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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35734
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| Posted: 30 March 2024 at 6:16am | IP Logged | 1
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Rebecca Jansen wrote:
| As I say, I have known of people who apparently believed, whether happily or unhappily, and have done good things in their lives and world. Impossible to call them fools you know. It keeps my door open a crack. |
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I’ve muddled over this for a day or so, honestly, and I have to come back to it. I have a problem with equating those who “believe” with “good things” as if one must believe in order to do good things. We all can do good things, right? Even the worst of us have stories where we helped a stranger or otherwise were better than what we actually are. So how does faith and religion play into it? Asking honestly. Does faith beget “good things” or does just simply being a good person regardless of/or the lack of faith do the same thing?
I have an issue with it because, honestly, why would it “keep my door open a crack”? As if believing in any religion automatically makes you do good things. Not me. Someone saying that sends me in the direct opposite direction. Like, if someone says “god” or “destiny” or “faith” led them to a certain situation, I roll my eyes. Maybe that’s just me. Dunno.
My current belief is that it doesn’t matter if you “have faith” or don’t. You do the right thing because you know it’s the right thing. Nothing to do with religion or gods or institutions. Those are incidental but easily attributable and manipulated to be “godly”.
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 30900
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| Posted: 30 March 2024 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | 2
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But Matt, Christians are taught all good things come from God. There can
be no good things without him. It’s even (almost) the same word. And yes, I
have heard that argument at a church. Not only that, without god there is no
difference between good and evil.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 30 March 2024 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | 3
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What people so often fail to grasp is that “morality” is programmed into our nature by evolution. It’s basically a survival instinct. We clump together for mutual protection, and through that clumping we create social structures that benefit from honesty and cooperation. Then we retrofit various gods and religions to reinforce our society. Once that starts to happen it doesn’t take long for people to forget what actually came first. Especially once some among us realize these beliefs can be used to control others.
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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1251
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| Posted: 30 March 2024 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 4
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Good things have been done in the name of religion. Likewise, so have some of the most evil acts in history.
I have no problem with people following a Christian path (for example) if it leads to them being considerate and kind to their fellow man, but the accusation that you have to be a believer to qualify as 'good' is what bugs me the most.
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4530
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| Posted: 30 March 2024 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | 5
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For me it's as much good things done in spite of them being a professed Christian or a believer as from it. I think of British PM Stanley Baldwin who I feel is underrated as a very crucial figure in western history... a conservative who supported a Labour PM for years for one thing! Protected the BBC as independent of government when Churchill had wanted to (and almost managed to) simply take it over in it's early days during the general strike. Having read about him and how he struggled often with believing but went ahead with hope for the whole thing to have something real to it, a future, acting on faith, I simply have to admire him as our lives would be nothing like they have been otherwise (a King Edward VIII continuing into the '40s? Yikes).
In my own life I've also seen people who are that 'salt of the Earth' mentioned in ye olde 'good' book... who've been there and done real needed good at some cost and no gain to themselves (the altruism Ayn Rand railed against as always false?). I've always been conflicted about their motivation though, were they doing it to score brownie points with the unseen guy in the great by-and-by they hope/expect to spend eternity with? Were they at all thinking about our future here on Earth even just on the small here and now scale? They say a wise person has some grasp on what they don't and maybe even can't know, and this is one of those can't know things to me... I honestly have no idea. On one hand Baldwin, on another Jim Jones.
I've been reading about early comic strips and have benefited a lot over many years from the work of one Rick Marshall. Last I heard far right politically and a staunch believer in Christ and all that. I might agree on nothing with someone like him and yet I got to read early Dickie Dare by Caniff and learn all kinds of other things made by artists I definitely would never have known about because of him.
There's the real mystery for me, do these people really believe, or are they faking it hoping it to make it? Because I can't unknown that they are not all glassy eyed self-hypnotized fools (talk about flattering with faint praise, congrats for not being a brutal animal).
I had to go through slightly under two years at a private Christian school, the kind that thought nothing of making us watch 700 Club recordings in class, saying some of us were possessed, or telling little kids 'Santa' was Satan spelled differently. Did that only to find that my school records never included it when I went to finally complete high school proper much later. Maybe I'd be happy if this particular 'faith' didn't exist but that's never going to be so I deal with what 'is' and each person as they present themself, and I've read loads of Gnostic Gospels, Sayings Gospel Q, Herodoutus, anything that has a bearing on something that influenced and still influences so many people, same as I would read about Sikhism or Jewish midrashes (which I probably technically shouldn't be allowed access to).
We're all one species and these things are a part of us and as real as music or language is. Personally I have no idea what I am, I'm always finding that out so maybe that needs a name. Not an atheist in that I leave the door open that crack in regard to higher powers or intelligence behind existence, but it is a crack, I don't naturally swing to the extremes of all or nothing, by which measure Christianity would rebuke me anyway as lukewarm (sometimes I think that's just being Canadian).
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 30 March 2024 at 5:33pm
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35734
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 6:58am | IP Logged | 6
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Your reasoning makes a kind of sense to me. That said? We’ll have to agree to disagree about the conclusion. My real stumbling block is why any being so beyond us, a creator above all, would give two shits about basically ants. And then? To think they would care if I, as one of a billion or more, pray to him to help with my specific request. Answer: They wouldn’t. A god or gods are just a convenient excuse to superimpose my belief onto a supposedly unquestionable altruistic deity. Reason? It gives one comfort. Like, there’s someone/thing/power that’s “guiding” my life and choices and also has power to do the same in the world.
That’s crazy to me. Can’t buy into it. Full stop.
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | 7
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To paraphrase Steven Weinberg, religion is the only thing that consistently
results in good people doing bad things.
Some beliefs may indeed be benign or even beneficial in the short term, but
inevitably they can and will metastasise into something more sinister
because unlike facts, beliefs and associated morality are arbitrary.
Edited by Koroush Ghazi on 31 March 2024 at 12:18pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | 8
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In the movie STATE & MAIN, one of the characters comments that people in small towns make their own fun, prompting another to say everyone makes their own fun. If they don’t it’s not fun, it’s entertainment. Substitute “spirituality” for fun, and “religion” for entertainment, and we have what we’re looking at here.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | 9
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Nice!
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | 10
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If there is some ineffable realm and if it includes some manner of diety that once had some kind of involvement with us (because nobody can solidly prove there isn't anymore than prove there is) it/they would likely be not what we imagine nor want it/them to be. Someone could say the same way there can't be silicon breathing creatures of four dimensions on another planet. I can think maybe, it's in the can't know category at this point, case still open/active.
A fair number of people say they see or sense ghosts, which speaks of some level to reality we aren't generally aware of, and while these could be simply echoes of some electrical nature from the past (The Stone Tape), they could also be interacting in the present forms of some extra-dimensional sort.
I get in enough trouble with the dogmatic over did 'John The Baptist' advertise pancakes and honey rather than locusts and honey to draw people out to the waterside. We have old words on paper from many different times, places and languages, but Troy was thought fictional once, and Jerico the same. In other words some truth there but a lot may easily have fallen through the gaps between the languages and the copies of copies of copies. Jesus was probably a married Rabbi, a lot of stuff was obviously added/altered after he was gone. He had parents and a sibling, people thought things he said interesting enough to want to record some of them, but those more direct quotes are often long gone to dust (in fact we know of some things solely from someone who objected to them mentioning them later).
The door stays open a crack, not out of upbringing, or 'no atheists in foxholes' fear, but because I recognize I'm too limited and imperfect an ant to know enough to totally close it... I may yet have a visitation of Amida Buddha revealing of my personal Atman/higher-older self and then everyone would think me insane... but I would know, sans solid proof however. Somebody says they have communicated to angels I can't 100% say there is nothing at all to that. Never moving to Guiana however! I guess if I get 'left behind' I must be one of those meek, and then it's clean up time, which we should be working on right now whether we thing the big father/favored son might return or not.
(corrected for a couple minor typos)
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 31 March 2024 at 5:32pm
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
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Location: Canada
Posts: 4530
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| Posted: 31 March 2024 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | 11
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The communist Soviet Union and China both have the elimination of religion as a primary foundation... I guess that they weren't/aren't paradises of progress is the fault of the various religions (Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, Judaism, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhism) that still managed to survive despite that? Just not ruthless and absolutist enough?
The two ends meet seems to hold true, go far 'left' enough and you are close to the far 'right'. Middle Earth or Midgaard we are often halfway to 'fubar' and halfway to heaven or Asgard. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - Dickens. "'Twas ever thus" - Mr. Natural.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 31 March 2024 at 5:34pm
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