But maybe because of my particular brain architecture, the pain of cognitive dissonance was far outweighed by the pleasure of having a ready-made community.
I used to have that kind of brain architecture for quite some time, and I kind of miss it. But as I started studying more and more physics, it just became harder and harder. So, I guess the trade-off got really skewed at some point of time.
I have to mention that my religiosity kind of went through cycles. There was a time when I was an internally-militant (not very outspoken) atheist, followed by a period of considerable appreciation for religion, and again followed by a (currently) pretty comfortable atheism. If I think back to my first episode of atheism (religion was my default state as I was born in a pretty religious family), I guess I was pretty uncomfortable with it, in the sense that I felt that a lot more needed to be explained. In the intervening episode of religiosity, I appreciated the exact things that you mention about religion, but I just didn’t like all the baggage, i.e. the time and money spent in rituals. My religion was Hinduism, which is highly ritualistic, but enjoys some nice philosophies. I still like some of the philosophy but I dislike most of the ritual.
I appreciated the exact things that you mention about religion, but I just didn’t like all the baggage, i.e. the time and money spent in rituals.
Funny. That’s probably a brain architecture thing, too, but I really enjoy a lot of the High Anglican rituals at the church where I used to sing in choir. The traditional carols that all of us know by heart, every single word… The ministers and the bishop in their beautiful robes leading the choir in a procession around the cathedral while we sing in insane harmony… Stuff like the ritual of turning out all the lights and everyone leaving in the dark on Maundy Thursday (day before Easter Friday) to symbolize Jesus’ death. It’s all very theatrical, and very moving, and usually makes me cry.
I have a feeling that you might be talking about a different kind of ritual, though, if you’re frustrated by the amount of time and money spent on them.
Building and running a church, paying for a bishops education and the time he works there, training children to sing, and all of the time people spend there is not a small investment. Multiply that by all the churches in the world, and add the cost of various missions and church plants to spread religion, or the charities which do their work sub-optimally because they take religion more seriously then saving lives and I imagine that the figure would become inappropriately ludicrous. Not that just eliminating religion would make us all much more efficient, humans are very gifted at wasting time and money.
I’ve heard that argument before, and it does have a lot of weight. In this case, though, are we talking about religion or about costly ritual? Both are cultural phenomena, and they’re frequently found together, but there are religions that aren’t into ritual at all, like Quakers, who are best known for their simple, silent style of prayer and worship, and don’t go around building fancy cathedrals). And there are costly “rituals” which are not related to religion at all: football, for example, or theatre.
Agreed that churches which run charities may run their sub-optimally from an atheist’s point of view, since a lot of the time one of the unstated aims of their charity is to convert people. (This used to make me furious when I attended the Pentecostal church mentioned in one of the parent comments.) But we were talking about ritual, and I was specifically talking about deeply moving, meaningful rituals. It just so happens that the ones that have meaning to me are religious in nature. I know a lot of people find arts and theatre meaningful, and likely there are people who find watching sports meaningful, in a similar way. There’s some kind of human instinct to gravitate towards activities that are communal, repetitive, and have a sense of tradition that imbues them with meaning. There’s also a human instinct to think superstitiously, which I don’t share much, and which makes it hard for me to really enjoy those meaningful moments in church.
Nitpick: yes, paying for a bishop’s work and teaching children to sing is something that happens “under religion’s umbrella.” That doesn’t make it bad! I learned to sing better through the church choir (for which I was paid a monthly stipend for the community service of singing during Sunday worship!) than I would have in the $400-per-month children’s choir, which I probably wouldn’t have been allowed into...most people thought I was tone deaf until I proved them wrong. Bishops who organize community events and charities are doing something good for the community, whether or not it’s sub-optimal, and face it...are any human activities run optimally? Yes, it’s possible to have a better community-runner than a church, but the amount of money that goes into churches right now does produce something of value!
I’ve heard that argument before, and it does have a lot of weight. In this case, though, are we talking about religion or about costly ritual? Both are cultural phenomena, and they’re frequently found together, but there are religions that aren’t into ritual at all (like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers), who are best known for their simple, silent style of prayer and worship, and don’t go around building fancy cathedrals). And there are costly “rituals” which are not related to religion at all: football, for example, or theatre.
Agreed that churches which run charities may run their sub-optimally from an atheist’s point of view, since a lot of the time one of the unstated aims of their charity is to convert people. (This used to make me furious when I attended the Pentecostal church mentioned in one of the parent comments.) But we were talking about ritual, and I was specifically talking about deeply moving, meaningful rituals. It just so happens that the ones that have meaning to me are religious in nature. I know a lot of people find arts and theatre meaningful, and likely there are people who find watching sports meaningful, in a similar way. There’s some kind of human instinct to gravitate towards activities that are communal, repetitive, and have a sense of tradition that imbues them with meaning. There’s also a human instinct to think superstitiously, which I don’t share much, and which makes it hard for me to really enjoy those meaningful moments in church.
Nitpick: yes, paying for a bishop’s work and teaching children to sing is something that happens “under religion’s umbrella.” That doesn’t make it bad! I learned to sing better through the church choir (for which I was paid a monthly stipend for the community service of singing during Sunday worship!) than I would have in the $400-per-month children’s choir, which I probably wouldn’t have been allowed into...most people thought I was tone deaf until I proved them wrong. Bishops who organize community events and charities are doing something good for the community, whether or not it’s sub-optimal, and face it...are any human activities run optimally? Yes, it’s possible to have a better community-runner than a church, but the amount of money that goes into churches right now does produce something of value!
I used to have that kind of brain architecture for quite some time, and I kind of miss it. But as I started studying more and more physics, it just became harder and harder. So, I guess the trade-off got really skewed at some point of time.
I have to mention that my religiosity kind of went through cycles. There was a time when I was an internally-militant (not very outspoken) atheist, followed by a period of considerable appreciation for religion, and again followed by a (currently) pretty comfortable atheism. If I think back to my first episode of atheism (religion was my default state as I was born in a pretty religious family), I guess I was pretty uncomfortable with it, in the sense that I felt that a lot more needed to be explained. In the intervening episode of religiosity, I appreciated the exact things that you mention about religion, but I just didn’t like all the baggage, i.e. the time and money spent in rituals. My religion was Hinduism, which is highly ritualistic, but enjoys some nice philosophies. I still like some of the philosophy but I dislike most of the ritual.
Funny. That’s probably a brain architecture thing, too, but I really enjoy a lot of the High Anglican rituals at the church where I used to sing in choir. The traditional carols that all of us know by heart, every single word… The ministers and the bishop in their beautiful robes leading the choir in a procession around the cathedral while we sing in insane harmony… Stuff like the ritual of turning out all the lights and everyone leaving in the dark on Maundy Thursday (day before Easter Friday) to symbolize Jesus’ death. It’s all very theatrical, and very moving, and usually makes me cry.
I have a feeling that you might be talking about a different kind of ritual, though, if you’re frustrated by the amount of time and money spent on them.
Building and running a church, paying for a bishops education and the time he works there, training children to sing, and all of the time people spend there is not a small investment. Multiply that by all the churches in the world, and add the cost of various missions and church plants to spread religion, or the charities which do their work sub-optimally because they take religion more seriously then saving lives and I imagine that the figure would become inappropriately ludicrous. Not that just eliminating religion would make us all much more efficient, humans are very gifted at wasting time and money.
I’ve heard that argument before, and it does have a lot of weight. In this case, though, are we talking about religion or about costly ritual? Both are cultural phenomena, and they’re frequently found together, but there are religions that aren’t into ritual at all, like Quakers, who are best known for their simple, silent style of prayer and worship, and don’t go around building fancy cathedrals). And there are costly “rituals” which are not related to religion at all: football, for example, or theatre.
Agreed that churches which run charities may run their sub-optimally from an atheist’s point of view, since a lot of the time one of the unstated aims of their charity is to convert people. (This used to make me furious when I attended the Pentecostal church mentioned in one of the parent comments.) But we were talking about ritual, and I was specifically talking about deeply moving, meaningful rituals. It just so happens that the ones that have meaning to me are religious in nature. I know a lot of people find arts and theatre meaningful, and likely there are people who find watching sports meaningful, in a similar way. There’s some kind of human instinct to gravitate towards activities that are communal, repetitive, and have a sense of tradition that imbues them with meaning. There’s also a human instinct to think superstitiously, which I don’t share much, and which makes it hard for me to really enjoy those meaningful moments in church.
Nitpick: yes, paying for a bishop’s work and teaching children to sing is something that happens “under religion’s umbrella.” That doesn’t make it bad! I learned to sing better through the church choir (for which I was paid a monthly stipend for the community service of singing during Sunday worship!) than I would have in the $400-per-month children’s choir, which I probably wouldn’t have been allowed into...most people thought I was tone deaf until I proved them wrong. Bishops who organize community events and charities are doing something good for the community, whether or not it’s sub-optimal, and face it...are any human activities run optimally? Yes, it’s possible to have a better community-runner than a church, but the amount of money that goes into churches right now does produce something of value!
I’ve heard that argument before, and it does have a lot of weight. In this case, though, are we talking about religion or about costly ritual? Both are cultural phenomena, and they’re frequently found together, but there are religions that aren’t into ritual at all (like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers), who are best known for their simple, silent style of prayer and worship, and don’t go around building fancy cathedrals). And there are costly “rituals” which are not related to religion at all: football, for example, or theatre.
Agreed that churches which run charities may run their sub-optimally from an atheist’s point of view, since a lot of the time one of the unstated aims of their charity is to convert people. (This used to make me furious when I attended the Pentecostal church mentioned in one of the parent comments.) But we were talking about ritual, and I was specifically talking about deeply moving, meaningful rituals. It just so happens that the ones that have meaning to me are religious in nature. I know a lot of people find arts and theatre meaningful, and likely there are people who find watching sports meaningful, in a similar way. There’s some kind of human instinct to gravitate towards activities that are communal, repetitive, and have a sense of tradition that imbues them with meaning. There’s also a human instinct to think superstitiously, which I don’t share much, and which makes it hard for me to really enjoy those meaningful moments in church.
Nitpick: yes, paying for a bishop’s work and teaching children to sing is something that happens “under religion’s umbrella.” That doesn’t make it bad! I learned to sing better through the church choir (for which I was paid a monthly stipend for the community service of singing during Sunday worship!) than I would have in the $400-per-month children’s choir, which I probably wouldn’t have been allowed into...most people thought I was tone deaf until I proved them wrong. Bishops who organize community events and charities are doing something good for the community, whether or not it’s sub-optimal, and face it...are any human activities run optimally? Yes, it’s possible to have a better community-runner than a church, but the amount of money that goes into churches right now does produce something of value!