Wow. So, I’m basically brand new to this site. I’ve never taken a logic class and I’ve never read extensively on the subjects discussed here. So if I say something unbearably unsophisticated or naive, please direct me somewhere useful. But I do have a couple comments/questions about this post and some of the replies.
I don’t think it’s fair to completely discount prayer. When I was a young child, I asked my grandmother why I should bother praying, when God supposedly loved everyone the same and people praying for much more important things didn’t get what they wanted all the time.
She told me that the idea is not to pray for things to happen or not happen. If I pray for my basketball team to win our game (or for my son to get well, or to win the lottery, or whatever) then based on how I interpret the results of my prayer I would be holding God accountable for me getting or not getting what I wanted. The point of praying, as she explained it, was to develop a relationship with God so I would be able to handle whatever situation I found myself in with grace. Even though we often structure our prayers as requests for things to happen, the important thing to keep in mind was how Jesus prayed in the garden before he was crucified. Even though he was scared of what was going to happen to him and he didn’t want to go through with it, his prayer was “your will, not mine”. He didn’t pray for things to go his way, although he acknowledged in his prayers that he did have certain things that he wanted. The point of the prayer was not to avoid trials or fix their outcome, but to communicate with God for the strength and courage to hold fast to faith through trials.
Now, I’m certainly not citing my grandmother as a religious or theological expert. But that explanation made sense to me at the time, partially because I think you could probably that it would have the same benefit for people regardless of whether or not there was actually a God to correspond to the prayers, which jives well with how I believe in God.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the post, but I think I have something like believing that I ought to believe in God, although I’ve always phrased it as choosing to believe in God. Even though I was raised Catholic, I never felt like I really “believed” it. For as long as I can remember, the idea of “belief” has made me incredible uncomfortable. Every time a TV show character asked “didn’t you ever just believe something” I would cringe and wonder how anyone could possibly find such an experience valid when anyone else could have an alternate experience.
Secretly, I’m glad that I’ve never felt any kind of religious conviction. If I did, then I would have to prize my subjective experience over someone else’s subjective experience. I’m quite aware that there are a multitude of people that have had very profound experiences that make them believe in one doctrine or another to the exclusion of all others, and that’s something I can’t really understand. Knowing that other people exist that feel equal conviction about different ideas of God with the same objective evidence makes it impossible for me to have any sort of belief in a specific God or scripture, at least at the level of someone who believes with enough conviction not to be perfectly comfortable with the idea that I’m wrong.
That said, I consider myself Catholic. I don’t agree with all the doctrine and I don’t think I could honestly say I think my religion is correct and other religions are wrong in any way that corresponds to an objective reality. But I choose to believe in this religion because what I do really believe deep down is that there is some higher order that gives meaningfulness to human life.
I consider it to be rather like the way I love my family- I don’t objectively think that my family is the best family in the world, the particular subset of people most deserving of my love and affection. But they’re my family, and I’ll have no other. I can love them while still acknowledging that your love for your family is just as real as mine. Just because they’re different experiences doesn’t make them more or less valid- and just because it isn’t tangible or falsifiable doesn’t make it any less potent. Even so, I’m always curious if I’m really an atheist, or maybe an agnostic, since I don’t really believe it beyond my conscious choice to believe it (and a bit of emotional attachment to my personal history with this specific religion).
Whew. That was a lot of words. Anyways, I’m sure that I’ve got plenty of logical and rational flaws and holes. Like I said, I’m basically brand new to all the ideas presented here, so I’m going to try and thrash my way through them and see what beliefs I still hold at the end.
Hi there, nice to know I’m not the only one absolutely new and quaking in my slippers here.
I don’t think you’re quite making the mistake of believing in belief. I can’t model your brain accurately just by reading a few paragraphs of course, but you don’t seem to show much flinching-away from admitting the judeo-christian god and the catholic interpretation of it is wrong. I think you’re more identifying the religion of your family and peers as your ‘group’ (tribe, nation, whatever wording you prefer) and shying away from dropping it as part of your identity for the same reason a strong patriot would hate the feeling of betraying their country.
I remember reading a thing about this by… some famous secularist writer, Dawkins or Harris I think. About a million years ago, for all the good my memory is serving me on the matter. I’ll try and find it for you.
As for being attracted to a higher order of things, well.. I agree with you. I just happen to think that higher order is quite physical in nature, hidden from us by the mundanity of its appearance. I think you might really want to read the sequences:
Wow. So, I’m basically brand new to this site. I’ve never taken a logic class and I’ve never read extensively on the subjects discussed here. So if I say something unbearably unsophisticated or naive, please direct me somewhere useful. But I do have a couple comments/questions about this post and some of the replies.
I don’t think it’s fair to completely discount prayer. When I was a young child, I asked my grandmother why I should bother praying, when God supposedly loved everyone the same and people praying for much more important things didn’t get what they wanted all the time.
She told me that the idea is not to pray for things to happen or not happen. If I pray for my basketball team to win our game (or for my son to get well, or to win the lottery, or whatever) then based on how I interpret the results of my prayer I would be holding God accountable for me getting or not getting what I wanted. The point of praying, as she explained it, was to develop a relationship with God so I would be able to handle whatever situation I found myself in with grace. Even though we often structure our prayers as requests for things to happen, the important thing to keep in mind was how Jesus prayed in the garden before he was crucified. Even though he was scared of what was going to happen to him and he didn’t want to go through with it, his prayer was “your will, not mine”. He didn’t pray for things to go his way, although he acknowledged in his prayers that he did have certain things that he wanted. The point of the prayer was not to avoid trials or fix their outcome, but to communicate with God for the strength and courage to hold fast to faith through trials.
Now, I’m certainly not citing my grandmother as a religious or theological expert. But that explanation made sense to me at the time, partially because I think you could probably that it would have the same benefit for people regardless of whether or not there was actually a God to correspond to the prayers, which jives well with how I believe in God.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the post, but I think I have something like believing that I ought to believe in God, although I’ve always phrased it as choosing to believe in God. Even though I was raised Catholic, I never felt like I really “believed” it. For as long as I can remember, the idea of “belief” has made me incredible uncomfortable. Every time a TV show character asked “didn’t you ever just believe something” I would cringe and wonder how anyone could possibly find such an experience valid when anyone else could have an alternate experience.
Secretly, I’m glad that I’ve never felt any kind of religious conviction. If I did, then I would have to prize my subjective experience over someone else’s subjective experience. I’m quite aware that there are a multitude of people that have had very profound experiences that make them believe in one doctrine or another to the exclusion of all others, and that’s something I can’t really understand. Knowing that other people exist that feel equal conviction about different ideas of God with the same objective evidence makes it impossible for me to have any sort of belief in a specific God or scripture, at least at the level of someone who believes with enough conviction not to be perfectly comfortable with the idea that I’m wrong.
That said, I consider myself Catholic. I don’t agree with all the doctrine and I don’t think I could honestly say I think my religion is correct and other religions are wrong in any way that corresponds to an objective reality. But I choose to believe in this religion because what I do really believe deep down is that there is some higher order that gives meaningfulness to human life.
I consider it to be rather like the way I love my family- I don’t objectively think that my family is the best family in the world, the particular subset of people most deserving of my love and affection. But they’re my family, and I’ll have no other. I can love them while still acknowledging that your love for your family is just as real as mine. Just because they’re different experiences doesn’t make them more or less valid- and just because it isn’t tangible or falsifiable doesn’t make it any less potent. Even so, I’m always curious if I’m really an atheist, or maybe an agnostic, since I don’t really believe it beyond my conscious choice to believe it (and a bit of emotional attachment to my personal history with this specific religion).
Whew. That was a lot of words. Anyways, I’m sure that I’ve got plenty of logical and rational flaws and holes. Like I said, I’m basically brand new to all the ideas presented here, so I’m going to try and thrash my way through them and see what beliefs I still hold at the end.
Hey, welcome to Less Wrong! You might want to take a moment to introduce yourself at the welcome thread. Hope you find LW enjoyable and educational!
Hi there, nice to know I’m not the only one absolutely new and quaking in my slippers here.
I don’t think you’re quite making the mistake of believing in belief. I can’t model your brain accurately just by reading a few paragraphs of course, but you don’t seem to show much flinching-away from admitting the judeo-christian god and the catholic interpretation of it is wrong. I think you’re more identifying the religion of your family and peers as your ‘group’ (tribe, nation, whatever wording you prefer) and shying away from dropping it as part of your identity for the same reason a strong patriot would hate the feeling of betraying their country.
I remember reading a thing about this by… some famous secularist writer, Dawkins or Harris I think. About a million years ago, for all the good my memory is serving me on the matter. I’ll try and find it for you.
As for being attracted to a higher order of things, well.. I agree with you. I just happen to think that higher order is quite physical in nature, hidden from us by the mundanity of its appearance. I think you might really want to read the sequences:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Reductionism_(sequence) and http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Joy_in_the_Merely_Real
Funny, it’s the second time this past week or so that I encounter a Lesswronger that identifies as Catholic.
(Welcome to LessWrong by the way!)