Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

You read my last post - twice I'll bet!

Pond Life

[Obvious Leo]

You read my last post - twice I'll bet!

Pond Life

You may as well piss off, Gustav, because nobody is going to read your posts. You were given a fair hearing and an opportunity to explain yourself and all you did was spit in the eye of those who took the time to read your words. You simply have no idea how offensive your conduct has been and you've worn out your welcome. You can crawl back into your pit now.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Spit in the eye did you say?

Consider this mia bella balia:

Spitting that hits the mark!

'Surgical tools, firehoses ... and crackbrained Aussies!'

[Greatest I am]

I didn't bother reading the rest of your post because I've got a bit of a queasy guts this morning.

Me neither, Leo. I'm confident I'm not missing anything significant... and it's best not to wallow around in stagnant ponds too much. Nothing much new grows there.

Referring to the OP/topic title: It's likely that everything we think and do is part of a fairy tale, including the idea of "growing up". So we can encourage each other to drop one fairy tale for another, but does it even matter?

Do you think it would benefit mankind if some people dropped a fairy tale that promotes homophobia and misogyny for a fairy tale that does not?

Regards
DL

[Lacewing]

It's likely that everything we think and do is part of a fairy tale, including the idea of "growing up". So we can encourage each other to drop one fairy tale for another, but does it even matter?

Do you think it would benefit mankind if some people dropped a fairy tale that promotes homophobia and misogyny for a fairy tale that does not?

Yes, I do! I think there are a lot of changes of attitude and awareness that would benefit mankind. I don't know, however, how much of this explosive creation is geared for balancing and exploring and evolving -- as might be better understood from a larger perspective?

My question of "does it even matter" is aimed towards considering that everything is made up -- and, therefore, is any fantasy more valid than another, or are they just different stories? I'm not sure it's as simple as saying: "this is right" and "that is wrong" -- which is what we humans fight over a lot. I'm guessing the issue is not so much what we believe for ourselves, but what we impose on others. So, in regard to the topic title... I think people can believe whatever they want for their entire lives, and hopefully MOST get and generate value from it. IF, however, there are those who impose the ignorance and limitations of their particular fantasy onto others, as if it must be a universal template, the war of the fantasies goes on!

I prefer peace, but I (too) go to war when I feel I need to. I think calm clarity is more effective and beneficial than intoxicated rage. We're immersed in SO MUCH all the time... it can be a challenge just to keep our own selves clear in the midst of it. I'm guessing that's actually the most beneficial thing each of us can master doing, however. Other people's fantasies are no place for us -- and I'm not sure we can accomplish anything there.

You read my last post - twice I'll bet!

No, really, Gustav... your attitude has ruined your credibility for me. Even if you were to have some insights... your attitude has shown (from my perspective) an OVERARCHING LACK of insight! So I, personally, am not going to wade through your stuff (nor click on any links you provide) to see if there are a few items of value to me. That would be like digging through a giant trash heap in hopes of finding a few pearls... when there's a VAST beach of pearls all around us. I don't need to dig through someone else's self-absorbed and limited viewpoints. I have enough trouble continually cleaning up my own. Good luck to you (truly) with whatever particular trip you're on.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Fair enough, as they say. I am of the school that some 'structures of viewpoint' are so radically separate that there is no point in attempting to bridge. Yet out of that comes 'instructive polemic'.

This can make this clear by a comparison. If we were to take two trees of different genera, cut off their heads and without uprooting them bend them together and tie them in such a fashion that each should become the graft of the other, the upward growth would at once become an impossibility for both; deterioration, not improvement, would be the result, for, as every botanist knows, an organic union is in such a case impossible, and the trees - if they survived the operation - would continue to bear each its own leaves and flowers, and in the confusion of foliage opposed would everywhere be driving against opposed.

[Greatest I am]

It's likely that everything we think and do is part of a fairy tale, including the idea of "growing up". So we can encourage each other to drop one fairy tale for another, but does it even matter?

Do you think it would benefit mankind if some people dropped a fairy tale that promotes homophobia and misogyny for a fairy tale that does not?

Yes, I do! I think there are a lot of changes of attitude and awareness that would benefit mankind. I don't know, however, how much of this explosive creation is geared for balancing and exploring and evolving -- as might be better understood from a larger perspective?

My question of "does it even matter" is aimed towards considering that everything is made up -- and, therefore, is any fantasy more valid than another, or are they just different stories? I'm not sure it's as simple as saying: "this is right" and "that is wrong" -- which is what we humans fight over a lot. I'm guessing the issue is not so much what we believe for ourselves, but what we impose on others. So, in regard to the topic title... I think people can believe whatever they want for their entire lives, and hopefully MOST get and generate value from it. IF, however, there are those who impose the ignorance and limitations of their particular fantasy onto others, as if it must be a universal template, the war of the fantasies goes on!

I prefer peace, but I (too) go to war when I feel I need to. I think calm clarity is more effective and beneficial than intoxicated rage. We're immersed in SO MUCH all the time... it can be a challenge just to keep our own selves clear in the midst of it. I'm guessing that's actually the most beneficial thing each of us can master doing, however. Other people's fantasies are no place for us -- and I'm not sure we can accomplish anything there.
.

I think we do have a role in other people fantasies that are doing harm so that we can at least point out the harm and hope they respond properly.

I like this type of response for instance which does go into the Christian fantasy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olhCazkejPg

Regards
DL

[Obvious Leo]

I think we do have a role in other people fantasies that are doing harm so that we can at least point out the harm and hope they respond properly.

This is the part of your world-view that I'm having difficulty with, GIA.

I remain convinced that religious belief of all sorts is a dying ideology which will have been reduced to a quaint cultural curiosity before this century is out. I can support this opinion with plenty of evidence and argument, but I realise that that's not what this OP is all about. What you're essentially saying is that we should do our best to hurry up this natural process by attempting to use the tools of human reason to try and persuade religious believers that they're wrong. Before I go on to explain why I think this is both futile and counter-productive please either confirm or deny my understanding of your position. I hate it when people put words into my mouth so I don't want to be guilty of the same crime.

[Greatest I am]

I think we do have a role in other people fantasies that are doing harm so that we can at least point out the harm and hope they respond properly.

This is the part of your world-view that I'm having difficulty with, GIA.

I remain convinced that religious belief of all sorts is a dying ideology which will have been reduced to a quaint cultural curiosity before this century is out. I can support this opinion with plenty of evidence and argument, but I realise that that's not what this OP is all about. What you're essentially saying is that we should do our best to hurry up this natural process by attempting to use the tools of human reason to try and persuade religious believers that they're wrong. Before I go on to explain why I think this is both futile and counter-productive please either confirm or deny my understanding of your position. I hate it when people put words into my mouth so I don't want to be guilty of the same crime.

I agree that religions will likely dies our but to ignore the harm just because of that shows a poor social conscience.

There is enough time for you to lose grand children and even great grand children to religions as well as having all the women in your family be second class citizens for those decades.

But hey, if you do not care ----

Regards
DL

[Obvious Leo]

But hey, if you do not care ----

Kindly mind your manners and don't presume to put words into my mouth. I am a grandparent and care about such matters very deeply. However I've been around the world long enough to learn the meaning of the word futility. A person who is willing to hold a belief without benefit of supportive evidence will NEVER be diverted from such a belief by the tools of human reason for the simple reason that they deny the very validity of such tools.

The rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world in recent decades is complete and adequate evidence of this. The troglodytes have been painted into a corner and are fighting back with all the tools at their disposal, which are the ancient tools of divisiveness and hate.

Education and the anarchy of the internet will ultimately achieve the goals that you and I both aspire to and merely poking people in the eye with a sharp stick and telling them what a pack of idiots they are will only set this process back instead of advancing it. However there are some practical steps which secular governments are able to take which would be quite productive. For a start it should be unlawful to teach falsehoods to children in taxpayer funded schools and this is a policy which the people of a democratic state have every right to insist that their government should implement.

[Greatest I am]

But hey, if you do not care ----

Kindly mind your manners and don't presume to put words into my mouth. I am a grandparent and care about such matters very deeply. However I've been around the world long enough to learn the meaning of the word futility. A person who is willing to hold a belief without benefit of supportive evidence will NEVER be diverted from such a belief by the tools of human reason for the simple reason that they deny the very validity of such tools.

The rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world in recent decades is complete and adequate evidence of this. The troglodytes have been painted into a corner and are fighting back with all the tools at their disposal, which are the ancient tools of divisiveness and hate.

Education and the anarchy of the internet will ultimately achieve the goals that you and I both aspire to and merely poking people in the eye with a sharp stick and telling them what a pack of idiots they are will only set this process back instead of advancing it. However there are some practical steps which secular governments are able to take which would be quite productive. For a start it should be unlawful to teach falsehoods to children in taxpayer funded schools and this is a policy which the people of a democratic state have every right to insist that their government should implement.

Why only taxpayer funded schools?

Would a responsible government not want truth to be taught to their citizens all the time and everywhere?

Is lying for money not fraud? Yes it is and we allow charities and religions to both flagrantly do it tax exempt.

The truth is that all priests and imams lie to us all the time funded by your tax dollar and mine as we subsidize the tax burden that we exempt the liars from paying.

As to demanding something from government, how droll.

Please have a look at how well that works.

http://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-dat ... b014efbf27

You are likely right that the internet is what will bring down those who deserve to be taken down and that is why I am taking the stance that I do.

The only other alternative is to sue the offenders through the courts but few of us have the millions that a court case costs.

Regards
DL

[Obvious Leo]

Why only taxpayer funded schools?

In my country this would actually include all schools because even private and religious schools receive a certain level of government funding.

Would a responsible government not want truth to be taught to their citizens all the time and everywhere?

Yes. However a government can only govern with the consent of the people and thus the burden or responsibility for this rests with the people. In a democracy we always get the government we deserve.

Is lying for money not fraud? Yes it is and we allow charities and religions to both flagrantly do it tax exempt.

I've always wondered what would happen if the tax-exempt status of religious institutions was challenged and tested in our high court. I'm not a constitutional lawyer but I've often heard the opinion expressed by some who are that such a tax status may be unconstitutional in this country. It would certainly cost big bucks to put it to to the test because these organisations would fight it tooth and nail and they have very deep pockets full of OUR money.

[Lacewing]

I think we do have a role in other people fantasies that are doing harm so that we can at least point out the harm and hope they respond properly.

So, is it that these people have simply not had the harm pointed out to them... or that they don't agree as to what is harm?

I agree with you that it can be valuable to speak out against foolish and destructive beliefs... in order to try and help turn the tide. However, due to most people's denial and resistance to change, I think more real/lasting change may come from non-engagement, keeping oneself clear, and from setting new examples that can demonstrate the archaic nature of some methodologies/beliefs.

It often seems to me that fighting against something, gives it some level of credibility/validity -- simply because of the effort people are willing to invest in it. Whereas, NOT giving it that level of involvement, might show it for the absurd fantasy it is?

No easy absolute answers! I'm winging it moment to moment with the ever-shifting wind.

[Obvious Leo]

Lacewing. I think the point you make about allowing things to run their course and simply setting the example is a good one because in the case of these particular fairy tales the facts speak for themselves. Almost all of the major indicators of social progress which are used in the social sciences show that the most advanced and progressive societies are those in which religious belief is not a significant factor in the cultural zeitgeist. Rates of crime, domestic violence, sexual abuse etc are all higher in religious countries than they are in secular countries. The populations are also generally healthier and better educated. I am a much travelled man and these statistics also resonate well with my own anecdotal experience. The more religious a place is the more dangerous it is and this is hardly surprising because religious belief and intolerance go hand in glove.

However I completely agree with you that simply pointing these things out to believers and saying "see, I told you so" is unlikely to make a scrap of difference. Such attitudinal changes take place between generations and seldom within them. I feel certain that when my grandchildren are my age they will see a world which I would be unable to recognise and this world will be far more tolerant than mine. I know this to be so because this has been a steady and uniform trend throughout the last couple of centuries as the information age has dawned. It's sometime hard to see this from our own particular perspectives but undoubtedly the world IS becoming a kinder, more tolerant and a fairer place as the dominance of religion has waned.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

To have harm pointed out.

• The interesting thing here is to 'turn the lens around' and have it face those making these statements. That they know, and for certain, that holding to an imago or an 'imagined sense' or even a mythological vision of some aspect of reality, or incarnation here, can really be called 'doing harm'. It is obviously insinuated that the one making the statement stands in a truer relationship to reality, that that one sees it more clearly, or grasps its essence and what is most important in it and about it. This might amount to hubris. It extends into a whole attitudinal posture in which one declares oneself qualified to make these sorts of decisions and judgments not only for ones closest to one, but for a whole nation! Given the opportunity, the structure of education would be revised to conform to whatever the core ideas about 'reality' that these folks hold. It is also implied that civic authority would have the power to apply civic penalty to those whose thinking did not accord with the established zeitgeist. And as we have seen in some of these posts, at least one in this tête-à-tête feels qualified to decide questions of mental health! One imagines, then, the logical extension: indoctrination centres, mental wards a la Solzhenitsyn, forced round-ups of thought-malefactors. Exaggeration, it is true, and yet the seeds are there.

I agree with you that it can be valuable to speak out against foolish and destructive beliefs.

• Yet it surely must be a heavy responsibility. For after all, what if one gets it wrong? How many modernist social programs - social engineering programs - have ended doing much more harm than good? But yes, we are duty-bound really to speak out about 'foolish and destructive beliefs', and for this reason, again, we must be willing to have the examination lens turned around. And on what basis do we declare that we have a viable grasp of these matters? From whence our authority? In truth, these questions (the question of religiousness, of faith, of spirituality, of growth in consciousness) are likely outside of your-plural ken - if we are to base an opinion on the silly declarations you-all make in your posts. I would say that both of you are largely ignorant of the core of the issue. If that is so, how can you possibly rectify error? It is possible that your own 'beliefs' are erroneous, partial, and arise in forms or levels of ignorance. What right do you have to define how life and existence are perceived, understood and addressed? Who the heck are you?

Real/lasting change may come from non-engagement, keeping oneself clear, and from setting new examples that can demonstrate the archaic nature of some methodologies/beliefs.

• God in Heaven! I am reminded of the blocks of time spent in Venezuela and Nicaragua and around American and European activists, many of them young, idealistic children with a very limited and parochial grasp of the world yet with an obstinate belligerency that made them stick out like sore thumbs. They actually spoke like this! I kid you not. This idea of setting to work on the recalcitrant world and whipping it into shape. If that world would only see the 'archaic nature' of their erroneous 'methodologies'. But the spirit of idealism is often a double-edged sword.

Because in the case of these particular fairy tales the facts speak for themselves.

• It is the attitude in these statements that catches my attention. In a significant sense we humans define our relationship to 'reality' through our 'imagined world' or our 'imagined relationship' to life. There is even a rather dry, materialist one, at the base of this declaration. One sees oneself in the structure of a muthos, a story that defines a relationship to life, to truth, to being. Some other people operate a different vision, or have a different intuition of life, and impose a different 'tale' about the nature of reality. But note that you suppose you have the truer one, and the right one, and the one that has the right to ascendency, and one that evolution forms (another sort of divinity). Sobering up a convoluted belief-system may indeed be in order, but you cannot say that any one of them does not allow for worthy social and human outcomes. The idea that you will do away with them is quite suspect, at least to my ears.

Almost all of the major indicators of social progress which are used in the social sciences show that the most advanced and progressive societies are those in which religious belief is not a significant factor in the cultural zeitgeist.

• I find this sort of argumentation to have a suspect element. One is that it cannot be stated with certainty just what is 'social progress', and indeed the concept is so much a part of academic outlooks that hinge in social management and social moulding projects. I hear in these declarations the enunciations of Marxian social scientists with clear idea of 'what society needs' and 'what people need', and indeed there is a wealth of written material that indicates just what these theorists intend, and what they'd do given the opportunity. One of the first things is to undermine the structure of religious belief, the structure of the family, and social hierarchies that they determine are negative. This hinges into darker political areas in which mercantile interests and corporate interests also have will and interest. Turn the world into a manufacture and distribution system where everyone looks and acts the same (sees the world through the same lens) and 'peace will come to Earth'. There are dangers here that need to be looked into.

It's sometime hard to see this from our own particular perspectives but undoubtedly the world IS becoming a kinder, more tolerant and a fairer place as the dominance of religion has waned.

• I remind you again that the 20th Century brought forth some of the most destructive conflagrations, and ones terribly mortal in astounding numbers, that did not have much at all to do with religious pieties. A couple of them had origins in some facets of the ideology which shines out of your writing. Massive 'education' projects, cultural engineering, the elimination of that dread religion, and intolerance taken to stark levels. This brings into question, at least, some of the elements of these 'declarations'. Thank you for reading, I'll take my answers on the astral plane...