Cobb

The Ranting Rationalist" is yet another blog.

I'm capitalist, pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-euthanasia, pro-gay marraige. There are believers and non-believers who hold these same positions.

Since you haven't defined what you mean by "God" (there are literally thousands of definitions) I can't really evaluate much of what you say or whether your conclusions follow from your premises.

I'm pretty consistent in my definition of god, although it isn't perfectly obvious. I even tripped out Battleground God, which I highly recommend. The details of my 'inconsistency' can be found here.

The question of the existence of god as anyone might recognize god is irrelevent to the necessity of morality, but it was religion that brought us to understand this. I respect religion as a way of transferring knowledge. Everyone has faith. Faith in reason is faith.

Religion is not the only thing that has ever made people be nice to one another. That is ridiculous. You don't think it ever occurred to folks not to kill their children before "god" told them to do it? Love existed before the word "god" was ever written down. I'll grant you that religion made it easier for the masses to be nice to one another, but religion has also made it easier for them to kill each other off. People that want to be evil will be evil no matter what book they're reading, no matter what leprechaun they pray to.

And I don't see why I have to acknowledge there is such a thing as a soul. I'm not even sure what you mean when you write "soul." And I like your color scheme. Much prettier than yesterday. Are you named after the softball player? I just saw a movie about him starring our friend Tommy Lee Jones that was so amusing I might buy his autobiography.

i would say that religion is not evil, but since so many people are religious it stands to reason that much evil done can be blamed on religion. but is religion a cause? maybe love is a cause. you killed your neighbor because you love yourself, our you kill your wife because you love money.

religion helps people overcome their fear of death. is that a good thing? people who aren't afraid to die (for their family, for their country, for their principles, for their god - whatever) are especially unleashed.

what i'm essentially saying is that religion is no bigger scapegoat than anything else and that i believe most people who go out of their way to demonize religion lose their sense of perspective.

yes some religions in some situations deserve special credit and blame. but religion itself? it's too central to human experience.

Lots of things help people overcome their fear of death. You can't give religion all the credit for that, either.

So are you sayign that things which are central to human experience cannot be demonized? Like murder, rape, and war? Those have made pretty regular appearances in humanity's history, too. Just as often as religion, I'd say.

Let me put it the other way. You tell me what is wrong with the Akan creation myth.

I'll have to look it up and figure it out. What's RIGHT about it?

Briefly, the Akan believe that god created the universe. That god also created life and death, and in so respecting his own creation, lived and died.

The entire concept of paradise and life after death is absent from the Akan religion.

But you still haven't said what's good about it.

Well, I don't know about you, but there are two things that strike me about this particularly simple conception of the divine.

#1 It suggests that death is indeed final and to be respected as such. There is no such thing as martyrdom under such a belief system. Therefore, no divinely inspired rationale for those things we have come to know as suicide bombing and crusading. If there is any consistent criticism of 'religion' it is precisely this. Now admit it, this is one of your criticisms of organized religion isn't it? Well, the Akan cosmology rejects all such premises, and that is a good thing.

#2. God is dead. Yet, here is a religion that persists in the absence of a living god. In fact it exists to proclaim god is dead. How is that for spirituality? No healing, no questions about predestination, no deus ex deus, no quibbling about free will, no ridiculously unanswerable questions about "Why does God allow this to happen?". That too is good.

So while I am not a devotee to the Akan, it's clear that their basic principles avoid most of the contradictions at the heart of the Islamic-Judeo-Christian traditions, which is the context of a great deal of atheist complaint.

That's interesting, but you still haven't said what's more good about religion than irreligion/disreligion/non-religion. I mean, clearly we are coming from two different sides; mine assumes religion is bad, and yours assumes it is good.

So I want to know what you think makes it so good. You seem to just be saying that it isn't bad, which I can understand. To that, I say Touche! But then I also say--we are in America, where the religions that have the most relevance to our daily lives are the judeo christian ones.

So while all religions aren't terrible in theory, in practice, the ones that are dominating America, and the world, are pretty damn terrible. So my problem is that I'm focusing too much on the big three, and in my view yours is that you are including so many religions in the "debate" that it's impossible to actually make any generalization. And maybe that's the best way.

But that doesn't speak to the fact that millions of people are degraded and otherwise abused due to the excesses and austerity caused and encouraged by religion, whether you are talking about only three or a whole buhzillion of them. But then again, maybe that's just too damn evident to even talk about. Like trying to discuss whether or not the sky is indeed blue.

So yes, maybe it's not religion's fault. Maybe the way to say it is that the abrahamic religions sure attract some evil-ass people to them. But that seems a strange thing to say. So are they evil before or after they become religious? Who knows. I guess I'm assuming they were evil only after. But maybe that's the wrong way to look at it, too.

Well, what's good about religion is just like what's good about anything else. So long as you understand what it's trying to teach you and you learn and appreciate it, then it's beneficial. It's not like I can't say anything bad about religion, but I am taking the point of view that an intelligent person can avoid the pitfalls while enjoying the benefits.

A bit of background is called for.

First of all I would say that an organized religion is an institution that formally guides one to a spiritual awareness. I don't want to sound new agey about it, but that's fundamentally how I view them. I also judge any religion based upon its effectiveness in this matter as compared to other religions and other structured or unstructured ways of knowing. But I believe that addressing the matter of the soul is inalterably part of human destiny. So long as we are humans we will need the functions that religions' disciplined approach to spiritual enlightenment provides. If you raise a baby in perfect isolation from religion, as it grows it will inevitably ask the questions that religions address. I take that as evidence that humans possess a soul, simply stated. A soul must be satisfied, it is a part of the hungers we have. We need something to maintain and refresh our spirits, without which we cannot properly function.

I view the establishment of religion as a step in human social evolution. It was an organized way to satisfy the those spiritual needs of people, just like agriculture satisfies the need to eat, just like literacy satisfies the need to remember. People needed a way to satisfy their souls, and the experiences of a few led to the teaching of many. A solution was found. No matter what you hate about what some religion may have become, or what it has created, or destroyed, that doesn't alter the fundamental purpose that a religion must serve which is the teaching, maintenance and cultivation of the soul / spirit.

The fundamental tool of religion is prayer/meditation. Very close behind this is ritual. So I would say that if you were to invent a religion today and your purpose was to cultivate the spirit using prayer and ritual, you could go right ahead and do something useful. This is the assumption that I have behind why religion must exist.

Now these are very simple, one might even say primative tools, yet they are extraordinarily powerful.

You ask what I think is more good about religion than irreligion. I think that religious rituals are more beneficial to people than corporate rituals, or nationalistic rituals. I'd rather attend the Hajj then a highshool walk-a-thon. I'd rather pray to god than to Congress even if I have an equal chance of getting a reply, meaning none.

You speak about millions of people degraded and otherwise abused due to an excess of austerity. I wish our president would make some use of austerity. Millions of people are going to suffer because of his willingness to spend money on the rich which forces the rest into austerity.

How far can one say that religion is the antecedent of science? I have long since come to the realisation that religion is really the forerunner of science and the discussions so far point to this fact.

These days I am reading Stephenson's 'Quicksilver' which gets into the nexus of thought and discovery before it was called 'science'. I can easily see, through Stephenson's portayals, the religiosity of the individuals who created science. There was no fundamental conflict.