As time advances, do our religious beliefs subsume the increasing data of human experience? If religion addresses a genuine body of understanding and human necessity, then it should be susceptible to progress; its doctrines should be more useful, rather than less. Progress in religion, as in other fields, would have to be a matter of present inquiry, not the mere reiteration of past doctrine. The truth should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that don’t offend the rest of our understanding of the world.
By this standard, the project of religion as it now stands is flat out backward and doesn’t deserve the reverence it’s paid, but rather contempt and unrelenting criticism until it’s consigned to the realm of anthropology or archeology or the fascination with weird ideas.
Those fields are where religion is rightfully consigned. And my post didn’t mention them explicitly, but if you reread my concluding papagragh, you’ll see that the studies OF religion are where religion belongs. But religion itself ties our current needs for moral direction to edicts from antiquity pronounced without the benefit of 3000-2000 yearsof progress. Religion itself does not address progress and for that reason alone should be consigned to the disciplines you mention, and that I mention too in my closing remarks. We have no disagreements. I am an a occasional student of the fields you mention, and that’s why this topic is on my mind. But the Bible and Koran, taken as literal guides to action, enslave the agent to much ignorance and gibberish.
I’m thinking about constitutional interpretation. I read some book by Scalia on it. Can we construct a method of interpretation of the bible,(a religion), which functions in the way we need it to with our common sense notion of progress and still consider it a religion rather than simply a study of one?
Your welcome. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “addressing progress.” Religion itself has progressed. The conception of God has evolved. On the other hand, progress has itself come under criticism since every advance we make seems to have unintended negative consequences. The province of religion goes beyond that to which you would “consign” it. Science and politics are not above of theological analysis. I don’t know about the Koran, but if people misinterpret the Bible, then theological insight is needed more not less.
We live in an era where religion has become a force for division, antipathy, and groundless dogma. Religionists typically stand in the way of education, throwing out fictions to deceive followers from grasping simple truths like natural selection. What’s worth preserving and why? Just because it’s been around for so long. Some scientific findings are abused? So is the wheel.
You are describing fundamentalism which comprises only a small percentage of the religious. Unfortunately they are getting a disproportionate amount of media attention. Sensationalism sells. Most religionists are quiet “salt of the earth” types who rarely make the news. It’s unfair and inaccurate to tar us all with the same brush.
If a system puts progress at it’s center as the First Dogma, then yes, religion will get in the way of that, and very quickly, because proper religion has God as that center instead.
If a system takes it for granted that religious claims (the supernatural sort) must be false by default, then naturally enough, it will be hard to find the benefit of religion through the lense of that system. But proper religion does is not about ‘throwing out fictions to decieve’, it’s a collection of truths that are not accessible any other way.
So, in essence, I agree with the initial post. From the perspective of a progress-bent, humanistic materialist, religion would at best seem unnecessary, and at worst, a destructive or inhibiting force. But of course, there’s no good reason at all why a supernatural, traditional, God-centered religion should have to justify itself in terms of what a humanist is willing to accept.
Religionists may indeed claim their privileged place as being informed by a supernatural source. But if they want that privilege, they must admit disqualification from the secular realm, and not throw out garbage notions like “Intelligent Design”. Religious people should admit their foundations rest on faith and not try to meddle with unassailed scientific conclusions outwith their realm. Nor should they premise foreign policy on supernatural planks, like some Muslim republics, or as America has bordered on under the current admin, whose head has been on record as being informed by God before decisions of statecraft (Woodward, “Bush At War”).
Teaching things such as “do not steal”, and forms of altruism, are examples of “principals” that are not “progressive”. “Progressive” means, essentially, something that is a means but not an end. It is an open, ever changing process. But the very essence of absolute truth, is an end in itself. After it has been reached, it is “complete”, therefor it needs no more “progression”.
To “progress” the principals of non-theft and altruism, for example, one would only be able to complexify them more and more, until they became very maticulus, technical, and political.
But, what use is all of the specification, if the simple and general principal was more important and more efficient?
In many ways, a reduction or recession of “progress” creates more “efficiency”, through a sort of minimization.
Claiming to have a supernatural source (or any other source)for one's beliefs is not a 'priviledge' that you, or anybody else, is in a position to extend. I will go on believing as I do regardless of what you think I'm entitled to. Now, if someone rouses an [i]argument [/i]against my positions, that's another story. Also, you're approach here is still much as it was before- you are arguing circularly, by assuming your stance is correct, and then judging other positions in light of it- which is fine in itself- but you go on to decree that people who disagree with you ought to behave themselves as though your views were correct anyway. Not only is that an illogical thing to propose, it's an irrational thing to expect.
Here again, when you say "admit" their foundations rest on faith, you're saying it like that's a bad thing. It's something the religious person should grudgingly fess up to. You have not established that the faith-based believer has anything to feel bad or inferior about, you have so far just implied it. Since the religious-believer excersising their 'priviledge' of religious belief is unlikely to feel they are blameworthy for what they believe, this is something you would need to argue for.
Of course they should. This is the most striking example of the cognitive dissonance you seem to be wishing upon religious people. If should be allowed to believe something, then I have the obligation to act according to what those beliefs entail. If someone has a belief that God wants them to bomb Greenland, then they had better bomb Greenland. What you’re doing is asking people to believe something, while pretending they don’t. Ironically enough, that’s precisely the position most religiously-raised atheists find themselves in when they begin to doubt.
Do you think believers are closet atheists?
OK, then if divine sanction is claimed to justify genocide, a theocracy whose deity is said to have given that sanction may rightfully eradicate the rest of the human race. They have a right to act in accordance with their beliefs, no matter how outrageous we might personally find them. That’s exactly what some faiths sanction.
It is the way of humanity to defend old-ideas with sword and shield.
Territorialisms and cultural traditions, as I’d call them, go hand-in-hand.
Just try, try and try again to remember:
“Religion” isn’t just a shot of messa-monotheism.
The writings of plato, for example, are those now “progressive”?
Or does “orthadoxy” wish to preserve the exact and original meanings, by means of accuracy, and not dogma?
Precisely- but only if their beliefs are justified. That’s the unity I’m trying to bring out of this discussion. I think it’s useless to try to say that people should be entitled to their stupid, silly, wrong beliefs, and then expect or require them not to do stupid, silly, and wrong things. If someone thinks God wants them to wipe out all the green people, then they should try to wipe out all the green people. Conversely, if you think there is no God, or that if there is, He wouldn’t want the green people wiped out, then the beliefs have to be opposed just as strongly as the actions that follow from them.
You point to violent extremists as an example. It seems ludicrous to me that we would say to such a person, “Go ahead and believe that everybody but your sect should be killed, and that eating corn is a sin, and that being taller than 5’6” is an affront to the Lord…believe all that stuff, just as long as you act basically like we do." That will never happen.
I think Dan~ hit on something: define progress. So far, I haven’t seen any definition that allows any resolution of the issue. To ask for a change in perspective, one might want a definition of just what “progress” might be. Both to ask and to receive answers.
Ucc, we’ve been down this road before… To take RD’s side just a little bit, I don’t care what anyone believes until it affects me. At that point, it simply becomes a matter of raw power doesn’t it? Religion, no matter its source, no matter its claimed “authority”, has and always will be exclusive and therefore divisive. Religion is always at “war”. There are the believers who are “saved” and then all those others. It is built in and there is no way around it. As Dan~ suggested, religion and spirituality have parted company. The issues of the moment are religion at its most ugly. This in no way affects the need for spiritual understanding. The divisiveness of religion is readily apparent at this time in history. All the talk about the war on terror is just a red herring. Religion is at war with other religions and itself. Asking for an end to the violence promulgated by “faith” isn’t wrong, even if it is impossible as you suggest.
Finally, it makes no difference. I plan on being on the winning side, and religion, ALL religions will be the losers. The fundamentalists are advertising the the gap between irrational faith and the sometimes rational facts on the ground. They make the difference between religious faith and spirituality completely clear. Religion is the loser.
This is all that was necessary. That you can harp endlessly about the dangerous of devisiveness and exclusionary thinking, and then say something like this in the same post, is why you and I never get very far. Nobody knows anything, and yet somehow, you're better at not knowing anything than everybody else is. Whatever.
Sorry about harping on the obvious. I know you don’t like to hear it, but that doesn’t make it go away, does it?
As for the rest, I don’t not know anything better than anyone else, but I do know that I don’t know. We all “know” what seems to be mirrored in the limited reality we can grasp. That is why I am not a religious person. I have enough trouble knowing anything about what is in front of me. Accepting irrational religious edict takes me even further away from that.
Interesting. In a theocracy, whatever your own belief, you’d better act out according to what the government has sanctioned as the official belief or you might just get imprisoned or made dead. In the somewhat more enlightened nations, you can carry around whatever thoughts of obligations come to you, you just don’t get the freedom to act on them unless your behavior is acceptable to the rest of the society in which you dwell. And, might I add, God bless our Founding Skeptics for throwing in there the separation of church and state!
What do you want me to do, tentative? If I give you a decent reply, you’ll say something about how futile it all is and bow out of the conversation. If I act dismissive, you’ll take it as some kind of victory. If I say ‘whatever’, then apparently that’s not working towards some sort of progress that you suddenly seem to think can be achieved.
Preach your good word brother, you have it all wrapped up nice.
Ingenium
Indeed. There are some paralells there with the idea that started this thread- both theocracy, and the original poster in the thread are of the opinion that people should act as though they believe X, regardless of how they really feel.
Belief that temporal affairs are improving and that better times lay ahead seems to be waning in popular culture. Witness the many dystopian visions in literature (e.g. Brave New World) and movies (e.g. Blade Runner). Perpetual war, nuclear arms, the on-going mass extinction of hundreds of animal species, and global warming don’t lend themselves to optimism about progress and the likelihood of human perfectibility.
To take RD’s side just a little bit, I don’t care what anyone believes until it affects me. At that point, it simply becomes a matter of raw power doesn’t it? Religion, no matter its source, no matter its claimed “authority”, has and always will be exclusive and therefore divisive. Religion is always at “war”. There are the believers who are “saved” and then all those others. It is built in and there is no way around it. As Dan~ suggested, religion and spirituality have parted company. The issues of the moment are religion at its most ugly. This in no way affects the need for spiritual understanding. The divisiveness of religion is readily apparent at this time in history. All the talk about the war on terror is just a red herring. Religion is at war with other religions and itself. Asking for an end to the violence promulgated by “faith” isn’t wrong, even if it is impossible as you suggest.