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fpbThe fact that three of the most active and intelligent members of my f-list have been more or less repeating each other's errors about something they call "religion" means that I am no longer allowed to avoid the subject, as I have been more or less wishing to. A man who allows his friends to go on talking nonsense does not do them any favours, even if it would be more comfortable for him to go on doing so.
Your error is at the most basic level. You speak about "religion" without knowing what it is; you speak about "religion" when you mean "Christian practice". You have never asked yourselves what religion actually is, what it amounts to. You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence. It is an explanation - any explanation - of the existence of the universe and of the existence of life within it. Think about it. What is Christianity? Christianity is not the Church buildings, or the clergy, or the laity, or the daily and weekly rituals; these are, at best, its manifestations. Christianity is the doctrine that the universe, existence itself, is the result of an act of will by a transcendent Creator - God - who, having once created the universe - and, especially, beings "like Himself" in being intelligent and aware of good and evil - could not disinvolve Himself from it, and Who once performed an extraordinary act to redeem the souls He had created. Buddhism is the doctrine that the human self is born and dies through several succeeding lives, in a universe that has no beginning or end but is recreated through successive cycles, until each soul achieves, through generations of wisdom and self-perfecting, union with the Uncreated. In both cases, it is the doctrine that is the absolutely central, motivating fact; everything else simply descends from the doctrine, makes it manifest, makes it active in the world. Religion is the doctrine, the theory if you will; and the theory it concerns is a theory of existence. Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, all give a picture of the essential nature and relationship of things which claims to be matter of fact, to be a real description of real things. One says that reality is created, another that it is everlasting; both have clear relationships with reality, and implications in the way that reality is understood and apprehended.
It follows that there is no such thing as a person without religion, unless of course we are speaking about a person without a mind. For there is no such thing as a a person who does not make assumptions about the meaning of things and of life. When Ayla Pascal declares herself dissatisfied with the current state of mankind and hopes in some sort of eugenic revolution, that is a religious statement: a statement about the nature and value of human life. Anyone who uses the imprecise word "atheist" (a word which could and does cover Buddhism) is, as a rule, what philosophers call a "monist", that is a believer that only one reality exists, and that this reality has no transcendent or immanent extra dimensions. But this is just as much a statement about reality as Buddhist immanentism or Christian transcendentalism; and a monist has just as much a religion as any Christian. He only claims that his view of the universe is different from any other, being more "rational"; he chatters about the opposition between reason and faith. But his faith in monism is just as much a faith as that of the Christian in certain historical documents. Among the competing views of the universe it is impossible to make a choice that is based purely on reason; reason does not stretch far enough. At the end of the day, there has to be a leap of faith, quite simply because the opposite is possible.
What I mean is: even if I managed to show you, with all my skills and experience as a historian, that the early Christian documents are, as I believe they are, records of fact, even if you accepted as a fact that they were written in the first century, you would still have one resort open to you: "I don't believe it." You could simply say that dead men do not rise from the dead, and that if anyone claims to have seen otherwise, there is a reason for it other than the claimed one. Call it fraud or call it delusion, it is open to you to simply reject the documents. It is bad practice, it is bad history, but plenty of historians do it to plenty of documents. Your faith in monism would simply overcome your faith in historical documents. But one way or another, it would be a matter of faith. The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts. You are starting from a presupposition, not from the rational examination of facts.
Most of what you have said in your various rants, then, is simply irrelevant to the issue. The issue is simply this: WHICH RELIGION IS TRUE? Which doctrine adheres to the facts about life, which makes sense of the universe and of life as we experience it? You may say that there is none among those known to people at present (including monism) that is actually true; but you cannot exclude the possibility of a true religion, for that would be the same as excluding the possibility that life and the universe can be understood and that true statements can be made about them. In other words, the one thing that you cannot reasonably do is exclude the possibility of a true religion. And that means that any religion that presents itself to you must be examined, not in terms of whether it is good or bad for society, good or bad for you political views, whether it makes you feel good or not, but whether it is true. And that is the only issue that matters.
All right. End of the first essay. I have no doubt that you and others will have something to say, so I expect that I will be dealing with these issues again.
Your error is at the most basic level. You speak about "religion" without knowing what it is; you speak about "religion" when you mean "Christian practice". You have never asked yourselves what religion actually is, what it amounts to. You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence. It is an explanation - any explanation - of the existence of the universe and of the existence of life within it. Think about it. What is Christianity? Christianity is not the Church buildings, or the clergy, or the laity, or the daily and weekly rituals; these are, at best, its manifestations. Christianity is the doctrine that the universe, existence itself, is the result of an act of will by a transcendent Creator - God - who, having once created the universe - and, especially, beings "like Himself" in being intelligent and aware of good and evil - could not disinvolve Himself from it, and Who once performed an extraordinary act to redeem the souls He had created. Buddhism is the doctrine that the human self is born and dies through several succeeding lives, in a universe that has no beginning or end but is recreated through successive cycles, until each soul achieves, through generations of wisdom and self-perfecting, union with the Uncreated. In both cases, it is the doctrine that is the absolutely central, motivating fact; everything else simply descends from the doctrine, makes it manifest, makes it active in the world. Religion is the doctrine, the theory if you will; and the theory it concerns is a theory of existence. Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, all give a picture of the essential nature and relationship of things which claims to be matter of fact, to be a real description of real things. One says that reality is created, another that it is everlasting; both have clear relationships with reality, and implications in the way that reality is understood and apprehended.
It follows that there is no such thing as a person without religion, unless of course we are speaking about a person without a mind. For there is no such thing as a a person who does not make assumptions about the meaning of things and of life. When Ayla Pascal declares herself dissatisfied with the current state of mankind and hopes in some sort of eugenic revolution, that is a religious statement: a statement about the nature and value of human life. Anyone who uses the imprecise word "atheist" (a word which could and does cover Buddhism) is, as a rule, what philosophers call a "monist", that is a believer that only one reality exists, and that this reality has no transcendent or immanent extra dimensions. But this is just as much a statement about reality as Buddhist immanentism or Christian transcendentalism; and a monist has just as much a religion as any Christian. He only claims that his view of the universe is different from any other, being more "rational"; he chatters about the opposition between reason and faith. But his faith in monism is just as much a faith as that of the Christian in certain historical documents. Among the competing views of the universe it is impossible to make a choice that is based purely on reason; reason does not stretch far enough. At the end of the day, there has to be a leap of faith, quite simply because the opposite is possible.
What I mean is: even if I managed to show you, with all my skills and experience as a historian, that the early Christian documents are, as I believe they are, records of fact, even if you accepted as a fact that they were written in the first century, you would still have one resort open to you: "I don't believe it." You could simply say that dead men do not rise from the dead, and that if anyone claims to have seen otherwise, there is a reason for it other than the claimed one. Call it fraud or call it delusion, it is open to you to simply reject the documents. It is bad practice, it is bad history, but plenty of historians do it to plenty of documents. Your faith in monism would simply overcome your faith in historical documents. But one way or another, it would be a matter of faith. The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts. You are starting from a presupposition, not from the rational examination of facts.
Most of what you have said in your various rants, then, is simply irrelevant to the issue. The issue is simply this: WHICH RELIGION IS TRUE? Which doctrine adheres to the facts about life, which makes sense of the universe and of life as we experience it? You may say that there is none among those known to people at present (including monism) that is actually true; but you cannot exclude the possibility of a true religion, for that would be the same as excluding the possibility that life and the universe can be understood and that true statements can be made about them. In other words, the one thing that you cannot reasonably do is exclude the possibility of a true religion. And that means that any religion that presents itself to you must be examined, not in terms of whether it is good or bad for society, good or bad for you political views, whether it makes you feel good or not, but whether it is true. And that is the only issue that matters.
All right. End of the first essay. I have no doubt that you and others will have something to say, so I expect that I will be dealing with these issues again.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 10:48 am (UTC)At the end of the day, there has to be a leap of faith, quite simply because the opposite is possible.
I agree that being an athiest requires a leap of faith. That's why half of the time I say that I'm agnostic.
You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence.
I disagree. Religion is a system of worship. A belief system is a doctrine that explains life and existence. For example, my current belief system is Darwinism and the Big Bang theory. That explains life and existence. We exist because we evolved. You cannot possibly call Darwinism or the Big Bang theory 'religious' theories. Just because a religious theory explains life and existence, does not mean that ALL theories that explain life and existence are religious.
What I mean is: even if I managed to show you, with all my skills and experience as a historian, that the early Christian documents are, as I believe they are, records of fact, even if you accepted as a fact that they were written in the first century, you would still have one resort open to you: "I don't believe it."
Well, documents are documents. People lie. If I saw with my own eyes, Christ being killed and then him walking again a few days later, then I would believe. Provided, of course, that people around me didn't tell me that I was insane and lock me in a mental institution. If you showed me the early documents, I would accept that yes, Jesus was a person. Yes, there was a lot of faith in him. Yes, he did good things. But him as a son of God beggars rational belief.
You ask me to examine the facts rationally. Okay. Suppose you showed me the documents. I accept that they exist. I accept that the people who wrote it believed in what they were writing. I accept Jesus existed. However, rationally, I have never seen anybody rise from the dead. I have not ever seen of miracles that have been scientifically proven. So rationally, I cannot accept the doctrine of Christianity despite the fact I accept that the documents are authentic.
Christianity is not the Church buildings, or the clergy, or the laity, or the daily and weekly rituals; these are, at best, its manifestations.
Part of this is accurate. Yet, the buildings, the clergy, the rituals, they all represent Christianity. Without them, Christianity is just a nebulous concept that isn't differentiated from Islam, Hinduism, etc.
When Ayla Pascal declares herself dissatisfied with the current state of mankind and hopes in some sort of eugenic revolution
*blink*
I don't believe I've ever expressed those sentiments. Not in those precise words anyway. I do wish that humans would be better people though.
In other words, the one thing that you cannot reasonably do is exclude the possibility of a true religion.
Again, if you take religion to be a belief system then I give to you my true 'religion': Science.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 02:44 pm (UTC)The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts.
I think it's more like questioning the documents than rejecting them. I hope I didn't sound like I was stating that I would stubbornly stick to my opinions if concrete proof landed in front of me. :) The people who wrote the historical accounts are no longer alive. Therefore, they would be able to stretch things a bit, right? Even if there are multiple documents lying around saying the same things, we can't really rule out fabrication. So it could have been that there was a man named Jesus who worked as a carpenter and was a major leader who was crucified... but how likely was it that his mother was a virgin? And perhaps he never died. Maybe it was a coma, and he woke, and the first century people thought of that as rising from the dead. So really, they truly believed that Jesus was the son of God, and that opinion was strengthened by things that made him seem like a living miracle, but were just things that couldn't be explained by (at the time) current knowledge.
You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence.
Yes, I agree with your definition. Religion is a doctrine. Now, I'm assuming that doctrines are set and not changeable; otherwise, they become different doctrines. Under that assumption, science is not a doctrine. It is always changing, yet it is still keeps the same name. Whereas, say, Catholicism was modified by Henry VIII and from then on called the Anglican Church. A very shaky argument, I'll admit, but it somewhat separates science from religion.
But if this assumption is incorrect, your second to last paragraph is completely correct, because then whatever causes the universe to run, that mysterious force, is the head of the true religion, be it God, Allah, or energy.
I do hope I haven't got half my facts incorrect. :D
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 02:44 am (UTC)Agreed. But that's of little use unless we can guarantee to recognise truth. And if that were possible, there would be no role for faith.
How does one discern truth? For me, in everyday life it's largely a matter of gut instinct, after allowing that gut instinct access to as much hard fact as is available through an effort proportionate to the importance of the issue at hand. So I can't see how to avoid using 'whether it makes me feel good' to discern truth (in fact, doing so is a fundamental shamanic 'technique'). All I can do is try to align myself with God (however one defines God) as best I can so my instincts are likely to be truer, but I'd never be arrogant enough to believe my discerned truths were mecessarily absolute, though some of them feel so.
Incidentally, I'm more with Ayla Pascal about the definition of religion as a system of worship. I've always seen 'religion' as the human constructs - the church hierarchies, the rituals, the laws - around... well, I hesitate to say 'doctrine' because to me that word feels dry, too limited. I would say it's around spirit, mystery. Religion is not just about belief, it's about communion. IMHO. But perhaps you engage with it on more of a rational level - especially with your historical interests - than I do.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 06:39 am (UTC)you speak about "religion" when you mean "Christian practice".
Well, I don't know about the others, but I spoke mainly in terms of Christian practice, because that's all I've had experience with. My "rant" was a very personal one - it was about my own experiences, thoughts, and beliefs at the time that I wrote it. As such, I only really spoke about Christianity. That's where I've been. I don't know the first thing about Buddhism, or Islam, or whatever.
a doctrine that explains life and existence. It is an explanation - any explanation - of the existence of the universe and of the existence of life within it.
It's true that I generally tend to think of religion as a "system of worship". However, when I really think about it, I do include your broader definition. And that should've come across in my rant. However...
a believer that only one reality exists, and that this reality has no transcendent or immanent extra dimensions.
That's a good point. I never thought of it that way - or rather, I did, but it never clicked that that, in itself, can be considered a "religion".
but you cannot exclude the possibility of a true religion, for that would be the same as excluding the possibility that life and the universe can be understood and that true statements can be made about them.
Why, I thought I was making that exact point in my rant. Well, at least, in trying to explain my own beliefs. What I wrote wasn't so much about "which religion is true" - I wouldn't be so presumptuous. :) At least, not now. As I said, it was personal - what I think, what I feel, what I've felt. Really, what you've written above seems mostly to concur with my view of things. Maybe some of my definitions are a bit off, but really, I mostly agree.
it is impossible to make a choice that is based purely on reason; reason does not stretch far enough.
That, I agree with. At least, that's something I believe, and why I can't ever define myself as an "atheist".
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 06:47 am (UTC):) Here, I disagree. I don't think that explains life and existance. It explains how they came about, but it doesn't explain why they came about. To me, that's an important distinction. I mean, why was there a Big Bang? I think the "religious" part of this belief system (taking
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 06:54 am (UTC)It more or less says that there are other sort of parallel universes, called membranes (branes) and sometimes they bump against each other and this creates new universes. Something like that. I'm no physics student. That explains why gravity is the weakest of the four universal forces despite being the thing that holds our universe together. Because the strings of gravity aren't fully connected to our universe and their main affect is outside our universe.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 07:22 am (UTC)I'm rather hopeless at this sort of thing. I tried reading A Brief History of Time once, and I think I even finished it - though I didn't understand a word after page 2. Even the Bible is easier to follow!
(And I do realise that "because I don't understand it" isn't a good reason not to believe in something!)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 09:09 am (UTC)Hey, have you ever read The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose? It's more understandable than Hawkings. It's about computers, relativity, AI, quantum mechanics and maths and is completely readable.
The Bible gives me a headache every time I pick it up! We're really different. I can't read any sort of real deep meaningful type literature without giving me a headache but Asimov, Penrose and Hawkings, I love their popular books on science.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-07 09:24 am (UTC)