Meaningful Dialogue Impossible with Religion?

I have been going back and forth on my opinion of religion lately.  Fundamentalism bothers me, but I am a big fan of free speech, so I guess the religious should have their say as well.  Cencorship, even of falsehood, seems criminal to me. 
I think I just hit upon one of the major problems with religion in the public square.

To make the right decision as a group, a good way to go is to spend time discussing options and weighing outcomes.  Open discussion is huge: even if I have a great idea, you might point out a flaw in this idea and we'll have to further plan before we proceed.  Once we've discussed thouroughly, we can put it to a vote.  If the vote is divisive enough, we can discuss and vote on compromise.
This is supposed to be the idea behind democracy, right?  And I think sometimes it actually happens this way.

But when you put stubborn dogmatism into the mix, everything breaks down.  Dialogue is impossible with fundamentalists, because they will not even listen to the opposing viewpoint:

"Hey, don't you think we should let same-sex couples marry?"
"No!  Person X, who I believe speaks for god, says that that is wrong and evil and terrible and an attack on the institution of marriage, which GOD INVENTED."
"I understand your point of view.  But consider-"
"No!"
"Well I thought if we could discuss-"
"No!"
"Perhaps then, if we can never agree on this matter, we could compro-"
"No! NO! NO! NO!"

This is not dialogue.
I am aware that there are many things that destroy dialogue in this way.  Even stubborn atheism might.  Opinions are okay, and values are okay, and worldviews are okay, but in a society which is populated by a variety of people, we can't afford not to have meaningful dialogue and open, honest exchange of ideas.

Still, it seems like religion really does this a lot.  Like when a church leader says that atheists are only rabidly fighting the level-headed Christians because they are sinning and can't face their own indecency.
...ahem...
A.  I'm behaving quite well, even by your standards. 
B.  That is ad hominem, and has absolutely no relevance to the discussion at hand.
C.  I'm willing to discuss things calmly with you, but you keep shouting me down.


So I guess I can't, through this line of reasoning, condemn open-minded religion, if there is such a thing.

I'd like to discuss my philosophical questions with people around me, but they're all LDS, and after a certain point discussion breaks down.  Usually it ends up with them saying "I feel sorry for you."
I hate that line.  I said something similar to a friend once in high school, and he angrily called it "unwarranted pity."  That has stuck with me.
The thing is, "I feel sorry for you" means "you obviously don't understand, are too pigheaded to understand, and I pity you for not being as humble and enlightened as I am."
Discussion over.  It's like playing tic-tac-toe, but the fundamentalist gets to place as many Xs as she wants, and I only get to place one O.  I can't win, not because of my strategy, not because of my mental capacities, but because the outcome is already decided by the other party's unwillingness to play by any rules that make the game a game at all.

Demoniac Madness

Life is absurd, is it not?  If there is purpose to existence, we can't ever really know it, can we?  Since rational value judgments are ultimately impossible, there would be no way to persuade an individual that such a value judgment is correct.

Kierkegaard wrote about the absurd, all the while defending religious faith.  He called acceptance of the absurd "demoniac madness,"  and said that a person who refuses to accept unfounded beliefs "rages most of all at the thought that eternity might get it into its head to take his misery from him!"

Kierkegaard defends the "leap of faith," the acceptance of something that is not necessarily true.  He admits that there can be no rational purpose to life; even if life's purpose is determined by god, what is the purpose of god?  So the absurdity of human existence is not in anyway assuaged by the concept of god, because god's existence is equally absurd, if not more so.

I, as a human being, am doomed to die.  Likely, this will be the end of my awareness, something to which I feel a strangely powerful attachment.  So, I experience fear, though I know nothing of what it will be like to die, and can hardly expect that existence following death will be in any way unpleasant... or in any way anything!

Yet, as a "sane" person, I go about my daily life, working, resting, talking, engaging in a repetitive life that seems as if it's always been, and will always be.

This is absurd.  Would I really be doing the dishes if the shear, animal terror of death were truly in my mind?  Looming at the end of my short life, with the seconds flying by and completely out of my control, lies my end. My decease.  The black pit that I hurtle toward every moment.

All that I do to "improve" myself will be gone in that instant.  All that I am will be forgotten not long after.  This flourishing planet, covered in life, is just in a transient state, but will eventually reach the steady-state: lifeless, cold, silence.

And we take ourselves so seriously!  It's hilarious, really.  We think we matter.  We think that anything matters!

And when we can't ignore death, we turn to the wild realm of fantasy.  Religion, superstition, spiritualism, pantheism... all coping mechanisms evolved by a bunch of primates who have been the victims of runaway brain evolution.  We are too smart, and so our nature is to cling to denial.

What separates man from the animal?  Not a whole lot, genetically.  Tool use, abstraction, language... these can all be found in the animal kingdom.  But no other species does much of what we do... why?

Maybe it's because no other species has stumbled upon the ability to clearly and systematically describe their own existence.  Human beings are the one species that we know can gaze into the abyss and realize that all we have, all we are, and all we do is for naught.

In response, we become nature's masters of self-distraction.  We fight, we pray, we pretend the dead are still around somewhere.  We build, we make up words like "destiny," and we try to force a place for ourselves on the uncaring universe.

As someone willing to distract myself by undertaking pursuits that will allow me to further distract myself in the future, I am called "sane" or "well-adjusted."

And when a person talks about the absurdity of life and existence, others dismiss her.  They smile knowingly, having perhaps experienced a tiny hint of existential crisis in the past.  But they are beyond such things.  They have managed to not believe in death.

The ultimate human triumph is denial, for without it, the human race might see themselves clearly.

In the Way of the Spirit

There seems to be some sort of concensus that depression is capable of completely blocking the spirit of god.

I have pretty bad depression, especially for the past year.  I'm on several medications and still not doing great.  And I understand where people get this idea that valid religious experiences are impeded by depression; I have trouble feeling joy or even interest in anything.

I'm pretty sure my parents, who have stopped trying to convince me to cling to my former faith (for the moment), expect that I'll be somehow spiritually viable again once my depression is under better control.  I know some other people think this of me.  My father-in-law has severe depression and left the church years ago, and I know people think the same of him.

I don't know what to think about this... It's certainly better than having people say that I'm either sinning or offended, I guess.

The thing is, I'm pretty convinced in my atheist ways.  I don't know if I could ever go back to the doublethink of my former self, holding conflicting ideas in my mind simultaneously.  I'm addicted to thinking clearly and completely, now.  So if I'm ever in better shape at some point, I don't know that I'll be returning to my previously pious self.


The other thing is, my mom always assures me that the way I see things is tainted by my depression, and I could see things more accurately if I weren't depressed.
I'm skeptical.  The fact that depressed individuals are unhappy is unrelated to the question of whether or not they have an accurate view of the world.
In fact, it's been shown that most people have a "personal fable," a view of themselves that is better than the reality of the situation.  Nearly everyone will list themselves as "above-average" in categories that they value.  Guess who doesn't do this?
You got it, people with depression.  They tend to pretty accurately assess themselves, turns out.

The world around us is a terrible place.  The human race is on the fast-track toward its own destruction, people are killing each other brutally all over the world, and the human condition is based on the concept of living in hope of whatever comes next, ending finally in death and probably-false hopes of an afterlife.
I mean, damn, we live in hell!  So is it the happy people who are really accurately viewing the world, or is it the unhappy?

I actually really enjoy entertaining the concept that the most "well-adjusted" and happy are actually victims of some kind of insanity that is built into human beings to keep us from dying of despair as a species.
So your religion makes you happy.  So what?  Yeah, me losing my faith coincided with the worst depression of my life so far, but what of it?
Does you being happy about something make it true?  If so, how exactly does that make any sense?

Waitin' fer Jeezus

How long have we been waiting for Christ to come back?  I mean, it has been a while.  What's he doing?

Well, let's see how long the Mormons have been waiting:

Dec. 25, 1835  -  D&C 87:8  "..until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord."
Time elapsed:   175 years, 1 month, 14 days.

Feb. 4, 1831   - D&C 41:4  "And I will be your ruler when I come; and behold, I come quickly..."
Time elapsed:   180 years, 4 days.

So, our latest update was 180-ish years ago?  What, exactly, is the lord's definition of "quickly?"  180 years is easily 6-7 generations.  So... "I'll show up quickly, as in about when your great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren read this."  Someone needs to let god know that his use of 'quickly' is really confusing us.

Okay, so let's go back to the later New Testament books:

Traditionally 95 C.E.   - Revelation 22:20  "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
Time elapsed:  ~1916 years.

So... now I'm really concerned about this whole 'quickly' thing.  Okay, so maybe 200 years is nothing to god, but 2000?!  Isn't that, like, 1/3 of the age of everything or something?  And he makes very clear that it's Jesus we're talking about in this passage.  And, if we want to put this in generations, we can probably say that here, the lord meant "quickly as in when your great^74 grandchildren read this."

Okay, let's see if Jesus himself was a little more clear and accurate:


Around 30 C.E.  -   Luke 21:27-32  "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory   ... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Time elapsed:  ~1981 years.

And no, this is not taken out of context, go read it.  Well, Jesus was way more specific, right?  Same generation, so anywhere from 20-50 years, depending on how you define generation.  Oops!  That's somewhere around 5500% error.  Remind me again why we listen to this guy?

So... Jesus seems to be taking his sweet time.  Everyone is so sure that the second coming is right around the corner because of the state of the world...  just like people were during WWII... and WWI... AND the Civil War!
And that's just a few examples from the U.S.  All over the world, people have been feverishly declaring the coming of the lord since... well, just after 0 C.E.

I mean, jeez guys, how long do we have to wait?  Ten thousand years?  A millions years?  A billion freaking years?
Seriously, once the sun goes out, I think we can be pretty sure he completely blew off the whole party.


'Of course, if I were Jesus, I probably wouldn't be too excited to come back either:

"So I went to my people and told them I was god, and then asked to be nice to each other for a change and to stop being such big jerks.  They nailed me to a freaking tree!  

So I went back for a bit to tie up some loose ends and figured I'd show up in a generation or so, but it turns out.. my followers suck!  They don't love each other, for one thing, and anyone who isn't one of them, they kill!  

I mean, the idiots fought for centuries over the hometown of all the jerk-offs who killed me in the first place!  And they burned anyone who even had a clue at the stake for thousands of years! 

Anyway, no matter how enlightened they get, they are total jerks everybody, including each other.  I'm not going back until my 'followers' are at least mildly pleasant to be around."

Superstitious Apes and the Utility of Religion

A number of conversations, as well as a few snatches of back-to-reality moments, have given me some thoughts about religion lately.

I have stated before that I don't believe religion will be gone anytime soon.  In fact, I think the majority of the world will always be religious.
From what I know about human beings, religion is built into us.  Every culture in the world has religious beliefs that developed with it.  We are very superstitious apes.

You can argue for the spread of atheism and agnosticism in modern, educated society, but it's still not that much.  The nation in Europe with the highest fraction of its population admitting no belief in god or a higher power is France, at 33%.  And only 4 nations of the 32 studied are above 25%.  That means that at least 2/3 of the populations even the most godless nations in the most godless continent believe in a higher power beyond the reaches of rigorous human science.
 You could argue for China, but studies vary from 20% to 70% of the population being religious.  It is hard to measure behavior in places where a specific belief system is forcibly imposed on the people, because those who believe differently are better off not to admit it openly.

And imagine what would happen if something disastrous seriously upset the global economy, throwing the former first-world nations into poverty, famine, disorder, and misery.  There is no doubt that at some time this will happen, disasters are too common to expect otherwise.  Will people turn away from god?  Some perhaps.  But the world is full of people who have lost so many of their friends and family, whose lives have gone from opulent to desperate, and most importantly, whose modern society with all its science and technology has failed them.  In times like this, people turn to whatever they think or hope or even just wish could help them.
 I don't think these facts will change unless the human race makes some biological (not just sociological) shift.

But what if we could abolish religion, right now?  Gone, somehow, in a day, or a year, or something.
My wife asked me a potent question about this scenario: Would drug abuse and suicide rates go up or down?
I had to admit that they may well go up.  People take a lot of comfort in religion, and not everyone can handle the idea of no higher power, afterlife, etc.  Sometimes I don't think I can handle it.

So though I still don't believe in a higher power, I would not advocate the abolition of religion.
I would, of course, limit the political power of religion.  I would love to quell the more violent and bigoted aspects of certain religions.
But if the whole world moved steadily toward a new-age feel-good "god loves everybody" kind of religion, would it be so bad?  Tolerant religion without political agendas.  It can exist, I think.  Strong adherents of religions with strict doctrines scorn these religions, but I think I like them.

So, my policy now is that I don't want to actively persuade people not to believe in god, but rather I'd like to point out the arguments against the hell and damnation and strict Victorian morality aspects of religion.
Seems more realistic, in any case.

Experiment Time!

Okay, so we are encouraged to find out for ourselves what religion is true, right?

So I thought, why not be scientific about it?

If you feel good after reading the Book of Mormon and praying like Moroni says, that's one data point.  Completely useless.  The same goes for other religious experiences as well.

The thing is, you need a decent number of trials, a good sampling of the available hypotheses, and a well-constructed control group.

It is obviously not a good idea to try to take on each of the tens of thousands of religions in the world.  Best to try a good, generic example of each major category thoroughly.  If one stands out above the others zoom in on that category of religions and start testing some.  Hopefully, by "hunt and peck," you can narrow it down to just a few in not too many steps.

But, each religion is going to have to be tested thoroughly.  Praying on a bad day and feeling comfort can't count... too many variables.  Praying on a good day and feeling a swell of gratitude is a poor data point as well.  No, you need your most normal, meh days.  These days are the ones you are most familiar with, and therefore anything out of the ordinary would be much easier to separate from statistical noise.  Plus, you have lots of these.  So, make a questionnaire for yourself.  Do all the religious things some days and none of them other days.  Record your experiences, well-being, apparent luck, etc each day.  Even better, have someone close to you fill out a questionnaire as well, but don't tell them if it had been a religious day or not.

However, there are still too many variables.  Maybe the religious practices make you feel good, but aren't based on truth at all.  So we need a control group.  For each religion you test, take a couple of other religions and do the same things for them.  Pick maybe one other religion from the world (so, read the BoM and pray to Buddha), one obsolete religion (pray to Baal or Hermes), and one religion you make up yourself (pray to Dyith, the great chili god).  Obviously, you can't approach this without bias, but you have to do your best.
Additional helps:  listen to new-age music while you pray for each of these, then don't.  This will hopefully give you a very rough estimate of how much you can trust feelings during a movie or presentation created by the religion in question.

This is a very rough outline: I haven't covered how to write up the questionaires, how to run a decent statistical analysis, etc.

Why don't we hear about this kind of procedure at church?

Dualism

Dualism is the idea that people consist of two parts, one material (the body) and one material (the spirit).
The point at which these two interact has been debated for centuries (Descartes thought it was in the pineal gland).  In addition, which functions belong to which side is also a topic of debate and speculation.

Now, I can see how one might think this.  There appears to be a part of me that is not my body, for some indescribable reason.  Like you lose a finger, and it's not like part of you goes with the finger, right?  Not your identity.  But, the thing is, lose part of your brain, and some part of your identity often does go with it.  So this casts some doubt on the idea.

So I was musing on how this seems to basically be an excuse for ignorance.  Does anybody really talk about the soul of a bacterium?  No, because we can explain exactly what goes on inside a bacterium in physical terms.  Biology has come far enough that most cellular processes (especially primitive ones) are well-understood chemical processes.

So that brings up the question: where do things start having souls?  How about eukaryotes?  They have nucleii, and complex organelles separated from the rest of the cell by membranes.  This is a ridiculous jump in complexity, though it's on such a small scale we often don't realize it.  Evolutionary biologists talk about the great "geneses" that constitute huge, unlikely leaps in complexity.  The formation of the first DNA, the development of the cellular nucleus, the formation of multi-cellular organisms, etc.

Does life get a soul at any of these stages?  Multi-cellular organism span everything from primitive algae colonies to incredibly-more complex mosses and worms, all the way up to us and organisms of similar complexity.  It seems silly, though, to insist that these must have souls.  Theses are parasites and pond scum on the lower levels.

Okay, how about complex plants?  Conifers?  Their more-advanced cousins, deciduous trees?  Incredibly complex life-cycles.  Usually each plant contains separate male and female reproductive capabilities.  Plants evolve to interact with animal life in complex ways, like flowers and fruit.
But we understand everything that happens inside a tree.  There is no reason to insist that there must be some immaterial component that is responsible for certain functions when we can see all of the tree's functions taking place in complex-yet-well-defined biological processes.

Okay, so we move into the animal kingdom, and we'll skip over the amoeba and worms, because we already rejected those.  So let's move on to jellyfish.  Still pretty simple... how about coral?  Sea cucumbers?  All those invertebrates that don't really have brains?  No?  They are still pretty easy to describe.

Okay, so give them a spine!  Fish?  Have you ever looked into a fish's eyes and thought "I can't see those without seeing a soul?"  Fish are pretty dumb, even though they are a quantum leap above sea-cucumbers.
So maybe it's not the spine, it's the brain!  The octopus, the cuttlefish, and the squid are intelligent creatures.  They have been compared to certain "higher" mammals, in fact.  So do these have spirits?  Well, we certainly can no longer 100% account for their behavior.  So it seems that we have crossed some barrier here with a complex brain.

So let's go to things with brains between the complexity of the octopus and the fish... maybe shrews, or cardinals? (..a dumb bird.  Don't believe me?  I have a story about cardinals.)  How about ants, their behavior is extremely complex, but their brain is relatively simple.  Frogs?  Lizards?  This class of creatures seems pretty ambiguous.  They are not entirely predictable, but they are pretty well understood, and it doesn't seem reasonable to demand a soul for these.

But what is the difference between a frog and a dog?  Do dogs have souls?  They have large brains, and have emotions and personalities that seem similar to a human's.  Ultimately, though, the difference between the frog and the dog seems to be one of scale.  Does god decide to start shoving souls in when things are smart enough to pretend to have one?

I know I've rambled a little, but I just want to demonstrate that the difference between a human and a worm is simply one of scale, and fish are practically our cousins.  Where do we start insisting that there is some incorporeal part that accounts for the behavior of an animal?

So let's pretend for a second that humans and only humans have souls.  Never mind that almost all human behaviors are not unique in the animal kingdom (though there are a few little gems, like fearless use of fire).  (And no, texting doesn't count.  It's just communication and tool use that is more sophisticated than, but not fundamentally different from, that of apes and dolphins.)
Psychology is rapidly unlocking the secrets of the human brain.  There are things that are interesting (like the guy who had a certain brain injury and couldn't tell his wife from a hat, or even my professor at BYU who has a disorder that makes it nearly impossible to recognize faces).  There are things that are terrifying (like those scientists who figured out how to influence you decisions using magnetic fields!

So what behavior remain, that our brain is not responsible for?  In the spirit world, are we utterly incapable of recognizing one another?  Does the magnetic field mess with our spirits?  (that violates the immaterial aspect, which, incidentally, is already violated by the idea that the spirit influences the body)

The whole thing gets a little hokey when you try to reason with it.
Couple that like some questions like "if god can create souls, they can be created.  Can they be destroyed?"
Kinda defeats the purpose, if our souls are not invulnerable.  It gets worse with each question.

When we are little kids, we actually ask our parents about things like this!  Remember?  The questions that really seemed pertinent to us, but prompted nothing more than knowing smiles?   "Oh, maybe we'll know that someday..."  Why is it not okay anymore?  Because it is taboo for religious adults to openly admit to thinking logically about their belief.

And now, I rip off j-dog.

Bring It

I've been posting a lot recently.

When I used to think about myself as LDS, I felt insecure as a Mormon.  As a minority, really.
This was in spite of the guarantees of the church that one day the world will all be Mormon, and anyone who doesn't believe it now will know it's true some day (even if it's after they die).  Basically, even though I mostly believed that I knew the truth, and everyone would admit I was right one day, I still felt nervous about believing things not too many people believe.

Now, I find myself in another minority: atheists.  I entertain no notions that the world will slowly-but-surely give up the superstitious religions of the past, I've admitted to myself that the world will probably always be largely religious.  I also admit that most people who believe wrong things will probably never know they were wrong (given that there is no afterlife where god gets to say "gotcha!").

So why am I so much more confident?  I don't give a damn now, where I was so uncomfortable before.  I have never felt like I understood my own beliefs like I do now.  I don't need people to stop attacking atheism (although I guess I do get irked by the stupid reasoning behind, I don't know, all of the arguments).  Basically, everything I am says "Bring it on!"

I never wanted to organize protests and boycotts as a Mormon, I really kind of didn't like them.  Now, I'm ready to march!  Get something together at BYU, like some of us were talking about the other night at the gathering of atheists I attended the other night.

Maybe this is the first time I have really believed in a cause, even if it's just getting fair treatment for myself and those who think similar to myself.  I was timid as a Mormon (the mission really sucked, even after I learned to swallow my disgust at my own desperate tactics), but I feel bold as an atheist.  True, I don't admit it to everyone around me, because I need to keep hidden from administrative eyes if I want to finish my degree at BYU.  Once I'm done and have my diploma in hand, I'll make no pretense.

You know what?  I might just write up a mocking email to the Honor Code Office (from an anonymous email address) telling them that they'd better get their bishops discerning better, because I've had two so far who've missed that fact that I'm an apostate.  Tell them that if they don't want people coming up with blasphemous lyrics for the hymns under their breath in sacrament meeting, they should let Mormons change their religious status.  Tell them that I happily disseminate truth about church history (though always under the pretense of being a well-studied believer), shoot down arguments I hear against atheism, and otherwise sow my tare seeds of apostasy among their unsuspecting student body.

If I do end up sending something like that, I'll be sure to post it.

Tool Time and Game Time

If you asked any leader or member of the LDS church, I am a tool of Satan.  However, most of Christian America regards tehe church as a tool of Satan.  America itself, of course, is regarded by the rest of the world as a tool of Satan.  Of course, "the world" is the ultimate tool of Satan, according to the church... but now we're caught in a recursive loop.
Basically, I'm going to be considered a tool of Satan no matter what I do.  This thought has liberated me from some of the anxiety about the judgment of LDS church members; in all that, what's one more level of tooldome?

So maybe I'm just posting silly things to try to make up for my political rant of a few days ago, but I totally made up a new game today.  Take a Mormon buzzword  (for example, "worldly").  Replace it with a word that fits into how you view things (for example, "reasonable").  Go to lds.org and search for the buzzword, and laugh yourself silly at the new-and-improved quotes from prophets, apostles, and seers.

Worldly -> Reasonable:

While providing us with this opportunity, the world also presents us with many challenges, temptations, and pressures. Teenagers, particularly, are faced with great pressures from a reasonable society.

We must learn, as Samuel did, that the body and the person are not to be judged using reasonable criteria.

Reasonable preoccupation with self surrenders to sacrifice, consecration, and the other holy covenants of the temple.

Modern -> Fictional:

Ancient Israel had leaders before Moses, and fictional Israel had a prophet-president before Brigham Young.

Brothers and sisters, the special language of prayer is much more than an artifact of the translation of the scriptures into English. Its use serves an important, current purpose. We know this because of fictional revelations...

 Two companion qualities evident in the lives of our pioneers, early and fictional, are that same quality is evident in the conversion stories of fictional pioneers.


I'm getting a kick out of this.  If anyone comes up with some good ones, please post them in a comment!

Book of Mormon... Stories?

I don't know why I laugh myself to tears looking at this idiotic thing I created using MS-Paint and lds.org's online Illustrated Book of Mormon.  Maybe it's that I only got ~3 hours of sleep last night, or I'm giddy for finally having been able to hang out with some people I can be myself around tonight, or whatever.
Here it is: