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Internet Goosing the Antithesis

Monday, August 15, 2005

What is religion ?

I've come to the conclusion that religion is that layer of interpretation we overlay on our daily experience, personal values and inductive assumptions in order to suppress them or subdue them in the name of a higher, more attractive ideal. In essence, religiosity is this act of adding "of God" or "from God" to everything and thus trivializing it. You don't have an experience, you have an experience "of God", you don't have values, you have morality "from God", your assumptions come "from God".

The paradox which unravels belief is that just adding this "of God" or "from God" completely nullifies that which one tries to explain. One cannot declare having an experience "of God", since that demands one to have prior direct experience of God in Heaven to know what a God-experience feels like. And no one has that, even according to Christian doctrine ! Saying that moral or epistemic assumptions come "from God" is patently false since Christianity, for example, clearly stands against our most basic assumptions, such as :

The assumption that the sun will come up tomorrow - disproven by Joshua 10:12-13
The assumption that the future will be like the past - problem of induction, which Christianity cannot answer
The assumption that other minds exist and that those minds are volitional and have self-generated values (as opposed to robotic action) - disproven by Exodus 10:20
The assumption that a world exists external to minds - disproven by the inherent subjectivity of God's actions.
The assumption that genocide is evil - disproven by the Flood and pretty much the whole OT
The assumption that we are not guilty for the crimes of our ancestors, and born evil - disproven by original sin and many other verses
The assumption that the worth of a man is not based on his beliefs, but on his actions - disproven by the doctrine of salvation by faith

All that atheism does, is remove that layer of interpretation, that belief system that presses the person's individuality down, and free that individuality, permitting self-expression and personal responsibility and control.

By the way, whatever is up with soap bars ? Why do they make them with concave shapes ? It hurts the hands, that's all it does. Those Dove bars are particularly bad. I always ram each jutting end into a solid surface a few times to make them more bearable. Am I the only one who does that ?

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3 Comments:

At 8/15/2005 12:05 PM, Blogger Aaron Kinney declaimed...

Ahh yes, good old genocide.

But if the creator of the universe slaughters 99% of all life, is it genocide, or intelligent design? ;)

 
At 8/16/2005 6:41 AM, Blogger vjack declaimed...

Great point about the addition of god nullifying the phenomenon it was used to explain in the first place. I had never thought of it that way before, but it really does seem to be true. By resorting to fictional constructs to explain our world, we restrict progress toward real understanding. Great post!

 
At 8/16/2005 12:43 PM, Blogger Francois Tremblay declaimed...

A sphere would be counter-intuitive to soap your hands with, not to mention very hard to store. It would just keep rolling around !

 

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