Thoughts on Religion
Some thoughts on Religion. I assume that none of these thoughts are original. The literature on skepticism is extensive and goes back many centuries.
I think I should issue a warning. This is a discussion of religion. It is possible you will find some of these thoughts offensive. I am not trying to be offensive, but I am aiming to speak my mind in a forthright fashion. The overall thrust of these arguments is that I don't think highly of religion in any form. Indeed, I find some aspects of it highly objectionable. Please skip this post if you do not enjoy a free ranging, sometimes hard hitting discussion of a controversial topic.
A friend asked an interesting question that I suppose I should have thought of and answered at the top of this post. It would have provided some nice context for why this post exists. Let me remedy that now.
One big reason that I like interesting discussions of difficult topics. I am fortunate that I have Facebook friends who are pretty smart folks. I thought if I got any engagement it would prove to be an absorbing conversation. So much of what passes for culture is pretty damned dull and so my restless mind looks for interesting things.
As I joked with my friend, for some of the answer I will need to drag my soul out and show a bit to you. One thing I don't tell many people is that I was bullied through out my childhood. I am very sensitive when people use social position to inflict their will on other people. It is undeniable that religion, and other tribalisms have been used to do evil things. I am not saying that this is always the case. Clearly there is much good in religion and religions folk. What I am saying is that religion has been used for evil for all of recorded history, as far as I can tell. It is certain that my background plays a role here.
I am also a student of history. I've been reading a lot of it for some two decades. History provides a lot of interesting fodder for thought with regard to religion. It is certainly the case that religion has been a feature of political and social control through out all of recorded history.
One problem I have with religion as a concept is the methodology used to determine what is true. I suppose this is formally epistemology. The whole idea of a guy (they are almost always guys right?) shows up and says he's got a handle on the all of the really important things in life make want to shout stop. On what basis should I believe this?
It doesn't have to be Jesus. Could be Mohammad. Or the Buddha. I have a lot of trouble seeing how his word is somehow automatically good. I get that the words of these folks resonate with a lot of people. If it helps you, more power to you.
The only methodology I've seen that works to help us arrive at truth is the one that science uses. I do not say that everything science says is true. They get things wrong with some frequency and occasionally quite spectacularly. I am borrowing the methodology. I want to rely on material things, testable things. Religion does not do much of this. I do not say all the true things are currently known. I cannot know that. I want to rely on peer review. I want folks to check my thinking. I reject any argument from Authority. In principle anyone can make up their own mind from the facts presented.
Let me drag my soul out a bit more. I am an outsider, a geek, a weirdo. Have been all my life. This has led me to look at how people interact. Partly to see if I can emulate it so that I might fit in, at least a little bit. But it does lead me to see, and least I think I see, that some of these constructs, these protocols, aren't, in some sense, strictly necessary. They are social bonding constructs. If this is so, at least in part, then they are not features of the universe.
Some folks see religion as a necessary source for a system of ethics. I just don't. I've constructed a pretty workable, albeit lonely, system all by myself.
You might conclude from the stuff below that I am an atheist. As a formal matter I am not. My current thinking is that that the existence of a god is a proposition that is outside the ability of my system to decide. It is entirely possible that there is a god who chooses to not present itself in a way that would be detectable by the rules of evidence I use.
Some folks have suggested religions I should look into. I thank them for the thought. The problem is that this is not an issue I think needs solving. I suppose if you put a gun to my head and made me pick, I'd be a Buddhist. A lot of these folk are very gentle. But I don't see much that would entice me to search these disciplines for answers. My current thinking is that these approaches, as far as I understand them, do not use the techniques that I think are the ones that one should use to arrive at what's true.
Let me add that I am, truly, not trying to offend anyone. My intent was to start a conversation. The language I use is phrased that way because that is how I currently think about these topics. I knew going in that it was possible that some folks might think that this intended as an attack. Religion is a deeply held thing for a lot of folks. I do not intend this to be an attack. I am not trying to offend you. I offer these thoughts as a starting point, admittedly well to one side of the debate, for a spirited airing of various points of view. If you are a believer I honor that. Truly. I am not.
I've numbered these points to make them easier to discuss.
1. It seems to me that humans possess no ability to assess the truth of religious doctrine. Pretty much everyone today is sure that the folks who believe in Zeus, or Ba'al, or Marduk where completely misguided. And yet they were considered Truth in their eras. It is no better today. No member of any religion thinks the members of the others has any idea what is correct. You would be a member of the other religion otherwise. As this is true for all religions why should I think your ability to judge this question was any good? And if ability to judge doctrine is poor, why should I think any of it is true?
2. Religious doctrines are not testable using material evidence. My personal philosophy rejects all propositions which cannot be tested with material evidence. I hold that all things that are true are testable in a material fashion, in principle by anyone. Propositions not testable in this fashion might have validity but are not true in my system.
3. All religion that I am familiar with is essentially an argument from Authority. My personal philosophy rejects all argument from Authority. Doctrine is declared by the priest and I cannot challenge it. Why should I believe the priest? I reserve the right to determine the truth of all propositions myself.
4. Any deity capable of preventing the enormous levels of abject suffering in this world has is guilty of causing it. Droughts, hurricanes, floods are violence that devastates people indiscriminately. If the deity has the ability to prevent this why does it allow it?
5. Personal revelation is anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is a notoriously poor source of evidence. You tell me your religion is true. Why should I believe you? There should be some independent external means of verifying what you say. And, of course, the human mind is easily fooled. The Wikipedia article on Cognitive Bias is interesting in this regard.
6. Religion is an enormous source of conflict, misery and death all over the world and for all of recorded history. Endless examples. Jewish pogroms. The Holocaust. The Crusades. The Thirty Years War. The French Wars of Religion.
7. A large number of people use their religion so obnoxiously I assume their religion is morally bankrupt. This happens so frequently I am forced to think there something systemically wrong.
8. It is entirely possible to derive all of the useful aspects of religion without recourse to religion. Of course 'useful' is open to interpretation. But I am thinking mostly of morality here. It is straight forward to construct a functional morality without any regard to religion. Any comfort that the deity somehow has your back seems to me to rest on nothing. Thus there is nothing there that I would want to construct in my life. My view is the universe is capricious and you should live your life accordingly.
9. Religion is inherently divisive. These divisions contribute greatly to the dysfunction of society. Belonging to a religion separates you from those who belong to other religions. This tribalism leads to conflict so reliably that it is inseparable from religion.
10. Religious belief is very typically required of intellectually defenseless children. This seems like indoctrination to me.
11. Religion is used to enforce social grouping. Questioning belief very typically causes expulsion from the group, loss of family, and even death. A lot of the reality of religion amounts to social and political control. This frequently is more or less authoritarianism.
12. God works in mysterious ways is no argument.
13. I have never understood why an all powerful being needs worship. Is it's ego that bad?
14. Any deity that wants specific behavior should be willing to show up and explain. Any evidence that this has ever occurred is at best anecdotal.
15. Spending eternity with my relatives is not that great a selling point.
16. I see no evidence for the effects of religion that are distinguishable from random chance. Praying to a god should have a discernible effect that is stronger than random chance. Otherwise, what is the point? If your answer is that you get to live forever after you die (whatever that might mean) see point 15.
17. The wealth that some priests obtain is obscene. That their congregants permit this and don't demand that that wealth be used to help the congregants is beyond me.
18. I think cherry picking your scripture is intellectual dishonesty.
19. I think scriptures that are centuries removed from their origins, for which no original copies exist, and which were written in a dead language no one has spoken for centuries might have meant something completely different than how it is read today.
20. Religion is dying in all wealthy democracies. This suggests that poor people believe out of desperation. The example of Santa Muerte is interesting. In nominally Catholic Mexico poor people are reaching for a (Catholic) heresy that they think works where Catholicism does not.
21. Socially conscious, liberal religions are dying out faster than the other dying religions. That is, the only kinds of religion I can half way stand are being discarded.
22. Religion is an unnecessarily complicated argument. By parsimony, it should be discarded.
23. Religion was created largely to explain the world. Science does a much better job.
24. Religions written centuries in the past are in danger of not being relevant to modern society.
25. Religions have very little corrective mechanism. There is typically extremely difficult to remove or correct doctrine which is ineffective or wrong.
26. Religious authority is frequently abused. Some of this is so outrageous as to be sickening. And because of the nature of religion authority it is typically very difficult to remedy.
27. Several religions are so gender biased as to constitute misogyny.
I think I should issue a warning. This is a discussion of religion. It is possible you will find some of these thoughts offensive. I am not trying to be offensive, but I am aiming to speak my mind in a forthright fashion. The overall thrust of these arguments is that I don't think highly of religion in any form. Indeed, I find some aspects of it highly objectionable. Please skip this post if you do not enjoy a free ranging, sometimes hard hitting discussion of a controversial topic.
A friend asked an interesting question that I suppose I should have thought of and answered at the top of this post. It would have provided some nice context for why this post exists. Let me remedy that now.
One big reason that I like interesting discussions of difficult topics. I am fortunate that I have Facebook friends who are pretty smart folks. I thought if I got any engagement it would prove to be an absorbing conversation. So much of what passes for culture is pretty damned dull and so my restless mind looks for interesting things.
As I joked with my friend, for some of the answer I will need to drag my soul out and show a bit to you. One thing I don't tell many people is that I was bullied through out my childhood. I am very sensitive when people use social position to inflict their will on other people. It is undeniable that religion, and other tribalisms have been used to do evil things. I am not saying that this is always the case. Clearly there is much good in religion and religions folk. What I am saying is that religion has been used for evil for all of recorded history, as far as I can tell. It is certain that my background plays a role here.
I am also a student of history. I've been reading a lot of it for some two decades. History provides a lot of interesting fodder for thought with regard to religion. It is certainly the case that religion has been a feature of political and social control through out all of recorded history.
One problem I have with religion as a concept is the methodology used to determine what is true. I suppose this is formally epistemology. The whole idea of a guy (they are almost always guys right?) shows up and says he's got a handle on the all of the really important things in life make want to shout stop. On what basis should I believe this?
It doesn't have to be Jesus. Could be Mohammad. Or the Buddha. I have a lot of trouble seeing how his word is somehow automatically good. I get that the words of these folks resonate with a lot of people. If it helps you, more power to you.
The only methodology I've seen that works to help us arrive at truth is the one that science uses. I do not say that everything science says is true. They get things wrong with some frequency and occasionally quite spectacularly. I am borrowing the methodology. I want to rely on material things, testable things. Religion does not do much of this. I do not say all the true things are currently known. I cannot know that. I want to rely on peer review. I want folks to check my thinking. I reject any argument from Authority. In principle anyone can make up their own mind from the facts presented.
Let me drag my soul out a bit more. I am an outsider, a geek, a weirdo. Have been all my life. This has led me to look at how people interact. Partly to see if I can emulate it so that I might fit in, at least a little bit. But it does lead me to see, and least I think I see, that some of these constructs, these protocols, aren't, in some sense, strictly necessary. They are social bonding constructs. If this is so, at least in part, then they are not features of the universe.
Some folks see religion as a necessary source for a system of ethics. I just don't. I've constructed a pretty workable, albeit lonely, system all by myself.
You might conclude from the stuff below that I am an atheist. As a formal matter I am not. My current thinking is that that the existence of a god is a proposition that is outside the ability of my system to decide. It is entirely possible that there is a god who chooses to not present itself in a way that would be detectable by the rules of evidence I use.
Some folks have suggested religions I should look into. I thank them for the thought. The problem is that this is not an issue I think needs solving. I suppose if you put a gun to my head and made me pick, I'd be a Buddhist. A lot of these folk are very gentle. But I don't see much that would entice me to search these disciplines for answers. My current thinking is that these approaches, as far as I understand them, do not use the techniques that I think are the ones that one should use to arrive at what's true.
Let me add that I am, truly, not trying to offend anyone. My intent was to start a conversation. The language I use is phrased that way because that is how I currently think about these topics. I knew going in that it was possible that some folks might think that this intended as an attack. Religion is a deeply held thing for a lot of folks. I do not intend this to be an attack. I am not trying to offend you. I offer these thoughts as a starting point, admittedly well to one side of the debate, for a spirited airing of various points of view. If you are a believer I honor that. Truly. I am not.
I've numbered these points to make them easier to discuss.
1. It seems to me that humans possess no ability to assess the truth of religious doctrine. Pretty much everyone today is sure that the folks who believe in Zeus, or Ba'al, or Marduk where completely misguided. And yet they were considered Truth in their eras. It is no better today. No member of any religion thinks the members of the others has any idea what is correct. You would be a member of the other religion otherwise. As this is true for all religions why should I think your ability to judge this question was any good? And if ability to judge doctrine is poor, why should I think any of it is true?
2. Religious doctrines are not testable using material evidence. My personal philosophy rejects all propositions which cannot be tested with material evidence. I hold that all things that are true are testable in a material fashion, in principle by anyone. Propositions not testable in this fashion might have validity but are not true in my system.
3. All religion that I am familiar with is essentially an argument from Authority. My personal philosophy rejects all argument from Authority. Doctrine is declared by the priest and I cannot challenge it. Why should I believe the priest? I reserve the right to determine the truth of all propositions myself.
4. Any deity capable of preventing the enormous levels of abject suffering in this world has is guilty of causing it. Droughts, hurricanes, floods are violence that devastates people indiscriminately. If the deity has the ability to prevent this why does it allow it?
5. Personal revelation is anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is a notoriously poor source of evidence. You tell me your religion is true. Why should I believe you? There should be some independent external means of verifying what you say. And, of course, the human mind is easily fooled. The Wikipedia article on Cognitive Bias is interesting in this regard.
6. Religion is an enormous source of conflict, misery and death all over the world and for all of recorded history. Endless examples. Jewish pogroms. The Holocaust. The Crusades. The Thirty Years War. The French Wars of Religion.
7. A large number of people use their religion so obnoxiously I assume their religion is morally bankrupt. This happens so frequently I am forced to think there something systemically wrong.
8. It is entirely possible to derive all of the useful aspects of religion without recourse to religion. Of course 'useful' is open to interpretation. But I am thinking mostly of morality here. It is straight forward to construct a functional morality without any regard to religion. Any comfort that the deity somehow has your back seems to me to rest on nothing. Thus there is nothing there that I would want to construct in my life. My view is the universe is capricious and you should live your life accordingly.
9. Religion is inherently divisive. These divisions contribute greatly to the dysfunction of society. Belonging to a religion separates you from those who belong to other religions. This tribalism leads to conflict so reliably that it is inseparable from religion.
10. Religious belief is very typically required of intellectually defenseless children. This seems like indoctrination to me.
11. Religion is used to enforce social grouping. Questioning belief very typically causes expulsion from the group, loss of family, and even death. A lot of the reality of religion amounts to social and political control. This frequently is more or less authoritarianism.
12. God works in mysterious ways is no argument.
13. I have never understood why an all powerful being needs worship. Is it's ego that bad?
14. Any deity that wants specific behavior should be willing to show up and explain. Any evidence that this has ever occurred is at best anecdotal.
15. Spending eternity with my relatives is not that great a selling point.
16. I see no evidence for the effects of religion that are distinguishable from random chance. Praying to a god should have a discernible effect that is stronger than random chance. Otherwise, what is the point? If your answer is that you get to live forever after you die (whatever that might mean) see point 15.
17. The wealth that some priests obtain is obscene. That their congregants permit this and don't demand that that wealth be used to help the congregants is beyond me.
18. I think cherry picking your scripture is intellectual dishonesty.
19. I think scriptures that are centuries removed from their origins, for which no original copies exist, and which were written in a dead language no one has spoken for centuries might have meant something completely different than how it is read today.
20. Religion is dying in all wealthy democracies. This suggests that poor people believe out of desperation. The example of Santa Muerte is interesting. In nominally Catholic Mexico poor people are reaching for a (Catholic) heresy that they think works where Catholicism does not.
21. Socially conscious, liberal religions are dying out faster than the other dying religions. That is, the only kinds of religion I can half way stand are being discarded.
22. Religion is an unnecessarily complicated argument. By parsimony, it should be discarded.
23. Religion was created largely to explain the world. Science does a much better job.
24. Religions written centuries in the past are in danger of not being relevant to modern society.
25. Religions have very little corrective mechanism. There is typically extremely difficult to remove or correct doctrine which is ineffective or wrong.
26. Religious authority is frequently abused. Some of this is so outrageous as to be sickening. And because of the nature of religion authority it is typically very difficult to remedy.
27. Several religions are so gender biased as to constitute misogyny.
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