Except they don’t even read their own book.
They certainly don’t practice what is in there.
Only whatever their pastor cherry-picked from it.
Not even that.
Yeah I’m not so sure about this haha. I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism.
I think that’s just the comfortable position for humans. Questioning what you know to be true is hard, and the more fundamental the fact the more uncomfortable it is to doubt. Which is also why religion is so attractive.
Yeah no one seems interested in my perpetual motion machine.
In this Lemmy we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I don’t think Lemmy is a closed system.
I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism
Are we talking about discrimination against young or foreign academics not getting grants and degrees because of bias about who should be the ones leading research and hesitancy to invest time, money and political capital into new tech, or are we talking about “They didn’t want to read my paper about how I think the sun pooped out the Earth and why this is evidence for God”?
Seriously, that’s a loaded claim, you need to provide some context and nuance there, I haven’t met many actual scientific-minded people who are dogmatic, that is usually the exact accusation thrown out by theists who are butthurt that evolution exists and can’t be disproven.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science
Read this. I used to favour Popper, but I now quite like Kuhn. Kuhn is based.
My point is that the scientific endeavour according to Kuhn is not an inherently critical one(as it is with Popper, for example). Science is based on dogmas, positions and suppositions that are not questioned within a paradigm.
Also, if something can’t be disproven, it isn’t science.
I am sure you know what I’m saying here, but thank you for the required-by-law pedantry that occurs every time anyone says anything.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men. That’s ok, it happens to the best of us (myself included).
I’m definitely not trying to equate science with religion in every way. I just think it’s fair to acknowledge that science, being a human endeavor, isn’t immune to things like gatekeeping, resistance to new ideas, or institutional biases. That doesn’t mean science as a whole is bad or anti-progress. We’ve achieved incredible feats with science; we certainly didn’t “pray” our way to the modern automobile, or to the smartphone. All I’m saying is that, like any field, it has its challenges. And those challenges and weaknesses can be more than people or scientists like to imagine. I’m simply pointing out that dogmatism can exist anywhere, even in spaces that pride themselves on being open to new information.
The fact that you’re immediately jumping to extremes of either systemic biases in funding or absurd pseudoscience, kind of proves my point ironically. I’m a researcher at a nationally recognized university, and trust me when I say that there are many like you who seem to get their jimmies all riled up the second that someone so much as mentions that “scientific research may fall victim to dogmatism and other forms of human egoistic thought - just like religion”. It’s a strange phenomenon I’ve observed when people associate their entire identity with their specific scientific endeavors. And I get it too (and to say I don’t fall victim occasionally would be a lie). It is difficult for your ego to let go of 30 years of hard work and research, even when new data / evidence comes out to prove you wrong. It’s not easy to say “yup the research I associated my identity with the last 30 years? That’s actually all wrong”, but a good scientist is one who doesn’t attach ego to their work and remains perfectly objective. Much harder said than done- trust me.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men.
No I literally just asked you a question which direction you’re coming from, and the fact that you had to respond with this reactionary, defensive BS instead of using the opportunity to distance yourself from the kooks tells me you don’t have good-faith stake in this and my second option is probably true. No way I’m wasting my time reading further or engaging. Have a good one kook. Go ahead and say whatever you want, you’re blocked.
Reminder other readers: science is not dying, science is in a good shape other than US funding, we are making amazing discoveries every day around the world. The academic world isn’t perfect but it’s working. There is no coverup or conspiracy. Whatever sensational BS you guys read on the headlines, it’s not true, I promise, please talk to people who actually work in science and academia before trusting headlines.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
The less you know, the less you know you don’t know.
Religion: I don’t know everything…but my god does!
Psh that guys a hack MY book is better
But God puts thoughts in brain means I know everything!
I met people on both sides that had either of those attitudes.
The “I’m always right because I have a PHD” is not uncommon, even on fields not covered by their education. At the same time, I’ve met many religious people (Muslims, Hindus, Christians) that for them religion was a private, personal aspect that helped them deal with their lives. As a kind of a routine, something done time and time again enough to clear up their minds from stress and give them an anchor when lost.I’m not religious, but I believe in freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and I support anyone as long as it doesn’t interfere with other’s.
My God, a reasonable person talking about religion on lemmy
The problem with religion is it primes people for believing things just based on a trusted authority saying so. There’s no evidence in support of the existence of any supernatural entities whatsoever, and there’s no evidence to support the existence of a life after death, but people believe it anyway and religion holds their “faith” to be a virtue in and of itself. You could argue that that isn’t harmful by itself, but consider that many religious people believe things that the evidence of their own eyes proves impossible, and that any idea is fair game when you treat faith as a virtue. It doesn’t matter if people today only believed the “good” parts of religion, eventually someone will corrupt their blind faith and convince them of whatever they want, like that being gay is a sin worthy of death, that trans people are evil and shouldn’t be allowed to exist, that your pastor is totally a great guy and you should donate money to the church and totally trust him alone with your kids. The dangers of religion are in teaching people to stop thinking for themselves.
I agree, but I also fear religious people. Religion has time and time again interfered with people’s autonomy.
It still does to this day. Women in Oman, for example need a man (even if it is their son) to approve of her surgery. A woman needed surgery, but had no male relatives closeby to approve it for her. It was an emergency. Thankfully it was approved, but required a lawyer.
Christianity isn’t any better where I live.
Religion is fine on a personal level, but dangerous for everyone on a larger scale.
You seem to be conflating religion and culture with regards to Oman.
Those many “private, personal” benign religious people form a strong foundation upon which the crazies, cults, and conmen build their structures.
In my experience, these benign people are one tragedy away from metastasizing into the malignant religious type.
I have cousins who were benign-religious for most of their life, but after a death in the family they started following a new sect of christianity. Their children have never seen a doctor, nor a vaccine.
I agree people are entitled to their personal freedoms, but we would be much better off as a society if we could educate our way out of the cancer that is religion.
In my experience, these benign people are one tragedy away from metastasizing into the malignant religious type.
This kind of thinking and language is also used by a variety of “Anti-Theists” talking about the “Woke mind virus” and working together with current US fascism.
Talking about people as “diseases” is a pretty good indicator of Fascist ideology and you might be more entangled by it than you think.
The ratios are the opposite though.
“I’m 14 and this is deep.”
When your viewpoint is fairly tales, even a 14 year old can bust your view.
Accurate tho
Not really. If you read about the history of medieval universities, madrasahs, and mahaviharas, you will see how deeply and widely religious people have studied throughout history. It was customary for religious scholars to learn all kinds of topics, such as grammar, logic, and medicine.
Religions are made up of people, and have accommodated all kinds of people. Some are wise scholars, and others are ignorant conspiracists. Religion can’t really be boiled down to one side or the other, though I understand how the rise of fundamentalist Christian fascism might make this hard to see.
While I broadly agree with the view that debate was sometimes a part of religious institutions in the past, this changed dramatically in the 20th century, especially with regards to Islam, perhaps due to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When is the last time you’ve heard of a madrassah teaching that homosexuality is natural? Not to be Muslim-phobic, I am aware if the rich history of debate and science in the Middle East, but the material conditions have changed now, conservatism has been on the rise since the 70s.
You speak of mahaviharas, but Buddhists I have met are just as conservative as the average religious person when it comes to women’s rights, feminism and gay rights. Madrassahs were not ‘open’, even during the Islamic golden age. Even when Islam was less rigid, Mansoor al-Hallaj was executed for saying ‘Ann-al-Haq’, Omar Khayyam had to go on a pilgrimage to prove he was pious, al-Qadir ordered to kill every Mu’tazilite in Baghdad and no doubt there are countless other stories of persecution. That rational thought survived when people were religious is hardly to the credit of religion, and even in periods of prosperity when religious institutions weren’t on the defensive, such things happened anyway and under the sanction of religion. As long as religion is under an institution, it is the nature of institutions to cling to power and hence, suppress dissent.
this is a common fallacy with religion, but basically it’s not that religion has aided studies, but rather studies have made it despite religion. just because it happened under religion doesn’t mean religion is what helped it.
basically it’s not that religion has aided studies, but rather studies have made it despite religion
In some cases, sure, and in other cases, no. For example, Buddhism is supported by nine other fields of knowledge – the vidyasthanas – including such things as grammar and logic. Religious teachers draw examples and ideas from these fields when giving religious teachings. One must study these other fields to become a “learned one” (pandita/mkhas pa).
This is a living tradition that continues to the present day. For example, the Dalai Lama has heavily promoted education in modern science among Buddhists, and has co-authored several books on the connection between the two.
The idea that religion is just some anti-educational brainrot is, ironically, anti-educational brainrot. Religion definitely can function that way, but it cannot be reduced to it.
“Studying” in madrasahs is literally just the rote memorization of a version of the Koran in a language that students don’t even speak and don’t get me started on just how Christian belief was so thickly weaved into medieval university teachings that being against the Aristotelian earth-centric view of the Universe was cause to be burned at the stake (the medieval times aren’t called the Dark Ages for nothing and during the time of Medival Universities Europe actually went back a lot on technology and scientific knowledge)
Having studied Physics at university level in a country which still back them had quite a bit of religiosity, I have come across a handful of people who were both true believer Christians and Physicists and the only way to manage it was basically to keep them apart except for the single point of contact which was “by discovering the wonders of the World, I’m discovering the wonders of God’s creation” which is not a logic link in any way form or shape, just an attempt at getting two very different perspectives to be side by side, never really touching.
Religion simply does not inform Science in any way form or shape (and vice-versa), not in terms of logic, not in terms of information or knowledge and not in terms of methods - at best some people manage to have personal motivations to practice Science include Religious motivations, but any actually “knowledge” they have from Religion does not feed through into their Science because it doesn’t obey even the most basic criteria to work (for starters, it’s just “belief” rather than actual measurable or at least detectable effects that could not be explained in any other way than divine intervention).
Religion is absolutely fine when it’s about how people feel, but it ain’t fine when it tries to intervene into the domain of Science: back in the Medieval times the most advance civilization was Arab and mainly Muslim (such as the Moors, who invaded and occupied the Iberian Peninsula) - they were the true inheritors of the knowledge of Ancient Greece and Rome - but at some point in the 15th century within Islam the idea that all that Man needed to know was contained in the Koran spread, hence why Madrasahs are “schools” were people rote learn the Koran and why those nations have been going back Scientifically and Technologically ever since.
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Religion is a scam built to take advantage and control the uneducated masses.
Many religions are. The ones that focus inward to better yourself are not bothering anyone. When was the last time a Buddhist knocked on your door and asked you to find Buddha?
Edit: The self-righteousness of some atheists is truly hypocritical. Persecution is wrong, whether it’s of an atheist by a religious person, or vice versa. Yet another reason to be disappointed in my fellow man, I guess.
There’s a difference between faith and organized religion. I have nothing against the former, but the latter brings only trouble
Yeah, similar thoughts here
Buddhism is one of the world’s largest religions and originated 2,500 years ago in India.
Stupid thing to downvote, it’s so short if any of you 11 downvoters are here you can probably get a quick dunk in without typing more than 100 characters
“Appeal to age = irrelevant” would be one example (I made this up, not stating it for debate)
That entire link is irrelevant, so downvote is applicable. No point engaging in an argument that is fallacious to begin with.
Ah was intrigued by the thought but not the link :)
Thanks for improvin’ my Lemmy - nice thing to do after minirant
Yeah, I used to think that about Sikhism as well. Then I did some research. Every religion can and has been abused.
Of course it can, just as science has the ability to do the same. Do we brand all scientists as unethical because of Unit 731 or the Nuremberg trials? Ironically, this entire thread is very unscientific in its criticism of the religious.
Right, except religion serves no purpose that a non-religious group can’t do. Do you see why equating religion and science is pretty silly?
The only purpose of religion is to spread. Everything else is just a means to an end. Just take every good aspect of religion and remove the faith and the god from it. It becomes better. Teach people to do stuff because it is right, not because X god says so.
Buddhism is a religion in the same way that Christianity is a religion. I.e. it’s an abstract concept and not an implementation.
The implementations are invariably the problem. Just look at Myanmar.
They fall into the same category of people that look inward and find themselves as a train or an anime character or some other spirit animal / past life bullshit.
These are all people that need mental help and prescription medication.
That’s where atheists overstep. Why does it matter what someone believes if it has no effect on you? Isn’t that exactly what you criticize the religious of doing?
Other people’s beliefs directly impact me constantly through laws justified by religious doctrine, social pressures, imposing themselves into government offices, and being used to promote lying politicians who claim to be members but never following the teachings while gaining votes for being on the same team.
It has negatively affected me my entire life, even if it isn’t a obvious as racism and misogyny.
So you’re saying that you want separation from religion. Why can’t they have that from you? I agree that religion doesn’t belong in government. What about that justifies extermination of religion?
I didn’t say anything about extrrninating religion, I responded to your comment saying people’s beliefs have no affect on an atheist.
Atheists being against religion is a reaction to the default assumption that everyone is part of a religion. The label atheist only exists as a response to beliefs.
Right, until they harm someone or themselves by thinking they can fly if they believe hard enough or that they can get into a magical afterlife if they kill enough people. If you are open to that magic thinking then you are open to be manipulated and used.
Or their beliefs turn extremists because religion like cancer or capitalism needs unending growth to fuel its existence. People need to be kept uneducated and gullible enough to buy into the fantasy and to donate more money to make the clergy that will inevitably rape some kids.
These same people are bringing their fantasy into politics and look where that brought America and or the religious war going on.
Way to project. Find me articles on Buddhists harming people because they think they can fly. While I’m waiting, would you like me to provide scientific research that resulted in harm?
You can’t have it both ways. If you want boundaries that protect you from the religious, then you yourself must respect the same boundary.
Like every large religion, a significant portion of the followers will ignore any teaching in the right contexts. Christians are about turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbor except for the crusades and witch trials, Islam is the religion of peace except for when it isn’t, and Buddhism has its own exceptions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence
As found in other religious traditions, Buddhism has an extensive history of violence dating back to its inception.
These remarks followed the 1973 student-led uprising, as well as the creation of a Thai parliament and the spread of communism in neighboring East Asian countries. The fear of communism shaking the social forms of Thailand felt a very real threat to Kittivuddho, who expressed his nationalist tendencies in his defense of militant actions. He justified his argument by dehumanizing the Communists and leftists that he opposed. In the interview with Caturat he affirmed that this would not be the killing of people, but rather the killing of monsters/devils. He similarly asserted that while killing of people is prohibited and thus de-meritorious in Buddhist teachings, doing so for the “greater good” will garner greater merit than the act of killing will cost.
Fact: we would be better off if all of humanity were atheists
Not sure about this one, but we’d definitely be better off if religion was treated as strictly something you practice personally at home and not as part of any large hierarchy.
That is an opinion by definition. Facts can be proven true or false. “Better off” is a subjective sentiment. How very unscientific of you.
Except that many highly educated people are also into religions :(
Childhood indoctrination works wonders to keep you scam going.
Plenty of educated religious people are converts. I was raised atheist and converted to Buddhism in my late teens. The same was true of many of the other students in my university’s religious studies department.
The fact is, being religious doesn’t depend on lack of education or childhood indoctrination. People will still be religious in the absence of those things.
The whole life has a purpose and eternal soul thing make people want to believe as well
I think that more than a few highly successful people who are both religious and not stupid, have realized what religion actually is and manipulate it to their advantage.
Not all, but I suspect there’s more than a few.
You know everything, apparently.
Religion is to calm a heart when it has nowhere to turn to.
Problem is the same as with comunism, few in power get greedy.
Religion is “built” by the actions of countless religious people. There is not a single cohesive force shaping its development. Religion has also been used for education, political liberation, charity, and emotional healing. Reality is complex.
As an aside, people who are bothered by my arguments should consider watching Contrapoints’ recent video on conspiracism. The points I am making in this thread are the same points she makes against conspiracy theories.
Atheists like the OP suggest (ironically) that religion is an intentionalist, evil force, but a basic survey of the history of religion easily disproves this type of thinking. Intentionalism and binarism are cankers on the pursuit of truth. Like politics, religion is nuanced; it is not a grand conspiracy, even if there are groups in it who conspire. Atheists would do well to be wary of conspiracism, lest they place their hatred of religion over their pursuit of truth.
This isn’t true at all. It all depends on the person. People could fit into:
Religion - I know everything. Religion - I don’t know enough. Science - I know everything. Science - I don’t know enough.
You know, some people even love both religion and science!
I’ve met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God’s work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.
Their academic work is only valid if it doesn’t incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.
Yeah, there are also Christian scientists who do lots of research and studies and come to the conclusion that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Because they challenge modern science with valid questions that get ignored, they are considered quacks. Like why you can listen to 20 different scientists who are all respected in the field, and get 20 vastly different answers on how old the earth is. You don’t come up with 20 different answers (as though they are truth) by using the scientific method. Which would have to mean at least 19 of them are only guessing.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
Only thing I’d say about the christian scientists who say the earth is billions of years old, is that they’d have to deny the scriptures of their faith in order to believe that. Seems like an odd thing to do. Either they really believe it and not what their faith (religion) teaches, or they just want acceptance from non Christians.
I guess in the end, if you are on the right side of the image, (in the religious or science realm), maybe you should consider the other sides arguments. Maybe its just that they actually figured out the answer and have no need to continue searching. Maybe they don’t have the answer, maybe they do.
We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don’t know where you’re getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.
I like nature, history, discovery shows and documentaries. But they are always giving different ages of the earth, (ages of various plants, animals, events, etc.) Like, vastly different. So no, there is no overwhelming agreement, other than they may all say a long time ago.
I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you’re watching since you don’t actually list them.
But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we’ve known age of the universe that contains it.
The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.
We know the age of the universe? Please, that’s ridiculous. We don’t know, we have done math, and made guesses. If we have an age for it, it’s just a theory.
Go look it up. This is known stuff. It isn’t a guess it’s based on evidence.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I’ll give a few examples:
Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that’s still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.
Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein’s relativity). During the period of “normal science”, scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.
Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.
All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying “that’s it, we solved this problem, we’re done” is not something modern science event attempts at.
*“Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world… is not something modern science event attempts at.” * -Well, that there is the problem. And if that’s the case, and modern scientists believe this, then why are they always talking about something as if they know it for a fact?
“Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false.” -Well, he is wrong, of course you can prove things to be true.
If you’re science is replaced, then you never proved anything, and should not speak as if you know for sure what you are talking about. But modern scientists talk this way all the time.
then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.
This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.
You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority…
- In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
- In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don’t get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
- You will always see some kind of religion vs another
- You might see “science-ism” vs some other religion
- You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
- You will not see science trying to silence a religion
- You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
Well, religion is based on faith and history (but at a certain point falls back on faith since you aren’t there in the past), and science should be based on empirical evidence. So both realms can’t operate exactly the same, although they can cross over.
Many people do research on many faiths, and their research convinces them that a particular one is correct. They can live the rest of their life believing that particular faith is correct, and stick with it, even if they are open to being proven wrong.
And with science, if you actually prove something true, you do not have to act as though you have not. Now, if you only have a theory, then yes, you should be questioning it until it can be proven. I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
Yeah, that’s one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can’t know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
For now, at least I don’t see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it’s not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.Yeah, I think both religion and science have taken a back seat to just plain ol’ greed and power.
The science guys will always do science.
Even if the patronages stop.
Even if other’s start killing them for it.
Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
The quest for truth defines them.
Just don’t mistake them for science bros
I’ve seen a lot of conservative (the American Republican model) Christians but I have also seen what I consider to be “true” Christians, with a strong faith and love for everyone, and part of that faith often involves confronting reality, thinking about solutions to problems, helping the poor and weak. I agree with you that it’s not all black and white. A lot of Christians don’t believe in the literal text of the Bible for its supernatural claims, but instead they read it (and other religious texts, there are a lot of religious people who do some multi-track drifting) for its morals and guiding principles, which can all be interpreted in different ways, and there is a lot of discourse in religious circles about the meaning and morals of texts, about finding ancient wisdom or reinterpreting old texts to better suit modern standards. It can be a very research intensive way of life to be religious and have faith. I’d argue that if you have any principles at all that you stick to, that counts as faith.
I agree. Western Christianity is a perversion of the religion imo. To be fair a large part of biblical text has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and that confuses a lot of people. A lot of them seem to be quite contradictory to what he was saying.
If anyone is into reading interesting books these helped to clarify Christianity for me. I do not consider myself a Christian ( maybe in my next life) but Jesus was a radical cat and what he did at that point in history was revolutionary .
Leo Tolstoy , The Kingdom Of God Is Within You. This one may turn you into a Vegan Anarchist so watch out
Swami Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science
Tao Te Ching , Lao Tzu …this one has nothing to do with Christianity but helped me understand what God ( the Supreme Being , God Head, Jah, Allah or whatever you want to call the source) was in simple terms. It’s a quick read
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of A Yogi.
That Tolstoy book sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out.
There are versions of the Bible where Big J’s words are written in red text, that’s what I would recommend to people so they focus on the part that matters (for Christians)
Tolstoy was an interesting individual…and a great writer. Enjoy
I finished The Kingdom of God is Within You, I really enjoyed it. The book aligned with many of my prior beliefs about Christianity and the Church, which was very validating. I appreciated the insight into the state of eighteenth century Russia, which I never want to visit. And lastly it made me deeply consider how much my current job makes me a party to violence. You’re right about it potentially making someone an anarchist.
Thank you again for mentioning it.
I have given physical copys to a few people over the years and not a damn one read it. They claimed they were " true Christians " , I fear it would have gone over their heads anyhow.
I actually did quit a job that I was previously planning on retireing from after some deep reflection caused by Tolstoy’s writing.
As a kid I was under the impression that was how a Christian would behave and then I became jaded as I grew older. When I read it I thought “that is how they should behave” and it was refreshing to hear someone talk like that.
I personally do not consider myself Christian, I agree with Nitzsche that “there was but only one Christian and he died on the cross” (i can’t remember the exact quote, it was from the book " the Anti-Christ") but reading The Kingdom Of God is Within You sparked a genuine curiosity about Christ and religion in general.
Glad you enjoyed it ✌️
Well honestly, (since you mention Christians), if they are true, they’d have to say it is the only way. Not because they are bigoted, but because all the various religions disagree. But, that view (that Christianity is the only way) may have been achieved by doing lots of research. I think its kinda foolish to say all the religions are different paths to God if they disagree with each other. Any religious person who says all faiths are valid paths to God, are either fools, or liars. Some of the popes have said that, and that would make them not Christian.
I don’t think you need to be so black and white. you can pick and choose what goes into your faith, and still remain 95% christian. I guess to me the label just doesn’t matter very much. also if the Pope claims that to accept all faith is christian, then that is very much what Catholic Christianity is. the Pope also plays a guiding and interpreting role, and you can choose to go with his interpretation or not.
Correct. You can have minor disagreements about some things that aren’t clear. But if the bible and the pope disagree on whether all faiths are valid, then biblical Christianity and catholic Christianity are not the same faith. If the pope says biblical Christianity is valid and true, and the bible says that what the pope is teaching is false, then he just invalidated himself. See why saying all faiths are valid can’t work?
You have to accept that religions can be wrong about some things to have the view that they’re all different paths to God.
Plus everyone should turn a critical eye to their own religion, every holy text and every doctrine has both wheat and chaff.
If two faiths flat out contradict each other, they can’t both be right.
Faith A says that God doesn’t care what you do or believe. Faith B says that God does care what you do and what you believe.
Both can not be correct. Can they both be paths to God? That’s the thing, because of their statement, they’d have to believe in different Gods. So they would not be on two different paths to the same God. If they were, then God would not be stable, and in the case of faith B, God would be a liar.
If you reduce an entire religion down to a single axiom, then sure, they can be entirely contradictory.
But religions aren’t like that, they are each a thousand different beliefs, rituals, and directives. There are enough similarities in message to see a commonality between them.
Like you said, it’s all the same path to God, some paths are a bit more meandering than others, and some claim that there are no other paths.
“But religions aren’t like that” Yeah, some religions are like that.
Religions are a single axiom and nothing else? Which ones?
That’s how you know to not take them seriously
Edgy 14yo post
Yeah, your username speaks for itself
Ok edgy 15yo
Look at your fucking username before you blabber about edgy 14 yr olds
I get the sentiment, but check out the length of the Taoist cannon, it would challenge even some modern day myth lengths like Marvel super hero comics.
Here I thought that the Taoist canon was only the Tao Te Ching (which is pretty short).
canon = approved literature
cannon = large gun that fires grapeshot, etc.
Now I can’t help thinking about what a Taoist Megaman villains gallery would look like
Ennui man, Hubris man?
Sometimes religion: “it requires faith, therefore we can and should stop learning.”
There is also an idea in philosophy of science called “pessimistic meta induction”. Basically the concept is that science is a continually evolving process where we get increasingly accurate understanding about how things work. However since science progresses by falsifying previously held beliefs we can speculate that all of our current scientific theories are technically false.
It’ll end up like the Bohr model. Someday we’ll miss the elegant simplicity of everything just being vibrating strings.
Out of concern for how much the “Bible Belt” throws in with Israel’s Zionist bullshit, I did some basic searches on the topic, and the discussion was a bit different than I thought it’d be.
People need a place to belong. For many, they have communities in cities that fit. For rural areas, it’s one thing to say “Stop listening to that televangelist ordering you to deposit your savings”, but you’d need something else to take that place - something to believe in.
That’s where more progressive preachers, people similar to the current pope, are shaming themselves for not stepping up enough, recognizing people’s needs and being genuine voices of compassion; not trying to be the economic “immigrants pay taxes” or scientific “colleges fuel cure research” voice, but the “Be good to your neighbor” voice.
So even though I’m not a believer, I’m at least seeing the way churches can bring communities together rather than leave all one’s connections to Facebook. The important thing is what sort of voice is unifying them - because by god, there’s a million ways to pervert the message of any major religion into one of hate.
Life is hard people are desperate for some source or strength. Makes sense.
I often see this sentiment on the internet, but I wonder what definition people who hold this view are using for “religion” to reach this conclusion. I have found that the definitions of “religion” and “faith” in use by people are so varied or vague that they are almost pointless to use. The way I define them, everyone is religious and faith is a necessity.
life presents a dilemma to me: I would like to conclusively know everything about the universe and reality before deciding what choices to make, but I do not have that luxury. I must make decisions daily with what amounts to almost no information. Faith is not an optional part of life. Some people recognize that necessity and others do not. It is merely a question of who and what you place your faith in.
Rather than use the word “religion”, I would be much more interested in asking about people’s worldviews. Wikipedia gives this description: One can think of a worldview as comprising a number of basic beliefs which are philosophically equivalent to the axioms of the worldview considered as a logical or consistent theory. These basic beliefs cannot, by definition, be proven.
I have boiled this down to two essential questions about the nature of life/existence/reality that can be graphed on a quadrant:
The horizontal axis is the duration of existence. The difference between a worldview with an infinite existence and a worldview with a finite existence is immeasurable. If I believe in an infinite petsonal existence, then my actions have infinite consequences which I must experience the results of. Short of infinite personal existence, I may believe that life/the universe will exist forever, but that I will personally cease to exist when I die. In this case, my actions may still have infinite consequences (for future generations) but I will not personally experience them. A purely finite/temporal worldview would mean that I believe that everything will end in the heat death of the universe or similar life ending event. In this case, it ultimately doesn’t matter what I, or anyone else does in life, everything will end the same way for everyone and all life.
The vertical axis represents the nature of our existence. Is the source of life personal or impersonal? If I believed a completely impersonal worldview, then I would believe that we are essentially just biologically pre-programmed to live our lives based on the DNA that we have been built from and that person hood/personal agency is a construct of the mind with no higher meaning. If I believed in a completely personal worldview, then I would believe that I am created by a personal being that is also interested in a personal relationship with me, and I am created as a reflection of their person hood.
These are foundational questions about the nature of reality that demand an answer. Every choice I make in my life should reflect the answers to these questions. But where are the answers?
In our current society, it seems to be accepted that science and religion are diametrically opposed and cannot co-exist. I have observed, especially on the internet, that if I espouse to be religious, then it is assumed that I believe in flying spaghetti monsters and think the earth is flat. I believe that intellectually honest people will find that they are actually in more similar circumstances than they realize. It would be foolish for me to disregard scientific observation and experimentation, but it would be equally foolish for me to disregard the limitations of those observations and experiments:
It is impossible to take a zero-trust approach with science (never trust, always verify). I don’t have access to a Large Hadron Collider to observe the Higgs boson for myself. I don’t have access to the LUX-ZEPLIN to experiment with dark matter. I don’t have access to the LIGO Lab to observe gravitational waves. I trust that these experiments are conducted correctly and that their findings are correct, but by doing so I am placing my faith in the scientists performing the experiments. I do so also knowing that complete objectivity is impossible. I have a personal bias. My own life experience and observations skew the way I see the world. I assume this is the same of other people, scientists included. Even if I had access to all the equipment necessary, and dedicated my entire life to scientific experimentation, I would only be able to conduct a tiny fraction of experiments necessary to explore just a few of the questions about the nature of the universe. At the end of my life, I would likely have more questions about the universe than when I began. Even if I had the time, ability, and equipment necessary to conduct all necessary experiments to explore my questions about the universe, I would be making a fundamental assumption that I am actually able to observe everything. I have no idea if there are other dimensions that I will never be able to observe or experiment with. I simply have to accept by faith that these do or do not exist. Even if I assumed that everything is observable, and I had the capacity to conduct all necessary experiments, I would still have an impossible problem from a practical standpoint: I need to make decisions on a daily basis. I don’t have a lifetime to wait and scientifically determine the nature of the universe before I make a decision about how I want to live my life. I am living it right now. The fundamental truth about the universe matters in the decisions that I have to make right now.This is why faith is a necessity. I look around, and I see that I am just one of over seven billion people on this Earth, and that Earth is just one of eight planets orbiting our Sun, and that our Sun is just one of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, a galaxy that is so vast, even travelling at the impossible speed of light, would take me thousands of lifetimes to traverse, and that galaxy is just one of possibly trillions of galaxies in what is just the observable universe. One thing is for sure. I am very small, in every sense of the word. To sit here, and read this paragraph again, and then think that I really know-it-all would make me one of the most arrogant beings in the universe. I know very little, and I live by faith.
Most people use “religion” to mean “organized religion” in particular, and many people further take it to mean christianity and christianity-like religions. Religion is a word that is hard to define, but I think that although there are many edge cases, most people mostly agree on what is and what isnt a religion. My point here is that, just because they are not definable in a strict sense, does not mean the words “religion” and “faith” are “pointless”. They very much have meaning.
Many words are like that: no clear definition but they refer to real things or ideas. For example, existentialism, postmodernism, artistic styles (such as cubism or impressionism), etc. And even many terms in the sciences are like that. None of the words mathematics, physics or philosophy have clear-cut definitions. Hell, i can take this to the extreme. Even words like water or gold do not have a clear definition, in the way that lay people use them. Seawater is water even though it is made up of more than just H2O. 95% ethanol is never called water, even though 5% of it is water.
My point is that memes like this use religion as a strawman because they don’t actually want to discuss the foundational concepts expressed by the meme. Which is what I addressed, in my admittedly very lenghy, response.
