"Your opinion sounds bit impoverished." You don't get how condescending that sounds?
The dude said religion is only for fear and people afraid of death.
its true though, and people that feel lost
Why do you feel that way?
I don't feel it's such a surprising view of it for an non-religious person.
Religion, at its best, does two things: 1) Gives hope 2) Teaches people morals and to do good.
Welp, plenty of people have found ways to do that without religion. So to them they view it as religion has
- Followers that follow for tradition (nostalgia)
- Followers that need some sort of structured hope (to someone that doesn't need it, this will be considered weak)
- Followers that follow for some "treasure in heaven"/fear of hell (greed/fear)
- Followers that believe you can only do good with religion (weak)
- Followers that hope for an afterlife (can't deal with an existential crisis/fear)
- Followers that want to belong (this in itself isn't a bad trait, though a non-religious person will view it as weakness)
Not to speak for Premium Lager, but I just don't see it as a surprising summation from someone that's not religious. Remember, to them a connection with a god is not something they see or need (or at least they don't need a paternal god as defined in most religions). So the above is how they view a religious person.
Before I get into the real content of your post I'm going to offer up my own flip side to show how you come off as:
At its best, non-religion offers 1) a structured guide to exploring and dissecting the material world through science, and 2) open dialogue.
Here's why these two things are flawed. For one, neither one is unique to the non-religious life. One can do and appreciate both while being religious (I'm proving it right now). Newton, Leibniz, Mendel, Heisenberg, Godel, Da Vinci. They were all religious and scientific. Open dialogue has a long storied
tradition (more on this later) with religion, and especially (surprisingly or not surprisingly depending on who you ask) Christianity. St Aquinas took lessons from the Greeks (many of whom were religious) to openly debate and exchange ideas helping form the building blocks of the university, something many non-religious today cherish. Heidegger, Aquinas, Maimonides, Godel all are involved in this long
tradition.
With that out of the way, it's pretty good to assume the following about non-religious people:
- modern non-religious people think they're the first people to find rebuttals to these religions (arrogance and naïveté). They (the non-religious) think that they are using original arguments for these rebuttals. One such example is the Problem of Evil.
- they argue for emotional arguments as if they are rational arguments (problem of evil) (immaturity and overly emotional) - okay, this one is actually true
- they just don't want to be told what to do (lack of conviction, rebellious)
- they just haven't earnestly sought out religion or God (passivity)
- have childish ideas of God an attribute God to being a sky daddy (childish stupidity)
- talk a lot about religious morality but have never volunteered in their life (hypocrisy)
- just don't want to get up for church on Sunday (laziness)
- have the understanding of religion from the pov of a 12 year old (stupidity)
- non-religious societies have a history of authoratarianism due to people who are non-religious lacking any moral guideline where anything goes. Why care? Every man or woman for themself.
In no way do I think these things. But that's what you sound like and that's what I mean by impoverished view on religion. It's really just close-minded, shallow stereotyping. That's "what there is to it." To think yourself better than others because of what they believe, even if it's perfectly valid, is futile arrogance.
Now, to address the meat of your post let's start with your initial point:
"You can be moral and have hope without religion."
Sure you can. But do you have the structure for it? Let's start with hope. While anecdotal, most of the non-religious people are absolutely losing their shit about Donald Trump while about everyone I know who is religious is dealing with it, as much as they can. Every time Donald Trump and his administration does soemthing the non-religious I know wets their pants, talking about a war against fascists, how we need to get armed (although I support this), how the government is going to start euthanizing Muslims in just a few months time. The religious I know are calling out injustice where they see and not letting it ruin their lives. Non-religious have hope. Certainly. But they have no structure for it. The other day, I prayed for sincere compassion and patience in adoration. I prayed for my enemies. I prayed for people I don't like, for the friends who need it, and for my country. When I left Church that day I had a smile on my face the rest of the day. All I could feel was absolute
joy. Certainly, this gives me a structured way to have hope. I can keep fighting without
losing my shit like the rest of the left and get outraged all. the. fucking. time. Speaking of which. Most Social Studies Warriors tend to be non-religious, but I have rarely seen hope brimming from that camp. It is outrage after outrage. What hope do you remotely have? Funnily, this also applies to the far right as well, who, while Christian, don't go to church (there is vast data for this). What hope do
they have? None at all, because they don't go to church, lack community, and are without hope. This even includes modern activism. These people have no hope, just demands without action. Operation Wall Street. Black Lives Matter. Both secular activist movements, with not one ounce of the hope present in the religious-based Civil Rights Movement. Without religion these groups have nothin to fall back on but pure anger, which doesn't get things done unless you're willing to kill for it. Meanwhile, I have an obligation for adoration duty every Wednesday at night time. This means, we go there to pray and meditate on a weekly basis out of obligation and duty. Research shows that prayer and meditation leads to less stress (source:
https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/03/21/spirituality-and-prayer-relieve-stress/). While you can easily do this without religion, what helped to make these things exist in the first place? Religion. What offers the ability to pray on a daily basis? Religion. Sure, you can meditate on your pillow every day, but zen centers are open every day of the week, multiples times a day. Structure. Muslims pray five times a day; structure. Catholic Churches are often open pretty much all day depending on the area. Mine is open from 8 to 9 pm every day. Guess who was open on July 4 this week? A holiday of all days. The Catholic Church. Guess who went? I did. That's structure. It gives you options to adopt it into your every day life ore easily. You can do this as an atheist but it'll be a fuck load much harder. You could definitely meditate or pray without religion, but religion makes it easier to access due to obligation. For free, without having to buy yoga pants or a yoga mat.
This taps into the spiritual but not religious thing and why it's an utter copout.
You said you can be moral without religion. Sure you can. But I think most people would agree that religion makes easier to do good because it has - again - structure. Religious groups volunteer all the time. Priests go to hospitals to help people. Most volunteer groups are full of religious people. Not too many atheists there. I wonder why. Not because religious people are more moral but because religious groups simply have far more community outreach and ease of access to it. But again, no structure. True religious observation forces self reflection. I'm very aware of my flaws. I even stress this in this very thread. Religion gives me an avenue to hopefully correct them and I hope you see the fruit of my effort in this thread and post. Religion requires sacrifice. I'm doing a daily self reflection on my actions, and how I can do better. I recognize that I have a tendency to fall into certain moods or habits. I can be judgemental, I can call people names, I can be a big bitch. Without religion I could perfectly tell myself,"hey, that's okay. We all have flaws" and that'd be the end of it. Mandark posited just that. But religion, or at least Christianity, is about trying to become perfect in Jesus' image. This is an impossible task, but that doesn't mean we can't try. This gives me a goal and an outlet. Being non-religious offers no such support system beyond maybe the philosophies, and even those are quite limited because they aren't moral guidelines.
Now I'll get into your claims.
1. Claim: tradition is nostalgia.
This a poor definition of what tradition is. Most tradition is done for a purpose. In America, as you know, we celebrate holidays such as Memorial Day. While certainly, many just use the tradition for a day off, for others, it
means something. It means revering the dead lost in battle. It means grieving your loved one who didn't get to come home. It means respecting the sacrifices of people who laid their life on the line. It's tradition, but it isn't nostalgia. It is observed out of
respect and love. On Martin Luther King Day, I have never taken a day off of work. I always work when I can. Why? Because Martin Luther King and others
literally died for my right to work among white people, to be seen with dignity as a human being, to have basic fucking rights. That is
my tradition. It has nothing to do with nostalgia, but everything to do with reverence, sacrifice, love, and honor.
So when you go to a Church that upholds
tradition, you are doing the same thing. Confessing your sins is
tradition. Before my first confession I felt I was going throw up from the sheer amount of guilt. I felt sick and after I confessed I truly felt forgiven. I truly value confession because it forces me to own up to my flaws through self observation to hopefully become a better, more whole person. Confessions are held during the week and usually has a long line of silent people looking towards the floor, deep in thought.
That is tradition. And tradition serves a purpose. Tradition has many definitions. It can be something that your culture values, like scratching on a turn table in hip hop. Or it can be honoring the dead in a funeral to say that one final goodbye. Tradition is not inherently nostalgic. It depends on the context and reasoning. One of the many reasons I fell in love with Catholicism was its intellectual tradition. Art, philosophy, theology, apologetics. No other church comes remotely close. But to see that word that I value turned into an over simplification is vast injustice.
That, is what I mean by impoverished and it tells me you had a very shallow relationship with religion. I could be wrong, but that is what you're giving off and I am willing to be corrected.
2. You said that religious people are weak, in that we need community, or because we "need" to believe in God.
My ancestors were enslaved for hundreds of years and one of the biggest things that helped was religion. The civil rights movement was typified by its religion. You said structured hope is weak. Would you say Martin Luther King or Malcolm X were weak? Structured hope leads to gaining strength. Despite being LGBT, I've joined a church where I am not allowed to even be married within it. Am I considered weak? I'd think a lot of people would see having hope in soemthing, despite all opposition, to be strength. I could very easily go to an affirming church like the Episcopalian Church, and I've been to a few. But I decided on something else entire after months of search because I have faith and hope in it and I truly think it is the better place for me spiritually. Is this weak? I can agree that being religious just for a reward or because you're scared of hell is silly, but the way many atheists are framing it, that's why a lot of religious people believe. It's such a poor assumption and nothing more. How many of your points can be determined with evidence? How do you know so many people are doing these things? They're so generic and presumptuous that they're on equal standing with a theist accusing an atheist for not believing because they're "mad at God". Certainly, there are people like that that exist, but to use it as an argument against atheism isn't a rational argument. It's an assumption and doesn't cut into
why they find atheism so poor. The same is true here. It isn't a legitimate case against religion. To many it just comes across as a projection.
It's a projection because as said, religion is supposed to be hard af. There's nothing weak about faith. Faith is not just taking something at face value and believing it whole sale. It's believing in soemthing despite the doubts. It's a choice. It's about action. There's many stories of the Saints who were fighting crippling atheism and still did their duty out of love and trust for God. This is not weakness. Why is hope considered weak? Hope is the ability to fight against all odd despite the uncertainty. I have hope that America will be healed of its division. We all had hope that Atramental would get laid.
That is what I mean by impoverished.
It's such a poor look at how religion operates to the point of being a caricature. This is without mentioning the sheer arrogance of thinking people are weak for being religious in the first place.
