How has your view of religion changed over the years?

[DrZoidberg]

My views of religion have gone something like this:

Age 0-20. Religion is harmless. It's for stupid and/or weak people. This was my looking-down-on-the-religious-phase. In hindsight it was only about inflating my young and vulnerable ego.

Age 20 - 35 Religion is evil. It's a corrupting form of pure evil. It is memes (the scientific term) that tells us comforting lies we want to believe which makes us vulnerable targets for charlatans that take advantage of us. This is my I'm-afraid-of-religion-phase. I think it was the zeitgeist. God Delusion and all that.

Age 35 - 45 Religion is great. It's a collection of practices, rituals and beliefs that can help you to become a better person, and by extension, make the world a better place. It's tried and tested methods for social and self control. It's designed to reign in the worst excesses of human stupidity. Without religion everything will be worse. Is the claims religions make about the world true? No. They are not. It's nothing but lies. But it's lies that work. Perhaps our ancestors tried the honesty method, to achieve this effect, and it didn't work? So they went with lies. Is everything about religion good? No. Fundamentalism and litteralism is always bad. Each religion was created to deal with contemporary issues. What worked then, might not work now. So they're in need of constant revision and updates, as well as flexible interpretations. I reached this insight after taking 6 years studying religion and religious sacred texts. As well as starting with yoga and exploring spiritual practices. LSD helped.

How about you? How has your view of religion changed over your lifetime? What made you change your opinion?

 

[rousseau]

When I was a teen religion was so much of a non-issue that I didn't think about it much. I may have thought that it was something only followed by the gullible, but that was about it.

In my twenties I experienced religious belief onset by mania, which was quickly snuffed out when I recovered. Shortly after that I became a strict materialist, but still didn't give religion much thought.

In my late twenties I started explicitly studying world religions and the outcome of that was basically the understanding we're all at now - religions are man-made, and their beliefs are usually fantasy. But at the same time I've gained a lot of respect for why people believe, and the motivation behind religion. So I'm now in my mid-thirties and certainly non-religious, but not anti-religious. It would just be nice if religious people with dumb ideas wouldn't force them on others.

 

[rousseau]

Age 35 - 45 Religion is great. It's a collection of practices, rituals and beliefs that can help you to become a better person, and by extension, make the world a better place. It's tried and tested methods for social and self control. It's designed to reign in the worst excesses of human stupidity. Without religion everything will be worse. Is the claims religions make about the world true? No. They are not. It's nothing but lies. But it's lies that work. Perhaps our ancestors tried the honesty method, to achieve this effect, and it didn't work? So they went with lies. Is everything about religion good? No. Fundamentalism and litteralism is always bad. Each religion was created to deal with contemporary issues. What worked then, might not work now. So they're in need of constant revision and updates, as well as flexible interpretations. I reached this insight after taking 6 years studying religion and religious sacred texts. As well as starting with yoga and exploring spiritual practices. LSD helped.

I'm of the opinion that the 'why religion' question is a bit of a false dichotomy, in the same way something like 'why meat eating', or 'why child-rearing' would present a false dichotomy.

From some unreachable realm of idealism the questions make sense, but I'm convinced that the behavior and cognitive processes that manifest themselves in religion or religious thinking are an inextricable part of human nature. They can't be eliminated by culture and just are what they are. So asking whether religion provides a net benefit presents a false dichotomy, because it can't be otherwise. You can talk about it's impact, but not if we'd be better off without it.

Some may argue that it's disappearing in some parts of the world. And that's true, but likely an outlier in the grand scheme of human history, and the religious type of thinking still persists but is focused on other types of ideas, like economics.

 

[Tammuz]

My views haven't changed much I think. I am passionate about what is true, and religion falls more than a little short there. Religion is quite often a repository of cruel practices. But some cultural traditions, like feasts, etc, associated with religion I have no problem with.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

From some unreachable realm of idealism the questions make sense, but I'm convinced that the behavior and cognitive processes that manifest themselves in religion or religious thinking are an inextricable part of human nature. They can't be eliminated by culture and just are what they are. So asking whether religion provides a net benefit presents a false dichotomy, because it can't be otherwise. You can talk about it's impact, but not if we'd be better off without it.

When I was young everyone was drinking the same kool-aid so it's no wonder I did too. Eventually I began to notice that not everyone was drinking the same flavor of kool-aid and wondered why. Years later I met lots of those people and they seemed just fine to me, we never talked much about who's flavor of kool-aid was the right flavor. But even in my early 30's I still hadn't met anyone that didn't drink some flavor of kool-aid. Everyone was a kool-aid drinker.

Having children and a stable marriage that involved a lot of moving probably did as much as anything to bring about deconversion. Eventually I got to talking with other atheists and met quite a few who didn't like using the word due to cultural pressure. But as I was financially stable it didn't bother me, and I eventually realized my employers were the same, though they didn't advertise.

Scientific curiosity killed the religious cat in me, no doubt about that. Today religion is just more woo, belief in ghosts, anal probing aliens, bigfoot, etc. People do it because it feels good to pretend and they just don't know any better. Our brains create the religion because we're emotional creatures and some of us lack a really good WTF gene.

I'm of the opinion that religion is harmless but not helpful, and resent people trying to legislate that the earth is flat. I see religious folk as a kind of natural resource being exploited. Maybe the vein is finally running out.

 

[Tammuz]

I don't think religion is harmless at all. I'm at a loss as to how someone can come to that conclusion.

 

[abaddon]

Oxygen is harmful. Food's harmful. The sun is harmful.

<broad category> + "is harmful" = too vague to be either true or false.

It's T.G.G. Moogly's claim "Scientific curiosity killed the religious cat in me" that I find curious. It hasn't done the same in me. SJ Gould wasn't entirely wrong in calling religion and science non-overlapping categories. They overlap only when religion has historical and physical claims, that's yet another optional feature in religions. It's an extremely huge category. It's not false for not being science. It's not theism. It's not supernaturalism. It's not superstitions. Even though it much-too-often has those as features of it - but not in all instances. If naturalists whose main guiding light is science regarding how nature is can call themselves religious naturalists, then all the things I listed are optional to religion.

New atheists are stuck in the science vs. religion dichotomy. It requires that you focus on fundies as the worst of the problem. Which is fine, but stop with huge claims along the lines of "all religion is harmful" when your focus is on part of it.

 

[Tammuz]

NOMA only holds if religion makes no factual claims. Is there any major religion that does not make factual claims?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Used to think "all religion is harmful", now I just think some people do need religion, but not everyone. Might be a controversial view here...

 

[ideologyhunter]

Foolish and tribal. Without it, our species would still war on each other, but hopefully with less fanaticism. Religion makes problems more intractable: human rights, school curricula, taxation, foreign policy, climate change; pretty much the full scope of polity gets invaded by the invisible world and fantasized beings that exist only in the heads of believers.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't think religion is harmless at all. I'm at a loss as to how someone can come to that conclusion.

I understand your point.

At least here in the U.S. we don't hang people for blasphemy. Religious ignorance and superstition is still just ignorance and superstition. Yes, the less we have of it the better we all are but there are far worse things that happen in the society that deserve our attention.

 

[southernhybrid]

I was indoctrinated into a fundamentalism version of Christianity, starting around the age of 4, right after my mother converted from being an apathetic Christian who never attended church to an extreme Christian who suddenly believed that those outside of her religion would suffer eternal torture in hell. I did my best to believe, despite having some doubts, and considered myself "saved" until I attended a fundamentalist Christian college. It was there, being around the other believers 24/7 that I suddenly went from conservative Christian to liberal Christian, while still believing that perhaps there was another religion that was true. I transferred from that horrible place after one semester.

I spent about 5 or 6 years investigating other world religions, while tossing each aside, usually in a very short time. None of them made sense to me. Still, I never judged those who had religious beliefs or considered religion as necessarily harmful. I suddenly realized my atheism around the age of 27, and my first husband, a dedicated Baha'i seemed very disturbed by this. I liked his religion, but could never fully accept the supernatural elements. We eventually divorced, and I started being more aware of how harmful religions could be when people took them too seriously.

I met my second husband at age 30. He was raised Catholic but was an atheist since around the age of 19. While never worrying too much about it, I began meeting more people who used religion as a weapon, or a way to condemn others who didn't share their group think. I was always fairly open about my atheism. Sometimes that was accepted and other times it left me a target by idiotic coworkers. But, all of those who judged me, were very conservative Christians.

The older I became, the less I cared about the beliefs that others held, and I frequently used humor to address their craziness. In old age, I see liberal to moderate versions of religion as helpful, as it offers individuals community, friends and opportunities to do charity. There is a lot of that in my town. In fact, without the churches here, there would be more hunger and less access to decent health care. Many of the churches in my community seem more concerned with doing good works and developing community than they do their beliefs.

I still consider the harsher religious beliefs as potentially dangerous, not only to the individual but to the world. These are the folks who deny scientific evidence, who are close minded when the contradictions of their holy books are pointed out etc. These are the folks who are easily manipulated by corrupt, lying leaders like our current president, who has used their naivety for his own advantage. These are the folks that would like to instill their personal moral beliefs on the entire country. These are the folks who would support wars and violence to sustain their worldview. I think many of these individuals are harmless, but when they form large groups, some of them are like sheep who will follow their leaders regardless of the harm that these leaders do. Best example, Jim Jones and his followers who drank the Kool-Aide.

I also think that some people need religion to feel complete. I'm a fan of the late Joseph Campbell. His "Power of Myth" helped me have a greater appreciation for the history and purpose of mythology. Campbell condemns fundamentalist religion but gives many good examples of the benefits of religious mythology and of its purpose for humanity. Don't ask me for examples. It's been years since I read some of his works.

As for me, I have no need for mythology. Perhaps if I hadn't been exposed to such a harsh, selfish version of religion as a young child, I might have found a mythology that appealed to me. I think I could easily be a UU, and I've called myself a cherry picking Humanist at times, but the only thing that I find attractive about religion is community and the opportunity for group involvement in charity. We atheists simply aren't very good at successfully herding the cats. I know this because I've been a member of many atheist groups and the only one which hasn't died out is the Atlanta Freethought Society. But, even the AFS has not been able to do a good job of organizing and keeping the cats in line.

Basically, my personal feelings are, if we must judge, judge others based on their character and not on what they believe.

 

[hyzer]

I grew up in an Episcopalian house in suburban Washington DC, baptized as a child and going to church every Sunday up to high school age. My parents believed in God, and taught me that there are many faiths, but “we all believe in the same God.” I became an acolyte (alter boy) in my early teens in our church. Our minister was a former Washington DC police officer. While he never told me any of his stories, my parents shared that “he has seen all sides of living in the city”. At high school age, my father was directed by his employer to lose some weight and he started playing golf Sunday mornings, when he could get a tee time. At the same time, my brother and I started playing a lot of competitive frisbee and joined a club that met Sunday mornings. I knew from years sitting on the alter, listening to the sermons, that the church had little for me. At the same time, my education was teaching me about the wider world and, hey, that thing called science! Where I grew up there were many Jewish families. When I got to the point in high school of asking them about their faith, I found out that universally none of them ‘believed in the Bible’, their Jewishness was all about continuing family traditions and had nothing to do with their world view. I was fascinated that one could be Jewish, but fully modern in terms of science and education and world view. Being Jewish was limited to, well, going to Temple and maintaining a Jewish heritage. And nothing to do limiting education or science or progress. By the time I entered collage I was a committed atheist.

 

[rousseau]

Oxygen is harmful. Food's harmful. The sun is harmful.

<broad category> + "is harmful" = too vague to be either true or false.

It's T.G.G. Moogly's claim "Scientific curiosity killed the religious cat in me" that I find curious. It hasn't done the same in me. SJ Gould wasn't entirely wrong in calling religion and science non-overlapping categories. They overlap only when religion has historical and physical claims, that's yet another optional feature in religions. It's an extremely huge category. It's not false for not being science. It's not theism. It's not supernaturalism. It's not superstitions. Even though it much-too-often has those as features of it - but not in all instances. If naturalists whose main guiding light is science regarding how nature is can call themselves religious naturalists, then all the things I listed are optional to religion.

New atheists are stuck in the science vs. religion dichotomy. It requires that you focus on fundies as the worst of the problem. Which is fine, but stop with huge claims along the lines of "all religion is harmful" when your focus is on part of it.

I agree. It seems like the meaty part of the bell curve of religious conversation focuses on the reason/unreason dichotomy. People are usually only interested in practical concerns, so the non-religious focus on it's negative affects, and the religious focus on it's positive effects.

Few are interested in understanding or discussing it from a broader perspective (not to suggest that this is always the case for T.G.G. Moogly).

As Nietzsche said:

In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

 

[abaddon]

I agree. It seems like the meaty part of the bell curve of religious conversation focuses on the reason/unreason dichotomy. People are usually only interested in practical concerns, so the non-religious focus on it's negative affects, and the religious focus on it's positive effects.

They have important concerns about people with really stupid values trying to get across the CSS divide. I'm on secular activism's side in that, for sure.

My main interest in religion is the religious attitude and not the metaphysical religious claims. It's the celebratory and reverential attitude toward something greater than oneself or one's species that is religious and valuable.

I've struggled a bit with whether it's possible to "secularize" the useful/helpful attitudes. Like, recently I argued that religious feelings aren't religious. They're human feelings so religious people should not claim them for themselves. Nor do valuing feelings like "awe and wonder" show there's a "god-shaped hole in the heart". I thought the attitudes and feelings that religious behaviors evoke are available to secularists too. In arguing this, I thought I could extract "the baby in the bathwater" and fully secularize it.

Some atheists agreed but others argued against. They argued "not gratitude!" because it implies a Whom. So I had to wonder about the effect of ideology on feelings. "Secularly inappropriate" feelings would indicate it has an effect on feelings and attitudes (and thus probably on behavior). So, now I have to consider it's a meaningful distinction to call them religious feelings.

With that in mind, I recalled all the times I've seen atheists express sentiments like "nature wants to kill you". The tacit idea under that and similar notions is: nature and humans are in a battle, and science & technology are our weapons to make that heartless/mindless/inhuman machine obey our will. So nature is distinct from us "rational beings". It's the background scenery to the human drama, and we "owners" get to re-engineer it for the greater comfort of one particular species. There's a dark side to the 18th century enlightenment and that still informs contemporary secular thought.

This isn't a critique of that here though and I won't answer to challenges about it now because it's a HUGE topic and I'm still working on it. The point here is: There are religious feelings/attitudes and it might be better if more people were encouraged to direct them to nature instead of presenting them with stark dichotomies: "you're either secular or religious", "you're either for science or, if you're religious, you're clearly not up-to-date on science".

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.

---------------------

Disclaimer: Nothing I said that's favorable to religion supports theism or supernaturalism.

---------------------

That's a change in my view of religion in the last couple years. Actually it's me trying to settle something I've been up-in-the-air about for a very long time.

I want to answer more directly to the OP. But I'll be briefer with the whole life story:

- apathy towards religion when a kid

- then got "born again" at age 14 so was fervently theistic for 1.5 years

- in my 20's, I read psychology, philosophy, and about non-traditional religions (mystical traditions, some new age thought), always more interested in how to live a happier life than in finding 'The Answer to Absolutely Everything in the Universe'.

- in my middle years, I got more vocal about being secularist and atheist when the school boards were pushing creationism in the early 00's

- found IIDB in 2003 and thought "hell yeah!"

- then started wondering about secular thought, and you see the result of that in the post above.

 

[rousseau]

This isn't a critique of that here though and I won't answer to challenges about it now because it's a HUGE topic and I'm still working on it. The point here is: There are religious feelings/attitudes and it might be better if more people were encouraged to direct them to nature instead of be presented with stark dichotomies: "you're either secular or religious", "you're either for science or, if you're religious, you're against science".

Interesting post, and good point, thanks. My pessimistic view is a feeling that many of us haven't, and don't seem to be able to form our own views very readily. Following religion, or 'discovering' atheism is often a product of what ideas stick and adhere, then we follow the leader so to speak. We find out what popular talking point works with our friends, and go with it.

So to me many of our religious 'views' (and political views, and views on many other things) are usually just memes, rather than products of critical discourse or thought. And beyond that few of us seem to be great at thinking beyond black and white dichotomies. It's either you're this or that, or if you're not this, you're clearly that. We can piece 2 + 2 together, but once you make it 2 + 2 + 4 it doesn't work anymore.

I guess what I'm shooting at is that I'm more pessimistic than most when I think about any type of religious 'progress', so to speak, whether it's your dogmatic scientists or Christians. My feeling is that we all like being in boxes, we like being a part of a team, we like having a mission, and that for most of us the world makes more sense, and is more comfortable when you leave it at 2 + 2. Either science is going to be our savior, or it's going to be God. When we're left to our own devices and have to face an ambiguous reality, that's when things get scary.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Oxygen is harmful. Food's harmful. The sun is harmful.

<broad category> + "is harmful" = too vague to be either true or false.

It's T.G.G. Moogly's claim "Scientific curiosity killed the religious cat in me" that I find curious. It hasn't done the same in me. SJ Gould wasn't entirely wrong in calling religion and science non-overlapping categories. They overlap only when religion has historical and physical claims, that's yet another optional feature in religions. It's an extremely huge category. It's not false for not being science. It's not theism. It's not supernaturalism. It's not superstitions. Even though it much-too-often has those as features of it - but not in all instances. If naturalists whose main guiding light is science regarding how nature is can call themselves religious naturalists, then all the things I listed are optional to religion.

New atheists are stuck in the science vs. religion dichotomy. It requires that you focus on fundies as the worst of the problem. Which is fine, but stop with huge claims along the lines of "all religion is harmful" when your focus is on part of it.

I agree. It seems like the meaty part of the bell curve of religious conversation focuses on the reason/unreason dichotomy. People are usually only interested in practical concerns, so the non-religious focus on it's negative affects, and the religious focus on it's positive effects.

Few are interested in understanding or discussing it from a broader perspective (not to suggest that this is always the case for T.G.G. Moogly).

As Nietzsche said:

In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

I don't like the idea that atheists are paragons of rationality and are free from illusions. We're all overflowing with a warped sense of reality. To me atheism and secularism is the acceptance that we're all more or less deluded, and irrational beings. There is no escaping it. All we can do is, try to mitigate our failings and try to catch ourselves fucking up through continuous re-evaluation of our beliefs. Everybody sucks at it, more or less

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I've struggled a bit with whether it's possible to "secularize" the useful/helpful attitudes. Like, recently I argued that religious feelings aren't religious. They're human feelings so religious people should not claim them for themselves. Nor do valuing feelings like "awe and wonder" show there's a "god-shaped hole in the heart". I thought the attitudes and feelings that religious behaviors evoke are available to secularists too. In arguing this, I thought I could extract "the baby in the bathwater" and fully secularize it.

Some atheists agreed but others argued against. They argued "not gratitude!" because it implies a Whom. So I had to wonder about the effect of ideology on feelings. "Secularly inappropriate" feelings would indicate it has an effect on feelings and attitudes (and thus probably on behavior). So, now I have to consider it's a meaningful distinction to call them religious feelings.

As others have said, much of religion has nothing to do with religion. It's only cultural bias that religion is better than no religion. Gratitude can be part of a person's life, there's plenty to be grateful for if one feels so. Ancestors needn't be deified and worshipped but they can certainly be appreciated, even thanked. Religious associations with alleged supernatural things can easily be seen as an interest or a hobby, even just a quirky sidebar of religion proper.

I agree that there are too many either/or aspects of religion. The christian version teaches that in the end there are only two possibilities, eternal happiness or eternal agony. Nothing could be more phony or incorrect, it's a false goal.

 

[rousseau]

I agree. It seems like the meaty part of the bell curve of religious conversation focuses on the reason/unreason dichotomy. People are usually only interested in practical concerns, so the non-religious focus on it's negative affects, and the religious focus on it's positive effects.

Few are interested in understanding or discussing it from a broader perspective (not to suggest that this is always the case for T.G.G. Moogly).

As Nietzsche said:

I don't like the idea that atheists are paragons of rationality and are free from illusions. We're all overflowing with a warped sense of reality. To me atheism and secularism is the acceptance that we're all more or less deluded, and irrational beings. There is no escaping it. All we can do is, try to mitigate our failings and try to catch ourselves fucking up through continuous re-evaluation of our beliefs. Everybody sucks at it, more or less

Yea I see the same thing. As much as the atheist crowd tries to usher reason into the world, sometimes they can be tribal too, in the exact sense that Abaddon mentions about the 18th century Enlightenment. Without a broader understanding of science as an amoral tool, they feel that reason and science is going to fix all of our problems rather than approach that, but also create new ways to engage in conflict.

I think the essential problem, no matter how you identify yourself, is that the primary 'purpose' of living isn't understanding, it's survival and reproduction. We're so pre-occupied with the act of living most of the time, that any type of deep understanding of anything is a pipe dream. Instead, most of us learn just enough to give the appearance of understanding, because any more than that wouldn't give much more of a return. In consequence, I suspect most of us who promote any specific paradigm very rarely understand that paradigm to the degree that we think we do.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I suspect most of us who promote any specific paradigm very rarely understand that paradigm to the degree that we think we do.

I'm not an atheist for rational reasons. I do think that my atheism can be supported rationally. But so does anybody who has any belief. But when I've sat down to introspect and examine my atheism... bottom line... I don't feel there's anything out there. When I do psychadelic drugs and I see God and talk to God I think it's my brain projecting. I can feel God's presence just fine. Still an atheist. There's rational reasons to believe this, sure. But fundamentally it's just a feeling I have. I don't feel God exists. Which is not a rational reason.

My Christian girlfriend, who is extremely scientifically minded and a sharp thinker, her attitude is that it doesn't matter if God exists or not. It just works for her. It makes her happy. She grew up atheist. In her teens she became depressed and in desperation joined a church. Whatever the secret sauce of that church is, it makes her happier to be a member (and not depressed). That's all she needs to know. Just like my scientist sister (also depressed) who went to a kiropractor she knew talked nothing but pseudoscientific bullshit, still kept going because after each treatment she was less depressed. They're both submitting to irrational beliefs for rational reasons, and it's working for them. There's nothing irrational about that.