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I do not understand why the above sense of betrayal arises only when the fates turn against the believer. Has not the believer observed that while some believers have prospered, other believers around him have met with bad fortune? Was your brother's learning of his cancer the first demonstration he had seen of religious fidelity not only going unrewarded, but seemingly being punished?
I think it was the first example that was egregious enough to break through the taboos of questioning his faith.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander
In such situations, does the believer conclude that those star crossed souls around him were less pious and that his advanced devotion provides divine immunity from such things?
Basically, yes, although not that much thought goes into it, as thinking is discouraged. Also, there is the idea that god sometimes tests people's faith or brings trials to toughen them up. You can accept a certain amount of that for yourself, but something like what happened to my brother gets your attention and breaks through all that baloney.
To be honest, some strains of Christianity actively teach that if you are ill, poor, or otherwise in trouble, it was your fault. You didn't believe hard enough, you didn't trust enough, you are under a generational curse, some reason why it is your own failing.
Other sects teach that one can find comfort in the idea that God works in mysterious ways, or that whatever happens is for the best, even if you don't feel like it. It is sort of a power of positive thinking thing, you just push through it and cling to the promises of peace and joy and the love of God, unrealized though they may be. In this variation, the physical ailment may not go away, but the peace and joy are the indicators of whether you are doing it right. I think a lot of people struggle a lot more than they let on, but admitting you feel lost, alone, and abandoned by God is an admission of failure.
Exactly so. I felt lost / alone / abandoned for a long, long time before even admitting it to myself, much less anyone else.
And, your assessment of the two major approaches to suffering within fundamentalism is also spot-on. I would add that, schizophrenically, some sects teach both things, whatever is convenient and produces the best result from the point of view of the leaders. "It's all your fault somehow" goes either to people more easily cowed by guilt, or to someone who has a behavior (however unrelated to the problem in their life) that is particularly undesired. "God works in mysterious ways" goes to people who aren't so vulnerable to guilt manipulation, especially if they are "pillars of the church" or children or old people.
So what do you call a simpleton such as myself who has no use or respect for religion as it stands BUT has a simple belief that there must be a God - or "source" of everything?
So what do you call a simpleton such as myself who has no use or respect for religion as it stands BUT has a simple belief that there must be a God - or "source" of everything?
I wouldn't call you a simpleton any more than I call my former self a simpleton, in fact less so because you do NOT succumb to "religion as it stands" as I did.
I would say it's a mistake to say there "must be" a source. There just is or isn't one, regardless of whether the idea appeals to you. You may be assuming that time and causality always were linear, and if you appeal to any personal experience or inner witness you may be succumbing to agency attribution.
For me it is a matter of there "may be" a source and further that source "may be" sentient and further that source "may be" benevolent or whatever other attributes you want to slather on -- but it's no more likely than unicorns or leprechauns and I default to believing nothing about such matters until there is some basis to. The problem is that the likelihood decreases the more specific you get and the more requirements you have for the "source". I believe that a personal god a projection. That is a simpler explanation and there is evidence for it.
If you think of religion in memetical terms it might make more sense.
Think of catching the common cold. While it is not _quite right_ to say our ability to catch the common cold is a product of our genetics.... clearly it still is technically correct. Our genetics have evolved in such a way... and viruses have evolved in such a way.... that our genetic make up leaves us prone to infection by viruses.
In other words viruses have evolved to take advantage of attributes of our own evolution and to use them for their own ends. Aspects of our own evolution which evolved for entirely different and good reasons which have nothing to do with viruses.
Similarly religion as a meme has evolved in many ways that exploit aspects of our psychological make up.
Viruses are just a piece of information that infect us and exploit us in ways that cause us to reproduce them and distribute them. So to, essentially, are religions.
As such one would also expect some people to be more prone to infection than others which is also what we observe. Inoculation of a sort is also possible.
I was interested to learn that germs and viruses even more can infect a body and are really hard to deal with. We might suppose that we have evolved methods of dealing with them and we have, to a great extent, but they don't always work. The Bomber will always get through, as they say and then the bod. has to do a scorched earth policy of simply allowing huge chunks of bodland to be destroyed in order to beat the infection.
Exactly so. I felt lost / alone / abandoned for a long, long time before even admitting it to myself, much less anyone else.
And, your assessment of the two major approaches to suffering within fundamentalism is also spot-on. I would add that, schizophrenically, some sects teach both things, whatever is convenient and produces the best result from the point of view of the leaders. "It's all your fault somehow" goes either to people more easily cowed by guilt, or to someone who has a behavior (however unrelated to the problem in their life) that is particularly undesired. "God works in mysterious ways" goes to people who aren't so vulnerable to guilt manipulation, especially if they are "pillars of the church" or children or old people.
So it's a 2 -tier system of religious healthcare? Pay in the most and you get sympathetic caring treatment. Go NHS and you are asked snappishly what you are going to do to shape up(1).
(1) That happened with me. My response was to give up the pills and begin a regime of better food and exercise and let myself get washed off the clinic's computa. Never felt better. It is a betrayal of my faith in the benefits of science, but in this case the NHS has been compromised, not by religion, but by performance-pay targets.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-14-2013 at 06:08 AM..
So what do you call a simpleton such as myself who has no use or respect for religion as it stands BUT has a simple belief that there must be a God - or "source" of everything?
Non - religious theist and perhaps Pantheist. Maybe even Deist. And, as such, my brother in arms against Organized religion and its too - pervasive influence.
So what do you call a simpleton such as myself who has no use or respect for religion as it stands BUT has a simple belief that there must be a God - or "source" of everything?
In your thinking, is there a distinction between god and source, or are you using those interchangeably? Could there be a source that is not god, that is to say, a force of some kind which meets none of the criteria traditionally employed to describe god? Or is a a matter of "If there is a source, that source must be god?"
If the former, then you do not actually believe in a god of any sort, rather you are rejecting the idea of an unplanned cosmos. If the latter, then insisting that it must be god is also insisting that the current state of human intelligence knows and is capable of comprehending all of the possibilities.
In either approach you have moved rather than solved the problem because we are still left with "What was the source of the source?"
So it's a 2 -tier system of religious healthcare? Pay in the most and you get sympathetic caring treatment. Go NHS and you are asked snappishly what you are going to do to shape up.
Yes, that's a pretty good characterization. I have to believe that a pastor knows on which side his bread is buttered and he's not going to want to antagonize his biggest donors / political allies / most popular members and he's not going to want to be seen as cold and heartless to the frail and young. I'm not suggesting this is a conscious, cold, Machiavellian calculus, but based on human nature it just has to factor in. It's rather the same reason one does not lightly challenge one's boss in front of others.
So depending on how the church is governed, if I wanted first-tier consideration and spiritual care, I would want to be on the church board, an elder or deacon, sunday school superintendent, music director, or some similar. But that now seems like an awfully high price to pay for "care" of highly dubious value. I mean, all we're talking about is a little empathy for problems you have, not actual solutions. I find that people outside the church are generally quite empathetic and caring without the need to navigate around all the rules and regs.
So we goddless bastards can offer a cure rather than asprins and 'pull yourself together'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
... It's rather the same reason one does not lightly challenge one's boss in front of others.
That never stopped me. Admittedly, I was a few years from retirement, but the bosses knew that they had to have it sewn up tight, of I'd be picking their case apart. Not even their claque of yesmen could put some of their humpties together again.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-14-2013 at 09:46 AM..
Reason: Ps...aeroticon..yes...that was just what was needed.
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Pay in the most and you get sympathetic caring treatment. Go NHS and you are asked snappishly what you are going to do to shape up(1).
That happened with me. My response was to give up the pills and begin a regime of better food and exercise and let myself get washed off the clinic's computa. Never felt better. It is a betrayal of my faith in the benefits of science, but in this case the NHS has been compromised, not by religion, but by performance-pay targets.
So we goddless bastards can offer a cure rather than asprins and 'pull yourself together'.
