This thread has plenty of anti-religious stances and oversimplified explanations that just mock those that are religious. Despite how exhausting it will be to think about the replies, I feel that some balance is needed for the sake of good content and discussion. I’m terrible at this shit, so take it with a grain of salt. Obligatory “I’m not religious” - I’m not defending those that have twisted religion to be used for personal gain, perversion, or for enacting upon hatred, but to say there’s zero benefit to religion and that it shouldn’t exist is naive; it is, however, in need of improvement.
Religion provides community, philosophy, and despite what everyone in the comments here are saying, education. You can deny a specific diety all you’d like, but it poses potential answers to questions science has yet to figure out. Did a diety create the universe via The Big Bang? When does life begin? What happens after death? What happens before we’re born? Etc.
Church provides support for those struggling. You can argue that praying to a diety may not do anything on its own, but to have a pastor say that someone in the church has been struggling with something and everyone includes that in their prayers - it helps a lot to cope with the passing of someone, addiction, debt, etc. Some churches will do events to help raise money for a cause. Some will pull you aside to help give direction to resolve the struggle in your life. Some host meetings for AA and other similar programs.
Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.
Multiple strong atheists including my college Language Arts teacher throughout my life have said that The Bible is one of the greatest books ever written - not for the diety, but for the teaching of morals, the poetry, the individual pastorals, and the story overall. Is it the only source to learn morality? No. Additionally, any source where you learn morality from will also have immoral characteristics, so don’t let any strawman arguments prevent you from learning from it.
Nothing and no one is perfect, so use your own judgement to discern the morality from the immoral, and question it. For those interested in pro-religioua debate, books on Apologetics can be an interesting read.
Einstein didn’t say that religion was needed for science. Cosmic religion is not a good term because any reader will associate it with our umbrella term religion while he defined something else. Writing it without context is manipulating any reader who does not have/take the time to read up on the term.
He firmly stated that he does not belief in any religion associated with any god or gods like all the religions OP probably means. Even going so far as calling such beliefs expression and product of human weaknesses.
He also wrote “the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” And “I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy.” So he does se a conflict between religion like OP means and science. He only once made a statement in support of the traditional religions when he said he was positively surprised that the christian church opposed the Nazi regime. He later backtracked on this because the church supported the Nazis partially during the further years of the war.
He still stated he is no Atheist because he believes in the existence and governance of the fundamental laws of nature and what he sometimes called religion he defined as the aspiration to pursue the research on these fundamental laws.
I’ve been looking into a tradition for the last few years that died out nearly 1,500 years ago that has me wondering the opposite.
How in the present day with the clear trajectory of science and technology we are currently working on do we not realize this ancient and relatively well known text isn’t some mystical mumbo jumbo but is straight up dishing on the nature of our reality?
I think there’s a stubbornness of thought that exists among most humans regarding what they think they know about life which blinds both the religious and non-religious.
Anchoring bias is remarkably resilient.
The Gospel of Thomas. Lost for centuries. Misunderstood for decades after being found. And bizarrely on point with its thinking to more modern ideas and developments.
Though I prefer the name of the text fully translated - "Good news of the twin’ - given that its ultimate point is that it’s a good thing to be the virtual copy of a physical original.
Childhood indoctrination is a big part of it. I have been told by my 8-year old niece that she’d like to save me from drowning in a lake of fire. She was genuinely scared for me. It’s literal child abuse followed by Stockholm syndrome.
Have you heard of the fireplace delusion? Burning wood is horrible for our health and the environment, but most of us have fond memories of sitting by a fire. Religion is the same. Holiday traditions with family, organized events marking important life events, it’s hard to break away.
Religion has certain self-reinforcing properties. Kind of like genes that make it more likely to propagate against other forms of information.
- Believing without question is better than questioning
- Not believing will be punished
- Virtue will be rewarded
- Spreading the belief is a virtue
- You should obey your parents
Combine that with young human brains being malleable, and religion tends to continue against all odds.
