fundamentalism question, cont'd

[mckitterick]

After participating in the original discussion (find it here: http://www.livejournal.com/~mckitterick/32356.html ), I think perhaps that if such a virus were to hit us, it would be a bad thing. Even if taffy23110's suggestion that we would descend into animals weren't the case (and that's an entirely different conversation, I think), I think several people's argument that religiousity isn't the root of the problem, rather black vs. white / right vs. wrong is (and they just use their chosen religion as a shield and a weapon).

Bad people using religion is the problem, then. "We can kill them because they're heathens"; "They're going to hell anyway, so let's end their suffering"; "God hates fags"; and so on. So what kind of intentional attack would remove that? It's a tough one; I mean, do you want to eliminate decision-making? I suspect that's related to thinking one is right. Eliminate the capacity for evil thoughts...? Hmmm, that one scares me; how do we know if that's not a requirement for survival? And what would that entail, anyway?

So what would eliminate the fundamentalist's smug assumption that he is right, everyone else is wrong and headed for hell? That's what got me started: If no one could feel the divine, they could no longer use it as an excuse. But y'all're right: It would also eliminate all kinds of good things, things that make us great and good like creativity, the "eureka!" moment, and the sense of one-ness with others. Perhaps this conversation does return to our needing to sense the divine in order to be human...

I would like to hear an atheist point of view, as well. Atheists, hello? Certainly they have their own sense of this via non-religious experiences.

Thanks,
Chris

Comments

Rheostat NOT On/Off

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

I missed the original wordplay, but I'll leap in here for a moment.

I dub my desire, "The Shades of Grey Memetic Virus".

It mods the human logical center to have a rheostat (indexed but non-graduated knob control with infinite number of settings) for truth/decision consideration, instead of an On/Off switch.
See also:(black/white, my way or the highway, love it or leave it, us/them dichotomies, and related holdovers from Survival Tribalism.)

For more info and abstract concepts with which we can hold a better conversation about this:
please see The Virian Lexicon.

The divine

[saycestsay.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll give it a shot.

Not sure if you're kidding or not about atheists chiming in. Atheists get slammed in today's society; and even good ole fence-sitter agnostics like me (I don't 'believe' either way) get a lot of flack from folks who proclaim the divine. Not too long ago I mentioned my long-held belief that Jesus never existed as a living person. You'da thunk I developed leprosy and attacked a grandma baking apple pie. Yet I was talking an issue of historical fact vs. an issue of faith. I'd be happy to see proof (of which there is an astonishing lack) but the defenders of faith wanted merely to bury me in Pat Robertson type declamations and denunciations.

That's part of the issue between religion and atheism: Religion requires faith (read: belief;) atheism points out that there is no empiric evidence of godhood. You're not just comparing apples and oranges, you're comparing fruit and metal.

Check out the American Atheists website for interesting essays: http://www.atheists.org.

Now, when it comes to 'the divine,' you say there's an actual area of the brain that responds to prayer and meditation. This is the same area that is active during deep sleep. If a person in these meditative, measurable brain wave states is disturbed (brought into awareness of existence outside himself) the brain wave activity is thrown off.

Then you say that the prayer and meditation is reaching for the divine or for congress with God. And, that the divine and congress with God shows that we're reaching beyond ourselves and connecting with others.

I feel this is a contradiction. If god and the divine is found within (searching for that little voice, training our brain waves, interior silence as the nuns would say) how does that being human an act of reaching out as an affirmation of connection to God? Like I said, apples (meditation) and metal (needing others.) How does God enter into the equation empirically? I feel that God and the divine are actually imposed values on human behavior, not internal drives or biological necessity.

These are my observations, and like any good scientist, I'm willing to evaluate arguments either way. Uh, read arguments to mean positions, not denunciations. Amazing how denunciations serve to force opposite conclusions.

For your last sentence, which prompted this answer: Atheists, christians, true believers, non-believers, infidels, whatever your flavor; don't we all find joy in life in some fashion? Does joy have to be related to divine?

I believe (love that word) that if you removed the requirement to believe in god, (and note that I think that requirement is imposed and not internal) then humanity would probably be better off, able to accept beauty or not-beauty without having to assign a religious meaning.

Of course, there's going to be a shake-out period where certain types of people will gleefully assert that they can do whatever nasty thing they want because no one will punish them once they're dead.

*sigh* Chris, it's a big issue. I think you should write the story you want, and not try to congeal ALL the issues into it!

Re: The divine

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Thanks, and yes I was asking seriously. So, assuming we make it through the "shake-out period" -- and that's a big assumption... well, actually, would we? If we're so close to self-destruction as-is, what happens when you take away that level of morality which says, "If I do this I'll get punished"?

*sigh* Chris, it's a big issue. I think you should write the story you want, and not try to congeal ALL the issues into it!

Ah, yes -- that's the problem with most of what I write. I'm not engaged enough with the small issues to care about writing them. I'm the guy who wrote a 1000-page novel entitled Transcendence about the next possible stage of human evolution....

Chris

[http://users.livejournal.com/kai_/]

I've got this new book, see, which actually addresses some of these questions...

I'll post more later, but I have to go now or I'll be late for my chiropractic appointment.

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

An interesting read that might touch somewhat on these issues, is Alfred Bester's Demolished Man. Of course, you might already have read it...

It seems to me that so much could be solved by improving parenting skills, and, of course, by retooling the societies we live in away from their primitive primate-based, lower-circuit functioning (aggression, hierarchy, submission, negative-reinforcement), and towards more enlightened modes. Yes, John Lennon got to me at a tender age, as did Star Trek :)

Tangential...

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

An interesting phenomenon (for me, anyways) is to watch the sorts of spittle-spewing, dogmatic rages so many atheists are prone to if one even suggests the possibility that something Divine, or Beyond, or Numinous exists. It certainly reveals the difficulty in trying to ascribe the mental malady of fundamentalism strictly to those who are traditionally described as "religious". One of the biggest difficulties I have had in maintaining friendly relationships with some atheists is the sheer lack of respect for the beliefs of others (much the same reason I don't have many Protestant Christian friends left). There is a certain amount of contempt that always seems to leak in. Of course, we all have this tendency in certain areas, and it's difficult not to give in to emotion with such topics. What exactly is that mechanism?

I prefer to stay firmly on the "agnostic" fence, in spite of the frenzied efforts of True Believers on either side, since it seems the only rational position--it does not seem to require nearly so much by way of a priori assumptions that are difficult to trace out. Of course, this requires a fundamental tolerance for lots and lots of "grey", which at times (for a socio-political radical *ahem*) is nearly impossible, particularly when one has been burned by a particular ideology/theology and feels that it is in no way a good thing for humans to be "enslaved" to it. I will readily admit to having the same feelings for Baptists, Pentecostals and other conservative Xtians that I have for the Measles, Ebola, or AIDS. Sometimes it is difficult to navigate all the different tributaries that make up the river...

Another related book : The Mind of the Bible-Believer by Edmund D. Cohen. It's a wee bit thick, but a fascinating case-study of a psychologist's personal experience with Fundamentalist Christianity.