Is religion good even if it's false?

[Stanley Huang]

What you wrote was not relevant to my writing. I said if his false belief makes him happy, then, he may be morally correct but metaphysically wrong. But you go on by saying that what if his false belief makes him sad. But that is not relevant to my writing. And my writing may want to answer the question above, but your writing did not seem to answer the question.

[Belinda]

Stanley Huang wrote #129 :

I asked the question before. I asked: "If there is no God, yet, a person who feels that he is more happy if he believes in a God, even if what he believes may be wrong, yet, his faith makes him more happy, will you still tell him not to believe in God?"

Depends what you mean by 'tell him'. I trust and have faith in freedom of choice, thought and speech. Therefore I would tend only to question the true believer's attitude as perhaps head-in-the-sand regarding real life. Human beings are not those fabulous ostriches but creatures characterised by curiosity and the ability to learn and when necessary adapt to fresh information about the world. I cannot see that some person who clings to unquestioning and unquestioned faith is living up to the standard of what human nature actually is.

To put it another way, human beings are closer to God the Creator than the unquestioning seeker after her own peace of mind gives them credit for.

[Quotidian]

My answer: religion is not good if it is false. If one is a religious practitioner one needs to try one's hardest to expunge falsehood.

A lot of the problems in this question come from the way 'religions belief' has developed through history. The stress put on belief is far too great. In my view the whole point of belief is simply to be disposed towards trying something out. It is an attitude which opens you to the possibility of something. If your belief comes to the point of a kind of bare-knuckle clinging to an idea, I generally don't think it is that healthy.

I have heard some Christians say 'Christ is a relationship not a religion'. I can really relate to that idea. But I didn't come to it through bible studies or attendance at a church. I was and am much more interested in mystical spirituality and Eastern religions. Through that avenue I learned meditation - not that there is much to learn, other than sitting still and watching. But through this practice and through a lot of reading and reflection, I began to understand this notion of 'a relationship with Christ'. Now when I hear Christians say that, I think I understand them, although where I differ is that I think other roads lead to that kind of spiritual relationship. In other words, I would never agree that Christianity is the only way to it.

But in any case, I would not generally agree that a religion, or anything else, is good, if it is false. Falsehoods of all kinds are things we need to strive to get beyond. Humans are equipped with intelligence for a good reason. They need to discriminate between truth and falsehood. This is actually a hard thing to do, as delusions of various kinds are very common and even encouraged by modern economic activities. One should strive to discern the truth. This is the teaching of 'the victorious ones'.

Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering" — then you should abandon them.' Thus was it said. ...

"Now, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them.

Kalama Sutta

[Godless Truth]

Quotidian,

I know you do not enjoy my ideologies; I know you do not like how I see the world, but this surely does not beg any reason out of you to dismiss everything I have to say through discordance. If fire and water can work together, why can't we find our own common grounds? Please, read what I have to say, sir.

I disagree with the Buddhist scriptures, not because they are wrong, but because the people that will be reading them are prone to be wrong. Any person could easily squeeze in their ideas and practices through the context of what has been written, that would be equivalent to hyperchondriacs thinking that they fit medical symptoms by comparing the shadow of an orange to the shadow of an apple. This is why the moral system can not stand alone, because the moral system is not about distinguishing what is truly right or wrong in all actuality, but a system only for you to sneak in your own false rights and to apply false wrongs. The moral system is a mirror to your morals, this does not in any way, shape or form focus on expanding and capitalizing on your moral system to strengthen it and create a more balanced and reasonable system of morals that can be alligned with the rest of the world's abstract.

[Belinda]

Quotidian quoted:




The Buddhist Scriptures wrote:Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering" — then you should abandon them.' Thus was it said. ...

"Now, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them.

As Jesus said "By their friuts you will know them". A good tree bears good fruit.

[Godless Truth]

Belinda,

To say that a tree bares good fruit is a logical fallacy, how does one deem a tree to have good fruit, if you or the fruit do not bare the system of morality in all actuality? What if 'good' and what is 'bad' is a false system that derives from your mere head, dear.

[Belinda]

Godless Truth. because for any fruit farmer it is definitive of a good tree that it bear good fruit. Jesus was not talking to modern landscape gardeners but to fruit growers.

Godless Truth, you do the cause of secularism no good by being sarcastic without good cause.

[Seremonia]

Lucky us, if we can find the true religion. But so far we have tried to fit our thinking skills, and find any religion, then when we die, and it turns out there is a God, we can affirm that we have fought wholeheartedly and we should get reward for this effort.

Even if you're an atheist. Our sincerity in the struggle for truth and honesty in the search for truth and keep us away from emotional arguments, but more and more closer to carefull thinking "there is no need to judge something easily", even though we are so hard to deal with a lot of contradiction in asserting a truth, then hopefully an atheist can have forgiveness (if God exists). And hopefully (if God exists), then all the confusion in the past when we face many contradictions, controversy and chaos and beliefs as an atheist, can be wiped out by forgiveness from God and changed into certainty, that there is no chaos, there is no absurdity, and there is only the truth without contradictions whatsoever (it must be)

The points are:

- There is no assurance, that even when we are dealing with the correct religion, then God will put us on heaven.

- Don't worry, use your struggle with honestly (you know how to do it, anyway, we are not a child), and see if we can meet together within prosperity after hundreds or thousand years from now, and yelling "We Win". Until now, we just hope.

It makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense, again, don't worry, we are just the same facing life after death with uncertainty.

[Che Guevara13]

I view religion as primarily as "the opium of the people" that had been used by the ruling classes to give the working classes false hope for millennia, while at the same time recognizing it as a form of protest by the working classes against their poor economic conditions.

[Belinda]

Che Guevara, if you explore further back in time than Karl Marx you will find that ruling classes and intellectual and artistic elites believed in God who could and did intervene in history. It was rediscovery of the humanism and reason of ancient Greece and then the scientific enlightenment of the eighteenth century that opened the plughole for faith.

It is true that the ordered estates of the age of faith did allow labour to produce unquestioningly but I believe that the cult of individualism did more than belief in God to urbanise and industrialise labour . I truly doubt that the slum dwellers of the new unplanned cities got much consolation from God, more likely from gin.

The religious dissenters such as Quakers and Baptists were inspired by individualistic Protestantism but those were the comparatively few educated people who were able to be social reformers , not the untermensch.

I don't know what is meant by false religion.

[Wuliheron]

The growing majority of countries in the developed world are now secular. In contrast, the US remains by far the most religious country and has the worst social record. In fact, the Bible Belt has the highest rates of abortion, divorce, rape, etc. in the US. What appears to be happening is as governments provide a decent standard of living and comprehensive safety net most people just lose interest. Religion has been on the decline in the US as well for the last half century and much of ranting and raving on the far right is really the growing awareness their way of life is dying. So much so, younger Americans have been abandoning fundamentalist churches in recent years complaining the preachers are too busy pushing politics.

The speculation so far is that religion serves economic purposes, most especially, it serves as a means of ensuring the wealthy support the poor in times of need. Just as a healthy democracy thrives by creating taboos about things like suppressing freedom of the press, religions seem to thrive on promoting taboos about the wealthy abandoning the poor in times of great need. In places like Tibet as much as one fifth of the entire population are forced to become monks because the available agricultural land cannot be further subdivided. That the Tibetans have managed to not only accomplish this peacefully, but create a peaceful culture that respects their poor is a testament to how good religions can be if you don't have modern alternatives.

[Belinda]

The divine right of kings ensured that the ruler was a total ruler and by extension that everyone else must remain in the stratum of society into which they had been born,

The religion of that time and place also provided for the poor . I think that the poor were regarded as useful for the rich to save their souls upon, besides giving money to professional praying people to intercede with God and Co.

Religion IMO has become a better thing these days insofar as churches, mosques and gurdwaras do practical social work among the needy.(Although monks did once run all the hospitals for the poor and needy many of whom were given medical care ). Religion also played a part in social and regime change in Europe to the effect that the scientific Enlightenment could take place.

[Present awareness]

Belief is a powerful thing. Medical doctors have long known about what is called, the placebo effect. If a patient believes that the medication they are taking, is helping them get better, they will often recover, even if it just a sugar pill. It's comforting to believe that there is an elderly father figure in heaven watching over you and helping you in times of trouble. It's especially comforting to those whom are near death, believing they are going somewhere better. It's irrelevant whether the belief is based in fact or not, all that matters is that the person who believes, is experiencing a genuine feeling of comfort.

[Belinda]

Belief is a powerful thing. Medical doctors have long known about what is called, the placebo effect. If a patient believes that the medication they are taking, is helping them get better, they will often recover, even if it just a sugar pill. It's comforting to believe that there is an elderly father figure in heaven watching over you and helping you in times of trouble. It's especially comforting to those whom are near death, believing they are going somewhere better. It's irrelevant whether the belief is based in fact or not, all that matters is that the person who believes, is experiencing a genuine feeling of comfort.

Don't you think nevertheless that an adult in full health and strength would rather know reality and grapple with reality than live in a euphoric haze?

[Present awareness]

I don't feel that anyone's belief, can be said to be better or worse then another's. Our beliefs are formulated through our life's experience and everyone's experience in life is different. Beliefs may be discussed, opinions offered, but seldom will a personal belief be changed because of someone else's opinion. The best we can do in life, is seek the truth in whatever form we find it.