Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

[afleitch]

I'd submit that the sort of harm you're describing happens in every time, in every country, with every excuse known under the blue sky and still others just waiting to be invented appended to it. Democracy is one of the few things that seems to help. Of course 'reason'* also would, since not behaving this way or at least not as frequently as one would otherwise is a feature of most people's definition of 'reasonable', but it's more that I lack the requisite optimism about that than the requisite cynicism about the way people behave when governed by 'traditional' worldviews, which is sometimes awful, sometimes benign, sometimes admirable, and usually kind of stupid.

Sometimes I wish I could have that outlook. Instead contemplating those possibilities just makes me feel rather lonely, which is probably the worst feeling in the world other than intense hunger, which it also makes me feel. Then again, I have a fairly...extensive...personal history here, and on a lot of these issues.


*This word is in scare quotes not because I'm trying to be snide but because my point about it has to do with the word itself, which I think informs how we view the concept.

If contemplating the world without superstition or purpose makes you feel lonely, then religious belief is for you. I have no qualms about that or anyone seeking solace in that. Indeed appealing to the lonely or the questioning is Christianity's 21st Century sales pitch. Simply selling the whole story as lock stock and barrel true is difficult which is why it's gotten a little more esoterical so we have things like the Alpha Course. The idea being that once you have the support, have the social group and the questions answered you're already part of the 'in group' and so accepting the rest is easier (though I do know of people who got all the way through such a course but walked out when people started rolling about the floor because in their words it was 'f-cking stupid' )

If someone get's comfort from that I'm not ultimately opposed to it unless they then start using that as a justification to cause discomfort to others. I'm essentially a Humanist. I get support from my husband, my family and my friends. Even when I was a Christian, in retrospect that was always the case. I never found prayer particularly easy because it was always directed to something I never saw and I didn't derive much from it despite trying to force myself to. Not to be flippant about such things I probably got more inner peace and contemplation from stroking my cat. I still contemplate and meditate. But I'm entirely aware that it's a product of my own self and my environment and there's nothing external to it. Nothing is making me calm but me. The world to me makes more sense without a god.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Alpha Course is a little too, uh, low-church for me but yeah. I was actually talking to an Eastern Orthodox cleric of some description some time ago about this sort of thing, and he said that for many, even most serious mystical Christians there's a certain degree of sustained effort in believing the whole thing, so obviously that would depend on the extent to which one feels up for making that effort and is supported in making it by one's environment and experiences. That's certainly been true in my case.

If someone get's comfort from that I'm not ultimately opposed to it unless they then start using that as a justification to cause discomfort to others. I'm essentially a Humanist. I get support from my husband, my family and my friends. Even when I was a Christian, in retrospect that was always the case. I never found prayer particularly easy because it was always directed to something I never saw and I didn't derive much from it despite trying to force myself to. Not to be flippant about such things I probably got more inner peace and contemplation from stroking my cat. I still contemplate and meditate. But I'm entirely aware that it's a product of my own self and my environment and there's nothing external to it. Nothing is making me calm but me. The world to me makes more sense without a god.

That's worthy, I think, of anybody's respect. My cats, as it happens, are skittish and one of them is delicate on account of his very advanced age and feline arthritis, and a lot (but not all!) of my friends are actually assholes whom I like and trust implicitly because they're my assholes (I am, of course, myself one of the assholes). My family could be the subject of an update thread. Even so, I do get a lot of my peace and actually a lot of my spirituality from them.