Religion - Help Me Understand
11 Jun 2023, 11:53 am
LaTech wrote:
I was brought up Southern Baptist from the time I was a small child. My parents were both Pentecostal Church goers before then, but the "happy/clappy" bits, I think, bothered them so much they left. Personally, I don't think the Southern Baptists are much better, but for entirely different reasons.
By college, I had started to really question "religion" and was mostly hung up on the idea of faith. I, like many here, I'm sure, am fairly logical and rational, and the idea of faith is something that confuses me because it is believing in something with no empirical evidence (I've heard the "what about the wind?" argument and those like it before, but even those things can be measured and physically felt).
Faith isn't something that is easy for me at all. I need to hold a thing and take it apart and fully understand it. You can't do that with faith. "You can't do that with love, either," I've been told. True, but love has symptoms and, like the wind, can be felt...faith, as I understand it, can't.
So, maybe my understanding of faith is flawed? I don't know.
I will say that I live my life the way I remember it being laid out in the New Testament (the Old Testament, from a Southern Baptist point of view is all hellfire and damnation and "You will never be worthy and are going to hell!! !").
Then, there are the "believers" -
My grandfather, a professed "Godly" 94 year old man, is one of the most racist and hateful people I've ever met. Sure, he's nice on the outside, but some of the things he will say in regard to other humans are downright hateful.
In college, I went to a Baptist church in a small town in North Louisiana with someone I was dating at the time. Her dad was a deacon in the church and would, outside of the church setting, of course, use racial slurs against people all the time.
In the same church, the pastor was a married man, slightly older than I was. One day, I was driving him through the small college town I lived in and we passed a group of college girls jogging down the road. He turns to me and says, "Man...if I lived here, I would never get anything done." You're a married man that is the LEADER of the church.
My ex's father was an Elder in the Church of Christ in Nashville. He was a nice enough person most of the time. After my wife left me, I emailed he and his wife saying that I tried everything I could. He emailed back, "You're a damned liar." I don't know what she told him, but I don't lie.
These are the models of what a "Godly" person is supposed to be? That's a hard pill to swallow.
I've heard the argument that "These are just people and people are fallible. People sin...that's what makes them human." That's great and all...but that seems like a great way to just excuse bad behavior.
This all sounds so cynical, I know. I don't mean for it to...I genuinely don't understand...but I want to.
I started dating someone recently who is also on the spectrum. She's religious and we had a discussion last night about religion. She doesn't go to church because The Church is not how she views religion. Her religion is a relationship with God and, to her, that doesn't require The Church...and that's something I don't have because I don't understand. I've fallen away from it because I don't possess the understanding of the key part of religion: faith.
How can you have faith?
How can you reconcile the disparity between what people profess and what they are?
How do you accept something that you've spent so much time away from?
Sincerely looking for input here. DM's are welcome if you prefer that over responding in the forum.
Thank you.
By college, I had started to really question "religion" and was mostly hung up on the idea of faith. I, like many here, I'm sure, am fairly logical and rational, and the idea of faith is something that confuses me because it is believing in something with no empirical evidence (I've heard the "what about the wind?" argument and those like it before, but even those things can be measured and physically felt).
Faith isn't something that is easy for me at all. I need to hold a thing and take it apart and fully understand it. You can't do that with faith. "You can't do that with love, either," I've been told. True, but love has symptoms and, like the wind, can be felt...faith, as I understand it, can't.
So, maybe my understanding of faith is flawed? I don't know.
I will say that I live my life the way I remember it being laid out in the New Testament (the Old Testament, from a Southern Baptist point of view is all hellfire and damnation and "You will never be worthy and are going to hell!! !").
Then, there are the "believers" -
My grandfather, a professed "Godly" 94 year old man, is one of the most racist and hateful people I've ever met. Sure, he's nice on the outside, but some of the things he will say in regard to other humans are downright hateful.
In college, I went to a Baptist church in a small town in North Louisiana with someone I was dating at the time. Her dad was a deacon in the church and would, outside of the church setting, of course, use racial slurs against people all the time.
In the same church, the pastor was a married man, slightly older than I was. One day, I was driving him through the small college town I lived in and we passed a group of college girls jogging down the road. He turns to me and says, "Man...if I lived here, I would never get anything done." You're a married man that is the LEADER of the church.
My ex's father was an Elder in the Church of Christ in Nashville. He was a nice enough person most of the time. After my wife left me, I emailed he and his wife saying that I tried everything I could. He emailed back, "You're a damned liar." I don't know what she told him, but I don't lie.
These are the models of what a "Godly" person is supposed to be? That's a hard pill to swallow.
I've heard the argument that "These are just people and people are fallible. People sin...that's what makes them human." That's great and all...but that seems like a great way to just excuse bad behavior.
This all sounds so cynical, I know. I don't mean for it to...I genuinely don't understand...but I want to.
I started dating someone recently who is also on the spectrum. She's religious and we had a discussion last night about religion. She doesn't go to church because The Church is not how she views religion. Her religion is a relationship with God and, to her, that doesn't require The Church...and that's something I don't have because I don't understand. I've fallen away from it because I don't possess the understanding of the key part of religion: faith.
How can you have faith?
How can you reconcile the disparity between what people profess and what they are?
How do you accept something that you've spent so much time away from?
Sincerely looking for input here. DM's are welcome if you prefer that over responding in the forum.
Thank you.
Ultimately, religion is pretty archaic at this time. It originated out of a need to understand the world around us and have some basis for forming a cohesive society. These days, we have a much better developed scientific framework that can explain most of the things that really matter and centralized governments that can enforce rules deemed important enough to be enforced.
That being said, I do think that religion still does help people to cope with things that don't have a particular solution otherwise. For example, the reality that people are born with different abilities and opportunities is something that's difficult to resolve without some form of religion other than the sucks to be you, but I'll help out if I can. And the problem of what happens at death where it's legitimately unknowable and there are few options other than some form of religion other than a genuine acceptance that either nothing happens or that it's not worth worrying about.
11 Jun 2023, 5:09 pm
ToughDiamond wrote:
As for religion, having researched and considered the evidence available to me for a long time, I've concluded that the balance of probabilities very strongly suggests there's no soul, no afterlife, no deities. So I don't bother with church or anything else that religionists or scriptures might tell us to do, at least not just because they say so. I take particular exception to their notion that (cognitive) faith is under the individual's control and that people are morally obliged to have it. I also take exception to their idea that we should obey their deity as our prime directive. Even if there turned out to be a deity, my five senses tell me nothing about what any deity wants, so I'd have to take the word of religionists as my sole source of instruction. They claim to be inspired by their god, but I don't believe them, I think they're wrong. The arguments they presented to me presupposed my acceptance of scripture as absolutely true, but there don't seem to be any objective grounds for accepting that.
There is a strong element of faith at the core of all regions/spiritual philosophies. The vast majority never experience first hand interaction with a deity/spirit so from childhood accept what they are told. The reason so many stick with faith is that it provides a cognitive placebo (sometimes even physical e.g. faith healing).
11 Jun 2023, 6:42 pm
cyberdad wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
As for religion, having researched and considered the evidence available to me for a long time, I've concluded that the balance of probabilities very strongly suggests there's no soul, no afterlife, no deities. So I don't bother with church or anything else that religionists or scriptures might tell us to do, at least not just because they say so. I take particular exception to their notion that (cognitive) faith is under the individual's control and that people are morally obliged to have it. I also take exception to their idea that we should obey their deity as our prime directive. Even if there turned out to be a deity, my five senses tell me nothing about what any deity wants, so I'd have to take the word of religionists as my sole source of instruction. They claim to be inspired by their god, but I don't believe them, I think they're wrong. The arguments they presented to me presupposed my acceptance of scripture as absolutely true, but there don't seem to be any objective grounds for accepting that.
There is a strong element of faith at the core of all regions/spiritual philosophies. The vast majority never experience first hand interaction with a deity/spirit so from childhood accept what they are told. The reason so many stick with faith is that it provides a cognitive placebo (sometimes even physical e.g. faith healing).
Yes, although in some areas Churches, and other places of worship, are the center of social life outside of work, which can make it tricky to leave, even if somebody has decided it's no longer something that they believe.
