I spirituality/religion a useless insanity?

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Religion is an awful thing. And using the "organized religion" excuse is awful too since no matter if organized or not, religious beliefs kind of make people insane.

Well, the "kind of" that makes people insane is what makes arguing about religion interesting.

The people who reject God and tradition often land straight into progressive bourgeois belief systems that say all kinds of nonsense. To be free of religion just opens the door to all kinds of fashionable insanity.

That wouldn't be inaccurate.



You're not alone in that interpretation. As with many English words, it suffers from a duality of function that can create confusion. Originally it was devoid of implied anti-theism, though it later was expanded to include such, presumably due to inter-religious politicking and debate. There's a brief but decent etymology here http://www.defineatheism.com/etymology/



Couldn't agree more. The most strident anti-theists tend to be those who held a prior adherence to religious belief. They appear to be trying to replace the loss of one faith with that of another (Matt Dillahunty is the best example of this to my mind). Religions of all kind clearly hold strong appeal to those who wish to belong to something greater than themselves consciously or otherwise (i.e. most humans).



Religion, that is to say the organisation of human beings using a variety of hierarchical carrots and sticks, is largely responsible for the shape of the world we live in. It might be unpalatable at times, but I don't think it's entirely awful.

I guess the dictionary war is concluded then. The dear old Cambridge dictionary defines atheist as:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/diction ... sh/atheist

someone who believes that God does not exist

It doesn't leave much room for wishy washy you-never-knows. Using this definition I think you can see why I regard an agnostic atheist as contradictory.

Neither do I, the more history you read, the more you learn how much more horrible human societies can be when compared to ours, often depending on the religion or lack thereof, that dominates.


It's very rare and pleasing to see an atheist understand this, assuming of course you apply this to the (formerly?) Christian West too.

The OED pays more heed to the etymology and nuance.

Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God. Also, Disregard of duty to God, godlessness (practical atheism).

But I digress. As I acknowledged, yours is not an uncommon position. Needless to say, it's for each of us to define ourselves.



Aye, the human element could - inevitably would - corrupt the purest utopian society. Don't blame the ideology, blame the practitioners who wield it immorally (whatever that means to you personally).


It's very rare and pleasing to see an atheist understand this, assuming of course you apply this to the (formerly?) Christian West too.[/quote]

One would require a thick tinted lens to view things otherwise. Of course, whether an alternative primary ideology would have been more advantageous is up for debate. However, as this is the version of reality that culminated in my existence, I'm content to consider it moot.

I'd say most formally religious as well as, unfortunately, most atheists/materialists seem to fail on the same point.

If you're eating, sleeping, drinking, have air to breath, and have a roof over your head without imminent or constant threat of abuse - the bulk of whether you're happy or miserable has to do with how you manage your internal life. I could be wrong, would love to find out that I am on this, but people seem to be really quick with assuming that subjective and unreal are synonymous and if they wouldn't go that far in words they often seem to go that way by their actions. I say that partly on how rare it is to run into people who meditate in a dedicated manner. Even when people do acknowledge that it's true, that yeah - managing your subjective life well probably is important, they still have a tendency to let external events and opportunities dominate their identity rather than taking a direct role in it themselves. I'm not saying at all that people should shun external facts, just that most people are in trouble if they can't build some kind of internal self-edifying response to the pressures of the outside world and really the better you can do that the closer you are to thriving.

Spirituality, generally speaking, is that kind of internal pursuit. The wooh is really secondary; it may prove true, it may not, it could be confluences of all kinds of interesting factors within our own wiring that yield deep mystical experiences. First and foremost I'm not sure that really has to matter all that much if the actual yes or no of it is stuck out in the unfalsifiable. I'd fully agree that someone's out of line if they're trying to control other people's behavior with their spiritual beliefs but I also think there's an incredible amount of wealth in mystic disciplines and work, and I'm really learning this from experience, regardless of whether it's external entities or whether it's simply you pulling your own leavers. Really when you think about it being able to pull your own leavers at will puts you out in a leading percentile of people who can adapt to handle whatever life throws at them. It's similar to how years of martial arts can have all kinds of pervasive benefits in your life even if you never have to use them.

So on the two questions?

1) Religion's perhaps okay for people who need the discipline along the same lines that karate helps kids with ADHD - so long as they keep its tenets to themselves. I'm sure beautiful things could be made of the template if it's handled right, just that to date what we have in the west, as well as mainstream in the east, has been disappointing to put it mildly.
2) Spirituality IMHO is critical for people to lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps, especially if life hasn't thrown them many opportunities so far. They have to do it themselves because no one else will. Maybe positive psychology in the formal sense might blossom into something that can overtake and replace the term 'spirituality' but I don't think that'll happen in my lifetime.

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The idea of existing only to go into complete 'non-existence', never to experience or perceive anything ever again, is an extremely alien concept to the human psyche so it seems reasonable it causes fear and is unfathomable to many. I mean why exist in the first place if non-existence is your fate? So I can certainly understand humanities want to find another explanation.

Personally, I fail to see why death has to be this awful thing. It may be the end of our existence as a discrete consciousness, but there is nothing to say that we won't form new life, that we won't eventually find ourselves at the centre of a new consciousness. Non-existence evokes fear in many people, and I used to feel that fear, but nowadays I accept the inevitability of death and only wish that life was so easy to accept!

This isn't a spiritual belief, though, and nor is it a religious one. There is no soul and when my physical mind is destroyed, my individuality will be gone with it. There is almost certainly no god. But the elements of my physical body will always exist in some form, just as sure as energy is never destroyed.

I have schizophrenia, and it is in no way like religious feeling. It is the opposite, in fact. Religion tries to get people to think similarly, to give them a shared spiritual language. If you don't believe in the Christian narrative, find one that sounds less hokey.

Buddhism, for instance, is very good for someone who is trying to avoid insanity. In fact, one of its precepts is "Right Mindfulness" -- being in your right mind is literally built into the system. Anecdotally, I heard a story of a schizophrenic who tried to join a monastery and was rejected because he was going down the path of suffering. Schizophrenia is suffering; Buddhism is a response to that.

I could also speak well of Taoism and Confucianism. Not to mention Western philosophies like Skepticism.

Spirituality includes philosophy: philosophy is the quintessential spiritual pursuit.

Putting aside the fact that the Abrahamic religions are useful among sociopaths and the detestable to justify their own abhorrent behaviors, and that they are likewise used to exploit weak and easily impressionable individuals, I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to the inherent paradox of "God"...

By my logic, a demiurge would have to have originated from outside of all space, time and dimension. Which begs the question: From where did this progenitor come from? What created it? Furthermore, what created that? And so forth.

It is like two mirrors facing one another and casting infinite reflections.

Indeed, spirituality, religion and other forms of irrationality probably wouldn’t exist if they weren’t useful to someone—not necessarily to the one practising them.

That and, as far as I can tell, any passage in the bible about God 'speaking' creation into existence really puts us in a place of pantheism.

Science has become somewhat of a neo-religion. People will take scientific theory as absolute fact when it is, as it says, a theory. The Big Bang is still just a theory derived from natural laws that we now know about. A theory turns into fact once we can say for sure that we have observed it. No one was alive to witness the Big Bang and see the inception of the universe. Evolution is another theory because no one has lived long enough to directly observe it. Even gravity can not be be directly observed, only its effects. Although I think recently scientists found a way to observe gravity itself. I'm not a religious person myself as I find a lot of it to be quite illogical, but a lot of people find solace in religion so I don't think it is inherently a useless insanity. Science is about asking questions and religion is about giving answers. So many people who are in need of comfort will turn to religion while the inquisitive mind will turn to science.

Alas, I thought our prophet and saviour Tallyman had returned to us.

To be honest, I wouldn't know since I've never been able to stomach reading any more than a few pages. Though I will say that I find pantheism to be of greater interest than monotheism. No dichotomous thinking.