As Above, So Below - the religion thread (formerly: People of California, beware)

Yes, there are many overlapping elements in the various religions and cultures and myths, but I would argue that Jesus' story, in particular, is quite unique as a whole.

Maybe there isn't really anything to bypass. People, you know, don't think of the origin of their religion on a regular basis even if they are professors. If they are Christian, Jewish, whatever, they stay the way they are until there is something (traumatic event, whatever really) that takes them out of their faith.

It works both ways, I have heard of staunch atheists who became dilligently religious after surviving near-death experience and other stories like that.

In other words, there is no psychological reason whatsoever to why would "the blatantly made-up nature" of religion prevent someone from being religious. The connection is purely emotional, not logical at all, which you seem to fail to notice.

Yes, I suppose religion is deeply cultural. Similarly, we're brought up in a particular culture and simply adopt it without thinking too much about where it came from. In that sense, I can understand the apathy not to delve deeper into your particular religion's origins. But it still strikes me as highly odd not to question the actual beliefs. I think that's another area where I really struggle to understand the religiously minded.



Oh I notice it. In fact I'm sure, like you are, that it is for most people a purely emotional thing. But even in my most emotional state I like to think I can still see reason, even if I might not be able to act on reason. I recognise it is my emotions that are telling me to think and act out in unreasonable ways. The difference, I suppose, is that emotional responses like love or hate are not reflections of what you perceive to be reality in any external sense, but rather truths and facts about yourself. Me loving someone doesn't change anything about how I view the nature of reality, only that my brain has constructed a set of memories and emotional responses to a particular stimuli.

Believing Jesus was (or is) the son of God explicitly changes the rules of reality. No matter how emotional the basis for the belief may be, emotion is not a good reason to believe in anything about the external world. This is a staple of the scientific method, and it's worked out pretty well so far!

What I struggle with is how one deals with the cognitive dissonance religious beliefs continually offer. I'd love to swap minds with a religious moderate for a day, or even a week, to get a real sense of what it feels like to believe crazy things but still live in the modern world! It's a failing on my part that I don't understand it. I desperately want to.

True, that's what I said earlier. Once you reach a certain age, you start to question a number of things that you just uncritically accepted in your childhood. It's part of building your own adult identity.

I question my own belief on a regular basis. In fact, I question a lot of things in my life -- not only religious convictions. I think that's quite healthy....to avoid stasis.

I'm not offended. I'm just often surprised how strong and aggressive the rhetorics of many non-believers are.

First principles are incredibly important, and it shapes a lot about how we think. So much of who a person is is already there by the age of 8, and it happens so early that many people don't even realise beliefs of the mind are there. (I'm going further than religion here -- this is about views on everything -- acceptable behaviour, morality, roles in societys, etc.) Reprogramming is possible, and takes place both consciously and subconsciously over our lives. (For me, the institutions that shape our lives end up determining our minds much more than our parents -- which by-the-by for the 2 different sides of the 'home schooling' issue provide the argument for and against home schooling. Sorry, a digression.)

But back to the starting point -- this natural tendency to learn from parents -- I actually think there is a contrasting behavioural impulse in people as well. When a person does reach teenage years -- and often this comes quite a bit later -- they will frequently overweight the opinions of people outside their previous comfort zone relative to those previously within the comfort zone. So 'mum' and 'dad' cease to know so much, less so than one's best friends, teachers, lecturers, employers. (Teachers often fall within the old group too.) People experience this to differing degrees, but I think the function of the behaviour is to actually to guard us against being overly biased towards an initiating viewpoint. Social extremes are balanced with a norm of some sort, in a lot of cases. As a result, some completely invert the views they were taught as a child, consciously aspiring to be the opposite of those things, others merely introduce an element of sarcasm/skepticism. It's partly about removing that automatic sense of authority from your life, and becoming your own person who makes your own choices, but in process the views of others are given unusual authority.

In the long run, this settles though. I think in the end we end up becoming more moderate people. There's a regression of views to a mean somewhere in between. You start to see those in your old comfort zone as people who made choices for their own reasons, and you have less of a drive to fight it altogether, because it isn't about authority anymore. You are your own person now. Your parents were also people once. Your friends and teachers and that writer and this writer and that preacher and this musician -- all of them are people who came to viewpoints. Just as you are a person with your own conscious and subconscious views that don't exactly match up with anyone else's. (You may be a complete adopter of another's views in one area of thought, but it would be a rare person who imitates everything about another.)

Of course, it's always possible that the people whose opinion you overvalue, don't provide a contrast to those views you were brought up with. Think of that small village between mountains somewhere where a whole life is lived. Or a child raised within a cult. (Or in an example that may be equivalent for some, a child born to a born-again family in middle american white suburb.) I think even then there's an impulse felt to varying degrees to break away, and the more imaginative/adventurous individuals will do it, but in the absence of an outlet, many will remain within one mode of thought, possibly to their cost. (The cult member is probably headed for trouble; the mountain dweller less obviously so.)

Admittedly, I'm neither a psychologist, an anthrologist, or a sociologist, so I might be talking absolute rubbish here. But it would make sense to me if humans actually as part of their 'growing up' experienced exaggerated disdain for their authority figures -- as a way to ensure that the individual doesn't miss the possibility of other ways of thinking. That would be good programming, however the programming was achieved.

The reference to historical wrongs performed in the name of religion is probably the most-mentioned argument of non-believers. Personally, I've always seen that as a limitation of our humanity more than an example of whatever religion's shortcomings. The fault is not in the text or the personal convictions; it's in the interpretations and the human actions.

And that particular retort is often the apologetic's defense. But it neglect's where bad behaviour really comes from; faulty belief. The very system you say is not faulty is dependent on unverifiable beliefs, and in that sense it's well protected from reasoned criticism against it. Those beliefs come from religious scripts full of divisive nonsense.

What has been repeatedly noticed by non-believers is the ineffectiveness of religious moderation to say anything particularly critical of religious extremism (and to me, extremism doesn't have to be flying planes into a building, but merely discussing gay marriage 'as though it were the great moral question of our time', to paraphrase Sam Harris). It neglects the core of fundamentalist behaviour, and tries to move the goal posts by simply asserting, as you have, that bad people do bad things because they're bad people, not because their belief system may be at fault.

If all religious interpretation was as mild and benign as yours presumably is, we would be living in a much nicer world indeed. But religion has no built-in 'deadman's switch', no self-correcting mechanism to prevent it from causing harm. Religious moderation has largely (if not completely) come from a mix of trial and error and outside secularist pressure. But why should a watered down version of Iron Age philosophy present us with anything more suitable for a moral and fruitful life than a modern, 21st century discussion of morality and ethics? Why not do away with ancient scripture, realise it's mostly nonsense and build on what we have learnt in the intervening years since?

Oh no, not at all. I hope I didn't suggest that! And as I have always said, if all religious interpretations were as benign as yours and your fellow moderates, I'd be far happier about its place in society (although I'd still feel it would be important to open up a dialogue between believers and non-believers). But it's not, and that's the thing. Religious moderation may provide a temporary balm to the harsh wound of religious extremism, but it doesn't really heal the problem.

I think that goes for all things in life, not only faith. Moderation is usually preferred over extremism. In all areas of life, however, there will always be extremists and fundamentalists. It's not exclusive to religion.

Speaking of aliens, this is an interesting read, to put it mildly: http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/01/if-the … with-life/

Incredible.

Aliens.

When I say "spiritual planes" I mean alternate, co-existing realities, as in a "multiverse", although I don't think it's infinite in the proper sense of the word infinite, although it may be. And I certainly don't mean in the sense of "every choice you make creates a new multiverse". It's just that religious and spiritual belief systems all across the world believe in various forms of "spiritual" alternate realities and I believe the ubiquitous nature of said belief supports the idea that such alternate realities truly exist. I believe we go to some of those realities when we dream, when we take certain drugs that are called "hallucinogens", and when we die. And I believe this can all be explained by quantum (and other fields of) physics. I don't know physics well enough to explain precisely how it works, but in general its the same principle as why we can see certain wavelengths of light and not others. Our "dimension" has barriers from the rest of the dimensions because our consciousness only accepts a certain set of frequencies. But with enough observation and experimentation we begin to see the shadows of the other dimensions and how what's happening there affects what happens here, in the same way that if Kevin Flynn got amnesia upon entering the Grid, he might still eventually realize that he's inside a computer simulation. In fact, there's some recent "science" (I put it in quotes because I'm not sure of the reputation of the scientists who did it) that suggests our entire universe is a something like a computer simulation.

I don't have the mental focus currently to respond to the finer points about the aliens subject, but I believe in aliens and them having visited here because:

-The idea of alien manipulation of ancient humanity fits everything I learned about religion (especially Judeo-Christian religion) like a hand to an expensive custom-molded glove. And I came to that conclusion without watching a single episode of that meme-generating History Channel show.

-The universe is so big (i.e. your linked article) that it seems absurd to think there isn't life on other planets, and that much of that life would have technology so advanced that it seems like magic to us. With stargate-type technology its not that hard to bridge the gaps between the stars and galaxies.

-There are countless accounts of alien visitation and manipulation in modern times. I can't quite accept the popular viewpoint that all of those people are crazy and/or lying. If there were just a few, maybe. But there's so many in so many different cultures and so much congruity between them too.

-I find it rather suspicious that the idea of believing in alien visitation is so broadly condemned and ridiculed. It seems to be one of the most stigmatic beliefs one can possibly hold...much more so than it deserves considering its relative harmlessness compared to, for example, believing in a God who does or did order genocides in his name. Why has mass media gone to SO much trouble to create the attitude it does towards the subject? This bias used to be very direct in previous decades...now its more subtle, through doing things like picking that crazy guy to be the host of Ancient Aliens when they could have just as easily picked someone who wouldn't inspire ridicule and memes mocking his disposition. Don't tell me there are no calm, level-headed people who believe the same thing! If actual religions were subjected to such constant media bias, there would be so much uproar...at least conservatives have Fox News! People like me don't have anything...we're so far out in left field we're practically in outer sp....oh God no I musn't make that pun

-And lastly, most importantly and least convincingly to anyone else, it just feels right and makes sense to me in a way that the beliefs I was raised with never did. Thankfully, there is no necessity for proselytization inherent in the belief, like there was for most of my life

To Pawel, I'm all for spirituality. I think its importance is often downplayed, and a concept that religion has unfortunately hijacked. But I'm not so keen on it when it begins to make unjustifiable claims about the nature of reality. I have spiritual feelings and experiences towards art, music, nature and science and most importantly the people I love. But none of that requires me to believe in ghosts and goblins or leads me to conclude there is a benign Creator. It just means I'm capable of having such experiences. It means I have a complex brain capable of complex thought, awareness and experiences (depending on who you ask). That's it.

Depends on your source. I can't say I've seen much evidence on facebook that "90% of atheism" boils down to mockery. Also, perhaps for the sake of your health, I wouldn't worry about it. If I got offended every time I saw a YouTube user's comment about how atheism is a sin or that Jesus is the only way or some such nonsense, I'd have white hair by now. (Well, I do. But it's unrelated to those comments.)

But since you've mentioned him, I'll let Neil DeGrasse Tyson explain why I'm not keen on being labelled an atheist.