(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

The truth.


If you don't value that, then carry on believing fairy tales.

Rather than discarding a crutch or a security blanket, moving from religion to atheism is more like stepping out of the darkness of superstition, with all its imaginary shadow monsters and bumps in the night, into the light of reality. There's a little scene in The Blair Witch Project in which the characters go back at night to a spot they'd found in the daytime, in order to film anything out of the ordinary. After panning around for some time, one of the characters remarks that it's all pretty much the same as it was earlier, only darker.

Put another way, if you throw out religion of any flavour and all its doctrines, you'll find nothing in reality that wasn't already there anyway that you might not have accepted or even seen before.

(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: Ok, here's my problem. I'm a Christian. I'm not mad keen on most other christians, we seem to attract more than our share of dicks. I'm downright embarrassed by mainstream christianities attempts at science. The bible seems to me full of contradiction and irrationality.

But here's the thing, religion offers something. An easy answer to lifes hard questions, a(broadly) functional moral code to live by, and something to cuddle when I get afraid of the dark (metaphysically speaking). I've heard religion described as a crutch and I think that's true. If I decide not to believe in god any longer, to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

hmmm, perhaps you dont need to be converted.

Religion in itself isnt a bad thing, the bad things are the human introduced aspects; the church, the books (bible, koran, torah etc) and the labels (christain, muslim, jewish, hindu etc).

It looks as if you have a good understanding of the reality of things, but you still maintain that you are a christian even though you see the problems involved.

Why not hold your beliefs, but dont label them, follow god, if thats what you want, but dont listen to the books. You will know the truth when you read, hear or see it.

(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: Ok, here's my problem. I'm a Christian. I'm not mad keen on most other christians, we seem to attract more than our share of dicks. I'm downright embarrassed by mainstream christianities attempts at science. The bible seems to me full of contradiction and irrationality.

But here's the thing, religion offers something. An easy answer to lifes hard questions, a(broadly) functional moral code to live by, and something to cuddle when I get afraid of the dark (metaphysically speaking). I've heard religion described as a crutch and I think that's true. If I decide not to believe in god any longer, to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

Mans religion is designed to give you false hope and to control you through fear and false reward. Your best bet is to do away with your labels and seek the true, whatever that really is and is accurately. Logic and reason are your friends, question everything and be sceptical.

In terms of having a Crutch, you have to except the reality that there was never a crutch, you were tricked into believing that there was a crutch. You been standing by your self the whole time, you just never knew it.

(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: If I decide not to believe in god any longer, to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

You cannot "decide" to believe something. You either believe it or not. Your beliefs can change if you find new evidence or new arguments and thoughts that you have not considered before.

I cannot "chose" to believe (as opposed to pretend to believe) that the moon is made of cheese. There is no mental technique or meditation method that will make me properly believe that. If there is another moon landing and cheese is recovered from drilling samples . . . maybe.

Regards

Grimesy

Wow, so many interesting replies! Thanks.

@ grimesy, I think it's perfectly possible to decide to believe something. We do it all the time, usually basing our decision on evidence, but sometimes on expediency. For eg, I believe my kids love me. I understand that their feelings are a mixture of dependency, socialisation, genetics etc, which cause their bodies to process chemicals in a way that generates what they perceive as feelings. But that's kinda long winded, so I use "love" as a model to sum all that up into a conceptural construct I can understand and conveniently process.

Same with religion. I think that for some people the "sky daddy" (love that) gives a model, a framework for a buncha stuff that they're not otherwise equipped to handle or understand.

As to those who said religion is not an effective, or is a deforming crutch, I'd have to say from a scientific point of view, what data is that based on?

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(August 31, 2012 at 6:37 pm)Napoléon Wrote:

(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

The truth.


If you don't value that, then carry on believing fairy tales.

And this one really struck me.

The main truth I've found is "I / we don't know". That truth stinks. That's why we wrap everything in simplified models which distil the bits we think we do know into bitesize chunks. Trouble is the models are almost always oversimplified! That's not truth, it's a different flavour lie.

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(August 31, 2012 at 5:14 pm)Tobie Wrote:

(August 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm)Penhorse340 Wrote: Ok, here's my problem. I'm a Christian. I'm not mad keen on most other christians, we seem to attract more than our share of dicks. I'm downright embarrassed by mainstream christianities attempts at science. The bible seems to me full of contradiction and irrationality.

But here's the thing, religion offers something. An easy answer to lifes hard questions, a(broadly) functional moral code to live by, and something to cuddle when I get afraid of the dark (metaphysically speaking). I've heard religion described as a crutch and I think that's true. If I decide not to believe in god any longer, to throw away the crutch are there any upsides to replace all that stuff?

You no longer have to delude yourself. Plus, sleeping in on sundays and all the buggery you could wish for

Lol!

Nah, Nothing here to tempt me! We all delude ourselves, lie ins are a distant memory and I already enjoy all the holes God gave me. After all, why put the prostate up there if we weren't meant to use it for fun as well as function!

You got anything else

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"Right, the same moral code that demands that I as a women should not speak when a congregation of men is present. No thank you. The golden rule is not hard to live by and Jesus was most definitely not the first one who thought of it."

Yeah, but like all good Christians, I cherry picked the bits I like. I then get to pick my own moral code (just like you) but also have the pleasant delusion that they're externally imposed. Makes it easier for me to stick to them. Else my "sky daddy" will spank me. Sort of Autologous discipline.

(September 1, 2012 at 10:06 am)Penhorse340 Wrote: The main truth I've found is "I / we don't know". That truth stinks.

Sure there's a lot we don't know, but there's also a lot we do know. That is thanks to the scientific method. The thing that sets apart the scientific method from every other way of discerning truth is that it actually works.

If you think that sucks, then more fool you.

Quote:That's why we wrap everything in simplified models which distil the bits we think we do know into bitesize chunks. Trouble is the models are almost always oversimplified! That's not truth, it's a different flavour lie.

I don't really get what you are going on about here. Science is not a lie, everything confirmed by science has been tested and proven.

Religion has not. Fairy tales, have not.

Who in their right mind chooses fairy tales over science. It's a purely ignorant way to observe the universe, and gets us nowhere in terms of actual intellectual development if we sit there and say we already have all the answers.

Now it's fine to say that if you actually do have the answers (the truth), but we don't. That's why science trumps religion every fucking time, because science acknowledges that we don't know something, and then comes up with testable, provable hypotheses to try and answer the question.

So science doesn't explain everything. At least it works at gaining the answers we seek.

Religion on the other hand, explains nothing, and doesn't even attempt to work on any questions at all.

(September 1, 2012 at 11:19 am)Napoléon Wrote:

(September 1, 2012 at 10:06 am)Penhorse340 Wrote: The main truth I've found is "I / we don't know". That truth stinks.

Sure there's a lot we don't know, but there's also a lot we do know. That is thanks to the scientific method. The thing that sets apart the scientific method from every other way of discerning truth is that it actually works.

If you think that sucks, then more fool you.

More than that, the truthism that is "I don't know" is the driving force behind science. To quote Dara Ó Briain, "Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop."

"I don't know" leads to "But let's find out."

(September 1, 2012 at 10:06 am)Penhorse340 Wrote: That's why we wrap everything in simplified models which distil the bits we think we do know into bitesize chunks. Trouble is the models are almost always oversimplified! That's not truth, it's a different flavour lie.

And that, I think, is your major stumbling block. You're expecting simple one-sentence answers to huge, complicated questions. Just as an example, a creationist prefers the answer "God" to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (most commonly phrased "Who created the Universe?", as if the qualifier "who" is supposed to make sense) because as well as feeding into their presuppositions and beliefs, such simple non-answers are far more comforting far more bite-sized - than either "we don't yet know" or diving into the deep end of quantum physics.

(September 1, 2012 at 1:58 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(September 1, 2012 at 11:19 am)Napoléon Wrote: Sure there's a lot we don't know, but there's also a lot we do know. That is thanks to the scientific method. The thing that sets apart the scientific method from every other way of discerning truth is that it actually works.

If you think that sucks, then more fool you.

More than that, the truthism that is "I don't know" is the driving force behind science. To quote Dara Ó Briain, "Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop."

"I don't know" leads to "But let's find out."

(September 1, 2012 at 10:06 am)Penhorse340 Wrote: That's why we wrap everything in simplified models which distil the bits we think we do know into bitesize chunks. Trouble is the models are almost always oversimplified! That's not truth, it's a different flavour lie.

And that, I think, is your major stumbling block. You're expecting simple one-sentence answers to huge, complicated questions. Just as an example, a creationist prefers the answer "God" to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (most commonly phrased "Who created the Universe?", as if the qualifier "who" is supposed to make sense) because as well as feeding into their presuppositions and beliefs, such simple non-answers are far more comforting far more bite-sized - than either "we don't yet know" or diving into the deep end of quantum physics.

I don't expect simple answers, but you're dead right, an inperfect answer Is far more comforting than the admission that we don't know. But you don't have to tell me about the scientific method. I teach Biomechanics at Post graduate level . I'd never in a million years offer "god did it" as an alternative to investigation. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking philosophy rather than science.

Oh and "science trumps religion every fucking time" is frankly a dumb thing to say. Even if you believe there is no shred of truth in religion, are you seriously contending that nobody has ever had benefit in their life from believing in religion? No alcoholics have even used religion to rehab? No bereaved people have ever been comforted by it? I thought sweeping soundbites like that were the preserve of theists!

Speaking as a recently-bereaved person myself, I can say that, although personally immune, I can see how people can be comforted by it. The religion-as-placebo argument is full of pitfalls, howeber, and I don't imagine many people might be convinced by it.