On teaching religion.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I used to very religious, but I found a belief in religion can’t hold up to any real test. Of course, there are people out there who have been tested in ways that I can’t imagine, and I respect them greatly for going on. But, I would still argue if they actually believe in religion rather than just claim to, then their faith in that belief itself has never been tested enough. Furthermore, let’s not confuse a faith in life with a faith in religion or a faith in goodwill, etc. I can believe that some people have an indomitable will to live, I just don’t think a faith in religion and goodwill can hold up to all of life’s tests.

Nonetheless, I think faith in religion and goodwill is just fine if one can manage to hold them. My question is; when is a good idea to teach others these things? I grew up hearing that my family’s church was true and no other. I had an active imagination, but not enough of one to imagine the afterlife they described to me. Nonetheless, I would have been willing to take their word for it, but I knew there were people all over the country just like us except with a different religion. It was beyond my comprehension at the time that I would be so lucky to be born into a family that happened to have the right one.

So I grew up with no real faith. But, I did get something very significant out of all they were teaching me. While I didn’t believe them when they said, “this is the way things are”, I did believe that things had to be a certain way, and when I found it I would know because the people living by that belief would "stand outside the crowd. Imagine how wasteful 10 years of looking for buried treasure that never existed would be, and you will know how wasteful looking for objective truth is.

I believe if I was never taught religion as if it was a fact rather than only a way of life, I would never have been so delusional. My argument is that in a closed culture people can teach a religion and have some luck of keeping it, and actually having it be a positive part of their life. In an open culture it is near impossible. Those who have it good from the start can just casually keep their family’s religion like an old photo album they never look at or throw it out like a pet rat they’ve grown tired of. Most people who are raised in religion, whether they always claim to be religious, made a pretense at atheism early on or are somewhere in-between, are set up for a life of doubt, indecisiveness and guilt.

So in an open culture I don’t think it is ever a good idea to teach religion as an objective fact. Telling someone to believe in the face of the glaringly obvious inconsistencies of religion that one sees where ever they look is as bad as telling someone to play through the pain. Religion, if taught at all, should be taught based on new methods. Can you believe people are teaching religion the same way in modern society as they did in the Stone Age, where everyone had to worship the same?

2

You must have been a pretty sharp kid. Most people don’t get the “luck” factor in religion. If they did, they would immediately see it as horrible that God is practically just playing dice with their souls. That God can by no means be considered just or merciful or loving.

3

I was born into the jehovah’s witnesses religion and they were similar in that they claimed they were right and the whole world was wrong.

Ideology can be viral. Whatever converts more than it destroys, will spread.

4

Yes, I can believe that people are still relatively teaching religion the same way.
I can, because the teaching isn’t to teach a religion, but to teach a cultural identity; an “us-ness”.

However, without exactly agreeing with everything you state (and it’s not needed for me to do so), I can agree with your overall sentiment that religion needs another round of renovation.
Luckily, believe it or not, that is gradually taking place.

If you consider that every cultural change arrives with radical outburst of opposition attempting to retain a given standard which is in their eyes correct and under threat, then it is easy to see an abundance of change at a nexus of beginning today.

My proposition, which does not need to be the answer, but I think it would be pretty interesting, is ‘modular spirituality’.
This would be a sort of à la carte system that openly recognizes subjective nature of humanity and that one size does not fit all, but instead that many different approaches (borrowing several practices from a variety of religions, beliefs, and spiritual ontologies) summarized into one unique package for a specific individual is capable of supplying a more articulated and efficient spiritual exercise for the individual than a slowly adaptable method of mass formation of conforming unity despite differences in individual needs.

Some have questioned the stability of such a system with a tangent of stating that often times religion is helpful by the very nature of challenging an individual to change themselves, not the other way around.
While this is true, the above outline concept does not negate this.

Instead, it treats religion more like personal training in which one uses a personal trainer.
In such a case, it is such that the trainer of a group of people (what we may think of a guru, pastor, priest, or the like today) would be an individual who prescribes the variations that an individual would use based on their assessment of the individual’s conference with the trainer.

So it would be the same as physical work-out programs; just simply for the human emotional and ontological spirit rather than the physical fat and muscle.

This is a tall order to fill, clearly, and an idealized one at that.
This is just my idea on the “evolution” of religion.
We have made everything around us modular in the new era of society; everything except for religion.

However, in regards to the need of society to change religion: don’t worry - it is.
It’s not a fast moving change, but it’s changing.
In fact, if you really look at it - it’s always been changing. :wink:

5

Both God and Santa Clause favoring some while ignoring others always bothered me. I don’t want anyone to get me wrong; I’m not an active atheist. My intelligence level sunk quite a bit when I grew up and I actually sustained a belief in religion for many years (I’m only saying I was stupid to believe in religion, others might actually be in a situation where it’s stupid not to, who knows). The facts of the universe and the world never got in my way, just the realization that I could die miserable, nearly alone with no God smiling down on me for trying to put others first most my life. All the facts against religion that can fill twenty phone books mean nothing to someone who can benefit from religion, but my argument is that few can. What Dan~ said is interesting, I never used such a strong world as “destroys” when talking of religion, but isn’t that exactly what it does sometimes. I’m happy to say I’m a survivor, I had some close calls but I beat the religion virus. It left me with little money, respect, career, friends, or even my health as it used to be, but I beat it. I’m rarely one to speak against religion based on facts, but don’t go to the Amazon without insect repellent and don’t get into religion if you don’t know what you’re doing.

6

Why not?

7

Jayson, that is exactly what religion needs to do. I believe people unexposed to previous types of religion could benefit from that. I’m not so sure about people reducing their current belief in religion. Some might be better to quit it entirely, then years later maybe consider going back in the more reasonable way. Though for some the damage is already done. I believe the nature of the word “right” is subjective, so if someone wants to claim destroying their life is “right”, what can I say?. But, to use alcohol as an analogy; if you’ve never been an alcoholic then perhaps casually drinking is good, but once you’ve become an alcoholic you remain one. I realized recently, that just like an alcoholic should stay away from others drinking alcohol, I need to stay away from people worshiping. Religion has a way of sucking people back in then spitting them out again.

8

I’m not an active atheist in the sense that I don’t think atheism has an objective priority over religion. Once again don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against atheists trying to save poor people from a life of misery (I applaud them), but personally I have trouble telling people that how they view reality is wrong. I prefer to tell people that if they are at least willing to agree with reality as I see it enough to admit that destroying one’s life is bad, then they should admit the religion has its risks. Also, I already switched sides twice, from atheist, to religious, to simply a non believer. I don’t feel I have enough credibility being that I change my beliefs more often than my carpet.

9

You do think non-religion is better. You appear only to not feel completely secure in telling a religious adherent that you think that they are wrong.

Well, I like to see your post here as you learning to have the courage to do so as you see fit, as you have created a post which expressly provides your non-religious perspective where religious people exactly survey for debate.

10

Jayson, thanks for taking an interest. I wouldn’t call it a lack of courage just reluctance. I haven’t talked much about religion lately, but I would like to, I think I have a common, but rarely expressed perspective on it. I don’t think religious people are wrong. I may wonder whether they really have religious faith, but it’s not my concern. Let me also emphasize that while I don’t think religious faith is always beneficial, faith in life always is.

11

Hi Stp523,

My friend, I can well understand how you feel and you are right from your POV.

But, the fact of the matter is that both, religions and faith are not perceived properly in general.

Here is something from a different thread. Perhaps it may wipe of some dust-

[i][b]There is a difference between sanity and spirituality. Sanity is not an ultimate goal of spirituality but only the byproduct. It is just like bitumen which we get by default while processing crude oil for petrol and diesel.

It is a general misconception that religions or spirituality do not require any effort as one could have a belief only and that is enough. This is the precise reason why sometimes sanity and spirituality are considered as synonymous. The reason behind this notion is that we do not understand what the essence of the religions is.

The core or crux of religions and spirituality is something else. It is neither faith nor belief as we generally perceive.

Spirituality or religions may take a start from many different ways. We can compare them with a complete meal. As we all know, a formal meal has three courses; a welcome drink or a starter, main course and dessert in the last.

The first one is the starter. It may be a slight belief, which comes with race or society. It may be a curiosity as in case of philosophers, it may be some unexpected incident in some cases or it may be something else like that.

Then comes the main course. This is the essence of religions but I am not talking about either scriptures or rituals but empiricism. I am talking about what Zen monks used to do 16 hours in a day throughout their life. I am talking about what ancient Hindu sages used to do alone in the Himalayas till their beard became white. I am talking about what Sufi saints used to do hiding in the caves for years, isolated from the world. You may call it worship. You may call it prayer. You may call it meditation or even anything else whatever you like, but, it does not matter. More often than not, we want to bypass this stage, because it demands herculean commitment and effort; more than anything else in the world. It requires such high level of concentration that you cannot do anything else doing this as there is absolutely no scope and time left for anything else.

Crossing this stage leads to dessert; and that is faith. Faith is not the starting point of the event, but, it is the end result. It is the default product of the process. It is just like the fruit of the tree of spirituality. It is a reward, that’s why I compared it with the dessert. It is like the dressing of the salad or icing on the cake. The event concludes here.

Religions, in totality, are just like science or rather I should say that they are more scientific than science as it relies more on practical than science. First of all there is a theoretic part; scriptures. The second stage is practical portion; meditation and final is conclusion; faith. The difference with the science is that one cannot use borrowed knowledge here. We have to earn (not learn) it, from the very first step while It is possible in science. One needs not to be Thomas Addison to use the electric bulb. We can bypass his whole effort of invention. But in spirituality, it is impossible. One cannot use the knowledge of Buddha merely by reading him. We have to do the same in person to reach that stage and unfortunately, neither we have time nor commitment for that.

We use to take the word ‘faith’ very lightly. Faith is not a belief. Belief is just more than assumption. Belief means that we are assuming that something is true, but still it is an assumption. While in faith, there is no scope of assumption. Faith is supposed to be as true as a fact. Belief has to pass the test of experience to be converted into faith. [/b][/i]

With love,
sanjay

12

Hello Stuart,
I believe that anything can become a problem if followed blindly. Monotheistic religion is often problematic. The arguments you are raising are not new, but the spirit needed is rare. Religion, in my opinion, provides a language, aset of readily available shared symbols facilitating social norms. That said, language can be used creatively. It can be used to express how one feels and sees. But as one does, our meaning is lost and we end up a bit lonelier. That is why the honest truth is hard to share or even keep.
Be careful when judging religion though because it is vast and wide. Even Christianity, for all it’s faults, can be noble. It is a vessel. Sometimes a mirror. It carries what WE put in it and we see humanity, human nature reflected in it, for better or worse. In an open society, some might add a pluralistic society, barriers that once stood like stone walls (again man-made) begin to crumble. Insisting on exclusivity is archaic in such society which welcomes the stranger. BUT such societies are rare and thus, while they have existed previously, they are fragile. They come at the height of strenght, but strenght is not as abundant as weakness. When society finds itself in danger, suspicion arises that destroys the welcoming spirit. Divisions emerge, causes appear to try to regain control and separate ourselves from weakness.

It is desirable to teach an open approach to all religions, but such teachings are an effect and not a cause. Behind this desire is the strenght of the individual or social group. From our perspective it is easy to speak of the older societies and see how they could have been better, more like us. But we cannot imagine what effects their circumstances would have had in their narration of religion. But I do get the idea from how we react when attacked.
I wish you took this detachment as an opportunity to come to terms, as they had to, with a narration that speaks the truth to you. If you don’t find it anywhere at all it might be because it is inside you. You said that: “While I didn’t believe them when they said, “this is the way things are”, I did believe that things had to be a certain way, and when I found it I would know because the people living by that belief would "stand outside the crowd. Imagine how wasteful 10 years of looking for buried treasure that never existed would be, and you will know how wasteful looking for objective truth is.”
The question should not be whether other people stand out of the crowd but whether you do.