Yoinked from dikaiosunh

[jackofallgeeks]

1. Reply with your name and I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in. I reserve the right to name a champion.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. You MUST. It is written. (or typed, even)

Comments

Part Un

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Hokay... somewhat tough question to answer properly...

My aversion to religion is, odd as it may sound, more moral than metaphysical. I mean, I think the evidence available to us favors disbelief. But if it was just a matter of saying, "well, you think there are immaterial intelligences and I don't," it'd be an interesting but not central question. Sorta like: I believe quantum theory is true, but it wouldn't change my life to find out I'm wrong.

The quip I heard (not sure where to attribute it) is: "without religion, good people would still do good things and bad people would still do bad things. But to get good people to do bad things? For that, you need religion." That's flip, but it's not a bad summing up of how I feel. I don't think religion is inherently going to make you evil or whatever, and religious folks and secularists are pretty much neck-in-neck for evil people: for every Torquemada, there's pretty much a corresponding Stalin (and vice versa). And there are plenty of people I've met for whom their religion is very much a wellspring for their goodness. But I tend to think that those people are people who would be good anyway. If you're genuinely good, you don't need religion as a pretext. And if you're good only because you think some punishment awaits you if you slip up, then you're probably going to do the moral minimum and find weasley ways of getting out of being good. Same thing for secularism - if you're a shitty person, maybe you'll use Darwin as an excuse for being a bastard. But I bet those same people would just as happily use the bible as an excuse for being a bastard.

So, I guess, in many cases I see religion as something of a moral wash. The problem is that I see it causing otherwise good-seeming folks to get confused - either because they spend their time on supernatural avenues of helping people that I don't believe will work (Story: I was just reading about secular vs. ultra-orthodox tension in Israel. One source of tension is that the ultra-orthodox do not serve in the military. When asked about it, one of the UO folks interviewed said that what they did was just as important to Israel's defence as the IDF. Oh, because you preserve the culture of Judaism, etc. ensuring that there is something left to fight for, etc. asked the interviewer. No, was the reply, our prayers are what defeated the Arab armies, not the IDF.), or because they substitute rigid dogma for their own moral judgment, and so get locked into a warped view of what is good and what is evil.

Part Deux

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

A few caveats:

1. Of course, it's not always bad. And so I'm not going around crusading to get folks to drop their religion - though I do try to work against dangerous varieties of religion (e.g., as I see it, the brand of Christianity that Bush & Co. preach that seems to care much about power and little about care). Religion is a source of comfort and moral reflection for many people - and plus, maybe I'm wrong about those supernatural avenues not helping (though I hate to see them being pursued to the exclusion of worldly ways of helping. Another story: one of my ex-gfs, an evangelical Protestant, was in a serious car crash a couple years after we broke up. She thanked G-d for saving her, but it didn't occur to her to thank the EMTs who showed up with the jaws of life to get her out of the wreck). I don't think religion is always and everywhere bad. I just think that, on balance, it's unlikely to do much good and can do much evil.

2. There are secular ideologies that are every bit as bad as the worst religious ones on all these counts. For instance, if the only difference between my views and Stalinism was that we disagreed on the most efficient way to organize production, OK, let's just see which one works. But Stalinist communism also encourages its adherents to suppress their own moral judgment, subordinate the worth of the individual to some ideal, etc. And look where it got us. In many ways, it's pragmatism that I endorse more than materialism. The most important claim of my atheism is not "G-d does not exist" but rather (to quote again, this time from my congregation) "We believe that people determine the conduct of their own lives, and must take full responsibility for their behavior... We believe that only people can solve human problems... In resolving ethical dilemmas, whether personal or social, we seek solutions that respect the dignity and self-esteem of every human being."

3. I don't like the term "spiritual," since it conjures up images of people who abuse Native American religion (to me). But depending on how you define it, I do believe in "spirituality." I'm a materialist in the sense that I don't believe there is any STUFF besides what we encounter in the material world - people, rocks, trees, etc. But I'm not a materialist in the sense that I only VALUE material things. I believe in 'things' like love, beauty, morality, honor, etc. just as much as I believe in numbers. And I think that the genuine sources of value in life are precisely those 'non-material' things. So in that sense I'm "spiritual."

Does that clear things up a bit? Or muddy them?