![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWhere do I stand religiously? Still atheist, about like you'd probably expect. Although more thoughts in a follow-up post.
Is there any particular religion I'm not? I think that's a question which is interesting in potentially several different ways.
I generally expect a religion to be something like "some combination of a culture, a belief system about the supernatural, and a moral framework".
Culture-wise, I'm very much english and vaguely CoE. I do Christmas, and Easter, and other english religious-instigated festivals, and I'd happily do other ones instead if I lived in a culture where that was normal, but it would feel very strange not to do ANYTHING for Xmas. I went to CoE things with school sometimes, and learned hymns and so on, and I hadn't realised how much I'd subconsciously absorbed how I expected religious services to work until I actively compared notes with people who had absorbed _different_ expectations: not just the obvious things, as the things I didn't even think to question (of course you bury people in the churchyard, right?)
And I'm also sopping up a steady trickle of Jewish culture from Rachel and Rachel's friends, and I really value having the experience of another culture, although I doubt I'd get to the point where it would displace my background as my primary religious-derived culture (unless I specifically made an effort to do so).
So in one sense, you might say my atheism is "CoE with the God taken out", although that's not really fair to CoE, nor to people who don't believe in God but come from different cultural traditions.
The other way of posing the question is, what, specifically, don't I believe? Well, basically, "anything supernatural" (where supernatural means something roughly like "outside how we expect physics to work",but you probably know what I mean better than I can describe). Which was always presented to me as a defining feature of religion. With emphasis on "and therefore you should obey this set of rules even if they seem horrible". That's what I'm atheist against, that's what I'm not. Although, my terminology may not be right, because that's the background I'm coming from, but I encounter more religious people for whom that is a small or non-existent part of their religion.
Is there any particular religion I'm not? I think that's a question which is interesting in potentially several different ways.
I generally expect a religion to be something like "some combination of a culture, a belief system about the supernatural, and a moral framework".
Culture-wise, I'm very much english and vaguely CoE. I do Christmas, and Easter, and other english religious-instigated festivals, and I'd happily do other ones instead if I lived in a culture where that was normal, but it would feel very strange not to do ANYTHING for Xmas. I went to CoE things with school sometimes, and learned hymns and so on, and I hadn't realised how much I'd subconsciously absorbed how I expected religious services to work until I actively compared notes with people who had absorbed _different_ expectations: not just the obvious things, as the things I didn't even think to question (of course you bury people in the churchyard, right?)
And I'm also sopping up a steady trickle of Jewish culture from Rachel and Rachel's friends, and I really value having the experience of another culture, although I doubt I'd get to the point where it would displace my background as my primary religious-derived culture (unless I specifically made an effort to do so).
So in one sense, you might say my atheism is "CoE with the God taken out", although that's not really fair to CoE, nor to people who don't believe in God but come from different cultural traditions.
The other way of posing the question is, what, specifically, don't I believe? Well, basically, "anything supernatural" (where supernatural means something roughly like "outside how we expect physics to work",but you probably know what I mean better than I can describe). Which was always presented to me as a defining feature of religion. With emphasis on "and therefore you should obey this set of rules even if they seem horrible". That's what I'm atheist against, that's what I'm not. Although, my terminology may not be right, because that's the background I'm coming from, but I encounter more religious people for whom that is a small or non-existent part of their religion.
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-11 12:01 am (UTC)You said "I particularly dislike believing in God in a way that has effects that I see as harmful". That suggested to me that you were averse to faith that has harmful effects, even if it also has beneficial ones?
I know my faith has had harmful effects. But if viewed overall in a utilitarian fashion… actually, I have to discount the benefits for my immortal soul or we end up with Pascal's Wager. Simply in terms of how I live my daily life, the net utility is considerable.
Yes, obviously, never going to the doctor is silly. (cf the modern parable of the drowning man) Are you actually saying "I'm scared of becoming religious because if I do I'll stop going to the doctor", though? I'd assume not.
I don't think you're rejecting religious messages out of contrariness. Rejecting them because you're "scared you can't live up to" them is much more what I assumed, even before you used the phrase yourself.
do you want to ask more?
I'll ask this: why is that scary? What's scary about it?
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-12 11:28 am (UTC)The same reasons everyone puts things off! I'm scared to act on my political opinions because I'm not certain I'm right. I'm scared to look for a better job (with indirect benefits on my life) because I might end up with a worse job. I'm scared to be more generous because it might never be enough, and I might drain myself dry trying and failing to live up to an impossible ideal. I'm scared to even think about some of the things I should do, because I'm scared to contemplate how BIG the set of things is, that I should do but haven't lived up to.
But I think most people have things like that all the time! Religious or not. No-one lives up to their perfect ideals all the time. Whether I'm better than average or worse than average, I have been improving and striving to improve further.
I don't think you're rejecting religious messages out of contrariness.
OK. If you're advocating "I should do more of the things I agree I should do, but haven't been living up to", then I agree with that, whether you call it God or not. Yay for agreement.
But in this line of questioning we keep seeming to have come back to the idea of God telling me to do things I DON'T agree with (which I am willing to consider on a case-by-case basis, but not just automatically adopt). I had the impression you were pushing for something more like that?
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-12 07:45 pm (UTC)Congratulations — your first paragraph is articulating things that, before I was Christian, I felt as a gnawing worry deep inside without being able to articulate or acknowledge.
So I'm not sure most people do have things like that all the time. At any rate, not to that extent, not consciously like you do. My own experience is that for many years I was relatively contented with my life, not aware of anything obviously awry, then went through a couple of years of searching and disquiet. Now, I acknowledge and embarace doubts like you describe, without being scared of them. (Well, not much, and not often.)
I needed God's grace to see those deep flaws in myself. But at the same time God's love and forgiveness support me through that process. I'm very grateful it happened, is happening, like that for me; I can see how it would have been scary to see them without!
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-12 08:20 pm (UTC)I'm not sure most people do have things like that all the time.
I didn't necessarily mean they were conscious of them, but that most people have things they intend to do one day, but never get round to, often because there's something they're scared of but don't realise.
Like, from my point of view, recognising those sorts of things and facing and putting to rest those fears is a worthwhile sort of (non-supernatual) spiritual growth people come to in various ways: by introspection, by therapy, by pep talks from their parents, by mentoring from a religious or cultural leader, by self-help books, by a sense of God. I'm aware you would disagree -- presumably you would say that God is uniquely qualified to help us and the other things that help are imperfect reflections of that?
But I'm worried you don't realise how people can have different problems to you, that you assume most people have the same problems you had, but just need help to realise it, and that only the same path that helped you can help them. And I'm not sure that's true...
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-12 09:37 pm (UTC)Nope — I'd say God is uniquely qualified to help us and the other things are manifestations of His grace and love, whether people acknowledge that or not.
I mean, you talk of "(non-supernatual) spiritual growth", but I'm not clear what that means. For non-supernatural spiritual growth, don't you have to have a non-supernatural spirit? What's one of those? To put it another way, can one of Google's data centres exhibit spiritual growth?
Maybe a useful approximation is that God is to spirit as Universe is to brain. We ought to be grateful that by His grace we are blessed with spiritual growth, but then again we ought to be grateful we were created at all, so…
I know full well that in some cases I have different problems from other people, whereas in other cases I have the same problems but don't acknowledge this. It's often really difficult to tell those cases apart.
I don't (well, try not to) assume other people have the same problems as me. But I do assume everyone has that difficulty.
Re: God and morality
Date: 2014-12-12 11:42 pm (UTC)Maybe spiritual growth isn't the right word. I'm not even sure "supernatural" is. I think, there's nothing supernatural, no soul, no spirit, that exists in any way other than "the way neurons and hormones and physical brain bits are connected together". But that knowing the brain obeys the laws of physics doesn't tell you everything you need to know about it, the implications of the way it's connected are really complicated even though ultimately deterministic (or conceivably random, if you admit quantum).
So by "spiritual growth" I meant the sort of thing I describe above of realising where I was being held back from things by being scared; of general moral health and self-awareness. But purely as a "improve the mind in conscious and subconscious ways", not as "spirit" as a separate supernatural substance. I'm not sure if that's more or less similar to the ways people would describe it if they believe in a soul additional to a mind...
I don't (well, try not to) assume other people have the same problems as me. But I do assume everyone has that difficulty.
OK, then we may be on the same page after all. Several times it seemed you were trying to talk round to a mistake you were scared I was making, which is always possible, but I didn't think I was! :) But maybe you actually weren't doing that deliberately.
The leap of faith
Date: 2014-12-12 08:26 pm (UTC)Mmm. Or, looking back to the final paragraph of the posting itself, you said that you perceived a defining feature of religion to be the emphasis on "and therefore you should obey this set of rules even if they seem horrible".
I expect you're familiar with the tale of Abraham and Isaac, but I wonder what you make of it.
I assume that "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." is a pretty stark example of an instruction from God which seems horrible? It seems horrible to me.
It turns out — spoilers — that it was a test. Once Abraham had demonstrated his willingness to comply he found he didn't have to after all.
So the paradox is that there is, indeed, an emphasis on obedience to God even if He says to do something which seems horrible, while at the same time one has to be very wary of doing something which seems horrible in the belief that God wills it.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is by modern standards a crude encapsulation of that paradox. Certainly, one can't make God a promise to do whatever He says with fingers crossed, with a "but only on the understanding that you're not going to ask me to do anything horrible" qualification. Trying to pull the wool over the eyes of an omniscient being is the epitome of foolishness; it simply won't work.
People talk of the "fear of God" and, for the most part, it refers more to respect and submission than actually being frightened. But the actual commitment really is a bit frightening.
Re: The leap of faith
Date: 2014-12-12 09:21 pm (UTC)Looking back at that paragraph, I think I might not have expressed it as accurately as I could have.
The primary answer to what I didn't believe is "anything supernatural". And my background meant that I tend to view that in a way that has me self-identify as an atheist, but if my background was different, I might have come to a similar opinion in a different way. Eg. if I was Jewish, I might have revolted against the religion and identified as atheist if I belonged to a community which I had really bad experiences with; or I might have embraced the religion while rejecting the supernatural, if I really enjoyed the culture and community. And either way, my theological opinion on God might be the same, but one way I might say "atheist" and the other "jewish, who happens to not believe in god". Or other cultures which don't believe in god but don't expect that to be a central aspect of people's identity.
Likewise, I grew up with a background idea of religions that do say "and therefore you should obey this set of rules even if they seem horrible". And I still think that's a problem many religious communities and denominations are prone to -- but I'm aware that there are others who aren't, who might actually be much more similar to my beliefs than I used to realise, even if they're described in a different way.
So I was sort of hedging with tenses -- my background was in rejecting those beliefs, but that only partially represents my current opinions.
Abraham and Isaac, but I wonder what you make of it.
I could talk for hours about it, and about the differences in the way the story is told between the different abrahamic religions :)
For the purposes of this conversation, the interpretation I would offer is that if I trusted someone enough, based on their previous superlative morals and good sense, and that I'd often followed their advice and it turned out well even when I wasn't sure why, and they told me there was a really really really good reason to kill a child but they couldn't tell me why... I would at least consider that they might be right. In the real world, I would have to weigh up "there really is a good reason they can't tell me" or "they've suddenly developed intense delusions", and both are really unlikely, but I'd have to decide which is MORE likely on the spot. There are indications of both.
My most charitable interpretation of the abraham story is like that: we're supposed to assume that Abraham had sufficient reason to trust God it was for the best somehow. I think that's a Christian-ish interpretation, but I think many Christians/Jews/Muslims might disagree.
Other ideas might be like you mentioned in another comment, that maybe at the time, a child was seen as much more disposable... But I don't really like that better. I can actually consider, how much is it an artifact of our culture that we think killing people is bad? But I don't really want to drop that moral axiom! :)
From that interpretation, I'd say, the story sort of makes sense, but it implicitly relies on already having grown to trust God, not just blindly doing things because you're told to.
Another perspective might be much less moralistic -- that it's not a matter of good or bad, but that the God of that story needed followers who were dedicated to him, and the followers needed the patronage of God, so a bargain was struck... That makes sense as a story, but doesn't really seem to hold God up as a source of morality, compassion, justice, etc as Christian theology normally suggests?
So the paradox is that
I guess, I'm not really seeing it as a paradox. If I have some reason to think that actually, God knows better than me, even if it looks bad to me, then it makes sense to do what He says.
If you DON'T have a good reason to think that God knows better, then DO you thnk you should obey? Why SHOULD you obey? What reason is there for obeying? My argument would be, "well, if there isn't a good reason, you shouldn't".
You could potentially look at historical examples. I think you'd find lots of people doing things that seemed potentially morally correct but potentially unwise for religious reasons when other people weren't brave enough. That's a good indication it might be a good time to follow what you think is what's God's telling you. But there's lots of examples of people doing things that seemed horrific because they thought God told them to -- and we mostly think they WERE horrific. Are there examples where someone did something that seemed horrific but was actually right, because God told them to? Maybe some, but it doesn't seem common to me...
To me, the Abraham story is an aspect of conformity. Stories saying "obey" are really good as forcing communities to stay together. Which is sometimes necessary for survival in adverse conditions. But has serious downsides, like being dogmatic and hurting people who don't fit. Lots of communities have been quite tenacious by being quite devoted to blind obedience -- but it seems generally harmful to me...
But the actual commitment really is a bit frightening.
Yeah... I guess where I am is, if there was something which I thought was PROBABLY good, but I wasn't sure and wasn't fully in control over, would I pledge obedience? Maybe, but it would definitely be scary. But currently, I'm not even sure what pledging obedience to God would mean, and I don't see any reason I should, and I ESPECIALLY don't see any reason I would pledge to obey even if it seemed immoral. Why would that be a good idea? I don't know if it will come up, but in general, planning to NOT do immoral things seems better...?
Re: The leap of faith
Date: 2014-12-12 10:31 pm (UTC)If so, God's actual commandment to Abraham was different in nuance: it was to be the means of Isaac's death.
Now, some people take from that a message of "there's no point arguing with an onmipotent deity", which I feel misses the point slightly. At one level, one could argue with an omnipotent deity on principle. At another, however, if one believes that God made us able to argue with Him, it's worth considering why He did that. And, indeed, why He let us have a sense of right and wrong.
wasn't fully in control over
Yeah, that. I managed to get as far as believing in God without stumbling, but giving up control to God was much more difficult. Work in progress, even.
Re: The leap of faith
Date: 2014-12-12 11:35 pm (UTC)Interesting question, but I'm not sure how to answer. The historical Abraham? I doubt the story happened as described at all. According to the people who originally told that story? I assumed they didn't have a modern concept of God as infinitely omnipotent. According to a Christian understanding? I guess so, but I don't know how you reconcile most of the old testament stories with a God as omnipotent as commonly considered by Christian theology, to me they don't really fit.
Regardless, I think most stories like this implicitly admit that even if God could change the world however He wanted, he usually doesn't so we should act as if our actions have consequences.
one could argue with an omnipotent deity on principle
Indeed, there are lots of examples in the old testament :)
if one believes that God made us able to argue with Him, it's worth considering why He did that. And, indeed, why He let us have a sense of right and wrong.
Yeah. That's about my position, without believing that there was a God who made us. My morality isn't perfect, but it's the best guide I've got at the moment (including, sometimes the right thing to do being deferring to someone else's judgement, if there's a good reason to).
giving up control to God was much more difficult. Work in progress, even.
I imagine it's normal that it's an ongoing ambition, not a prerequisite. And hopefully that it's good for you.