Choosing my religion

In article , Chookie
says...

In article , Banty
wrote:

Without a rational means to determine guilt or innocence, and without a
propensity to go to rational means to determine and address the causes of
misfortunes, cultures turn to superstitious explanations, and that gets
directed toward their own members. Salem witch trials. Voodoo. Sacrifices
to please the spirits.
snip
I think what you're doing is to ascribe ANY evil perpetuated in the name of,
or for the sake of, ANY religion to whatever particular sect is responsible, and
thereby deny that religion per se could be responsible for ANYTHING.
snip
Do or do not religions claim for themselves spiritual superiority? Most do.
The one you belong to does. On balance, is it a good thing to have religion
as all or part of the way people define their conflicts? I'm not sure of the
answer. But to dismiss it all piece by piece saying "oh, that's that
particular
sect", "oh that's that other particular sect" is just avoidance of the issue.

I think that our disagreement is actually more over whether "religion" per se
is a useful category. I think it's either too broad to be useful, or not
quite broad enough. Ideology is broader. Religions are ideologies, but not
all ideologies are religions.

Well, I'm not so sure I sign on to that either. It still seems the light of
blame, if you can't shine it only on specific sects for each instance of
conflict, you shine it on everything, and keep religion out of the picture. The
problem of conflict is either too atomized or too global for religion to have
anything to do with it. Phooey on that.

On the other hand, I've heard certain ideologies described as "religions",
meaning that they take their viewpoint as a given and consider any other
viewpoint as wrong. Which tells one some of what's really wrong with religion.

If you have to conflate them, then I'd have to say that most religions form a
subset of ideologies most likely to be the sorts that cause conflict.

Denigration and dehumanization of non-coreligionists (and I count the
unconverted going to one place to end or suffer while co-religionist go on to
live or have nice existances as one way of doing this). Counting
co-religionists as superior over non-coreligionists. Having an overall goal of
conversion of all non-coreligionists. These are much more likely to incite
conflict than an ideology that holds that all people are of value.

Having the purpose of life deferred to some unknown afterlife, isn't an ideology
that encourages building of good lives for people. Having rewards deferred to
an afterlife even encourages leaving this life, maybe doing some destructive
deed in self-dispatching that furthers one's co-relionists' aims adding to these
rewards to boot. Believing that future events have to, and will by design,
proceed to some set of horrible violent apocolypse during, before, or after
which one's own co-religionsts, and only one's co-religionists, will be set
aside for salvation and rewards doesn't direct people's energies to making a
good life for all. It even encourages doing whatever one can to bring that day
closer!

Believing that some supernatural superior entity has set aside one and one's
co-religionists and only one's co-religionists for some manifest destiny or
piece of land blinds one to any claims others legitimately have.

Not all religions are like this (but, gee whiz, my far most of the ones the
people around *me* are - which aren't? Maybe Bhuddism and animistic religions
....), but not all ideologies are like this either.

And since ideologies can be inclusive, flexible, generated with the greater good
in mind, and can evolve with learning and with changing needs, without waiting
for revelations or events or having been frozen by some document written in ages
past, I'd say non-religious ideologies stand a heck of a lot of a better chance
of actually being workable than a religious ideology.


Any ideology will, (to use your phraseology), incite or give rationalization
to conflicts over land or power, directly create conflict, or have serious
potential to cause conflict today. Are the various religions more likely to
do these things than any other ideologies? I don't think so (can't see any
way to prove it, though). I can rephrase the para I have quoted from you
above:

Without a rational means to determine guilt or innocence, and without a
propensity to go to rational means to determine and address the causes of
misfortunes, cultures turn to *ideological* explanations [...]
Salem witch trials. Voodoo. Sacrifices to please the spirits.
Invading Iraq. Our new Industrial Relations laws. The Purges. The
Inquisition.

(Our propensity to rationality is much smaller than we hope!)

I note with interest you have nothign to add. What do you mean? "Hey, we're
not rational, might as well be religious? f we throw our hopes to the wind,
relying on some supposedly revealed religion instead, we're pretty much lost.


*How* would you propose to do oppose religion and religious ideas *without*
discriminating against adherents? Religious ideas tend to be found in
containers called people...

The same way any other set of ideas is opposed - by discussion and persuasion
in the public arena of ideas.

That's a relief -- I had visions of book-burnings and re-education camps...
But I should think you would have to oppose any and every ideology, and I
suspect humans won't function too well without them.


So, if humans won't function too well without them, how about they function with
ideologies that are workable, inclusive, and encourage building good lives for
people, and learn from mistakes of the past?

By the way, why would a religon be confined to some "vessel called a person"
more than any other idea, such that the vessel has to be attacked or writings
have to be attacked? Have Democrats set upon Republicans in the U.S.?
(tempting....) Has even Das Kapital been rounded up and put into burning piles?
No! now we can point to the experiments tried and failed, therefore it loses
decisively in the public arena of ideas. That you think opposing religious
ideas means this sort of thing is part of what tips me off that defense of
religion motivates what you're saying here.

Banty

In article , Banty
wrote:

I think that our disagreement is actually more over whether "religion" per se
is a useful category. I think it's either too broad to be useful, or not
quite broad enough. Ideology is broader. Religions are ideologies, but not
all ideologies are religions.

Well, I'm not so sure I sign on to that either. It still seems the light of
blame, if you can't shine it only on specific sects for each instance of
conflict, you shine it on everything, and keep religion out of the picture.
The problem of conflict is either too atomized or too global for religion to
have anything to do with it. Phooey on that.

Yes, I'm more down the atomised end of the spectrum. As I said, I don't think
the category 'religion' is useful, because I can't find a definition of it
that works.

snip

If you have to conflate them, then I'd have to say that most religions form a
subset of ideologies most likely to be the sorts that cause conflict.

Denigration and dehumanization of non-coreligionists (and I count the
unconverted going to one place to end or suffer while co-religionist go on to
live or have nice existances as one way of doing this). Counting
co-religionists as superior over non-coreligionists. Having an overall goal
of
conversion of all non-coreligionists. These are much more likely to incite
conflict than an ideology that holds that all people are of value.

Funnily enough, most religions I am aware of posit that all people are of
value -- usually equal value, too. I also know exactly what the members of
the political parties in my country think of each other, and how the
socialists on campus viewed the unenlightened masses. I really am not seeing
any difference here. Subscribe to an ideology, *any* ideology, and those who
don't hold your position are, well, unfortunate, or odd, or misinformed, or
eevul.

snip

Any ideology will, (to use your phraseology), incite or give rationalization
to conflicts over land or power, directly create conflict, or have serious
potential to cause conflict today. Are the various religions more likely to
do these things than any other ideologies? I don't think so (can't see any
way to prove it, though). I can rephrase the para I have quoted from you
above:

Without a rational means to determine guilt or innocence, and without a
propensity to go to rational means to determine and address the causes of
misfortunes, cultures turn to *ideological* explanations [...]
Salem witch trials. Voodoo. Sacrifices to please the spirits.
Invading Iraq. Our new Industrial Relations laws. The Purges. The
Inquisition.

(Our propensity to rationality is much smaller than we hope!)

I note with interest you have nothign to add. What do you mean? "Hey, we're
not rational, might as well be religious?

Er, no. That removing supposedly irrational religion from the picture doesn't
seem to make our decisions more rational. There wasn't much difference
between the Purges and the Inquisition except scale and time frame.

That's a relief -- I had visions of book-burnings and re-education camps...
But I should think you would have to oppose any and every ideology, and I
suspect humans won't function too well without them.

So, if humans won't function too well without them, how about they function
with ideologies that are workable, inclusive, and encourage building good
lives for people, and learn from mistakes of the past?

Most people of most ideologies would probably claim that their systems *are*
like this!

By the way, why would a religon be confined to some "vessel called a person"
more than any other idea, such that the vessel has to be attacked or writings
have to be attacked? Have Democrats set upon Republicans in the U.S.?
(tempting....)

I dunno -- have they? A bit of biffo has not been unknown in Australian
politics, including during Parliament.

Has even Das Kapital been rounded up and put into burning piles?

Yes, in Germany in the early '30s. In an interesting reversal, _Mein Kampf_
is illegal in Germany these days, along with all other Nazi memorabilia. I
presume confiscated books are destroyed.

No! now we can point to the experiments tried and failed, therefore it loses
decisively in the public arena of ideas. That you think opposing religious
ideas means this sort of thing is part of what tips me off that defense of
religion motivates what you're saying here.

Nope -- I just don't think "religion" a useful way of distinguishing
ideologies, let alone "helpful" and "harmful" ones. For me, "religion" is so
broad as to be meaningless. Buddhism, Christanity and animism are so
different from each other that it seems silly to put them all in one category.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue