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In my opinion, the biggest tragedy of religion is this: people dedicate their entire lives to something that is fundamentally untrue. They put all of their hope in something that will never come to pass. I've seen it happen to my own parents, and it almost happened to me.
Religion can totally take over a person's life, to the point where one believes life has no value without it. Life becomes about the Pie In The Sky When You Die and little else. I literally believed that I had nothing to live for other than the afterlife, since that's what I was taught since childhood.
Think of all the wasted lives. Think of all the money wasted on building giant monuments (churches, cathedrals, etc) to falsehoods. Think of all the minds occupied with how to avoid hell instead of focused on improving the human condition. So many lives lived for a lie!
In my opinion, the biggest tragedy of religion is this: people dedicate their entire lives to something that is fundamentally untrue. They put all of their hope in something that will never come to pass. I've seen it happen to my own parents, and it almost happened to me.
Religion can totally take over a person's life, to the point where one believes life has no value without it. Life becomes about the Pie In The Sky When You Die and little else. I literally believed that I had nothing to live for other than the afterlife, since that's what I was taught since childhood.
Think of all the wasted lives. Think of all the money wasted on building giant monuments (churches, cathedrals, etc) to falsehoods. Think of all the minds occupied with how to avoid hell instead of focused on improving the human condition. So many lives lived for a lie!
If that were true..having a purpose to live is worse than aimlessly wandering through life and then dying, knowing that your existence was, in the end, meaningless?
If it doesn't actively harm them or anyone else to believe it, I don't see that it's a tragedy. They haven't wasted time, so to speak, or anything like that as they're just winding up the same place non-believers wind up: dead.
That may be a little fatalistic of me but I don't see "waste of life" in this scenario unless the person has literally just hidden away due to his/her religion, or has used it for harm/control or self-guilt or whatever. And even in the case of self-harm (I do draw the line at harm to/limiting others), again, the person is just going to wind up the way someone who didn't self-harm did: dead. Unconscious that it was "a waste" in someone else's eyes. So what does that person care? S/he CAN'T actually care, s/he's gone.
Even if the person lived his/her life hoping for better later, not seeing that "better" thing after death (because there's just blankness, unconsciousnes, the person is just gone) won't be sad for the person...s/he won't even know.
There's no real tragedy unless everyone's life is a tragedy. No matter what we do, no matter how hard we dance, how loudly we sing, whether we try to "help others" or not (most of us do at various times, in large or small ways), whether we do bad things, good things, have ten children or no children, have a hundred lovers or are celibate, have a job we love or a job we sort of like or a job we hate, we're all just going to be in the ground; whether that follows a fairytale belief life or a practical beliefs life, it's the same ending. I don't see that this ending would be any less tragic, so to speak, if the person lived life in a logical, practical way than a religious one, because the result is identical.
If that were true..having a purpose to live is worse than aimlessly wandering through life and then dying, knowing that your existence was, in the end, meaningless?
Why does life have to be meaningless without a particular theology?
Why do you ascribe meaninglessness to those without a belief in a deity or deities?
Are others that have different religious beliefs than yours living meaningless lives?
How does meaning in their lives differ from those that are agnostic or atheist?
If that were true..having a purpose to live is worse than aimlessly wandering through life and then dying, knowing that your existence was, in the end, meaningless?
Why would you consider "focused on improving the human condition" to be meaningless?
In my opinion, the biggest tragedy of religion is this: people dedicate their entire lives to something that is fundamentally untrue. They put all of their hope in something that will never come to pass. I've seen it happen to my own parents, and it almost happened to me.
Religion can totally take over a person's life, to the point where one believes life has no value without it. Life becomes about the Pie In The Sky When You Die and little else. I literally believed that I had nothing to live for other than the afterlife, since that's what I was taught since childhood.
Think of all the wasted lives. Think of all the money wasted on building giant monuments (churches, cathedrals, etc) to falsehoods. Think of all the minds occupied with how to avoid hell instead of focused on improving the human condition. So many lives lived for a lie!
I think it only feels a bit tragic to those of us who woke up from fundamentalist religious beliefs and realized a significant portion of our time and effort had been invested in something we not only don't believe anymore, but which we realize was, in some ways, an abusive relationship that damaged us.
Those fundamentalists who never wake up will never see it that way and will die believing they have lived a worthwhile life serving their God.
But, on the whole, many religious people DO contribute a great deal to helping and improving the lives of others in tangible ways, so I don't see the tragedy there.
Why would you consider "focused on improving the human condition" to be meaningless?
I agree with this...and how is living for something else (in this case, that "something" is God) MORE meaningful than improving the human condition?
According to religious belief, you only exist because an entity wanted you to, so that you could "worship" it and then "join with" it if it approved of you...in other words, presumably, it was lonely, so it created you. Therefore, you are living for it, not for you. If you hadn't existed it would simply have created someone else and never missed you at all. Therefore it boils down to: it not only doesn't matter to YOU whether you were ever born, it doesn't matter to your DEITY that you specifically were ever born (could have been anybody, really, could have been someone who looked like you, acted like you, sounded like you but wasn't you; or, a you-like thing never need be created at all as there are 7.5 billion others to take your place in the deity's loneliness-busting quotia).
Indeed, even though you, specifically, are here now (having won the luck of the draw of this deity's choice, I guess), you still might flub up and wind up burning forever, away from that deity you thought you were correctly "living for" for the past 85 years or so...hence, rendering your "life" meaningless anyway. Close chapter.
That's more meaningful than, say, living to experience life, to make your and others' lives (the lives of those already here, and in the future) happier and better, to love and be loved, maybe to create something useful - medicine, writing, art, anything?
We've only got one life to live. Living it for a lie is tragic. A waste.
All of us have an impact on the world, however small. Imagine if my parents had providing a good cultural and educational environment for their children instead teaching them toxic BS and moving to Podunk, PA. Imagine if my parents had cared as much about their children's education as they did their religion. Imagine if I had grown up learning about science instead of learning about how God drowned the world in a flood.
Ideas have consequences. Irrational beliefs negatively affect others, not just the individual holding said beliefs.
I don't believe that life is meaningless just because it's finite. If anything, we should try to live this one precious life as well as we can. Anything meaningful we contribute to society will outlive us. But it's difficult to contribute anything meaningful when you grow up in a fundamentalist religious sect.
We've only got one life to live. Living it for a lie is tragic. A waste.
All of us have an impact on the world, however small. Imagine if my parents had providing a good cultural and educational environment for their children instead teaching them toxic BS and moving to Podunk, PA. Imagine if my parents had cared as much about their children's education as they did their religion. Imagine if I had grown up learning about science instead of learning about how God drowned the world in a flood.
Ideas have consequences. Irrational beliefs negatively affect others, not just the individual holding said beliefs.
I don't believe that life is meaningless just because it's finite. If anything, we should try to live this one precious life as well as we can. Anything meaningful we contribute to society will outlive us.
Yeah, but religious people also have an impact on the world and not just in religious ways...they love their kids too, they seek experiences too, they love joy and music and art too...so...still not seeng the tragedy v. a person who didn't believe, and contributed to/enjoyed all those things.
ALL life is a waste, technically, unless we've personally cured cancer or something. MOST people live with only the small impact situations upon others that you describe, whether religious or not.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe it's all a fairy tale, I'm just not agreeing with the "waste" of life for the religious v. the non-religious since, woo aside (and again...not speaking of those who deliberately abuse/control others with their religion...that's a different story), we all make around the same impact with a few notable exceptions either way (for good or for ill) and we all technically live to keep the species going and that's about it. We've done that just by being here, species mission accomplished. Everything else is just the fluff we humans fill life up with... We non-religious, and the religious alike.
I'm sorry for your situation with your parents, but there's nothing saying the choices you describe weren't just part of their personalities, nor that some other situation in their lives wouldn't have caused them to make the decisions they did, had there never been any such thing as religion. You have no way of knowing they wouldn't have blown off education anyway, even if there were no such thing as religion (i.e. they'd have found a different "excuse" then religion) or they wouldn't have loved East Bunglefark, Pennsylvania anyway. There's no way of knowiong that religiuos people who, say, abuse their children wouldn't have found a different reason to abuse, or that religous leaders who seek to control wouldn't simply have found a different "job" that included their controlling others, were there no such thing as religion.
I think a lot of what DRAWS people to certain religious dogma is their own personalities, not the other way around...just something I've seen myself a few times (religous to non-religious, but still an abuser, or a controler, or whatever). Such people, in the absence of religion, would simply seek some other avenue of attaining the goal of controling, abusing, using or what-have-you.
Why would you consider "focused on improving the human condition" to be meaningless?
In the end, you still die, right?
Solomon summed it up pretty well. Vanity, vanity! It's all vanity.
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We non-religious, and the religious alike.
