Religion
In reply to the discussion: Where do you atheists get your morals? [View all]RiverNoord
(1,150 posts)very straightforward and accessible language. My compliments.
As for myself, I grew up in small town North Dakota - Lutheran country (basically, they want their pastors to be more or less moderate regarding everything - not too much hellfire and brimstone and not too much touchy-feely) - and my family really focuses on 'eternal life' and related (selected, of course - the rich having as much chance of entering heaven as a camel getting through the eye of a needle is pretty inconvenient sometimes), but isn't too firm on anything else. I sought a lot of meaning at an early age, and I suppose I still do (although the inevitable outcome of such searching for me is the lowering of expectations...) When I was told 'this is true,' I took it literally - something either is or isn't. So... I became rather tied up in the Bible that was available to me and grew deeply disturbed by the dichotomy between what it seemed to me to be clearly prescribed manners of behavior and what really went on around me.
Eventually, I underwent a painful and necessary shift from blindly accepting King James Bible writings as absolute truth to quite another perspective - that I accept nothing as likely to be true unless I evaluate the subject carefully based on information made available to me through personal experience and, generally, sources I have strong reason to believe are trustworthy on the particular subject.
What probably differs most between us is that I find the psychological 'benefits' to individuals resulting from communal religious activity to be of negative value when aggregated over the range of entire societies. Religions tend toward provincialism and that provincialism is easily manipulated to set groups (or entire societies/nations) against each other. I suspect that many of the religions/philosophies you mention are more universalist in scope, but they still bond people together in us/them mentalities (Buddhism has been used by many societies to promote warfare and Hinduism definitely has been employed in the same capacity over many, many years).
My attitude is that if some psychological benefit is to be derived from communal religious activity, then there must be forms of communal secular activity that should provide the same benefit. Such activities are probably less likely to result in easily manipulated us/them perspectives. Of course, I may be wrong...
Thanks again for sharing such well articulated and thoughtful perspectives