Dragon Horse’s Comments on Religion

 

Although I posted a link to the Intelligent Design On Trial Nova Special, I have never posted anything concerning my personal views on religion. I was raised Baptist originally, then Catholic. I also attended a Catholic primary school for a time.

I have read the bible and a good deal of the Qur’an but I do not feel nearly as equipped to speak about Islam. Much of their religious tradition is not in the Qur’an but the Hadith and whichever school of Islamic jurisprudence that is used to interpret it all. In any case this does not matter much as to my specific beliefs.

 

I believe that religion is useful and does serve a purpose for a majority of the human population, just not for myself. So what purposes am I talking about?

 

1) To explain things we do not understand. Humans (most of us) are naturally inquisitive and want to know “why”. To not know “why” nature work causes many people psychological stress. This is the reason every culture has origin myths. At one point we did not know why the sun appeared to rise. The ancient Greeks thought it must have been a chariot driven by Apollo across the sky. The Japanese thought it was a God that gave birth to Japan and their Royal family. The point is, it gave people an answer to uncomfortable ignorance.

2) To serve as a psychological crutch. Life is difficult and always has been. In fact I would argue that life is difficult most of the time, it is when it is not that makes it worth living. When faced with adversity, religion gives people solace; allowing the belief that someone/thing out there has a plan for them, cares about them, will never let them down, and genuinely cares. Even if something bad happens they can rationalize it as God’s Will” or part of God’s long term “plan”. If someone dies they can take comfort in the fact “they went to a better place” (even if in the case of Biblical text this is generally wrong, but Christians say it anyway).

3) For societal control. A man can make laws all day long and enforce them brutally, however man is not omnipotent and omnipresent, so there will always be people in a population who believe they can outsmart the king, the government, the police, etc. If that person believes that a true god is watching over them they might think twice before breaking the law intertwined with religion, such an act if they feel there is a strong chance of being condemned to hell, for all eternity, to experience the most brutal punishments imaginable. That changes the calcus of the price of getting caught vs the price of getting “away with it”. It is not a coincidence that the ruling class, until very recently, was tightly intertwined with the religious elites (priesthood).

How this applies to me personally:

1) I do not need an answer to everything. Many religious people argue that evolution is not “good enough” to explain things or that the Big Bang Theory does not answer all questions but the bible does. My response is, because I do not now know something does not mean I feel the need to make up stories to feel comfortable with my place in the world. At one point humans did not understand what the sun was or how it operated. If everyone decided to belief in a story and not rationally question the mechanics, then we would still be quite ignorant as to the workings of the natural world, even more than we are now. The fact we do not have an answer right now, does not mean we will never have one.

2) I learned many years ago that nothing good or bad last forever. A lot of what happens in life is random chance, it is often not personal. Everyone goes through struggles. I do not need a “crutch” in the form of a god to deal with that.

3) I am a humanist. I believe fully that human morality has a biological component, as in we have evolved to be as we are. This being said there is variation in the human population and everyone can not make the psychological leap to humanism without the dogma of religion or the threat of legal or religious punishment. I believe many people are like this and without religion they would behave in a barbaric way toward their fellow man, because their mind can not rationalize why humanist morality is beneficial to them and society as a whole. These people are usually concerned only with their self interest or that of their close family and must be “persuaded” to be civil to those outside their “realm of morality”. I do not suffer from this cognitive defect (or throwback).

 

Religion has no utility for me so I do not follow one per se, especially not “organized religions” that have come out of the Middle East. I do somewhat follow my wife’s religion, a school of Zen Buddhism, but there is no “God-head”, instead it relies on a moral framework with some “mystic” trappings as to not make it too austere. My wife is not very religious but for her, it serves #2. I notice she only prays when she is upset about something or needs some extra “luck”. It is so ingrained cultural for her that I do not believe it is possible to easily tease apart Buddhism (or some Shintoism for that matter) from Japanese culture.

 

It is also interesting to know that the more educated and wealthier a society is the less religiously observant they are. This is true even inside of America as the most religious areas or ethnicities that are the poorest and have the least educated populations, but for Utah (Mormons are strange ones), tend to be the most religious. Despite what religious conservatives in America say, societies with less religious observance also have lower crime rates, less STDs, less out of wedlock pregnancies, etc. No Christian conservative can explain to me why that is, as they usually believe, less religion in PUBLIC life means more societal instability, actually the opposite is true. I believe due to #2. The worse your life situation the more you feel the need to pray, and also #1; the less educated you are the more you need make-believe stories.

 

 

For a nice graph of global religiosity and wealth go here.

 

 

I also do not blame religions for wars or violence. The truth is people will group around anything, because we are a “group oriented” species. This leaves us susceptible to certain types of “group-think”. People will group around political philosophies (i.e. Communism) and kill millions just like religion, but the only issue with religion is it seems to be longer lasting. Also, it is obvious some religions are more violent than others. Look up Crusade and Jihad on the net. Then try to find similar situations in Buddhism occurring at the same rate and over such large areas. You can not, because it never existed. The reason is that Buddhism is not really an organized religion (in most of its forms) and also Buddhism do not have the idea that they have the “one true God” so their religion is much less xenophobic. When you think you have “the one true answer” that tends to lend itself to serious problems when coming into contact with others who believe the same thing, but their “answer” is different from your answer.

 

That is a good synopsis of my religious beliefs as far as organized religion goes anyway. I should say that I AM NOT an atheist. I’m agnostic, because I believe that is the most rational response. No one can prove or disprove that there is a “higher power” without relying on circular logic (using your religious text to prove your religion) or making leaps of logic (there is no god because there is no proof).

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