Religion
Josh posted something asking about religion and such. I felt like I may as well post my response in my own blog. I encourage you to comment on his entry if you haven't. Feedback here will still be appreciated, I just hate cross-post discussions.
Most people are fairly familiar with my stance on religion, but a very short synopsis/summary of my thoughts and the reasons for them follow...
I was raised Catholic (come on, big Irish family), traded in my faith for atheism, cynicism and spite when I was about ten or eleven.
I believed in God because my parents told me to. I sort of assumed religion was based on fact, with evidence. I mean, so many people all across the world believed essentially the same thing.
Then I found out a few things.
For a long time I thought, "Well, if it gives people something to believe, some sort of direction, then it doesn't really matter if there isn't a God."
Turns out I was still too naive. Religion isn't all about making people nice, there were (and are) tons of horrible things done in the name of religion. If people sin it's either because they aren't saved and can't help it, or it's not really sinning because it's justified by their god. Thou shalt not kill [except for when you have to kill heathens in my name]. God is such a fucking lawyer. When people don't sin, it seems to be less of a personal sense of what's right and wrong and more of the blind following and a fear of going to Hell. The threat of Hell/promise of Heaven seems a ploy to keep people in line and moderately well behaved (unless you have to torture/kill heathens).
So aside from dictating morality for themselves (and others!) and a certainty that their religion is the only correct religion they (any religion/religious institution) get to decide what is and isn't true about the world.
The Catholic Church is particularly guilty of this.
"Hey, guys, I think the Earth isn't the center of the universe. Here's a bunch of math that backs it up."
"WTF? Somebody set this douche bag on fire."
[paraphrased]
Thanks, Pope. You've always been so understanding. Religion has very nearly always stood in the way of progress of some form or another - primarily knowledge.
Religion is really convenient in the sense that it's the only theory (see: fairytale) that explains ALL OF EXISTENCE. It's just that the version it explains doesn't seem apply to reality.
People fault science because we don't have a perfect understanding of everything in our universe. They seem to forget, though, that if there were a God, and their religion explained everything so nicely that not only would The Bible (and other creation stories) have gotten a thing or two right (they don't), but we'd have all the information we needed. God and his Perfect Knowledge really seem to be lacking at a lot of key points.
Science is making progress. It updates itself as it finds flaws and admits them.
Religion can't do this (without cheating). If you update a religion some (or all) of the following must be true:
Most people are fairly familiar with my stance on religion, but a very short synopsis/summary of my thoughts and the reasons for them follow...
I was raised Catholic (come on, big Irish family), traded in my faith for atheism, cynicism and spite when I was about ten or eleven.
I believed in God because my parents told me to. I sort of assumed religion was based on fact, with evidence. I mean, so many people all across the world believed essentially the same thing.
Then I found out a few things.
- Religion is not based on fact and has a severe lack of evidence.
- Other points that I earnestly believed about my religion turned out to not be true.
- I'm talking about Santa Claus. Seriously.
- People all across the world really had a lot of very different ideas about their god(s), none of them seemed like belief systems that allowed the other systems to be right, none of them had any evidence, and the most likely scenario seemed to be that they were just all wrong.
For a long time I thought, "Well, if it gives people something to believe, some sort of direction, then it doesn't really matter if there isn't a God."
Turns out I was still too naive. Religion isn't all about making people nice, there were (and are) tons of horrible things done in the name of religion. If people sin it's either because they aren't saved and can't help it, or it's not really sinning because it's justified by their god. Thou shalt not kill [except for when you have to kill heathens in my name]. God is such a fucking lawyer. When people don't sin, it seems to be less of a personal sense of what's right and wrong and more of the blind following and a fear of going to Hell. The threat of Hell/promise of Heaven seems a ploy to keep people in line and moderately well behaved (unless you have to torture/kill heathens).
So aside from dictating morality for themselves (and others!) and a certainty that their religion is the only correct religion they (any religion/religious institution) get to decide what is and isn't true about the world.
The Catholic Church is particularly guilty of this.
"Hey, guys, I think the Earth isn't the center of the universe. Here's a bunch of math that backs it up."
"WTF? Somebody set this douche bag on fire."
[paraphrased]
Thanks, Pope. You've always been so understanding. Religion has very nearly always stood in the way of progress of some form or another - primarily knowledge.
Religion is really convenient in the sense that it's the only theory (see: fairytale) that explains ALL OF EXISTENCE. It's just that the version it explains doesn't seem apply to reality.
People fault science because we don't have a perfect understanding of everything in our universe. They seem to forget, though, that if there were a God, and their religion explained everything so nicely that not only would The Bible (and other creation stories) have gotten a thing or two right (they don't), but we'd have all the information we needed. God and his Perfect Knowledge really seem to be lacking at a lot of key points.
Science is making progress. It updates itself as it finds flaws and admits them.
Religion can't do this (without cheating). If you update a religion some (or all) of the following must be true:
- The doctrine was wrong to begin with.
- The doctrine was designed by someone without Perfect Knowledge (see: man).
- You're breaking the doctrine to suit your needs and are no longer truly following the same religion.