Category Archives: religion

The One True Faith. Mine.

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I’ve always wondered how deeply religious people could be so certain their “faith” was the real deal and everyone else’s was bogus. Brian Hines wonders, too:

“People will reject unsubstantiated claims in holy books… except the book they believe in. People will reject miracle stories… except miracles related by their own faith. People will reject the divinity of living prophets or messengers of God… except the person they accept as a genuine spiritual teacher.

Every religious believer, aside from the few who are genuinely open-minded, considers that he or she has found the One True Faith among the 4,199 or so false faiths. Yet how is this possible, logically or realistically?

It’s like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon, where all the children are above average.

There are good reasons for belonging to a religious, spiritual, or mystical group. But having a lock on cosmic truth isn’t one of them. Nobody knows what lies at the heart of reality, or even if there is such a thing: a heart, a core, a central truth.

So the only honest attitude is “I don’t know.” Along with, “You don’t know either.” This leaves us all on the same unknowing level.”

Scott Adams: Religion as road maps

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“Religions are like different maps whose routes all lead to the collective good of society. Some maps take their followers over rugged terrain. Other maps have easier paths. Some of the travelers of each route will be assigned the job of being the protectors and interpreters of the map. They will teach the young to respect it and be suspicious of other maps.

“Okay,” I said, “but who made the maps in the first place?”

“The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work,” he said.

At last, he had presented a target for me to attack. “Are you saying that all the religions work? What about all the people who have been killed in religious wars?”

“You can’t judge the value of a thing by looking only at costs. In many countries, more people die from hospital errors than religious wars, but no one accuses hospitals of being evil. Religious people are happier, they live longer, have fewer accidents, and stay out of trouble compared to nonreligious people. From society’s viewpoint, religion works.”

— From God’s Debris by Scott Adams

Religion and ego

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Brian Hines finds it strange “that religiosity is so often associated with humility, selflessness, and lack of ego. Actually, the religious impulse is highly egotistical.”

How would religious belief be affected if it was known that our sensations of being connected with, of under the care of, a higher power were entirely contained within our own personal mind/brain?

The mystical and spiritual experiences would feel the same. But no longer would we believe that we were contacting a transcendent divinity. We couldn’t claim a special relationship with some supernatural being, because that “higher power” would be us.

An expanded us, to be sure. An us that encompassed normally untapped areas of the mind/brain. An us that wasn’t as split, searching, anxious, uncertain, and self-doubting as we are now.

This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary religious egotism. No one would be a member of a chosen people, or a special beloved of God. We’d all just be human beings, having human experiences, making the best use possible of our human psyches.

I’m grateful we live in a country where it’s still okay wonder and write about such things. And yet, any candidate fo higher office who dared make such a connection between religion and ego would be toast.

Scott Adams: Holy Land

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“Well, usually it’s because some important religious event took place there.”

“What does it mean to say that something took place in a particular location when we know that the earth is constantly in motion, rotating on its axis and orbiting the sun? And we’re in a moving galaxy that is part of an expanding universe. Even it you had a spaceship and could fly anywhere, you can never return to the location of a past event. There would be no equivalent of the past location because location depends on your distance from other objects, and all objects in the universe would have moved considerably by then.”

“I see your point, but on Earth the holy places keep their relationship to other things on Earth, and those things don’t move much,” I said.

“Let’s say you dug up all the dirt and rocks and vegetation of a holy place and moved it someplace else, leaving nothing but a hole that is one mile deep in the original location. Would the holy land now be the new location where you put the dirt and rocks and vegetation, or the old location with the hole?”

“I think both would be considered holy,” I said, hedging my bets.

“Suppose you took only the very top layer of soil and and vegetation from holy place, the newer stuff that blew in or grew after the religious event occurred thousands of years ago. Would the place you dumped the topsoil and vegetation be holy?”

“That’s a little trickier,” I said. “I’ll say the new location isn’t holy because the topsoil that you moved there isn’t itself holy, it was only in contact with holy land. If holy land could turn anything that touched it into more holy land, then the whole planet would be holy.”

The old man smiled. “The concept of location is a useful delusion when applied to real estate ownership, or when giving someone directions to the store. But when it is viewed through the eyes of an omnipotent God, the concept of location is absurd.

“While we speak, nations are arming themselves to fight for control of lands they consider holy. They are trapped in the delusion that locations are real things, not just fictions of the mind. Many will die.”

— From Scott Adams’ God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment

Scott Adams: Different Religions

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I just finished listening to the audio version of Scott Adams’ first non-Dilbert, non-humor book (2004): God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment. In the introduction, Mr. Adams identifies the target audience as “people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls.

I’ve read this small book (132 pages) twice before checking out the audio version. And I know I will read this book many more times, trying to wrap my mind around ideas the human brain probably will never grasp. Like religion.

“Imagine that a group of curious bees lands on the outside of a church window. Each bee gazes upon he interior through a different stained glass pane. To one bee, the church interior is all red. To one bee, it is all yellow, and so on. The bees cannot experience the inside of the church directly; they can only see it. They can never touch the interior or smell it or interact with it in any way. If bees could talk they might argue over the color of the interior. Each bee would stick to his version, not capable of understanding that the other bees were looking through different pieces of stained glass. Nor would they understand the purpose of the church or how it got there or anything about it. The brain of a bee is not capable of such things.

“But these are curious bees. When they don’t understand something, they become unsettled and unhappy. In the long run the bees would have to choose between permanent curiosity—an uncomfortable mental state—and delusion. The bees don’t like those choices. They would prefer to know the true color of the church’s interior and its purpose, but bee brains are not designed for that level of understanding. They must choose from what is possible, either discomfort or self-deception. The bees that choose discomfort will be unpleasant to be around and they will be ostracized. The bees that choose self-deception will band together to reinforce their vision of a red-based interior or yellow-based interior and so on.”

“So you’re saying we’re like dumb bees?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Worse. We are curious.”

The Rev. Knute Rockne will deliver today’s message

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This morning I overhead two friends discussing religion. Their “conversation” quickly became tense and strained with one party walking away angry.

Kids, listen to your Uncle Steve. The ONLY safe place to talk about religion is in a big room with a bunch of people who feel exactly the way you do about it.

jesus_footballOrganized religion (a redundancy) is like the NFL. It’s made up leagues (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, etc) and the leagues are made up of teams (Southern Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Sunni, Shia, etc).

Now, the league officials (the Pope and whatever they call the top guys in the other leagues) don’t want you just getting together on a Saturday afternoon, choosing teams and playing touch football for a couple of hours. That might be fun, but you won’t make it to the Big Leagues like that and those pick-up games sure won’ keep the lights on.

You need uniforms, play books, cheer leaders, a band… and officials to blow the whistle when you break the rules.

With verrrryyyy rare exceptions… every “discussion” of religion (and politics, for that matter) is one person validating his or her beliefs by demonstrating that yours are wrong.

The Onion: Another Dark Ages?

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From remarks by Scott Dikkers, Editor of The Onion. Freedom from Religion Foundation

“We live in an age now that could easily turn into another dark ages. It’s a time when irrational beliefs that run counter to established science are accepted not just by a large percentage of the population but also by our elected leaders.

The religious like to say they’re “saved.” But after eight years of their pick for president, it’s the rest of us who need to be saved.

And the people who voted for this leadership are ready to do it again, because they are ideologues, who are incapable of learning–they reject any factual information that contradicts their beliefs.” 

Obama’s spirituality

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In 2004, Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Cathleen Falsani interviewed freshman state legislator Barack Obama about his spiritual beliefs. Earlier this year, she republished the entire interview on her blog. Here are a few paragraphs from that interview [pulled selectively]:

"I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived."

"I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others."

"I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it’s best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding."

"The most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.
I think there is an enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God’s mandate."

"I think there is this tendency that I don’t think is healthy for public figures to wear religion on their sleeve as a means to insulate themselves from criticism, or dialogue with people who disagree with them."

"What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing."

For all the sturm and drang –and endless showing of a couple of video clips– surrounding the Reverend Wright… I don’t even know what to call it… issue? We learned precious little about Senator Obama’s faith and spirituality. This blog post offers a useful insight.

Scott Adams: Religion and Politics

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“Why would you vote for a president who has a different religion than you? If you are certain of the rightness of your own beliefs, and equally certain of the wrongness of a presidential candidate’s belief, that proves the candidate has, in your opinion, bad judgment about the most important question in reality.”

“You wouldn’t vote for a candidate who believes in Ouija boards or horoscopes, because such beliefs would be a reliable indication of simple-mindedness. So why would you vote for a candidate who can’t figure out what version of God is right? If he can’t get that right, according to you, how good is his judgment? You probably think picking the right religion is not a hard challenge, because you got it right without much struggle. You want your leader to be at least as smart as you.”

“No one really believes what they say they believe, at least not in the same way you believe you have to open the front door in order to walk through it. There are two sorts of belief. One is the type you act on, and the other is the type you use to feel good about your place in the universe. As long as a president doesn’t use religion as a guide to action, then it has no bearing on his potential job performance. And he is not a liar or a hypocrite if you accept the notion that there are two types of belief, and they don’t need to interfere with each other.”

[Full post]

Bruce Sterling: State of the World 2008

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“Some people still think that there’s an “Islamo-fascist tyranny” somewhere that hates our freedoms and can organize Islam-dom into a coherent fascist state… There’s just no way. Al Qaeda and the Taliban aren’t true “fascists.” Fascists can at least make trains run on time. Even Communists were better-organized. The mujihadeen have no organized army and no industrial policy and they don’t know where to find any. Because God was supposed to handle all that for them. You’re supposed to die nobly in a crowd of unwitting strangers, and then God’s supposed to make that all better. That’s the big plan.”

“But when you blow up the china shop, God doesn’t reassemble the plates for you. Being faith-based doesn’t trump reality.”

“Now the Americans have clearly lost the thread… the Americans are really just horribly out of it, they’re like some giant fundie Brazil, nobody takes their pronunciamentos seriously or believes a word they say… Whereas the world is much more seriously global now. China and India are real players, they’re part of the show and they matter.

“Serious-minded people everywhere do know they have to deal with the resource crisis and the climate crisis. Because the world-machine’s backfiring and puffing smoke. Joe and Jane Sixpack are looking at four-dollar milk and five-dollar gas. It’s hurting and it’s scary and there’s no way out of it but through it.”

From Bruce Sterling’s State of the World, 2008