ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

An early passage in that Cave book that caught my eye:

As I’ve gotten older, I have also come to see that maybe the search *is* the religious experience – the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable. Maybe that is what is essentially important, despite the absurdity of it. Or, indeed, because of the absurdity of it. When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. And perhaps God is the search itself.

Later, when questioned about the "magical thinking" of religion:

Some see it as the lie at the heart of religion, but I tend to think it is the much-needed utility of religion. And the lie – if the existence of God is, in fact, a falsehood – is, in some way, irrelevant. In fact, sometimes it feels to me as if the existence of God is a detail, or a technicality, so unbelievably rich are the benefits of a devotional life. Stepping into a church, listening to religious thinkers, reading scripture, sitting in silence, meditating, praying – all these religious activities eased the way back into the world for me. Those who discount them as falsities or superstitious nonsense, or worse, a collective mental feebleness are made of sterner stuff than me. I grabbed at anything I could get my hands on and, since doing so, I’ve never let them go.

I found this line of thinking intriguing.

Credo consolans

xp truly beautiful. shame about the child abuse.

i'd be more of a fan of religion if this story was canon

Most Delightfully Evil Thing Young Jesus Does in "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas" - a POLL

Danzig's favorite Gospel!

referring to this timeless gem for anyone who's wondering

Now, thoughts: it is interesting that Cave refers to the existence of God as a "technicality." If it were, it would be easy for religions to discard. Obviously, it isn't. I think the basic requirement for all religious communities is the agreement on some indisputable reality. Historically, this has meant a belief in gods; one or many. But the idea is: some deity exists, and their existence requires humans to behave one way or another.

It strikes me now that this shared belief might have to be supernatural to function at all, and this might be why attempts to build non-superstitious alternative to religion have been ineffective. After all, the existence of supernatural beings cannot be proven or disproven, and so we end up outside the realm of disputability. That is in contrast to every other kind of knowledge we can have about the world, especially scientific knowledge, whose whole basis is that it is disputable.

OTOH, the fact that every religion and every community invariably splinters into sects and sub-sects means that it probably doesn't matter. It's like people are just built to disagree.

Zchrys, there certainly have been (and are) Humanist gathering places and societies. They're just smaller and more quiet about it.

sorry i'm kinda divebombing in here with this, but i just feel like saying real quick that i think belief itself is completely beside the point. being is right there in front of us and is an obvious deep mystery. belief seems to arise out of that, always as some kind of explanation for it. i just think it's beside the point, like a second order effect or something.

i mentally categorize 'belief' and 'religion' as psychosocial phenomena that arise out of the fact that being is this wild-ass mystery we will never ever make heads or tails out of, but that we can still observe and be nourished by.

I don't remember if I posted in this thread years ago or not. Raised Catholic, haven't been inside a church in 30+ years. As an adult I have been intrigued by Zen Buddhism and Taoism and Stoicism and Norse beliefs (not so much the gods as the ethical codes of honor and what one owes to one's family and one's community) and have kind of cobbled them all together into a moral code/approach to life that works for me. As far as the supernatural? Hard no. Particularly since moving to an area where I am surrounded by nature, the glory of the physical world is all I need.

I mean, what do I need a god for when I can stand in the woods and stare up at 60-70 foot tall trees?

i agree with you about the glory of the physical world.

More musings from the Cave interview/book:

I think, these days, I would be more considerate towards the mediocre in us all. Well, maybe not the mediocre, but our ordinariness, our sameness.

It’s interesting that one of the most common concerns from people who write in to The Red Hand Files is a feeling of meaningless or emptiness. Also a deep bitterness and cynicism towards the world, that the world and humanity is essentially shit. And a loneliness, too. I guess what I try to do through the songs and through The Red Hand Files is to make the case that our lives are more valuable than perhaps we sometimes think them to be, or, indeed, than we are told they are. That our lives are, in fact, of enormous consequence, and that our actions reverberate in ways we hardly know.

-Well, to be fair, many atheists would agree with that.

I'm sure you're right. Still, there seems to be a growing current of thought that tends towards the opposing view, a sort of cynicism and distrust of our very selves, a hatred of who we are, or, more accurately, a rejection of the innate wonder of our presence. I see this as a sort of affliction that is, in part, to do with the increasingly secular nature of our society. There’s an attempt to find meaning in places where it is ultimately unsustainable – in politics, identity and so on.

-But, hang on, are you saying atheism – or secularism – is an affliction? And that you equate it with cynicism? I mean, come on, non-believers can have a sense of wonder at the world – with nature, the universe, with the wonders of science, philosophy and even the everyday.

No, I am not saying secularism is an affliction in itself. I just don’t think it has done a very good job of addressing the questions that religion is well practised at answering. Religion, at its best, can serve as a kind of shepherding force that holds communities together – it is there, within a community, that people feel more attached to each other and the world. It’s where they find a deeper meaning.

-What kinds of questions, in particular, would you say religion is more adept at answering?

It deals with the necessity for forgiveness, for example, and mercy, whereas I don’t think secularism has found the language to address these matters. The upshot of that is a kind of callousness towards humanity in general, or so it seems to me. And I think callousness comes out of a feeling of aloneness, people feeling adrift or separated from the world. In a way, they look for religion – and meaning – elsewhere. And increasingly they are finding it in tribalism and the politics of division.

-The decline of organised religion may be one reason for that, but there are others, of course, social and political.

Well, whatever you think about the decline of organised religion – and I do accept that religion has a lot to answer for – it took with it a regard for the sacredness of things, for the value of humanity, in and of itself. This regard is rooted in a humility towards one’s place within the world – an understanding of our flawed nature. We are losing that understanding, as far as I can see, and it’s often being replaced by self-righteousness and hostility.

And I'll stop posting clips. Like I said, I found the whole back-and-forth discussion unexpectedly provocative.

I'm a pretty hardcore atheist I guess in that I don't believe in anything supernatural or spiritual, but I could get down with some kind of vulgar animism. Watching birds flit about or squirrels run around it's easy to get lost in wonder that animals can even exist.

I'd agree that actual belief is beside the point, as one's own belief is a mystery box even to oneself, but professed belief very much is the point, and the more unbelievable something is, the more valuable the expressed belief is as a kind of summoning call/hazing filter. So existence of God isn't so much an irrelevant technicality, but would actually undermine how valuable it is to profess that belief.

That makes it really difficult to build a fervent and cohesive following around the splendor of the physical world as is. We have to imbue it with unbelievable healing powers or something supernatural to make it sacred. It was telling when William Shatner came down from his space flight and his reaction to the overview effect, this transformative experience of seeing the entire natural world as he knew it from the other side, was a profound depression -- "The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands... It filled me with dread." OK, sounds right, but that's not the way to bolster an environmental movement!

xp Squirrels are Magic would be a better beckoning call than "Squirrels are gonna die if we keep killing them"

I'd agree that actual belief is beside the point, as one's own belief is a mystery box even to oneself, but professed belief very much is the point, and the more unbelievable something is, the more valuable the expressed belief is as a kind of summoning call/hazing filter. So existence of God isn't so much an irrelevant technicality, but would actually undermine how valuable it is to profess that belief.

That makes it really difficult to build a fervent and cohesive following around the splendor of the physical world as is. We have to imbue it with unbelievable healing powers or something supernatural to make it sacred. It was telling when William Shatner came down from his space flight and his reaction to the overview effect, this transformative experience of seeing the entire natural world as he knew it from the other side, was a profound depression -- "The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands... It filled me with dread." OK, sounds right, but that's not the way to bolster an environmental movement!

― Philip Nunez, Friday, February 9, 2024 8:57 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't know what to tell you hon other than you're really far up your own ass. sorry, i didn't invent perspective!

i think a healthy sense of respect for otherness is kind of required to be a person. ilx has so many dudes who think the answer to everything is in their own minds. sometimes i'm not sure how to be kind to that.

what if god is a cheeseburger and someone already ate him

you motherfucker

that was in common lols

xp I feel like I was saying the opposite -- our own minds are unknowable, or do you mean not taking other people's professed beliefs at their word?

lol Neanderthal

map, that was a dickish response to Philip

in all realness my trouble with believing in the Christian God has been, if what he and his Son said are so important, why has he been ok with letting everybody fuck up the message so badly for the last 2,000 years, like...for a long time the two of them are stage managing everything, and then just disappear forever and in some cases the Biblical canon is still in dispute!

I never got past it, even as a youth, it was this huge seed of doubt that pulled at me but really I just left the church because the fundies wanted me to choose between them and Slayer and I chose Slayer

nick caves projections of atheism arent tbh of any value or interest

its literally just not believing in god, ppl need to chill

"the more unbelievable something is the more valuable the expressed belief is" is tantalisingly close to profound but alas it again imbues expressed belief as something innately valuable

and remember we are talking about belief in a god of whatever stripe here, not like belief in democracy or ubi or feeding the poor, stuff that imo you need to perform belief in as a service to actions and outcomes you think are good

expressed belief in a god is not this, even if you 100% believe that yr god is the source of all good outcomes and actions, yr actual belief in yr god is just a thing you have or dont have and expressing it and especially celebrating it or trying to spread it should probably be seen as the very weird behaviour it is

peace tho

So, is anyone in this joint a believer in one of the Big Three who regularly observes the rites of their religion? I'm curious.

that was a big oversight in the original options

I don't consider myself a believer, per se, but we (as a family, and as individuals in the family) inconsistently dip in and out of various rites and rituals, many of which are as tied culturally to Judaism as they are religiously. I assume it means something to them? At the same time, I'm not sure what they means to me, though probably more than nothing.

i think a healthy sense of respect for otherness is kind of required to be a person. ilx has so many dudes who think the answer to everything is in their own minds. sometimes i'm not sure how to be kind to that.

― ꙮ (map)

i think what you're saying makes more sense than a lot of the hot takes on this thread. sometimes being kind is a lot to ask. is an exceptional thing to ask.

otm

but like yeah some of the takes here on religion are just, like, totally orthogonal to how i look at it. like there's this point of view that sees it as an abstract theoretical construct, like "What Is The Ultimate Nature of Reality" or some shit, or maybe sometimes "What Is Delusion And How Do We Cure People Of It", and for me religion is more... what the fuck even is this. ok yeah i can cobble together some kind of empiricist explanation for some things but it seems to fall short somehow. particularly since empiricist explanations of, like, my queerness have tended to be made-up bullshit that didn't do me no favors. like, this isn't the only angle for me to approach this from but it's the _least controversial_... why am i a woman? you know what, how about magic, how about literal fucking magic, because you know what, y'all don't _have_ any convincing explanations, y'all can't even _say_ what a woman is, what a _gender_ is, y'all just making shit up and it's internally consistent and it has no relationship whatsoever to reality as people actually experience it.

xp map, alfred, if I was being a jerk, I wouldn't mind a dickish response, and would rather be disabused of whatever it is that bothers people about what I'm putting out. I mean, I came to that POV in the first place by being disabused of the idea that flat earthers etc... were absurd people who genuinely believed what they were saying. I mean, they're absurd for other reasons, but I did come to respect their otherness in a sense while respecting them much much less in other respects.

Trees and squirrels are cool but I am going to push back a bit on the notion of making nature your "higher power," or whatever.

I am really into human connections and art. Empathy and creativity are more important to me than any number of cool birds or whatever.

Like, yeah a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc.

Responding to a couple of things:

I know a lot of ILXors love the dude for various reasons, but Nick Cave has exactly the beliefs you'd expect a 66-year-old Australian man to have, and those beliefs hold very little interest for me.

I don't know about "vulgar animism" or any other kind, but animals are fucking amazing and one big part of religion, particularly the Big Three, seems to be setting oneself (meaning humanity) apart from the rest of the world. "Man had dominion over all the animals" and shit like that. And to me it's much more interesting to surrender to the idea that you are an animal, and your way of perceiving the world is just one way of perceiving the world and maybe not even the best one. I mean, other species have sensory arrays that would feel to us like superpowers or magic, but we're supposed to be "superior" to them because...we can drive bulldozers and make porn?

ymp you seem to be kind of insisting that you are competing with another persons expression of what they find wonder in

if we manage to disregard gods and instead it turns into competing arguments for what replaces them then lets just keep gods it saves having to burn a lot of museums

like, yeah a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc

We don't actually have the monopoly on sexual intercourse I don't think. Not that I'm advising venturing outside of humanity for these purposes.

I feel the weight of my existence most keenly in cathedrals (not necessarily in Belgium), in the woods, in the attention of an other and in art. I do not know if this is evidence of some higher power. My instinct tends toward the *not* but I'm unsure. And, in truth, the focal point, the endpoint, the whatever of it, is the least interesting and the least attainable part. I'm good with the mystery and am reasonably convinced it's just a quirk of consciousness, and an entirely agreeable one.

a forest or a mountain is really nice and I dig those, but I get a bit more info from a novel, a symphony, a friend, a rock concert, sexual intercourse, a nonfiction audio book, an architecture tour, a history museum, etc.

I could be way off base here, but using this particular set of comparisons makes it sound like you appreciate a forest or a mountain mainly as a kind of intermittent aesthetic experience that happens inside your head when you are in their vicinity. aesthetics seem to me like a very narrow aperture through which to appreciate them.

Sorry, folks, no intention of dissing your formulations of meaning. Just, there are some people who speak about nature (and natural beauty) and science as the main alternatives to religious belief.

It seems like it's less common to hear about human interactions and human connections and human art-making as an alternative to religion. I want to forward those an alternative alternative.

Tldr: I am not arguing with anyone here, just arguing with other people in my personal orbit and wishing to present my own (probably idiosyncratic) perspective.

I see humans, nature, physics, art, religion, et. al. as facets of the same ground source we term "reality". there is no need to see them as alternatives to one another. each may be taken on their own terms, but no one presents more than a partial view of what is.

I've recently embarked on a relatively casual study of physics and it's made me question the rest of reality.

I read something recently that certain hardcore theoretical physicists consider all matter an emergent property and not worthy of study.

Could be a line out of Borges.

fair enough ymp

nb personally, everything is nature, including everything you note

i struggle to understand where youd stop calling things natural, tbh

'you'd' there is the wider sense, not yourself ymp