I think it was Hitchens who characterized the Abrahamic religions as celestial dictatorships, so I wouldn’t wish those to exist. Other religions focus on obtaining enlightenment, instead of say, improving material conditions on Earth, so I don’t find those helpful either, although they may have interesting contributions to make about human psychology, or how everything is actually a contradiction so the ultimate truth can’t be internally consistent, and other beliefs that go against traditional Western thinking.
It would be cool to sit up in heaven or be reincarnated, because I want to see the future history of humanity.
I believed for 38 years and no longer do. Life is so much better without belief. Sure, death being the end gets scarier just because I was taught a false sense of permanence, but life has become that much more precious and free.
To answer your OP, my wish is to believe in things that are true. That’s the whole purpose of science and the basis of rationality. There may be some emotional comfort in self-delusion and superstition, but it’s a shallow and fragile comfort that can be cruelly shattered by reality. We don’t need delusional superstition to help us deal with death, for instance. We came from nothing, and when we die we return to the same place from whence we came, which is neither painful nor fearsome.
Yes, there can be a valuable social aspect to organized religion. But I would argue first of all that it’s a divisive non-inclusive socialization; people of other faiths and beliefs are not part of it. And there are many secular social institutions that are more inclusive and not based on shared evangelism: schools, workplaces, clubs, social and professional gatherings, etc.
What I do believe in is the value of institutionalized social traditions that have been centered around religious institutions but have become secularized because they’re important milestones of life: christenings and the equivalent traditions of birth and adulthood that are common to many religions, marriages, funerals, and the like. I believe in them because they are symbolic markers that are important to the structure of society. There’s a very big difference between tradition and symbolism and literal belief in superstition.
Of course I do. Studies show that religious people are happier, healthier, they live longer, they are less likely to become addicted to alcohol and drugs, they have more stable marriages, they’re better able to recover from hardships, they’re less likely to commit crime, they’re more sociable, they’re less likely to cheat on their spouse, and they have better self-control overall.
The Scientific American thinks cultural values is the key to happiness. And of course, every time someone looks at these things, supposedly showing believers are more happier or has some other possible benefit than the non-religious, end up showing serious methodological flaws.
There is some evidence to show that non-religious people are not as happy living in religious societies, but religious people are happy living in religious and non-religious societies. Some think that is attributed to how religious people make non-religious people feel. Perhaps they are the cause? Atheists are also one of the least-liked groups. Think that distinction is deserved? Who do you think is the cause of that?
I agree with most of what you’ve said, though to me death is LESS scary. It’s no longer a metaphysical threshold; it’s just part of the natural cycle of life. I worry about my legacy and the well-being of my family if I come to a premature end, but I don’t worry about any gnashing of teeth.
I am always suspicious of the cause-and-effect relationship between religiosity and quality of life measures. I tend to think they are both related to social and cognitive skills as opposed to religious faith being a wellspring of health and happiness.
One relatively minor incident stands out where I did have some regret over not being a Christian of a certain stripe. I visited London in September, and one of the sites I enjoyed the most was Westminster Abbey. One small portion of the church, The Shrine of St. Edward the Confessor, is off-limits unless you’re going up with a priest for prayers. I would have loved to have seen it - I have an MA in religious history - but my personal integrity did not allow me to fake it. So, that’s one site I did not get to see. Pity.
Every hour or so, a priest would take a group of laity into the shrine to pray. Otherwise, the shrine is off limits, ostensibly due to its fragile condition.
Unless you have a subscription to SA, you have to get it piecemeal, like I did. Even the free content on their cite, I believe still charges if you want to read the entire article by Upton.
Speckhardt of the AHA states that ones happiness usually correlates to how well-connected a person is to others. It can be a religious setting, but so can other interests of like-minded individuals which is similar to what SA uncovered.
A link that is promoting a book I have yet to read, but weighs in on the happiness factor.
Search engines on atheists not being very trusted are easy enough to find, as are US prison populations.
I have a friend from Victoria who went on an exchange posting to Colorado Springs to primarily work with the USAF. He said that Monday morning conversations frequently centred around what one did for church on Sunday, and it seemed especially important that your immediate boss heard it. He was completely gobsmacked. Need I add that in the Canadian Forces you would be looked upon askance if you randomly brought up churchgoing into the conversation?
I remember being quite depressed about something once and my stepmother said “everything happens for a reason.” I’ve thought over the years how comforting it must be to believe that. And I’m sure there are social aspects to belonging to a church that non-believers don’t have. So I can see aspects of the religious experience that would be beneficial to to those who believe in it, but I don’t know if that rises to the level of wishing I believed.
TVTropes has a flip-side to this. As they tell it, some writers characterize Batman’s religious beliefs as a blend of atheism and maltheism. Specifically, “When I finally meet God, He’d better have a really good explanation for all this crap.”
That means that my suffering, and the suffering of others, was a planned event. That our suffering is not as important as this goal that we are unaware of and unable to gain from. Maybe if I knew the reason, then I would volunteer to go through this pain in order to accomplish it, but I have no idea. If the reason for my suffering is to create conditions for others to suffer more, then it is happening for a reason, just not one that I would find any sort of comfort in.
People do altruistic things all the time, like volunteer work or giving money to charity. In those cases we can see how our sacrifices lead to something better. If someone really believed that their hardships would lead to something better, even if the mechanism by which that would happen was concealed, I can see how that belief would make them feel better. I think that’s why they call it ‘faith’.
It’s not a faith I share, though. And yeah, the whole “God works in mysterious ways” thing always strikes me as a cop out. But for those who believe, I don’t know that I’m in a position to say they’re wrong.
Thanks for the responses. (never heard “laity” before but now I know.)
While this opinion piece makes the argument for religious happiness, there’s also this:
Actually the following Speckhardt quote seemed to resonate with me the most:
Some interesting quotes, here:
This last quote I’m a little dubious of. Correct me if I wrong, but isn’t there supposed to be accommodation and acceptance in religions? Is this what you mean by not “trusting” atheists, then?
And sure, you could argue that I was cherry-picking those quotes from articles that otherwise did maintain happiness associated with religion. However - this data struck as more speculative than empirical.
That wasn’t the gist of that piece, as one of the quoted parts you got from the article of SA demonstrated, nonreligious people can do, and are doing just as well, particularly in non-religious societies. It mentions the other factors that also played a role in their happiness.
If you simply type in “atheists not trusted in America” in a DuckDuckGo search engine, or the search engine of your choosing, you’ll get the poll numbers that I was referring too. The first one coming from the Scientific American.
Nothing wrong with that. Are you familiar with Martin Gardner?
With faith comes a sense of comfort and relief, “knowing” that a deity is shielding you from harm, never giving you more than you can handle, waiting to embrace you in the afterlife.
But the tradeoff to faith is anxiety, guilt, and cognitive dissonance. Don’t feel like going to church? Now you have to rationalize that. Do some raunchy fornicating during Spring Break? Now you have to deal with nagging guilt that God is judging you. Find yourself questioning whether prayer works or whether Hell is compatible with a loving God or whether its logically sound to ascribe divine wisdom in text penned by primitive patriarchs? Well, now you have to mentally slap yourself back into an unquestioning, child-like state, lest you ask yourself too many questions that causes your faith to crumble.
In the end, I feel there are more negatives to faith than positives. So I perfectly okay with not believing.
