RE: Are all forms of religious faith indicative of insanity? (My counter example.)
May 10, 2015 at 4:40 pm
(This post was last modified: May 10, 2015 at 4:44 pm by Whateverist.)
I agree that the exercise of skepticism requires judgement. I also agree that it isn't really that hard, or if it is you should find out how far out you are along the autistic continuum. Still, I don't identify as a skeptic nor cite it as a panacea for making the hard calls.
There are some calls to be made regarding when and where to apply skepticism that aren't as open and shut as solipsism. Religion really is one of them. It is a cultural artifact of long duration and widely dispersed. Just a misattribution of cause and effect? That seems a little glib to me. One should really try to find a positive use for it before taking such an easy out.
There is enough about and within us which is stranger than the conscious mind can adequately explain. I suspect projecting god out onto the world serves to allow the conscious mind to focus on that which is below consciousness. The thing is, it is only below in the sense of not being accessible to consciousness .. not in rank. Some pretty good insight can come from there, insight which you might never find by holding up one factoid at a time for conscious consideration. Diffusely focussed, the consciousness below can sometimes recognize opportunities and dangers we might otherwise miss. Someone with both the capacity to narrowly focus consciousness rationally AND the ability to access their animal nature might have an advantage which would be selected for by evolution.
That is more or less my theory. Do we still need religion for this purpose? Probably not. But could it still serve such an end. Maybe. The real point is that it might have served some positive end which it can still contribute to. Naturally institutional religion often replaces direct apprehension of 'god' with acceptance of doctrine. So that sort of religion is probably of little value. But listening to Bill Moyers, I definitely get the feeling he is getting something positivite from it.
There are some calls to be made regarding when and where to apply skepticism that aren't as open and shut as solipsism. Religion really is one of them. It is a cultural artifact of long duration and widely dispersed. Just a misattribution of cause and effect? That seems a little glib to me. One should really try to find a positive use for it before taking such an easy out.
There is enough about and within us which is stranger than the conscious mind can adequately explain. I suspect projecting god out onto the world serves to allow the conscious mind to focus on that which is below consciousness. The thing is, it is only below in the sense of not being accessible to consciousness .. not in rank. Some pretty good insight can come from there, insight which you might never find by holding up one factoid at a time for conscious consideration. Diffusely focussed, the consciousness below can sometimes recognize opportunities and dangers we might otherwise miss. Someone with both the capacity to narrowly focus consciousness rationally AND the ability to access their animal nature might have an advantage which would be selected for by evolution.
That is more or less my theory. Do we still need religion for this purpose? Probably not. But could it still serve such an end. Maybe. The real point is that it might have served some positive end which it can still contribute to. Naturally institutional religion often replaces direct apprehension of 'god' with acceptance of doctrine. So that sort of religion is probably of little value. But listening to Bill Moyers, I definitely get the feeling he is getting something positivite from it.
