h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry, it's a religious topic again, but a thought has just struck me.

Firstly, I should say I'm agnostic. However, my wife is religious without belonging to any organised religion. As she puts it, God is something within her and she does not need the affirmation of others to understand her relationship with God. I totally respect her point of view and we have had some interesting discussions.

If you look at the monotheistic religions, they all say their God created everything; life, the universe etc. If this is accepted as a given, why would such a powerful, omniscient being require people to believe in him? Why would such a being be in the least interested in what we wear or whether we masturbate or somesuch?

It is organised religion, a man-made contrivance that sets out rules and strictures. And as night follows day, it would seem that organised religions automatically say they are right and everyone else is going to hell.

Organised religion, directly and indirectly, has killed more people than any disease. It has caused more suffering and anguish than Jade Goody. It has perpetually set man against man throughout history.

Why would God want that? What would any God gain from this?

If you accept there is a God, it is a short step to believing in Satan.
Satan would certainly appear to be the beneficary of religious wars and dogma. In fact, Satan receives the most benefit from organised religion.

When Moses wandered around till he met burning vegetation, what if it was Satan saying "Here, have some laws"? When Mohammed went for a stroll, could have been Satan saying, "Got an idea for a good book here".

What do others think?

First I'd like to say that there *is* a problem here. I think it applies to more than just religion: many human social groupings identify 'them' and 'us', and assume that 'they' are wrong and 'we' are right. This is so common I think it must be a human trait.

Secondly, within the sphere of religions, not all are as dogmatic as you note. Sikhs, for example, are specifically required to respect other faiths, and their adherents. [Sadly this doesn't stop Sikhs - who are human like the rest of us! - from going against this 'commandment'.]

I think the problem is when any group adopts a dogmatic posture, and says that they are right [not unusual, or problematic] and all who disagree with them are wrong [this is where the problem lies!]. This leads, I think, to the real problems you describe, and requires (IMO) all decent, reasonable people to oppose such thinking and such actions, whether the source is a religious group, a political group, a racial group, the fans of a particular football team, or whatever.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"It should thus be clear that an orthodox person does not need to try to obtain a complete and clear explanation for why the name of John was given in advance to Zechariah. Nor should he try to explain how this angelic revelation can be proven or known. This is a matter of faith, not of knowledge. And since the Apostle says that faith is not your own doing but is a gift of God, thus not everyone can distinguish a true from a fals revelation. People can either spurn the true revelation and embrace a false one, or with sacrilegious impiety and incredulity, they can deny, castigate, and reject such things".

Jean Gerson - On Distinguishing True from False Revelations, 1402.

The Catholic Church had a number of ways to discern whether a prophecy or vision was genuinely from God: the moral character of the prophet/visionary (particularly humility), the truth of a prophecy that made a prediction (although it was accepted that some prophecies could be conditional, for example God might commute a sentence of pubishment out of mercy), the orthodoxy of the vision or prophecy, and whether it provided some genuine spiritual benefit to the Church or uncovered some truth about the nature of the divine. This was all to be judged by a senior theologian.

But, as can be seen from the quote, they always considered everything in the Bible canonical (although not necessarily literal, and also hence the word), and this could only be a matter of faith. This did not, of course, stop them from condemning those whose faith was different.

Hmmm.

But don't all the religions claim their God is omniscient? In which case (for example), God is with me at all times and knows my every thought so why does he need me to go to church?

In the case of the Sikhs, why would any God that created the Crab Nebula and Quasars give a stuff about humans wrapping a turban round their heads?

Satan would be quite pleased because it creates elitism amongst Sikhs and creates divisions in mankind.

"Secondly, within the sphere of religions, not all are as dogmatic as you note."

I would agree.

Unitarianism/Universalism, for example, is (are) (an) organized religion(s)* which has no dogma, no creed, and is non-doctrinal. Within Unitarian/Universalism, you will find Pagan, Christian, Buddhist and atheist groups.

No one is told "what to believe" and we respect all other religions.

I might point out, too, that Uniratianism has its roots in Transylvania in the 1500s and is the oldest Protestant religion. No fly-by-night religious group.

These are the principles affirmed by the Unitarian Universalist Association (the US Unitarian Universalist organization) but are basically the same to all UU's:

"We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

"With its historical roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions, Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion -- that is, a religion that keeps an open mind to the religious questions people have struggled with in all times and places. We believe that personal experience, conscience and reason should be the final authorities in religion, and that in the end religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but in ourselves. We are a "non-creedal" religion: we do not ask anyone to subscribe to a creed.

Our congregations are self-governing. Authority and responsibility are vested in the membership of the congregation."

* There are Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian/Universalists.

Probably other typos but this one stands out:

"I might point out, too, that Uniratianism has its roots in Transylvania in the 1500s and is the oldest Protestant religion. No fly-by-night religious group."

Uniratianism should have read Unitarianism.

I listed four types of groups you would find within Unitarianism....

There are many more, including Jewish....

For a brief history in UUism:
http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/history.html

More complete history:

http://www.uua.org/info/origins.html

Thanks Mudhooks,

I'd never really heard of Unitarians, or if I had I think I assumed they were just another Protestant splinter group. If I were to convince myself of a God, this would be the logical religion to subscribe to.

"Organised religion, directly and indirectly, has killed more people than any disease. It has caused more suffering and anguish than Jade Goody. It has perpetually set man against man throughout history."

Actually, organized religion has not done this. Adherents have.... Mostly with political rather than religious motives. They may have used religion as their banner but very few of the major incidents usually cited (The Crusades for instance) have been to further a particular religious end. The Crusades, in fact, were politically motivated rather that religiously motivated. Greed and the quest for land were at the heart of the Crusades. Threy used ignorance and religious fervor to rally people to fight their battles but it had nothing whatever to do with "religion".

It might be pointed out, too, that until the rise of Protestantism, the Catholic Church was basically run by the powerful and the wealthy. The Catholic Church certainly was a religion but it held sway simply because of its political power.

In Spain, the Inquisition was certainly involved in the mass destruction of Jews and Protestants, as well as indiginous peoples in South and Central America. However, this was merely a visible manifestation of what was really at work.... greed and power....

There was money in the Inquisition. If there hadn't been, it would have merely been a short and shameful excercise and would not have lasted as long nor have been so successful.

"I'd never really heard of Unitarians, or if I had I think I assumed they were just another Protestant splinter group. If I were to convince myself of a God, this would be the logical religion to subscribe to."

As I say, there are Atheist (as in not believeing in God, rather than believeing there is no God -- although there are probably those who believe there is no God) Unitarian/Universalists. I am one.

A great many Unitarian/Universalists do not believe in God. It is not a pre-requisite.

That's my point though. Organised religion is a man-made construct which is subverted by those with their own agenda.

But you can't blame organized religion for that. In fact, what we see as the "evils of organized religion" are merely a tiny portion of what religion, organized or not, is.

If you looked at the good that many religions do, communally or internationally, as well as the solice that they provide, their good not only out-scopes the bad, but outweighs it.

We tend to look at the supposed evils (which admittedly can be pretty evil) and say "THAT' is what organized religion is.

In fact, it isn't.

The problem is when certain politically powerful individuals, as you say, subvert a religion for their own ends and means. However, rather than doing comething about the individuals, we choose to blame the religion as a whole.

Recently, we have come to blame Islam for the evils of terrorism.... What those who are so ready to blame the religion as a whole for fail to think about is that, for every single terrorist, there are tens of thousands of Muslims who live the tenets of Islam rather than follow the twisted version of the terrorist.

It is so easy to make sweeping generalizations about any group without accounting for the fact that 99% of the adherents are nothing like the 1% we are selecting as our "representative" part.

In the case of the Catholic Church, we harp on about The Inquisition and The Crusades, forgetting that these ended long ago. The "Church" has spoken out against many evils in recent years and hundreds of priests and nuns have been tortured for and given their lives defending the poor and disenfranchised against political oppression and the efforts of big-business (in South and Central America, for instance).

While I do not agree with certain Catholic doctrine nor in certain policies, there are those within the Church who also do not agree and are doing their part to try and change the Church.

Hi SWL!

From your first post:



I think you've said this more than once, and I'm confused. Isn't an agnostic someone who is not convinced? So is it not possible that organised religion - or maybe just one of them! - is divinely ordained, not man-made?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I would say that I am an agnostic, in that I don't know what happens when I die and I don't know what the real truths of existence are or whether there is or isn't a God.

However I am still utterly convinced that nobody else does either.

I define agnostic as being open-minded in general but I am credulous at the idea of a supreme being passing on instructions to wanderers in deserts. With that level of power it would, I presume, be easy to instantaneously tell every human "Hello, I'm God - here's the deal"

Lots of interesting things to think about here....

The philosophical definition of 'agnostic' is someone who doesn't think that the existence of God can be known or proved (hence a-gnostic), but in common use it generally means someone who's undecided. Thus, technically, it's possible to be a devout Christian and still be agnostic.

I suppose that most believers don't think that their organised religion (the organisation bit) is divinely ordained in the sense of being incapable of error, apart from Catholics, who officially ought to believe this but many don't. I think most believers think the source of their religion is divine, but that the human bits - the organisation - are prone to error as are all humans.

But to try to address some of the original question, I think that for many of the kind of non-Liberal Christians of the kind we don't get much of around here, the existence of Satan (believing that there is a Satan or 'adversary' of some kind) is pretty much standard. And the thought that Satan might try to meddle in religion and sow discord is not a difficult thought for many. And so this world becomes a battleground for souls, between those who want to guide people to God and those who would lead them to Satan - wittingly or unwittingly.

That's why (though I could be wrong) heretics were burnt. I think I read somewhere that this was an act of purification rather than just barbaric violence - at least in the minds of those who did this kind of thing.

Well, technically speaking, even an atheist doesn't "know for sure" if there is or isn't a God (neither of course does a confirmed believer in God). It is an unprovable.

I, as an Atheist, am pretty sure, judging by everything I have seen and learned so far, that there is no God.... However, I cannot SAY "There is no God" because I haven't seen or explored all there is to state this for a fact.

A believer in God can say "I believe there is a God" from their exploration but they cannot state for a fact that God exists since empirical evidence of the fact does not exist. However, I am not going to presume the person who believes in the existence of God that they are wrong. I have to trust that they have based their opinion (it is, after all, just an opinion) that God exists on personal exploration.

By the same token, I expect the same respect from a believer that, as a non-believer, I have come to my opinion by very careful examination of the evidence available.

When it comes down to it, none of us will likely ever know until we die in that eventuality it will become a moot point. I have better things to do than to try and "convince" a believer that they are mistaken. Nor is it my place to do so.

These are all fine statements with which I have no quarrel. But they cerytainly do not seem to tie in with the ethos of the major organised religions.

It could be argued organized religions are neither inherently good or bad, but that the individuals and groups of which they are comprised can be good or otherwise, and indulge in good or evil works, expediently rationalizing their actions with various interpretations of their particular religion.

If organised religions are guilty of anything, it would be promoting non-critical world-views, aka dogmatism or authoritarianism, which typically involve superstition in preference to naturalism or science. I'm not sure this could be labelled 'good' or 'bad', but it seems at least somehow counter-productive

Often, although perhaps not always, organized religions tend to emphasise an 'afterlife', as having greater significance than our 'worldly' existence. If our current form of 'physical' existence is seen as less important than that of, say, our 'immortal soul', there may be a tendency to trivialize the lives of other humans, other life-forms, planetary ecology etc.

Organized religion also typically teaches separate-ness, in which, for example, the 'chosen' are considered somehow better than those who are not. This notion of separateness, while not restricted to organized religion, commonly gives rise to violence, imo.