. If you know that there are scientifically sound methods by which we can discuss the formation of the Earth, but the Bible expresses its creation in a way that resonates with you, this does not mean you have to turn off your brain and go with the myth or that you have to abandon the myth as if it were "wrong."

Me either.

Haha. Wish You Were Here primarily, though there will be plenty of lyrics from other songs thrown in as well. Most specifically it will be on the line, "Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"

I think the compartmentalization argument would carry more weight if every major religion didn't fundamentally oppose the idea. Islam is supposed to be a complete surrender to God, and it is commonly said to be not just a religion, but a way of life. Same thing obviously goes for Evangelicals, and of all the many Catholic priests I've known (not like that, pervs), even the most laid back and open-minded would say unequivocably that being a Catholic should effect every aspect of your life. Judaism has a shitload of cultural rules to go along with religious ones. Even Buddhism requires some fairly drastic lifestyle choices to move on up, while having less dramatic consequences than other faiths for failing to do so. Then of course there's Scientology, which requires that you check your money and sanity at the door to become a giddy, blathering magician.

And really, that makes more sense to me than being casually religious. God is a Big Deal. If you believe in Him (or even give Him a decent chance of existing), I don't see why you wouldn't focus on that in every aspect of your life. Why fuck around with eternity if you actually think someone's up there? To that end, fundamentalism makes sense to me. The issues religion addresses are fundamental to our understanding of ourselves and the world, and so the consequences of those beliefs should reasonably be expected to be dramatic.

I don't know, I just don't understand how someone could think that God exists but that He's not big enough to judge/effect all aspects of their life.

You're cool. I sincerely wish that all people approached their religion in this manner.

Okay...that sounds like it could be freakin cool. You gonna make this little presentation available to the rest of us?

I'll defend Fundamentalists for a second.

I understand Fundamentalist beliefs much more than the Christians who believe in "parts" of the Bible, (those that believe in the divinity of Christ, but no the literalism of the Old Testament stories). So, you're willing to believe in an All-Powerful God, who created everything, sent his Son (through immaculate conception) to die a martyr's death, only to have him rise from the dead three days later... but you draw the line at the Genesis story? You have faith, but only so much?

Grow some stones. In for the goose, in for the gander.

Time to go back to being concussed. Pass the morphine.

EDIT: and, what Schwartz said, much more eloquently than I could.

That has its own logic, yes.

I'm hoping there will be no recording devices of any type. I've never spoken in front of a group before except for at speech class in college. It will be based very loosely on a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago, but that is just the germ of the thought that I plan to expand and explain using more lyrics.

Anyway, I couldn't figure out how to isolate it, but it's about halfway down this page under, "Pink Floyd Revelation" if you have a bit of time and are interested: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...endID=74039657

Symphonies don't make claims about the natural world. They're subjective.

There was a need. I get along just fine with religious people despite your criticism.

Mind you, religion is not the cultural force here that it apparently is in the states. No mega-churches or Touchdown Jesuses in my neck of the woods. I don't know what that'd be like.

It's about the religious threads on the board, actually.

I don't think so. It seems to be about behavioural control to me. People may enjoy how their religion makes them feel, but that's not what the religion's about. Most religions tell you how to live.

It's usefulness is not an issue with me. I have no stake in the personal inspirations other people find in religion either way.

But - and this is the whole point - just because other people find it stirring or useful does not mean I have to give it special treatment. I don't go around fighting religion in any way, shape or form, but neither do I hold one's opinion in high regard just because it's based on religious teaching.

I say it is right to take out your own beliefs and examine them critically every once in a while. Otherwise we'd still be cutting black people down from trees and dragging homosexuals behind our cars.

Religion tells you nothing about the meaning of life, it invents stories. People tell stories, so there's nothing new there. Neurology and history and psychology and biology all tell us far more about the nature of good and evil than religion does. Religions give magic the credit and monsters the blame.


And great personal risk. Especially in the days when 'screwing people over' meant sneaking into their rooms at night and stabbing them. Are we all not better off with murder being illegal?

Oh, probably. This is not a masters thesis I'm writing.

Religions don't just teach it, they teach that it's true. If not that parable, then others.

But it's still not true.

Where'd this come from? What does this have to do with religions avoiding reason by just saying 'it's so because it's so'?

My point was, it's man-made. It's not delivered from on high.

How does one do this? To make a political analogy, isn't it like favouring the torture of Muslim prisoners but being anti-abortion? Or opposing gay marriage while boasting about advancing the cause of freedom?

Doesn't it? You can appreciate the moral of a given story without telling people it's true, can't you?

I've heard the argument that "reason attempts to answer the how, while faith attempts to answer the why" many times. While I do have an understanding of that argument, in some ways I find it a little silly, since there are so many "why" questions that don't necessarily need nor have answers. Contemplating stuff like "Why are we here?" or "What's the purpose of the universe?" might massage some deeply-rooted itch in each of our consciousnesses (mine too, I'll admit!), but are they truly important questions, or just cosmic fool's errands? I understand "truly important" to be subjective, as my "fool's errand" might be another's life purpose- I'm just kind of speaking from my own perspective here.

Here's an example of a cosmic "why" that wouldn't have nor need an answer: "What motivation does the Earth have for orbiting the sun? Does it 'enjoy' orbiting the sun, or is orbiting just to make us Earthlings happy?" It's a pretty rickety question to begin with, as it assumes the Earth needs some sort of private motivation for orbiting the sun. For some of us, it's similar to asking "What's the purpose of life?" or "Why am I here?" , as these questions imply a kind of phantom motivator- A god, a cosmic design scheme, or whatever else you want to call it. I'm sure some atheists would agree that there are plenty of "whys" that simply don't need nor have answers, while theists (and others) might disagree. You could easily defend either side of the argument, as many of us here do, but for atheists, I can see it boiling down to this: Faith, when used as a tool to answer the unanswerable questions, is pretty much redundant, since the questions are patently unanswerable. It's like a locksmith devoting his life to building a key for a lock without a keyhole.

Yes, that's oversimplifying. I'm aware that for many, the process of attempting to answer these questions is the point of the exercise. But I'd argue that it's certainly not a process that everyone can benefit from, or that everyone need have some kind of built-in reverence toward.

Personally, I'm a non-confrontational, waffling agnostic who's perpetually frustrated at organized religion in America. I can see why religious folks here on CHUD might feel alienated. I'd never presume to tell any of them how to live their lives, and while we might not agree on faith or spirituality, I'd like to think that mutual respect is always in order. CHUD atheists/agnostics can be a brutal horde.

On review, I can see Dave's point about coming across as contemptuous. It's just frustration about being asked to examine religion differently than everything else, honest. Religion is by and large just cultural background to me. No one's trying to force Creationism on the next generation here. Even Quebec's less religious than it once was.

I think that comes back to most of the discussions on the boards being prompted by the worst or most extreme religious examples, since those are what make the headlines. Tends to get people worked up at the get-go. I don't think any of the "vicious atheist" crowd have personal problems with the more religious chewers. I know I don't. Well, I think eenin's fairly screwed up, but mostly harmless.

Minus the final bit about belief in spirituality, you described me. Personally, I find religious people tend to have this top-down view of the world where God is up there somewhere with his objective knowledge of the universe, handing it down to us humans through whatever means he chooses. There's too many problems with looking at everything like that for me. In the same way strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, I don't see how divine revelation makes for a good basis for understanding anything that isn't already religion itself. For us lowly humans, at least the ground-up approach begins with the real world at face value and takes it from there. It doesn't have this questionable layer of abstraction between man and God. It puts that to one side and says "This is unknowable and that's fine and dandy". And I think that's the most honest way of going about it.

In a non-personal sense, there's a certain amount of frustration with the way religion is dealt with in public. On one hand, it's this Very Important Thing that has a hand in everything in society but, on the other, it has to be handled with kids gloves because examining it in anything other than a strictly reverential tone is a Very Bad Thing.

I read an article in the newspaper some years back about a survey that stated 60% of scientists did not believe in God. The headline of the article: "Scientists still believe in God". The basis for that, apparently, was the prediction of people involved with the survey that the rate of belief amongst scientists would drop over time when the actual results showed they had held steady over the decades. But, uh, hello, not only is that in stark contrast to the general public, the majority of the people in the survey still said they didn't believe so why not just say "Majority of scientists don't believe in God"? Why coddle people like that? Is that reality too horrible to acknowledge in large print?

Somewhat more blasphemously, they had that study last year, the largest of its kind, that concluded the healing effect of prayer was nil. So I tuned into NBC News and their coverage of the study was full of maudlin silliness to reassure people that their earnestly-held beliefs were Very Important and no research was going to take that away from them. The "I know it works and that's good enough for me" kind. And this was supposed to be admirable somehow. You still believe in something even if some researchers sat down, studied it, and concluded the opposite. Good for you.

I guess the point I'm wanting to make here is religion is such a sensitive subjective for so many, it can't be talked about honestly in public to begin with. And I don't even mean deep doctrinal issues that are central to someone's faith. This is just stuff on the surface. So when someone is being blatently offensive regarding someone else's religious views, I tend to give them leeway because at least it'll help recalibrate everyone's "Oh noes! I can't believe he said that!" threshold back to a reasonable level. And genuinely offensive remarks are exactly as useful to public discourse as the blatently dishonest, feel-good platitudes people prefer anyway.

I'm going to disagree with you here, Seabass. Rural Alberta is filled with evangelicals trying to save their kids and their friends. It's why we have a Creationism museum in Innisfail. Out in Airdrie there's a school (Koinonia) that's offering to teach high school students without the added 'distraction' of evolution.

Travel down the 22x into the Crowsnest and you'll run across some pretty frightening signs and thoughts. Hell, even into BC through Radium and you get a whole level of religious thought that borders on delusional.

Also, good luck being anything besides Christian and getting a seat in our legislature. Not likely to happen. The entire Conservative party in Alberta is pretty much based on Christian ideas.

I've probably spent too much time here, but I'll be selective (BTW, this new multi-post quote feature is awesome - thanks, Nick).

I love this post. Seriously. I absolutely disagree with it (although I would have been inclined to agree with it entirely maybe ten years ago), but it perfectly illustrates why this argument is so contextual.

I'm a big fan of Karen Armstrong's books on religious history, and I heartily recommend everyone here check them out. I'm about halfway through one of her newer ones, A Brief History of Myth, and it's a good, very short, primer on her ideas on religion, which I more-or-less share.

One of her big contentions is that the Enlightenment changed how humanity treated religion. By placing a new emphasis on reason and the observable, it attempted to root everything in the literal. As a race, we were confronted with a shift in perspective. We started to lose respect for the power of myth; in a nutshell, if a story isn't literal, it's not "useful." So, with the new means of scientific inquiry that emerged, you have this dichotomy of religious believers who feel the need to "prove" the validity of their stories on a literal level, and the non-religious thinkers who rightly recognize that these stories can't possibly be proven on a literal level.

What got lost is the idea that the stories and even the central elements of religion weren't meant to be taken literally to begin with.

From Armstrong (in reference to the myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades): "We know very little of the Eleusinian mysteries, but those who took part in these rites would have been puzzled if they had been asked whether they believed that Persephone really had descended into the earth in the way the myth described. The myth was true because wherever you looked you saw that life and death were inseparable, and that the earth died and came to life again."

Armstrong includes the Abrahamic religions under the rubric of "myth," as well, and she suggests that art and other entertainments around which we construct narratives (yes, even sports) can even serve the same emotional needs. That certainly widens the playing field in this conversation (probably unfairly some of you will certainly say), but it seems pretty valid to me.

In any case, we're used to approaching myth and religion from a post-Enlightenment, highly literalist perspective, which is why fundamentalism may seem more consistent and logical than the old fashioned, mystery-based takes on religion that were dominant in other times in history. The way I see it the interpretation is neither right nor wrong, but it's just one perspective.

It reminds me of the conversation that Kirby started in the book forum recently, in which he claimed that fiction had a lot more to tell us about humanity than non-fiction. Now, I didn't agree with him across the board, but I think there's some truth in what he was saying that can be applied equally to religion. Just because something's not literal doesn't mean it's not "true."

If you don't get what I'm talking about, you probably never will. But you might want to entertain the thought that it's a matter of perspective on what "truth" is. Knowing what makes a tree grow from a biological standpoint is one truth, but how viewing that tree affects you emotionally is another kind of truth, and while reason can explain how that perception works and maybe even why your brain interprets it in a certain way, a thesis on the biology of that tree just isn't going to ring as emotionally true to some of us as a poem or myth about it.

So is any text, to some degree or another. The Bible is just another book.

Religions can only suggest things. If you don't like what a religion is suggesting, you try another one. Even if a certain religious text promises punishment for certain infractions, that doesn't mean one has to take it literally. The number of formerly religious atheists in this thread is a testament to how easy it is to disagree with one's religious teachings and just drop them. And the number of non-fundamentalist, well-adjusted religious, seemingly rational people in this thread is a testament to how one can approach religion in a constructive way that doesn't involve literalism, dictating how others must live, etc.

That's basically where I've come down.

Neither do I. I cringe when I'm told that someone's status as a "good Christian" is what informs his or her good behavior, and I find it disgraceful that, while we may have gotten past (barely) or preoccupations with gender and race in electing our president, I can't fathom an atheist, Jew, or Muslim candidate having a shot.

But as someone who tends to find as much truth in the less literal realms of music and fiction as I do in the sciences, I feel a slight kinship to the religious on those terms.

And this is the crux of our argument. It's a matter of perspective on the value of stories. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.

I believe we weren't talking about religion here, but ethical philosophy and debates about good and evil. I said that this was just a matter of applying reason to concepts that are subjective and not universal (thus irrational, in a sense). There's no universal definition of "good," and the rational arguments applied to it in ethical philosophy are society-based. Religion helps some people to develop what they might perceive as a universal system of good and bad that transcends this. In dealing with something that doesn't have a "true" answer, this can not only be comforting, but can inspire acts that are in line with concepts of good as devised by secular ethical philosophers.

No, because those things all exist in the literal and they're inconsistent positions. It's not inconsistent to say that love is based on a bunch of brain activity and species survival instinct, but that a Shakespearean sonnet gets the point across better than a paper on synapses in a more eloquent, effective way. For some, at least. But you're a science guy, if I'm not mistaken, so I'm not sure if you quite "get" this.

Good post (I had to abbreviate it due to text limits), and I agree with you on the point of unanswerability. But I'm comfortable with open endings (or, rather, I've become comfortable with them, often via art). Some people aren't, and if religion is how they cope with it, I fully understand.

I wasn't speaking for all 35 million, of course. The movement is loud, but smaller than it was. It wasn't long ago we couldn't shop on Sundays and homosexuals weren't allowed to marry, remember?

Yes, but that's private stuff. They have no power in government to speak of. And it's such a small percentage that it's possible to remain completely oblivious when we're right next door. As far as I can see, the evangelicals have as much sway here as the separatists. Our government's awfulness stems from its political bent, not its religiosity.

That's different from running the province as a Christian entity, though. As long as their personal beliefs stay personal, I don't care. When candidates start to out-pious each other like the Americans do, then I'll worry.

So's our legal system, ultimately.

I gotta wonder: what's so Christian about slashing health care budgets in an attempt to soften us up for private health insurance? What's so Christian about proposing to throw massive amount of people off of welfare and foist them off on B.C.'s government?

I'll end with this, then. My opinion of religion is not informed by the perspective people take home with them, because that's always different. It's informed by the claims religions make. And that's it.

True enough. I think the neo-con/religious right is a dying bread in Canada (hell, even neo-con poster boys Preston Manning and Gordon Campbell have taken a step towards the left) but I think the ones that remain are as loud as their American counterparts.

Sadly, every time I go into town (Airdrie) I seem to run into all of them at the local UFA. (If I get asked one more time to sign some petition to support Alberta separation I'm going to kill someone with a farming implement)

And isn't that a good point!

Slightly OT, I have a very good friend who is conservative to the core but at least he never tries to hide his conservativism behind the facade of Christianity. He finds the playing to the religious right in this country and in the States to be antithetical to conservative beliefs. Of course he also thinks Frank Zappa s a God so he's a little different then most in the conservative world.

I never assumed that rationalism is always bad and irrationality is always good, that's something you assumed about my post. Of course, reasonable ideas are usually more explanatory than irrational ones, if not more parsimonious, but you're right, rationalism is not good 100% of the time. Brilliant.

If theists choose to be theists (choose being an important word), they do so in spite of the lack of evidence for their belief, just as adults who believe in UFOs do so in spite of any credible evidence.

I make no assumptions about the amount of rational education people who have been exposed to secular notions possess, I simply remark that they have chosen to believe in spite of it, however much it may be.

If I had personally sewn the above straw man, you would have a point.


I fail to see what the amount of education in a respective field has to do with the rationality of one's belief in a higher power. With regards to highly educated theists, their ability to speak expertly on their chosen area of study has nothing to do with their ability to articulate faith in rational terms.

Zappa was a god.

tru dat. But he named his son Dweezil, which sort of blows it in regards to the "Good Messiah names" meter. Plus, the son made an album with Don Johnson. I mean, c'mon....we can't take any of his miracles seriously after that.

That is certainly not one of the areas where my friend and I disagree.

I hear two of 'em was just card tricks anyway.

If there is anything we need in this forum, it's more Father Guido Sarducci references. God bess you.