ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

Churches, like governments, or sodalities, or sewing circles, can become corrupted. With certain twists, most of the arguments made here against "religion" could as easily be made against "politics".

I think that your ideal notion of what a christian church should be happens more as an aberration than a rule in the history of the churches.

I would like to see the heinous doings of this corrupted sewing circle.

Gukbe: corrupted governments are far far more numerous than anything even approaching an ideal government, too. (shrugs)

Abbbottt: malicious gossip and backbiting?

1) Maybe you should read the book and see the guy's research before attempting to counter it with "well, I think..." - it's available free to download, very easy to find.

2) The Church of England (where the bulk of my experiences took place) is hardly a "mom and pop indie record shop" - it's a worldwide religion with over 77 million members.

well of course, and often those corrupted governments went hand in hand with the corrupted church. that doesn't make it any better though, does it? xpost

If every church was more like the Church of England, we'd be in a pretty okay place tbh.

Gukbe: corrupted governments are far far more numerous than anything even approaching an ideal government, too. (shrugs)

This is true. Which is why I'd like to limit the corrupting factors as much as possible. Religion is one of them. Not like I'm ever going to get my wish, so can't I just be permitted to be cranky about it?

1) Maybe you should read the book and see the guy's research before attempting to counter it with "well, I think..." - it's available free to download, very easy to find.

That's fine, but still, life is a lot more goddamned complicated than just "change the radio station." For realz.

Make it better? Of course not! We are in complete agreement when it comes to most of your specifics. It is when one generalizes from the corruptions of religion to condemn religion as wholly corrupt and without value that I fall to the other side.

religion is so entrenched in politics, it'd be hard to separate out what is uniquely objectionable about politics. I suppose reasonable polite people disagreeing could lead to inaction, where religious fiat would be more effective governance.

"I would like to see the heinous doings of this corrupted sewing circle."
me too! this PBS special on quaker industry painted the sewing activiites as pretty DIY dischord records.

It is kinda funny that in a discussion of things as complicated as human behavior and religion you're resorting to THIS BOOK! PROVEN BY STATISTICS!

xp I do not think "religion" is wholly corrupt nor have I ever said so.

"I would like to see the heinous doings of this corrupted sewing circle."

bad thread

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/photographs/hro/834af0fc.jpg

It seems pretty obvious to me that several of the self-identified atheists posting here want desperately to confine religion to the publically professed doctrines of certain churches, because these doctrines are easy targets, whereas approaching religion as a personal faith requires them to discover what each person's religious faith actually is and to engage with it on its own terms. This is just not as fun or easy as slagging off on fundies.

So do you think it's unfair to criticize the actions and policies of major political parties because the people who make up those parties have millions of different personal, nuanced political beliefs?

So, when we discuss religion, you consider that we are ipso facto discussing churches as institutions and their effect on society?

I think when I'm talking about churches as institutions and their effect on society, it would be nice if the religious didn't try to change the subject off into the realm of personal belief and assume that invalidates any and all criticism.

But the effects of all the extant personal faiths has still more effect on society, in that they form a larger set of ideas, of which the other is a smaller subset. Some of those effects are decidedly quite positive. by leaving them out of the discussion, you are excluding a valid part of what you say concerns you.

Personally I don't see anything of value in religion that can't be provided in a secular way so that doesn't concern me.

If I had an iPad I would totally read this Authoritarians book.

I do not think "religion" is wholly corrupt nor have I ever said so.

Phil, when a couple of lines ago you identified "religion" as a "corrupting factor" in governance, apparently you misspoke yourself and meant to say something like "corrupted religion". Again, religion is the larger set, and should not be identified solely with one of its subsets. This misstatement of yours is probably just due to a certain habit of speech and thought you can clarify in the future.

Phil D, I give up. It feels really pointless talking to someone who has already made their mind up and will not even read anything that suggests another way.

You use vast over simplifications and I try to tell you "things are more complicated than that..." and you shrug that off.

I try to explain something in a metaphor which is necessarily a simplification, and you resort to "things are more complicated than that."

If you want to read some research and make up your own mind, go ahead. If you just want to decide that you know best, then you are actually starting to sound a *lot* like the people you claim to despise.

Personally I don't see anything of value in religion that can't be provided in a secular way so that doesn't concern me.

If a value comes through the avenue of religion or of secularism, it is still of value. Please consider the idea that for some people, the avenue of religion is more open and accessible than the secular one, and if you were to try to eliminate it, you might fall prey to the law of unintended consequences.

pretty sure Christianity will be dead and gone in 500 years anyway. not sure this conversation really matters.

Thank goodness, we can all rest easy now.

what? where did this 500 years figure come from? not some bible code i hope.

random number. somewhere around then, if not before.

The Church of England (where the bulk of my experiences took place) is hardly a "mom and pop indie record shop" - it's a worldwide religion with over 77 million members.

Well not exactly the indie record store, but we're talking 77 million Anglicans vs. 1.2 billion Catholics. If the Vatican were Walmart with $400 billion a year in revenues, the CofE would make around $27 billion a year which a little more than half of the revenues of #186 on the list of the biggest corporations in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue
So maybe it's more like an Apple or something?

i mean why is Xianity going to die out within 500 years. this doesn't have anything to do with singularity, does it?

re: church of england, what exactly is the monarchy's role there besides being the titular head?

DJ

i swear i saw footage of prince charles scratching decks in jamaica. it was obviously for a goof but he seemed pretty natural at it.

So maybe it's more like an Apple or something?

I HATE APPLE?

Prince Charles would make a terrible DJ, he'd spin all early disco and nothing after about '76. I mean, it'd be alright, but that's all he'd do and then he'd keep making sniffy speeches attacking Frankie Knuckles and hip-hop.

also has terrible ryhythm according to geldof's autobiography

Phil, when a couple of lines ago you identified "religion" as a "corrupting factor" in governance, apparently you misspoke yourself and meant to say something like "corrupted religion". Again, religion is the larger set, and should not be identified solely with one of its subsets. This misstatement of yours is probably just due to a certain habit of speech and thought you can clarify in the future.

No, because I can believe that religion as an institution in the public sphere is a corrupting factor in governance without believing that religion as practiced in the private sphere is at all corrupt. If you want to commune privately with your idea of the infinite, fine, no skin off my back. If you want government to be a certain way -- whatever way that is! even if it's something I like! -- because God Told Us To, I have a real problem with that.

But screw you and your condescension anyway JFTR.

You use vast over simplifications and I try to tell you "things are more complicated than that..." and you shrug that off.

When did I do this? I have repeatedly acknowledged that things are complicated. Again and again and again. I mean, if I did that, quote me, don't just keep accusing me of shit! Because you are, quite simply, wrong. I have not "shrugged off" anything.

I try to explain something in a metaphor which is necessarily a simplification, and you resort to "things are more complicated than that."

Because they are!

I was pointing out the irony of you trying to resort to science and statistics to prove something regarding religion, an endeavor -- i.e., "proof" -- that you assured us above was fruitless. It's funny, and I'm truly sorry if you don't get it.

Yeah, I don't get that. There's a word of difference to me between an institution being a "corrupting factor" in some part of our lives and being "completely corrupt". And neither of those things have much to do with an institution's value either IMO. There are corrupt institutions that are very valuable to society and totally innocent institutions that are useless.

oops, that was a 3x xpost

The only valuable institutions are those that serve to venerate God and bring awareness of His Word to all of Creation.

If you want government to be a certain way -- whatever way that is! even if it's something I like! -- because God Told Us To, I have a real problem with that.

yes! and it's not just the atheists/agnostics who have a right to feel pissed about this, but also people of other faiths than those imposing these changes.

TBQH I cannot for the life of me figure out why you're so pissed off at me, when you've engaged repeatedly in all the things you're actually accusing me of doing. (Oversimplifying, misstating my positions, dismissing my experiences as either not valid or nonexistent, etc.) Do you want me to simply concede all your arguments, such as they are? Because I'm not going to do that, nor am I going to concede in advance that one particular book -- be it the Bible or The Authoritarians -- proves anything at all. Making the reading of one particular book, whatever it is, a condition of discussing Politics And Religion On The Ground In America 2010 -- when I and others both religious and otherwise actually live it every day -- is the kind of dogmatic approach I, and I hope you, actually oppose.

I'm sorry that the thread you started to discuss the book didn't get any love, but that's not my problem. Doesn't give you the authority (<----NOTE, A JOKE HA HA) to turn this thread into a referendum on the damned book.

verily, men's hearts are full of Wickedness

There is no god, but in the future a state equivalent to God might be achieved. Technology will have advanced the New Society to a level beyond current comprehension.

i like where this thread is going

yeah, playstation 4 is gonna kick ass.

xpost

http://nazareneblogs.org/kpprobst/files/2010/07/oopinin.jpg

Lol, I guess this is the debating style that has endeared Christianity to so many of you.

But screw you and your condescension anyway JFTR.

I like a man who speaks his mind.

If we're looking for consensus, though, this thread is actually pretty good. I think everyone here, regardless of faith or lack thereof, believes that secularism is a goal we wish to see fulfilled in our societies, right? If that is the case (and sorry if I forgot someone who doesn't wish this), is that all the strong atheists here want? Or would you like to be actively dissuading people from religious beliefs? Because if we do just want secularism, then as far as the social or policy implications of faith we're all on the same page.

How to achieve this is another question. Ironically, I think that Britain, while less religious as a whole, will have a more complicated job ensuring that the state plays no role in religious life. This is, of course, because of the monarchy and it's peculiar relationship with the established church. Because the church, the monarchy, and therefore the state are constitutionally entangled it's hard to see a way to disentangle them without widespread republican reforms.

Maybe if Labour had pushed through on their promises to replace the House of Lords we would have seen the momentum carry through to the elimination of the monarchy (I doubt it, actually), but I think we might have missed the chance on reform for this generation - other concerns are too pressing for constitutional change to occur.

America, at least, has a tradition of secularism (even if large parts of the population won't admit that) and I do sometimes find myself wondering if the religious right is something of a paper tiger. Either way, people do seem to be getting more confident about standing up for their right to live without interference from someone else's religious beliefs, and I see no reason why this tendency shouldn't continue to grow. Secularism in America could occur now, if it was anyone's priority, with the passing of some tax reforms, guarantees of educational independence etc. Admittedly a lot of these problems are hampered by ideas about states' rights, and I don't expect them to happen anytime soon, but I really don't see much cause for pessimism in regard to secular reform. Obviously my ignorance of the USA will show through here, and hopefully someone can help me understand the hindrances to reform a bit better.

But I do think the idea of State protection of religious sensibilities is dying out, and will continue to do so. This is probably why some activist religious groups have got 'whatever religious undergarments they wear' in a twist of late. It's important to recognize how much we all agree on this - politically if not personally. As I said upthread, I think religions lose out by being complicit in the State too.

Anyway, tl:dr, I know, I know - I'm bored and haven't slept, sorry.

I do basically share the goal, with what I think is the caveat that I think our societies have more or less got the balance right already. I wouldn't want to see their ethical foundations razed on principle (if for no other reason than that those foundations have served well enough to get us here in the first place), any more than I would wish to see religious principles explicitly reintroduced and bolstered as a basis for public life.

In the UK it works because the established church is vague and unobtrusive and hasn't relied on coercion for a very long time, instead serving essentially the same function as the monarchy does legally - though how well it can continue to be so and function faced with more aggressive assertions of faith/faithlessness is tricky, as one sees with various freedom of speech issues recently. In the US it seems to function because people do understand, value and respect the public/private divide, whatever shouty types may say - in the ground zero mosque furore, the wild divergence in poll results between 'should they build there?' and 'do they have the right to build there?' is revealing to me at least.

http://www.pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedImages/Topics/Belief_and_Practices/religious-knowledge-01.png

what's the point of studying other, inferior, indisputed truths, tbf

Oh man, drunken, ill-advised revive.

Protestant childhood, agnostic atheist adolescence/young adulthood, sort of actively seeking, but kinda sad in way that I didn't expect that I would be, that I'll probably land back on agnosticism or some vague deism.

From ages 5-10 I attended a non-denominational Christian school in SE Ohio. I was sent there primarily, I'm told, because I was too scattered and weird as a kindergartener at public school. But also because my parents wanted me to have exposure to Christianity a. as an important part of my culture, b. as something they both had grown up in. My mom had a religious upbringing that seems to have been mostly edifying. She was raised in a Baptist church that has since (it's a source of no small pride on my maternal family's side) formally broken with the Southern Baptist Convention. She got radicalized at Penn, traveled west, lived in a bogus ashram, and all that, but Christianity was a source of succor, and her conception of Jesus most certainly informed her passion for social justice. My mom's side of the family has always seemed to me temperamentally inclined to secularism. Religion was there, but it never seemed focused, especially, on sin or prescription. When I went to this school, we attended a Methodist church. My memories are all of me and my mother attending alone, though I don't know if this is accurate. My experience at the school was similarly good. Instances of unkindness between were noticed and vocally addressed by teachers/administrators and discussed. I don't remember much of an emphasis on guilt or shame (though that may have had a lot to do with my young age). I remember some teachers individually saying some shit that didn't jibe, like that I was supposed to "love Jesus even more than my parents." And I thought God was a fucking dick for turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. One teacher revised the history of life on earth as recorded in our science book and shit like that, but on the other hand no one really freaked out about my speculation that the 6 days of creation weren't days as we understand them. As formative religious experiences go, not bad. When I was 11, my dad had a mental breakdown, we moved, and I stopped being Christian or believing in God, though at the time those things didn't appear so obviously connected. (And maybe they weren't. I think just being a thoughtful kid and hitting puberty can induce these changes.) I remember having a personal conversation with Jesus at some point during a boring car ride where I asked Him into my heart (some evangelical thing I guess I had picked up at my school) and failing to feel a transformation, and the whole implausible thing just sort of gently falling away.

The particular flavor of my dad's paranoid schizophrenia (and I think the particular flavor IS crucial, despite what American psychiatry might say) focused a lot around ideas of condemnation and hell. He was CONVINCED he was going to hell and would wail and scream in the house. He usually had a sense of humor and insight into his psychosis, which made it bearable for me as a kid (and extremely difficult as an adult as I imagine what suffering that insight might have entailed). Oh, Dad's just being wacky and indulging in his hell fantasies again...Why is there a skull and cross-bones on the calendar? Oh, Dad's just worked out some elaborate mathematical personal doom prediction based on the Nazi occult... My theory now is that his illness collaborated with his obsession with Nazi Germany, his fire-and-brimstone Christian upbringing, and his very ungrounded and emotionally immature attempts to study Indian philosophy, to create his particular hell. Point being it all colored my idea of what it could mean to be religious. I hadn't been raised or taught that way, but my dad's experience showed that religiosity was a dreadful seizure to be avoided. I had/have periodic fears of an unwanted religious epiphany in the exact same way that I fear losing my mind. An annihilation of self, a painful removal from the world. I felt like for me, obviously tainted with my dad's genetic material, it would always have to be an all-or-nothing. I resented people who could be Christian in a way that I erroneously deemed as "casual," that is not mystic, nor flagellant, nor insane. It's been 15 years since I read it, but William James' chapter on "Sick-Souled Religion" resonated deeply with what I feared and avoided.

I kinda moved out of that space to being pretty much take-for-granted agnostic. I've felt like it's arrogant and gives too much credit to human understanding to be staunchly atheist, even though there are moments in terms of subjective, irrational experience I've felt deeply atheist. I sometimes half-assedly resolve stuff with "materialism, but we just don't know exactly how that material functions." But lately I've been more interested in concepts of grace, trust, unresolvable paradox. And trying to conceptualize the crucifixion and resurrection in a way other than "God sent his only son to die for our sins" (wth, no one asked you, God, and you're the one who defined the sins and why should I, as a modern person, believe in blood sacrifice of a human being), but maybe ---though I am far from taking this literally---God in Christ experienced ultimate human suffering and subsequently defeated death to acknowledge and vindicate the faceless many who have suffered. Idk it's a stretch but it's still a beautiful idea.

She was raised in a Baptist church that has since (it's a source of no small pride on my maternal family's side) formally broken with the Southern Baptist Convention.

ha, I remember when the southern baptist convention broke off from the baptist world alliance & even the most gentle & inclusive voices in the uk were struggling to get very sad about it

yeah, it's pretty important in my mom's family to emphasize to others, especially non-Southerners who hear Baptist and assume a lot of things, SBC is not how we roll