Is there value in religion for non-believers?

The catch-all forum for general topics and debates. Minimal moderation. Rated PG to PG-13.
Post Reply
Alphus and Omegus
Area Authority
Posts: 603
Joined: Thu May 13, 2021 8:41 pm

Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by Alphus and Omegus »

Hi everyone,

Here's an article we published at Flux that might be of interest. It's by a former Mormon who missed some of the more community-centric aspects of Mormonism and so he began attending other churches, even though he's agnostic. But he couldn't take it after a while and so tried to see if there were other ways to discuss higher-order subjects in an in-person fashion. (Obviously this was pre-Covid.)

Anyway, I was thinking it might spark some discussion over here, if you want to check it out.

https://flux.community/erraticus/jeffre ... -community

In my own case, I feel like religion is sort of a poor man's philosophy. In the ancient world, religion wasn't particularly philosophical. Christianity is based so heavily on Greek philosophy beyond its obvious borrowings from Judaism. It seems that most people (Mormon or otherwise) don't really care about religious doctrines or philosophical abstractions so I have wondered if Judaism or Buddhism might be more of an interesting place for me personally, only because they don't make you have to believe various dogmas in order to be a first-class member of the community.
huckelberry
God
Posts: 2579
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:48 pm

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by huckelberry »

Alphus and Omegus wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:18 am
Hi everyone,

Here's an article we published at Flux that might be of interest. It's by a former Mormon who missed some of the more community-centric aspects of Mormonism and so he began attending other churches, even though he's agnostic. But he couldn't take it after a while and so tried to see if there were other ways to discuss higher-order subjects in an in-person fashion. (Obviously this was pre-Covid.)

Anyway, I was thinking it might spark some discussion over here, if you want to check it out.

https://flux.community/erraticus/jeffre ... -community

In my own case, I feel like religion is sort of a poor man's philosophy. In the ancient world, religion wasn't particularly philosophical. Christianity is based so heavily on Greek philosophy beyond its obvious borrowings from Judaism. It seems that most people (Mormon or otherwise) don't really care about religious doctrines or philosophical abstractions so I have wondered if Judaism or Buddhism might be more of an interesting place for me personally, only because they don't make you have to believe various dogmas in order to be a first-class member of the community.
AZ, I mean the fallowing comment a bit more seriously than they may sound. You might find various ways to participate in the American cults of football,baseball, basketball or others to your taste. They do not expect exclusive relationships. You might consider developing a group of friends. My memory of Mormon community was that it was most positive as far a real friendship extended and beyond that perhaps only having some limited practicality.

I do not know if it matters to you at the present but I think your characterization of Christianity is a Mormon caricature of what they call apostate Christianity. It avoids the real thing completely. Churches are full of people who have no interest in Greek Philosophy which contributed nothing to the foundational developments of Christianity.(yes I realize that theologians have employed some philosophy in working out systematic theologies)

Whether considering Buddhism Judaism I think that like Christianity there are things that people involved really care about and philosophy is more of a elective attachment.
User avatar
DrStakhanovite
Elder
Posts: 336
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2021 8:55 pm
Location: Cassius University

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by DrStakhanovite »

I find a great deal of value in not only treating religion as an object of study, but also engaging individuals from religious communities on a personal level. Most of my intimate and profound friendships are with members of the clergy from various communities, which at first I thought was weird but as time went on I came to understand those relationships make just as much sense as the other close relationships I’ve made with people within the academic world of philosophy or the men I spent so much time with in the military.

For example, one of the closest friends I have is a Christian pastor who belongs to the Reformed Baptist tradition. This is a very conservetive community (socially, theologically, and politically) that could properly be spoken of as “fundamentalist” in the historical sense of the term. The relationship we’ve fostered has become important to me, because it has really driven home the fact that this Pastor and I can offer things to each other despite our deep differences on just about every subject. Turns out being in a full time ministry with pulpit duties is a very lonely affair, not leaving much room for people to express feelings of personal inadequacy or blow off some steam with a rant; one has to be very careful with their words and behavior in a church/ministry context.

Knowing that this guy feels comfortable enough with me to complain about incidents and controversies in his own religious community to me (in effect, showing me the ugly side) has been something of an honor. He knows that what he says to me is confidential, but also that I won’t try to exploit anything he tells me as a way to try and convince him to leave the faith. The guy can just sit across from me and spill his guts about his real doubts concerning what the 1689 London Baptist Confession says on the infallibility of scripture knowing that I’m present and listening carefully, with no concern about where I might try to take the conversation. There are no points to score, no argument to win, and no culture war to wage. Just two guys, similar in age and interests, trying to cope with living in the world.

This also gives me a valuable and instructive glimpse into the world of Christianity as an actual mode of being; a way of interfacing with the world that goes beyond the cheap sentimentality of a Pureflix movie or listening to a clunky sermon from a John Piper type. It is one thing to argue about a Calvinist soteriology on the internet and quite another thing listening to a guy who affirms it talk about planning a funeral for a dead infant. When you are presiding over a service where the casket isn’t much bigger than a shoe box, theology takes on another dimension of meaning. It has absolutely nothing to do with trying to provide comfort with quaint aphorisms or even involves much use of the analytic intellect or one’s store of theological knowledge. It is hard to describe in a messageboard post, but it is like seeing something meaningful from another culture that jars you because it is different while at the same time touches you. He took this couple who lost their first child before it was 3 months old under his spiritual care and in six months he looked like he aged six years. I can’t turn that into a data point for Christianity or against Christianity, it was just something I experienced that transcends the “atheist vs theist” debates I love reading and occasionally participating in. The fact that my friend gave so much of himself to these people he had just met because of his calling to live a Christian life was moving to me.

In fact, this is part of the reason why you won’t see me participate in discussions on the problem of evil and theodicy anymore. I just feel like I’m being wildly disrespectful using suffering, pain, and misery to make a metaphysical point. There is just something petty about it to me and I can’t bring myself to participate anymore. I’m not entirely sure why.

I think some of it has to do with my past in the military. One of the most horrific things I’ve ever smelled was when a bulldozer began to uncover a mass grave of Shia Iraqis that had been slaughtered by Sunni terrorists who were trying to scare Shia militias into abandoning their posts. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard was listening to Pashtun Sufis sing while they worked themselves up in worship, not far from Asadabad, just up the Kunar river where it was fed water from the melting snow of the Hindu Kush mountains. I didn’t understand a word of what those men were singing, but I felt it. Both experiences have always been strongly connected to religion in my mind and probably always will be.

Listening to a body of Jewish people stand and quietly weep during an emotional recitation of the Aramaic Kaddish after a synagogue shooting is another experience I’ve had that I consider profound that is also deeply connected to religion. Still I’ve never seriously considered converting to Judaism, just like I’ve never seriously considered converting to Islam or Christainity. It seems my atheism persists alongside my encounters with religion and religious communities and it seems to do so comfortably.

I can’t really connect with the OP because of it. To me questioning the value of religion is like questioning the value of music or architecture. It is an expression of humanity, fundamental to us while being created by us. The Flux article was difficult to finish and if I’m being frank, made me cringe. When the author starts talking about the work of Joseph Campbell and how he and his friends started making applications of it to their lives was embarrassing:
Jeffery Howard wrote:We dissected Campbell’s work and practiced using the 12-stage outline or 17-stage outline of the Hero’s Journey to map our current struggles. His monomyth identified dynamic guideposts by which we could navigate existential challenges. Through the medium of storytelling we discerned our own missteps, moments where fear prevented us from taking the proper path, and ultimately, created stories that resonated on a deeply spiritual level.
It wasn’t embarrassing in the sense that they were doing something comically wrong or were being clueless. It was the same kind of embarrassment I feel when I see grown men buying, selling, and trading Pokemon cards. Like encountering a soft version of Peter Pan Syndrome. Framing your life in terms of the “Hero’s Journey” and having that resonate with you is probably the most Mormon thing this dude could be doing outside of Live Action Roleplaying a Danite or something. That is exactly the kind of shallow navel gazing that goes on every Sunday during those three hours of meetings, except it is done over food and alcohol.

Picture unrelated?

Image
Image
User avatar
Symmachus
Valiant A
Posts: 177
Joined: Sat Feb 20, 2021 3:53 pm
Location: Unceded Lamanite Land

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by Symmachus »

This is one of the best posts I have ever read on these boards, Dr. Stakhanovite. I find myself in complete sympathy with its main points, though my perspective is not derived from the depth of your experiences. On the one hand, I count myself lucky for that, but on the other it means I am liable to run into the crass superficiality that passes around terms like "evil" as if it were a kind of money that gives arguments greater purchasing power. I tried to work against this in the last thread on this: you can't just use "evil" as if it some obvious thing in the abstract or as more dignified synonym for "bad things," and I don't like when people do so to score cheap shots ("all powerful god + all good god + all knowing god = no evil, but there's memes of toddlers with Beriberi disease, so haha! no god! Hitchens for the win: take that!"). I lack the philosophical vocabulary and acumen to follow through, however.

I am also in agreement with Huckleberry's response, and I would suspect that Alphus's view of Buddhism most certainly reflects experience with a community that is either college-educated Americans or one that is trying to appeal to the sensibilities of that group. If Buddhism were free of dogmatism, there wouldn't be so many varieties of it. That is even truer of Judaism.
(who/whom)

"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
—B. Redd McConkie
huckelberry
God
Posts: 2579
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:48 pm

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by huckelberry »

DrStakhonovite, Thankyou for that post above. You not only had something to say but took to the time to dig into specifics creating substance to remember.

I am not sure how to connect the cartoon. That does not disrupt,for me, the value of what you said however. No harm in a few loose ends to cause a little puzzling
huckelberry
God
Posts: 2579
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:48 pm

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by huckelberry »

The Cartoon,
I am drawn back in puzzlement, it could reflect in different directions.

Is it an image of a role playing game with for Mormon Danites? That was a sharp edged phrase. I might read a narcy guy blowing up after too many shots of whiskey. (whiskey bottle, glasses and bucket of ice all about the table0.

I vaguely remember somebody with some reputation declaring he found exmormons all getting together to swap wives and do drugs. Is he the guy speaking in the cartoon? He decided best to return to the church. At least he,;whoever he was my memory is uncertain, did not find exmormons injecting marijuana and dying of overdoses of pot.

I could stretch the associations to a Cheech and Chong piece, Hows My Driving? They can not see that they are going nowhere at all, the car is full of smoke and their car is stopped in front of a telephone pole. Its a funny little bit but of course if the situation becomes a persons life activity, on and on and on and on and on and on and on ,etc.... It is no longer funny. Maybe there is a sort of death by overdose of pot and overdose of boredom.
User avatar
DrStakhanovite
Elder
Posts: 336
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2021 8:55 pm
Location: Cassius University

Re: Is there value in religion for non-believers?

Post by DrStakhanovite »

Symmachus wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 4:06 pm
This is one of the best posts I have ever read on these boards, Dr. Stakhanovite. I find myself in complete sympathy with its main points, though my perspective is not derived from the depth of your experiences. On the one hand, I count myself lucky for that, but on the other it means I am liable to run into the crass superficiality that passes around terms like "evil" as if it were a kind of money that gives arguments greater purchasing power. I tried to work against this in the last thread on this: you can't just use "evil" as if it some obvious thing in the abstract or as more dignified synonym for "bad things," and I don't like when people do so to score cheap shots ("all powerful god + all good god + all knowing god = no evil, but there's memes of toddlers with Beriberi disease, so haha! no god! Hitchens for the win: take that!"). I lack the philosophical vocabulary and acumen to follow through, however.
Thank you for the praise, it means a considerable amount to me.

I did some thinking and I think the person most responsible for completely reorienting my views about the Problems of Evil and Theodicies was the philosopher D.Z. Phillips. This is the opening paragraph to his book 'The Problem of Evil and The Problem of God' and pretty much sets the tone for the entire thing:
D.Z. Phillips wrote:Philosophizing about the problem of evil has become commonplace. Theories, theodicies and defences abound, all seek either to render unintelligible, or to justify, God's ways to human beings. Such writing should be done in fear: fear that in our philosophizings we will betray the evils people have suffered, and, in that way, sin against them. Betrayal occurs every time explanations and justifications of evils are offered which are simplistic, insensitive, incredible or obscene. Greater damage is often done to religion by those who think of themselves as it's philosophical friends, than by those who present themselves as religion's detractors and despisers. Nowhere is this damage more in evidence, in my opinion, than in philosophical discussions of the problem of evil.
Phillips lays out a critique about "instrumental value" theodicies that just blew me away and I often reread those passages. The instrumental value strategy is laying out arguments that "evil" provides people opportunities to grow through suffering, or display moral virtue, or make morality possible (i.e. the old canard "IF THERE CAN'T BE ANY EVIL HOW CAN THERE BE GOOD!?!); the way Phillips picks apart the reasoning is probably the best modern execution of contemplative philosophy I've ever read thus far.
huckelberry wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:11 pm
The Cartoon,
I am drawn back in puzzlement, it could reflect in different directions.
I'm on the older end of the millennial spectrum, so I have vague childhood memories of Regan being president and the first Gulf War kicking off. I've been apart of imageboard culture since the days of dialup and the Temple of the Screaming Electron. As a result, I often have to stop myself of attaching images to everything I post, because the practice in ingrained in me. I do it a lot of social media and often gets me in trouble with various 'Terms of Service' and 'Community Standards'. I actually have an app on my desktop that will randomly select images to attach and that is how I selected the picture you are puzzling over. The relevancy is supplied by you, dear friend.

This is intentional on my part and it plays into the reason my little corner of Cassius is named on honor of Jorge Borges.

Image
Image
Post Reply