Thoughts on the Value and Cost of Religion

[Atlas]

This is one of periodic looks back at the influence that religion and god have had in my life. I like having the forum in which to vent these thoughts. I find that doing so and responding to the ideas of others is illuminating. I invite all comment.

I was born in 1952 and I grew up in a large family, if 12 kids seems large to any of you. Often that means growing up on a farm but not so with us, I grew up in small towns of between 1000 and 2000 people. By most measures you would have included us in your definition of poor folks. When I was old enough I got to be an altar boy, I loved it and often served mass during weekday services when there were maybe 6 people in attendance. I pretty much knew I'd grow up to be a priest. I felt that way up until about 15.

I mention this because of the elevating influence religion brings to the poor. The poor pay big time for this entertainment but often it's the only show they can afford. They do seem to get alot out of it. I know I did.

I had a particularly scary experience in the Navy that turned me back toward god. Not the Catholic god either. The Protestant god. For this god the Bible was required reading. And even though there was the same old familiar eternal hellfire of anguish and torment, among the motley crew of believers there was a rich participation in something we called the love of Jesus.

I actually credit the experience with awakening aspects of my "self" to love in general. After I got out of the Navy and went to college and met my future wife I was much more prepared for the emotional and intellectual complexities of human love. Human contact in my family was seldom about hugs, it was about slugs. Oh sure, when my aunts visited we had to line up for uncomfortable hugs and sloppy kisses. To us, it was all pretty icky.

I mention this because of the elevating influence this religion brings to the emotionally stunted.

Some of you who have read my previous musings on the subject and nature of God know that my middle way approach grants God existence, not as any oversoul or inner soul, but as a human feeling. The intellectual approach to god is a walk though convoluted dilemmas. But anyone, at any age or religion, can be captured by the feeling.

Apart from the value I found there was a price. Fealty to whichever idea of god is real to the mind. It can be old testament, fire and brimstone, or the baby Jesus and all encompassing love - or anything in between.

There have been some excellent threads on the tsunami and a very interesting thread started by a new member, Winterfrost, that offers among other things a little insight into the minds of a parent and of an 8 year old on how god and religion invade and affect one's life.

It occurs to me that I have been at odds with myself. The elevating feelings of life were first presented to me through my association with the church. Our church was ornate and it was inspiring. The services were in Latin and there was a mystery about them and the choir was obviously supervised and recruited by someone who cared. For a poor kid there was a lot of human art there that I attributed directly to god. Kneeling before the statue of Mary holding the baby Jesus and smiling down on me was not just a feeling experience but an intellectual contemplation engendering a desire to do good. I think if I were a parent I'd want my child engaged in some activity that made them engage in a similar contemplation. What that would be I don't know.

The problem for me was never the positive feelings and thoughts that were engendered by the religion. It was in how to deal with the lie. Fortunately, I never heard of pedophile priests until I was much older. But people I knew were drunks or violent or unJesuslike in other ways were more regular church goers than many good people. What was the deal with saying you believe one thing but living your life the opposite?

The other problem was Hell. It made some sense growing up under the discipline of my Father. Ultimate authority is capricious and given to fits. The punishment of Kings is something that small minds cannot understand but probably deserve.

Escape from the thought of hell was the most difficult and most liberating aspect of my flight from religion. If there wasn't enough reason for fearing death Hell filled any gaps and then multiplied the fear a million times. It was in a sense debilitating. My Dad would on occasion wail on us kids with his belt. With 12 kids a bit of that kind of discipline went a long way. He could merely stand over us threateningly with his hand on his belt and we got the message. We slinked and cowered. Hell is a similar control mechanism for a threatening god. After wailing on us with earthquakes and tsunamis we know the threat of Hell is real and something we should be expecting from the god who watches us.

Fealty to the idea of god was the next most difficult escape. Why this god and not that god? Why not Odin and Thor or Chronos and Zeus? Even as I tried to tell myself that Hell was merely a control mechanism for the masses under a religion I still had the concept of the trinity. A creator who stood apart from creation, a holy spirit that permeated creation, and a human component to the deity that insured that god understood my plight. It was as reassuring as it was illogical.

Escape from that idea has led me from Zen to Deism to this "Experiential Deism" where the reality of God is really the set of human feelings that combine into that which constitutes proof of god to religionists.

This long arc of which I've described in terms of value, price and escape leaves me free. The cost is gone. The value is retained. It was, is, and remains a set of elevating feelings that I've chosen to nurture. Fighting the intellectual illogic of God was suppressing. Realizing that God is in no way an intellectual apprehension helps to appreciate how God is held by the masses. It helps to appreciate the magnitude of the problem as well in the fight for the minds of those locked in fealty to their idea which has been foisted on them by the clever manipulations of their feelings.

The mind deserves to be set free from the imaginary controller of lives and from ideas of eternal suffering. The self deserves to be uplifted by appreciation of the elevating emotions, love and joy and peace and others. Our awareness must be informed enough to recognize that this land we live in is at once a garden of Eden and is encircled by prowling wolves. That is, life is beautiful but threats to it remain all around us. Many are natural, many are human, many are of our own making. No deity will step in and save us. But we can appreciate the ideal with both heart and mind. Using the terms of god and soul should not require us to automatically raise the barriers we've constructed against those ideas. As shapeless emotions they can be keys to self illumination. I rebel though once religion tries to force fit its meaning of those terms and its controlling influence onto the minds of the credulous.

[Gestahl]

Atlas,

Wow, that was a lot to digest. I come from a similar background, though on the fundamentalist Protestant slant.

You talk about the emotional value of religion. I beg to disagree. Religion directly fed my emotional problems of a persecution complex, my own degraded feelings of self-worth, etc. Putting your life in Christ is almost like the death of the ego. It can lead to chronic depression for people like me.

This led to serious problems, because I had no emotional outlet for myself. I would pray to God and ask him to help me, but of course none was forthcoming. I began to believe God *wanted* me this way for some reason... maybe I was a horrible person and deserved to be chronically depressed. In any event, it was totally *my* fault that I was unhappy, because God is good and loving and all that BS.

Not only that but the cognitive dissonance I had between my logical and emotional selves when I came to think critically about God only made the problem worse. My entire emotional existence seemed to rest on how my relationship was with God, and the only way to tell how my relationship with God was, was emotionally! You can see how this turns into an ugly spiral. Not only that, but my entire emotional relationship with my parents and community was at stake.

Lastly, I attempted suicide (not trying to one-up you or give a better story, Atlas, just another side) because of the delusion of heaven, the delusion that reality was temporary, and that simply because I trusted Jesus, heaven is where I would be when everything was sorted out (Protestants don't universally regard suicide as a mortal sin). This is the danger that emotional responses can lead to (also bigotry, hate, intolerance, fear, and anger... things I consider hallmarks of religious fundamentalism).

I too am filled with awe at organ music, and cathedrals, and cry at the strains of Handel's Messiah. However, responding to beauty requires not a God. God can turn into an emotional crutch very easily, and I fell into it. I am glad you came away with the positive aspects.

[Atlas]

Gesthal,

An amazing story. You have touched on one of the biggest prices the religionist might pay... Sanity.

I was fortunate not to have fallen among any fundamentalists. To interpret scripture literally invites insanity in my opinion.

I am well acquainted though with the emotional anguish that religionists heap on themselves when they are not joyously in the spirit.

It passes for truth that when the true believer walks with the Lord he walks with a light and lightness of peace and joy. When the emotion is not present the mind wonders why and supplies reasons that deliver more distance, alienation and anguish.

Christians are taught to create new mental tapes of "Godly thoughts" because when the mind gets locked in on bad ways of thinking it leads to bad outcomes. Most of the time the new tapes are designed to keep the practitioner thinking "small". That is, do not desire the things of the world. Do not desire new knowledge. You can be happy with what you have. Live life happily in this straitjacket. (I'm exagerating this, but to religion if science makes you question your faith you are smart to retreat from it or actively fight it - evolution in schools is an example.)

My own insight into the delight experience which is followed by the mundane everyday experience which is followed by the questioning and the anguish is only this... something about religion provides the joyous delight experience. We all seek that something when we are within the religion but religion is not big on admitting that the delight experience is best held without the religious dogma that is pushed along with it.

If you can generate the feeling of truth and beauty and goodness yourself why would you need the religion to help you get it.

Anyway, after making my escape from the mask of god, the mask of truth, beauty and goodness I went back for an objective look. Comparitive religious study is wonderful for the insight it gives but it doesn't generate the feelings that one gets through the step by step approach of admission of guilt to submission to Jesus, which is an extremely liberating experience.

For one who no longer accepts the Jesus as deity story was it still possible to have that experience? If so, what would that say about God? Having once felt that wonderful moment of taking Jesus into my heart I felt that I'd recognize it if I was able to recapture or regenerate the feeling. It was tricky and it dredged up a lot of the guilt and doubt that had troubled me and given me the anguish you speak of. But I was able to recapture the moment. I was able to experience that joy and extasy again.

It completely changed my idea of god and the god experience. It explained how all the religions and peoples down through time have known god and it provided some insight into how the unscrupulous could manipulate people. It also gave me some insight on the way thought helps and hinders the experience.

What I learned was that all of religion and all of god could be transmitted in about 10 minutes. There really ain't much to it. But that does not seem to be valued unless people are made to buy the dogma and sell their soul.

[farmermike]

Atlas and Gestahl, Two thumbs up.

[RichardB]

Quote:

What I learned was that all of religion and all of god could be transmitted in about 10 minutes. There really ain't much to it. But that does not seem to be valued unless people are made to buy the dogma and sell their soul.

The answer is not to buy the dogma, which does not mean that a person can't follow a faith/belief system. Faith and belief go far beyond any kind of dogma, IMO. Dogma is just a bunch of rules and regulations people are manipulated into accepting and believing in order not to go to hell. Dogma does not encourage people to think for themselves, to make up their own minds about their own personal faith and belief. This is definitely not a good approach.

[Riddick]

gesthahl, for your own health, you should look into counseling if you're having those thoughts.

[Atlas]

Quote:

Originally posted by RichardB
The answer is not to buy the dogma, which does not mean that a person can't follow a faith/belief system. Faith and belief go far beyond any kind of dogma, IMO. Dogma is just a bunch of rules and regulations people are manipulated into accepting and believing in order not to go to hell. Dogma does not encourage people to think for themselves, to make up their own minds about their own personal faith and belief. This is definitely not a good approach.

It is certainly true that one should not buy the dogma. But the tradition should also be inspected.

In my case I happened to like the word soul. It has many meanings, some overtly spiritual and some not at all - that is, sometimes "soul" is merely a substitute for "person". I happen to like the Christmas holiday not just because I get toys.

The ideas behind soul and Christmas are filled in by religion. I think it's important to not only reject the dogma but seek appropriate definition of all the words inside a given tradition.

There is a lot of beauty crafted into some human concepts. Rejection of the words and concepts deprives one of any inherent beauty as well as establish barriers in the mind that must be defended. If a concept has a beauty one should identify that aspect of it and seek to carry that aspect forward and reject only the excess baggage - like the dogma that we both agree is dangerous.

[Gestahl]

Cursed double posts...

[Gestahl]

Quote:

Originally posted by Riddick
gesthahl, for your own health, you should look into counseling if you're having those thoughts.

Thank you for your concern, Riddick (seriously). I have already dealt with the issue by getting rid of religion, and focusing on developing myself to be the best person I could be, and not relying on something else for my self-worth. I am no longer under the feelings I was describing.

[Gestahl]

Quote:

Originally posted by Atlas

I am well acquainted though with the emotional anguish that religionists heap on themselves when they are not joyously in the spirit.

It passes for truth that when the true believer walks with the Lord he walks with a light and lightness of peace and joy. When the emotion is not present the mind wonders why and supplies reasons that deliver more distance, alienation and anguish.

Stated more eloquently here than in my post. People with emotional or mental problems can have them exacerbated by religion.

Quote:

Christians are taught to create new mental tapes of "Godly thoughts" because when the mind gets locked in on bad ways of thinking it leads to bad outcomes. Most of the time the new tapes are designed to keep the practitioner thinking "small". That is, do not desire the things of the world. Do not desire new knowledge.

Unfortunately, most of my depressive problems were due to the fact I couldn't figure God out... I could not reconcile Biblical scriptures to my experience of God, mostly probably because I am wired differently than most people emotionally, and think a whole lot more. I was a stranger in a strange land, kept in a bad situation for me by societal pressures.

Quote:

My own insight into the delight experience which is followed by the mundane everyday experience which is followed by the questioning and the anguish is only this... something about religion provides the joyous delight experience. We all seek that something when we are within the religion but religion is not big on admitting that the delight experience is best held without the religious dogma that is pushed along with it.

Absolutely. Watching a sunrise on mushrooms filled me with more awe and wonder than any scripture. Nature can provide the numinous herself, if you pay enough attention.

Quote:

For one who no longer accepts the Jesus as deity story was it still possible to have that experience? If so, what would that say about God? Having once felt that wonderful moment of taking Jesus into my heart I felt that I'd recognize it if I was able to recapture or regenerate the feeling. It was tricky and it dredged up a lot of the guilt and doubt that had troubled me and given me the anguish you speak of. But I was able to recapture the moment. I was able to experience that joy and extasy again.

I found that the greater part of the joy of receiving Christ was the immediate acceptance and appreciation of societal peers. Joining a fraternity felt the same way. Another part of it was sort of a crystallization of thought... kind of like when you read a grand proof of a theory, and everything just clicks and makes sense. And I get a little bit of that every day when I suddenly understand the code I work on better, and "get it."

[Beerina]

Quote:

Originally posted by Atlas
I was born in 1952 and I grew up in a large family, if 12 kids seems large to any of you. Often that means growing up on a farm but not so with us, I grew up in small towns of between 1000 and 2000 people.

On a more lighthearted note, your family made up a full 1% of the population!

[seayakin]

Your topic title “Thoughts on the Value and Cost of Religion� as well as your comments led me to think about this in a more utilitarian stance.

The benefits might include:

• Psychological salve for personal suffering (This could also be a cost because it could mean an individual stays in a bad situation rather than dealing with a problem--e.g. stereotypical battered wife who receives solace in her church but gets no real help)
• psychological ploy to deal with fears of death

Costs include:

• excuse for the use of violence (both physical and psychological)
• uses religious healing methods in place of scientific medical practices that have proven benefits
• method of controlling individual freedoms (From a Machiavellian point of view this could arguably be a benefit)

I don’t think this list is complete by any means, nor should the costs and benefits listed above be weighed equally.

However, can a cost benefit analysis be applied?

[Atlas]

Quote:

Originally posted by seayakin
However, can a cost benefit analysis be applied?

I think all of us who reject religious faith have made a type of cost/benefit analysis. I think the faithful get as far as eternal bliss vs eternal torment and don't see much beyond that. I would include Pascal's Wager as that type of cost/benefit analysis.

What I find fascinating is how seductive the idea is. I believe the genesis of god began in the human appreciation of lightning and thunder. These are the common manifestation of godly power. Earthquakes and volcanoes are less frequent but probably more powerful yet in their ability to seat the idea of god into our collective consciousness.

Those of us, like Gesthal, who have minds that churn the stories and their implications are so very susceptible to the psychological destabilization that faithfulness engenders with its many contradictions. Why does anyone trying so hard to live close to Jesus suffer the anguish and alienation that they do? He's not the only one by any means with a story of living in hell with Jesus.

The most dramatic psychological destabilization event for me was one night as I lay awake in bed I was realizing that I was choosing to walk away from my Christian beliefs and I could not escape the experience of laughter, devilish laughter, that haunted my thoughts. I wanted only to think about why I was going to take this step away from my previously cherished beliefs but I was having a horrible auditory hallucination.

What a grip these beliefs held me in. And I was a modern. I was educated. How ill equipped the sheltered uneducated peoples of old must have been in their own questionings. The diabolical laughter in my head surely would have sent me to my knees to pray to god to save me had it happened any other time in the previous thousands of years.

I guess it is that power that I find most fascinating. It is so elevating and also so psychologically destabilizing in its manifestations. I wondered how it was possible to maintain the elevation in the face of all the contradiction. I don't think you can. I think you must find a way to eliminate the contradiction and I think most religionist try to do that by looking the other way.

"Just accept it, don't question it," is what they tell us. If your brain can work like that you're going to be ok with that. If like Gesthal, it doesn't - if you are forced to question by an overactive brain - you will experience so much more cost than benefit - you'll have to escape or die trying.

[Atlas]

Quote:

Originally posted by Beerina
On a more lighthearted note, your family made up a full 1% of the population!

A similarly large catholic family lived down the street in both of the towns I spent my youth in. Each had a kid my age. In both cases the mathematics of our family size in proportion to the town size found its way into our conversation. It made me proud of the contribution we were obviously making to the town - but I don't think our neighbors looked on us in exactly the same way. Not math lovers, I guess.

[kmortis]

Well, cause it's the most intelligent thread I've read in R&P in a while. And, with everyone being at TAM, I was bored.

[Dogdoctor]

So I have some thoughts about the cost of religion. While I am pretty sure there are costs I am not so sure that you can determine them as easily as pointing your finger and saying there that is the cost. Many problems occur both within and without religion. One person might say this is what religion did to me and another say that religion saved them from that same fate. The other thought is that the image of your father touching his belt or hell needs to be replaced by something and this is the failure of atheism in my point of view. Atheists often deny the need for influences to keep you from being a burden to society. While individuals may be able to replace the father or the fear of hell with internal controls others just figure I can do what I want because there is no god.

[Beerina]

On a more lighthearted note, this thread was resurrected exactly one year after it it went into hibernation. OH. MY. GOD. What are the odds on that?!?!?!? (This is called lobbing a softball...)

[kmortis]

Originally Posted by Beerina

On a more lighthearted note, this thread was resurrected exactly one year after it it went into hibernation. OH. MY. GOD. What are the odds on that?!?!?!? (This is called lobbing a softball...)

Pretty good, really. Since everyone else was off at TAM, I rooted around in the basement to try and find some porn old threads to read. Someone much better at combinatrics than I would be able to calculate the odds for you, if you wanted a numeric value.