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mishalakI am not particularly torqued off about religion. To misquote Mr. Brigstocke I think that the religious are for the most part moderate and reasonable people who wear tidy jumpers and eat cheese just like non-religious people.
As I see it the real problem with religion is not the extremists, who would just switch to an infallible atheist like Ayn Rand, Mao Zedong, or Gene Roddenberry as an excuse to torture people. The problem with religion, for me, is that it would tend to displace my real hope of a small measure of immortality with a false one.
The only immortality is remembrance of those who have died and keep alive what was worthwhile in their lives, however small. My hope after my life is that I will have contributed more to making the world a better place than if I'd never been born and someone else had the opportunities and wealth I have been offered. If I spend my time in a church listening to false doctrines and assertions it takes away from the time I should be out doing something to make the world a better place by working, volunteering, or even socializing.
The underlying reason for this is that there is no real evidence of a god, gods, or spirits as commonly defined. Much like string theory it is an interesting assertion that some being created the universe in such a way as to hide the act of creation, but it does not give us anything useful course of action that logically follows. It is all well and good to say whatever book was inspired by the creator or that all of them were, but given how they all contradict how people actually behave or morality as informed by science they are just as useless or useful as the writings of Marx and Rand. Religious text are interesting and they are among the oldest of preserved human writings, but that is all they are. They are not a useful guide to how to behave other than through the same sort of coincidence that I would stumble upon a useful way of behaving.
Furthermore it is clear from the direction of science there is no creator. Science itself cannot assert this and should not, but gods have always been filler explanations rather than real ones. People have trouble with things that we do not yet understand so we make up an explanation to fill in the gaps. Until electricity is better understood god is in the lightning strike and so it is with creation itself. Don't like that we don't know they why of the big bang? God did it. And logically it does not even solve the problem. It just removes it up one more layer like saying that the earth rides on top of a turtle. What does the turtle rest on then? Saying that the gods always existed is just as illogical as saying, "Its turtles all they way down," or "random fluctuations of the void". The real answer is, "We don't know yet, but we're working toward it."
While I am tempted to join a congregation like the Unitarian Universalists (and I may give them a try in the course of time) I am fairly sure that it would only be a useful social outlet rather than a way to positively change the world. For that there is politics and supporting research and certain charitable causes. They probably are not doing useful research into how people actually behave and what is the best way to live. Though for now that's the best we have since there is no organized research into how people live successfully that isn't formed on the basis of proving some received moral wisdom.
To sum up: No god and I better do something about it to make life better for those that follow me so that I am not a dry branch that has taken from what all my antecedents gave me and returned nothing. Much as with a parliament the best course of action seems to be one that does not close off future action.
As I see it the real problem with religion is not the extremists, who would just switch to an infallible atheist like Ayn Rand, Mao Zedong, or Gene Roddenberry as an excuse to torture people. The problem with religion, for me, is that it would tend to displace my real hope of a small measure of immortality with a false one.
The only immortality is remembrance of those who have died and keep alive what was worthwhile in their lives, however small. My hope after my life is that I will have contributed more to making the world a better place than if I'd never been born and someone else had the opportunities and wealth I have been offered. If I spend my time in a church listening to false doctrines and assertions it takes away from the time I should be out doing something to make the world a better place by working, volunteering, or even socializing.
The underlying reason for this is that there is no real evidence of a god, gods, or spirits as commonly defined. Much like string theory it is an interesting assertion that some being created the universe in such a way as to hide the act of creation, but it does not give us anything useful course of action that logically follows. It is all well and good to say whatever book was inspired by the creator or that all of them were, but given how they all contradict how people actually behave or morality as informed by science they are just as useless or useful as the writings of Marx and Rand. Religious text are interesting and they are among the oldest of preserved human writings, but that is all they are. They are not a useful guide to how to behave other than through the same sort of coincidence that I would stumble upon a useful way of behaving.
Furthermore it is clear from the direction of science there is no creator. Science itself cannot assert this and should not, but gods have always been filler explanations rather than real ones. People have trouble with things that we do not yet understand so we make up an explanation to fill in the gaps. Until electricity is better understood god is in the lightning strike and so it is with creation itself. Don't like that we don't know they why of the big bang? God did it. And logically it does not even solve the problem. It just removes it up one more layer like saying that the earth rides on top of a turtle. What does the turtle rest on then? Saying that the gods always existed is just as illogical as saying, "Its turtles all they way down," or "random fluctuations of the void". The real answer is, "We don't know yet, but we're working toward it."
While I am tempted to join a congregation like the Unitarian Universalists (and I may give them a try in the course of time) I am fairly sure that it would only be a useful social outlet rather than a way to positively change the world. For that there is politics and supporting research and certain charitable causes. They probably are not doing useful research into how people actually behave and what is the best way to live. Though for now that's the best we have since there is no organized research into how people live successfully that isn't formed on the basis of proving some received moral wisdom.
To sum up: No god and I better do something about it to make life better for those that follow me so that I am not a dry branch that has taken from what all my antecedents gave me and returned nothing. Much as with a parliament the best course of action seems to be one that does not close off future action.