This thread was spurred by my thinking about these most recent terrorist attacks. I’ve heard a lot of people say things like: “This was not a religious act. No religion preaches hate. These people weren’t religious, they were extremists.” I’m not sure it impresses me as all that easy to separate religion from government from social norms, especially with groups who wish their government to reflect religious values. These terrorists (and ISIS) do seem to be religious - admittedly, a fanatically extreme form of one particular religion.
But that got me wondering - what does a believer in one true god think of someone who believes just as devoutly in a different one true god? Does the devout Catholic consider the devout Muslim misguided? Evil? Ignorant?
And what are the differences between folk at different ends of a continuum within a single faith. To me, both are equally misguided. How does the casual/tolerant believer persuade themself that their views are correct, and the more extreme views incorrect? Isn’t it a valid criticism of a particular religion (or all religions) that they can tend towards fanaticism? Or do we just cite Stalin and observe that our species has a propensity for assholishness and don’t need religion for that?
To me - a nonbeliever - all religions stroke me as, well, silly. And irrational, wasting time and effort on one supernatural while rejecting others. To me it only makes sense to say all religious beliefs are nonsense. I can’t figure out how I could get my mind around saying some unprovable things were right and others were wrong. I don’t say this to quell discussion, but instead, to be open about my mindset. While I will pose questions, I certainly will respect that many other people obviously feel and think quite differently than I.
I’m sure this has been done before, and may strike many of you as sophomoric, but I’d appreciate any thoughts any of you wanted to offer. These recent events have had these types of questions roiling around in my head more than usual.
I’m Jewish, so I don’t expect the rest of the world to believe like me. My religion is *my *thing, and other people have things of their own. It doesn’t really matter much - after all, they’re just different interpretations of the same principle. “All Gods are one God” and all that.
What’s important is that religion is here to serve humanity, not the other way around. You can have whatever religion you want, or no religion at all, so long as you’re a decent human being.
It seems that a standard response by someone from a slightly odd religion X being told that his religion is slightly odd is to say that more mainstream religion Y is just as weird if you look into into deeply enough. The nice thing about being an atheist is that I can always agree.
Christian here. I am largely in agreement with Alessan that all people should be mellow and friendly to each other, including those of different religions. However, I do not believe that all religions teach the same basic truths in different ways. I think that type of claim is factually wrong.
In general, I view organized religion as a shorthand for something that’s always personal. I don’t expect any individual person’s religion to match my own because of Godel’s Theorem as expressed by myself in my 11th grade Philosophy class*: “God is way too large to be completely understood by a human being; each person’s understanding is limited and different from that of everybody else”.
In particular, well, that requires getting into the particulars! I had a Jewish coworker with whom I had more in common than with my parents, religion-wise.
I swear, every time I have a real good Big Idea, it turns out someone else had it first.
Orthodox Jew, and basically I think adherents of other religions (or of none) are mistaken about the nature of metaphysical reality, not necessarily through any fault of their own. I don’t think they’re evil as a rule, it’s certainly possible to be a righteous human being without adopting the Jewish faith.
As an atheist, I often find people’s expressions of faith to be silly. All of the attention paid to the Pope, for example. I mean, I respect the guy & would probably find him to be a very level headed person. But, the security surrounding him and the mobs of people. I don’t understand it.
To the members of fringe groups, hatred and violence are expressions of faith. God commands (or requires) their actions. I think it’s silly. But, I haven’t spent a lifetime being indoctrinated.
The lay sociologist in me often wonders if religion didn’t exist, would people find some other implausible reason to hate & kill one another? For example, racism had a good run for a few thousand years & still isn’t quite over. Maybe we’d discriminate based on projected insecurities regarding our sexuality? Wait… we do that now as well.
Well, maybe society would all be more or less the same. And, that’s why I’m not too offended by religion. It’s silly. It’s destructive. But, we’re a silly, destructive species.
You don’t understand security surrounding a head of state? The death threats come from his religious job, but the security is part of the temporal one.
As a committed agnostic, I’m…pretty agnostic. Good people are going to be good, with or without any particular religion. Bad people are gonna be bad. Religions are spectacularly pliable, and people are just going to make them into whatever they want them to be. I’ve lived in Christian, Muslim and Atheist-Buddhist societies. They are more similar than they are different, and each is beautiful in its one way.
I do think religion is useful. It provides a vocabulary for expressing the ineffable, and a way to organizing one’s world view and focusing your energy. It’s a big complex metaphor that helps a person to make sense of the world. That’s nothing a person can’t do on their own, but religion provides a neat little ready-made package.
I’m not convinced that many “true believers” actually exist. I think most people secretly recognize that religion is more metaphorical than literal.
I believe all religions hold aspects of God at their core, a incomplete glimpse, which was filled in by people, formalized and ritualized, which is what a religion is. As such I don’t have a religion.
So all religions hold truths but also ‘enhancements’. They all can be filtered through a screen to get back out the original aspects of God, then only those aspects of God assembled together from many religions… The main filter I use is ‘God is Love’ which has many sub filters which makes that one up. Any message of a completely loving God is part of the original glimpse of God given by God to the founder or founders of that religion, everything else is the ‘enhancements’ and can be disregarded in the picture of God, but also respected and celebrated as a human based ritual.
The loving act of God in allowing religion to exist, IMHO is 1- provide a family for us, we need a common core of friends who hold like beliefs. 2: Teach a group of people the lesson they need to learn for their advancement and ultimate good and learning. 3: Simulate the relationship with God using a real person (such as a priest), so we learn how to have a relationship with God when the time comes. 4: to hold the truths of God among the people for us to find.
So to me other religions are fascinating to learn about, as you can get a better picture of God once you have the filters of love in place. And these people who have the religious tradition have brought that message of Love of God to me, giving me deeper understanding of God.
Thanks all for the well-intentioned comments. I wasn’t sure if GD was needed due to the religious nature.
I really have difficulty appreciating the apparently diffident nature of so many people’s beliefs. To me - and many nonbelievers - it is way too big of a deal to come up with some specific fairy tale to believe in, to just say, “Yeah, but anyone can interpret it however they want.”
Good catch. Yeah, I know that, but overlooked it given the differences in how that belief is practiced.
Thanks all for tolerating - and participating in - my confused pondering. I find so many aspects of religion so difficult to comprehend.
The thing that cracks me up … as posted a bit up thread … are things like, “I respect all religions in their own way, except, of course, for that wacky Scientology,” as though pretty much all religions don’t have an equal amount of wackiness at their core.
I suppose a true adherent to that philosophy would have to give equal credence to all religions including Scientology, the Church of the Subgenius and the Holy Alter of Batty’s Left Nut. But then again that doesn’t seem very practical. It’s just simpler to gather them all into the wacky pile.
One thing that should be mentioned is that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to worship the same god. They are collectively called Abrahamic religions. Of course they do it in such different ways that they may as well not. Another thing to recall is that all religions undergo phases of fanaticism. Think Christianity in 1492. “Kill them all, god will sort it out”. Islam at that time was not only relatively benign, but the world center of learning. Along with China, I guess. Now there are fanatical Jews in Israel, so we are not immune to this phenomenon.
Someone I once read summed it up as “My imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend.” My own attitude towards relgious belief is that in the benign phase, it is simply silly, but in the fanatic phase it is evil.
