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Comment by totallykvothe | Hacker News Reader

I think your comment highlights a fundamental difference in how most modern people understand religion from how our ancestors did.

In the pre-1970 Catholic mass, the priest faced the altar and spoke in Latin. The mass was changed in 1970 so the priest faces the people and speaks in the vernacular. The shift in understanding is clear. Religion used to be about God, and about our obligations to and relationships with Him. This was true across all religions. Now, most people think of it as primarily a community building exercise. This modern mindset is the only context in which your comment makes sense. Premodern catholics would be baffled at it

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I think it may be the case that your possession of a tidbit of trivia and your particular interpretation of changes/reforms that came after Vatican II is causing you to interpret my comment in a different light than it was meant.

I was actually envisioning something closer to the monastery that Alyosha was a part of in The Brothers Karamazov. It reminds me of the cliché admonishment of priests that pray in the streets (something that pops up in the Bhagavad Gita long before it does in the words of Jesus). It is worth pondering the lengths to which monks would go to prove their holiness was genuine and not the result of seeking attention.

It is true that at the time of my writing the comment, the top comment was a popular blogger extolling the benefits of clout that one might gain from writing a blog that gains some following. But in general, that is a feat most will never achieve. For the rest, they are more like the premodern adherents, doing the ritual for some other reason. The blog post we are discussing is literally about that kind of self-justification.

If you know you will not (or perhaps should not) blog to gain an audience, why should you do it?

In the spirit of the tangent because you know contemporary success is vanity and you should aim at what's eternal. The western tradition is filled with admonitions since the Greeks about these things-- Seneca's letter 7 "on crowds", everything written by Epicurus, the entire life of Diogenes... Montaigne "on glory"

>If you know you will not (or perhaps should not) blog to gain an audience, why should you do it?

I'm an atheist, so (knowing there are no gods) should I perform a ritual?

Is the ritual for the gods' benefit, or for mine?

Is the ritual for its own sake, something we do because we have always done it?

Why not? As an atheist you are probably best positioned to notice the ostensible pointlessness of it all and come to the conclusion that rituals are and have always been about the people doing them. It’s always been for our sake. Just like funerals are for the living to get closure, since the dead body at the center of proceedings can’t possibly give a damn.

I think, in the end, it comes down to hope—how hopeful you are that your blogs will turn out to be beneficial one day.

I can't answer those questions, but I have some comments. My question, which you quoted, was intended to be rhetorical and perhaps your questions are as well.

There is nothing exclusive about being atheist with regards to those questions. Belief in God (especially a deist or non-interventionist God) doesn't provide any clear answer. You may be thinking about a specific religion or spiritual dogma proposing answers to that question, but that would require some kind of revelation in the form of a prophet, inspired scripture, mystical/divine encounter, etc.

Another idea that pops to mind is again related to the Vedas, the oldest spiritual texts that I am aware of. I couldn't find the exact percentage but most commentaries I have read indicate that a significantly large portion of those scriptures are dedicated to ritual observance. Things like weddings, births, funerals, etc.

Some of the oldest archeological sites, like the notorious Göbekli Tepe, appear to be ritual sites. There is a lot of work to do there so I don't think our understanding is definitive at this point. But it does show how far back in our history that rituals appear to go (several thousands of years). It might even be worth pondering the question: what came first, ritual or a belief in god(s)?

So it is not really surprising that the shadow of ritual appears even within the most secular and rationalist modern contexts. What that means and how it should effect your own decisions is something I believe is a personal matter.

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