Off topic question: I know many here aren't necessarily religious (Though some would say they are spiritual)... Do the non-religious among us still find value in the writing of overtly religious authors? I'm not interested in arguing about religion. I'm just curious if the HN crowd find value in the words of people with differing opinions.
However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid.
Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences.
There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied.
I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature.
He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion.
Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.
We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.
You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.
Does changing the label of the same set of actions make it better somehow?
Also, there is a bit of irony in the statement "there is no dogma in science" as it is a fairly dogmatic statement :)
Similarly in science you do get certain axioms:
* occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions.
They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly.
NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.
On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.
I never denied nor tried to refute that there are many empirical axioms associated with science. I only stated that there are also a priori axioms which are structurally dogma.
Please stop changing the subject.
It also has a strong theoretical basis. Add enough epicycles and you can smooth out any irregularity's. But, over fit your data and you lose predictive capability.
PS: Preferring the more complex theory is unworkable, because E=mc^2+(10^(-900))m is going to give the same results for any test you could actually carry out. Having no preference has the same basic limitation.
http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614...
The observation was that in less developed societies there are bad religions, good religions, and better religions that promote social cohesion. It was not a statement about modern society and religion vs. morality and lawfulness. Sorry if I offended you.
I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof.
I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential.
Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion.
That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.
Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.
In this case by religion I mean the sort of things commonly associated with religion, minus the "clearly" religious stuff. For instance, consider utilitarianism. It's a "life-guiding philosophy", which is already treading into religious waters, but the real killer is, what utility metric do you use? Many people who claim to be one or another variety of utilitarianist often try to use some sort of global metric that accounts for not just their own subjective utility, but that of others. But... why? Why not just act based on your own utility? (Including an enlightened utility metric in which one understands that harming others is generally not the right answer due to retaliation or general degradation of the local environment, so not just stereotypical selfishness.) It's awfully easy to call that a sort of non-god/non-spirit religious decision, because there's no objective rational basis for that metric. (And there's not necessarily an objective rational basis for choosing any particular metric when it comes down to it.)
Most of them are way off. Not even close.
I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.
I'm with you until there. The point of science is to make testable predictions, to further our knowledge of the world. It's easy to single out creation stories and point to their falsehood to dismiss religion, but religion is not limited to an explanation of how the world is constructed, and it's also not built like a proof where it all hinges on whether or not this story is more allegory or fact. It's not about creating testable hypotheses. It doesn't have to be factually accurate to enrich lives. There is a wealth of truth about humanity that has nothing to do with our physical properties.
Science is tangible and real, and absolutely necessary for discovering and understanding the universe. Any emotional content or context you overlay on top of the application of the scientific method is essentially a religious experience. And that's perfectly fine; in fact, I think it would be weird to know much about science and not feel a sense of awe and wonder, but those senses, that emotional connection, is not science.
I'd say Mohammed certainly got one thing right in saying "there is no compulsion in religion." Either you appreciate it or you don't, like any other form of art. There's no sense in forcing it on people but there's also no sense in talking people out of it. Live and let live.
What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from?
[edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."
Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.
I disagree that this "movement" is aggressive. It is only perceived as aggressive because people are not used to having their religion publicly questioned, and held to the same standards of rational scrutiny as other products of human thought. I also disagree that it is "probably" anti-theist. The "new atheists" sometimes ridicule theists, but concede that merely believing in a personal god is fairly harmless in itself. I think they are definitely anti-dogma.
I was using 'aggressive' from the perspective of those using the term 'new atheist' - should've been more clear on that. I don't think 'new atheism' is 'aggressive', except to the extent that it's being vocal vs 'in the closet' year ago.
Rational, literal, dead religion is often harmful but mystical, experiential, living religion is quite the opposite.
However, I also believe it is not true.
Point being, say no to monoculture, say yes to having interesting caring people who enrich those around them.
Secondly, at its core Zen Buddhism is more philosophy than religion. I'm an atheist and can still agree with most of the concepts found in Zen Buddhism. It's not about worshipping gods but more about the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha who most Zen Buddhist regards as having no particular supernatural powers.
I would hope most non religious people have no bias against it and if they do I would recommend they give that a second thought.
I really enjoyed David Bently Hart's defense of Christianity a few years ago. Thick material, but it was fascinating to hear several popular versions of historical events challenged by somebody well-educated. ( Affiliate link: http://amzn.to/IupRsn )
But after thinking about your question a bit more, it occurs to me that you might mean reading religious authors writing about religion. The answer here is also yes, at least for me. A few years ago I completed an audio course in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition and it included several religious authors. This makes sense. Modern western intellectual thought has deep roots in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. Can't study the ancients without understanding what they believed and reading what they said in their own words.
I'll look around and see if I've written up anything.
It's not a religion. It doesn't describe a god, nor does it preclude one. It isn't even a philosophy, because it doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
It really is psychology. And as an old programmer from way back, who has always been cynical about life and laughed at the hypocrisy and dogma in religion, I can say straight up that Buddhism is the most intelligent thing I have ever encountered.
The worst offenders are self-help books. The moment the author starts rambling about spirituality, religion or other nonsense, it immediately destroys the author's credibility for me: how can I trust what someone is saying when they refuse to apply the rules of evidence to their world view? I'm forced to step back and evaluate what they are saying with more extreme scepticism, and in the end I'm left feeling like I may as well have just thought through the issues myself rather than reading the book (note, thinking for yourself is a good thing - but you don't need some dumb book filled with religious rubbish to give you permission to do it!)
Some of the most narrow-minded fools I've ever met have been atheists, and some of the most analytical have been religious. The reverse is also true. I'm reading a bit of confirmation bias in your observation.
His 'autoblography' is fairly enlightening as to his reasons and experience with it (it's about more than just that, though). You can read about it here if you wish: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=13918
For a non-religious person, death is an even sadder event than it is for the religious... because we view it as permanent.
Given an infinite time and an infinite universes, there becomes a small possibility of existence again after death.
(I'm Christian, so I admit that I may be a bit more optimistic than is warranted)