Why the most popular religions make the least sense

[Boshko]

I'm sure that all us atheists have noticed that Holy Books generally don't make a great deal of sense, they don't use rational arguments to back up their claims, and are often grossly inconsistent and self-contradictory. I've wondered why this is the case, after all you would think that a soft of cultural darwinism would result in religions that were at least half-way rational coming out on top eventually, but I've come to realize that the greatest strength of this sort of writing is the very fact that they don't make all that much sense.

Just imagine what would happen if the claims in "revealed" texts were actually back up by something remotely resembling clearly-written formal logic! People would be able to go over the text and demonstrate how some of the arguments used were false, irrelevant, logical fallacies etc. and if it really was clearly written people wouldn't even be able to claim that such objections were based on passages taken out of context. This would not do at all.

The very ambiguity of the Bible etc. allows theology, apologetics, and (re)interpretation to thrive. By engaging in the process of mucking around with an unclear text in order twist it into making sense, the would-be interpreter engages in a lot of effort and comes to be very attached to their interpretation. This strengthens religon in a two-fold manner. If there's battling theologians trying to interpret a text in two different fashions, people's brains can get caught in such arguments as "because X is violating everything Y stands for, I've got to stand up for what Y truly means." Also, in interpreting a text you put a lot of yourself into that interpretation and since your interpretation generally comes up (strangely enough) as agreeing with your pre-concieved ideas, it becomes very hard to disagree with a text after you've interpreted it to agree with you. Because of this, in many cases you often get people lobbing quotations at each other and howling about context and completely forget to do any real analysis as to why you should accept Y text as true in the first place.

Because of this you'll never find a religion that doesn't leave huge amounts of space to apologetics. A classic example of this is the jewish discipline of torah-examination (forget the term :( ). Judaism would be far weaker is this, quite interesting, discipline was made unnecessary by a clearly-written Torah.

This, of course, doesn't happen just with religious texts. Just look at doctrinaire Marxists. You won't find them saying "you know, your interpretation of Marx is perfectly right, but it just so happens that Marx was wrong about that" but instead bewailing how other people are violating Marx's legacy, while at the same time doing a whole lot of re-interpretation themselves (Lenin is the classic example of this). Much the same thing happened to Confucianism in China.

I certainly fell head-first into this mental trap. I stayed a Christian for as long as I did because I was so annoyed by how very different fundies are from the warm fuzzy new-agey Jesus that I thought that the Bible was all about, and I was more than willing to reject or completely reinterpret any passage that disagreed with me. I even started some threads in a forum about what a great leftist Jesus was :D . I didn't question this position for a LONG time since even when I got in atheist vs. theist debates I spend most of my time argueing with the fundies (which always seem to out-number liberals on the internet). Thank Darwin for Asimov, Hume, Paine, and Hawkings for getting me to think :D

[Theli]

Well... the bible was obviously writen by some very superstitious people. For example, if a boat were to sink and it would for some reason end up in the bible. It would probably say something like this - "And The Lord got mad at the sailors for one of them who was in leauge with the beast hath not prayed that morning. So The Lord pulled the ship down into the seas. And the sky turned red and the moon swallowed the sun"

And a few centuries later, some just as superstitious sailors is sitting in a boat praying, scared out of their mind, for god not to pull them down into the sea.

Hehehe... It's kind of amusing when you think about it. Miracles can be pulled out of anything. :p

[the Devil's Own]

I've come to realize that the greatest strength of this sort of writing is the very fact that they don't make all that much sense.


And this is the exact reason for their popularity. They HAVE to promise fantasies that "real life" don't offer (ie: heavens, afterlives, 72 virgins, reincarnation, etc ad nauseum).

A religion based in reality is a religion doomed for failure.

[Alf]

I'm sure that all us atheists have noticed that Holy Books generally don't make a great deal of sense, they don't use rational arguments to back up their claims, and are often grossly inconsistent and self-contradictory. I've wondered why this is the case, after all you would think that a soft of cultural darwinism would result in religions that were at least half-way rational coming out on top eventually, but I've come to realize that the greatest strength of this sort of writing is the very fact that they don't make all that much sense.

The cultural darwinism is in place. It is just that success of religions is not measured by how rational they are. Most likely because the targets, those who join such religions are not rational people. If people were rational, only rational religions would eventually survive, but people are irrational so irrational religions win over the rational ones simply because their success is measured by a different type of measure.

It is not that irrational religions have an advantage per se, it is more that how rational or irrational a religion is has little to no influence on its popularity. In fact, if anything I would guess irrational religions have an advantage since they are not bound by rationality they can simply sprout out assertions about infallible god blah blah blah, existing outside of time blah blah blah, doing impossible things blah blah blah, miracles etc etc and not worry about irrelevant issues such as coherency and consistency.


Just imagine what would happen if the claims in "revealed" texts were actually back up by something remotely resembling clearly-written formal logic! People would be able to go over the text and demonstrate how some of the arguments used were false, irrelevant, logical fallacies etc. and if it really was clearly written people wouldn't even be able to claim that such objections were based on passages taken out of context. This would not do at all.


Oh, such ideas does exist - science provide a world view that function this way. The problem is that people believe in science in spite of their own wishes. They believe we can make computers not so much that they like computers or don't like them, but when you see a computer in front of you, you cannot deny its existence. A god on the other hand is just the way you want him to be - always. There is no real god there that says "No, Johnny, I do not appreciate what you did there" ever. Sure, if a person later convert he might look back and see "hmm..that was a bad thing I did back there, I sinned and god probably tried to tell me to stop but I wouldn't listen" but has anyone ever heard a voice inside them tell them to stop doing something which they had no idea was wrong at the time? I don't think so, I have never heard of any such reports.

This is the beauty of intangible things. They always agree with you. You think that it is not sinful to accumulate a lot of money on your own hands, see, God agrees, he does not think it is sinful. You think it IS sinful to accumulate a lot of money on your own hands, and guess what? God agrees again! You think homosexuality is a sin and strangely enough, God agrees! You think being gay is OK and again, God agrees with you!

Whatever you think - God agrees with you. A very strong evidence that God is simply nothing but a fantasy figure. However, this is also exactly the reason why irrational religions are popular. People don't join a church where they are told that "you are bad". Sure, they can join a church that says so in a generic way meaning "everyone is bad". For example christians have a fundamental view that all humans are sinners, but John Hubert doesn't like to hear that John Hubert is particularly bad and that he should be more like his brother Eric - unless he happened to look up to his brother and admire him and as such actually agree with that particular idea.

Therefore a rational religion - being bound by rational thinking is severly limited, it cannot provide the answers people want to hear and it would allow for many questions that these people don't like to ask and don't like anyone else is asking. Irrational religions are so much better, they answer questions but they don't allow those answers to be questioned unless they already have a pre-made answer ready-made for the occation. You never hear a preacher take up a problem of contradictory information in the bible unless he already have a ready-made "explanation" as to how the two can be reconciled. You will never hear a priest in the pulpit say "Here in the gospel of Luke it says that Jesus was born in 6 AD or so we can infer but in Matthew is is implied that Jesus was born before 4 BC, how can that be reconciled? I don't know" No priest will ever be that honest. If they do drag out contradictions it is because they have already made apologetics to "explain" the contradiction.


The very ambiguity of the Bible etc. allows theology, apologetics, and (re)interpretation to thrive. By engaging in the process of mucking around with an unclear text in order twist it into making sense, the would-be interpreter engages in a lot of effort and comes to be very attached to their interpretation. This strengthens religon in a two-fold manner. If there's battling theologians trying to interpret a text in two different fashions, people's brains can get caught in such arguments as "because X is violating everything Y stands for, I've got to stand up for what Y truly means." Also, in interpreting a text you put a lot of yourself into that interpretation and since your interpretation generally comes up (strangely enough) as agreeing with your pre-concieved ideas, it becomes very hard to disagree with a text after you've interpreted it to agree with you. Because of this, in many cases you often get people lobbing quotations at each other and howling about context and completely forget to do any real analysis as to why you should accept Y text as true in the first place.

Exactly, every person can interpret the text in a way that is conforming to his own world view and agreeing with his own ideas. Some people are loving and caring, guess what? They see a loving and caring Jesus who only want to bring peace to the world. Other people want all those heathens to die and want to go on crusade for Jesus and guess what? When they read the bible they see a Jesus who is waging war against the unbelievers. Other people symphathize with the poor in the world and they see Jesus the communist rebel who want rich people to give away all their posessions to the poor before they can have any chance of getting to heaven. Other people think having money is quite ok, they most likely have a good amount of them themselves and guess what? They read the bible about a Jesus who loves and care everyone and tell the story about the rich who will get in abundance while the poor who will be taken away what he has.

I can go on and on. The point is that the reason why irrational religion is so successful is exactly this point. If it was clearer, more people would turn away from it. True, some people would have more confidence in arguing that the church support their view but there would be many more who would find that the church was speaking against their view and so would leave.

Of course, you cannot be completely unclear - that wouldn't win any followers. The trick is to be clear enough that many people thinks you agree with them but unclear enough so that very few people think you disagree with them. You see the same thing in politics. Political parties generally have more success the more vague they are, but only to a limit.

Religion is simply just even more extreme because they are about intangible things rather than the real world as politics is.


Because of this you'll never find a religion that doesn't leave huge amounts of space to apologetics. A classic example of this is the jewish discipline of torah-examination (forget the term :( ). Judaism would be far weaker is this, quite interesting, discipline was made unnecessary by a clearly-written Torah.

A clearly written torah would be filled with things that many people would have clear and reasonable objections to - consequently its authority as a religious holy scripture would be questionable.

The point is that it is exactly because it is not clear that allow it to be authorative.


This, of course, doesn't happen just with religious texts. Just look at doctrinaire Marxists. You won't find them saying "you know, your interpretation of Marx is perfectly right, but it just so happens that Marx was wrong about that" but instead bewailing how other people are violating Marx's legacy, while at the same time doing a whole lot of re-interpretation themselves (Lenin is the classic example of this). Much the same thing happened to Confucianism in China.

Same thing, see above. It is exactly because they are unclear that they are strong.


I certainly fell head-first into this mental trap. I stayed a Christian for as long as I did because I was so annoyed by how very different fundies are from the warm fuzzy new-agey Jesus that I thought that the Bible was all about, and I was more than willing to reject or completely reinterpret any passage that disagreed with me. I even started some threads in a forum about what a great leftist Jesus was :D . I didn't question this position for a LONG time since even when I got in atheist vs. theist debates I spend most of my time argueing with the fundies (which always seem to out-number liberals on the internet). Thank Darwin for Asimov, Hume, Paine, and Hawkings for getting me to think :D

You just unscored my point :)

Alf

[dshimel]

I'll start by disagreeing with the base premise.... There are a lot of new and small religions that are every bit as silly as the most popular ones. For example, the religion that teaches we're alien clones..... new, small, silly.

I'm sure that all us atheists have noticed that Holy Books generally don't make a great deal of sense, they don't use rational arguments to back up their claims, and are often grossly inconsistent and self-contradictory. I've wondered why this is the case,

Politics.

For Judaism, the religion was forced on the conqured peoples when King David first created the kingdom of the Hebrews... If the exodus happened, it would be some time after that... No historical data suggests the the exodus is a real historical event and more likely just a story to give David (an outsider) legitimacy.... politics.

When he died, the kingdom was split in two. Each developed separate "offical" versions of the books of Moses (probably not all written by the same person, let alone Moses himself). When a grandson reunited the kingdom, in order to keep the village leaders happy, he had to create a single book with both versions.... politics.

For the next thousand years, the people alternatly drifted off to pegan worship (which makes people hard to control), then were drug back by force to the monotheistic, authoritarian, dictatorial religion of judiasm. Each time, new "rules" were created, and these rules were added to the religion.... politics.

Along came Christianity. In the 50 years after the supposed death of Jesus, hundreds of versions of the story were told and retold.... When the new religion gained enough momentum that it needed to establish a single official book, the leaders of the churches got together to decide on the official version... They couldn't decide on just one, so selected 4.... Politics.

And when did this happen? When the Roman Empire was in full retreat and the ceasar decided that maybe a dictatorial religion would help hold his crumbling empire together..... politics.

The older something gets, the more changes that have happend, the more contradictory and confused it gets.

Remember, this is religion. It isn't survival of the fittest ideas... It has really only been the last 200-300 years that people in most of the world have the right to pick a religion. Before that, failure to chose the state chosen religion resulted in death. Those religions were chosen for political, not logical reasons.

Now, it is survival of the ideas poeple like to believe. Each person has a different need and different reason for wanting to believe.... Religions are again forced to change, but for emptional, not logical reasons.



Just imagine what would happen if the claims in "revealed" texts were actually back up by something remotely resembling clearly-written formal logic! People would be able to go over the text and demonstrate how some of the arguments used were false, irrelevant, logical fallacies etc. and if it really was clearly written people wouldn't even be able to claim that such objections were based on passages taken out of context. This would not do at all.

Again, have to disagree. The first page of the Bible is very clear. God creates the earth as a flat circle set upon a foundation. He then covers the earth with a sky dome with water above the dome and water below the dome. God then collects all the waters below the dome to create the seas. God then creates the sun and moon and attaches them to the inside of the sky dome. Fountains bubble up causing rivers. Windows in the sky dome are opened to cause rain.... Sky is blue because there is water up there above the dome.... God was corporal, and lived on the top of the dome.

It is very logical and clear. It is also 100% wrong.... Easily proven wrong.

People ignore it. Frimament (which derives from arch or bridge) suddenly becomes "vast expanse". The water above the sky suddenly becomes figurative.... So, the water in the ocean is figurative?!?! The same sentance that describes the water above the dome also mentiond the seas.... The believer has no problem with water being literal AND figurative in the VERY same sentance, if that is what is required to believe an idea they really want to believe.

Go to the philosophy forum and check out the thread on "being and existing".... Suddenly, existance requires heat deferential if that is what is necessary to use entropy to prove that "being is required but existance is optional".

Logical fallicies and inconsistancies in their beliefs are utterly insufficient to pull a believer away from a belief.



I certainly fell head-first into this mental trap. I stayed a Christian for as long as I did because I was so annoyed by how very different fundies are from the warm fuzzy new-agey Jesus that I thought that the Bible was all about, and I was more than willing to reject or completely reinterpret any passage that disagreed with me. I even started some threads in a forum about what a great leftist Jesus was :D . I didn't question this position for a LONG time since even when I got in atheist vs. theist debates I spend most of my time argueing with the fundies (which always seem to out-number liberals on the internet). Thank Darwin for Asimov, Hume, Paine, and Hawkings for getting me to think :D


And, it doesn't matter how clearly that passage is written. The believer can just as easily "reinterprit" a clear passage as they can a vague.


I'm always reminded of a day at the Ren. Fair a few years ago. There was this hypnotist. Had the whole audience stand up.... put their arms straight out in front of them. Relax, relax, relax.....

Relax.... Relax...

Okay.... There is a baloon attached to your right arm... It is a big helium baloon, pulling up on your right arm... Weight attached to your left arm... Baloon right, weight left.. baloon right......

Open your eye. At least 3/4 of the audience had their right hand higher than their left..... Everyone starts chatting... Wow... I could really feel the baloon and the weight pulling on my arm...

Anyway, so the hypnotist pulls the most hypnotizable people up on stage. Takes this one guy, puts him deep under.... Convinces him there is no number 7..... Wakes him up, count to 10.... 1234568910. How many fingers you have... 10. Count them... 1234568910...11. Either this guy was the BEST actor ever, or this was legit.... The guy simply couldn't figure out how many fingers he had. Eventually, the guy decided that when counting, you have to start at 0.... count fingers.... 01234568910... Okay, how many fingers on 1 hand... 5.... count them... 01234.... Guy confused as heck.

We were in area code 719... Asks the guy what his area code is... 19.... Aren't area codes 3 digits... yes. So why your's only have 2 digits....

Sends this guy away to figure it out.... tells a lady that was "under" that there is no number 6. Wakes her up and sends her off to talk with the guy that is convinced there is no 7...


You couldn't image the illogic people could use to justify an unreasonable belief..... Very funny, but also very enlightening.

I went back and watched all 4 of the hypnotists other 4 shows. Different people every time, and either they were all Oscar quality actors, or it was legit.

Anyway, the point is. Humans think were logical, using data to form beliefs. However, expirament after expirament has shown that isn't true for most people in most circumstances... Beliefs form from a combination of emotion and expectation, then we cling to any bit of data that supports our belief, and easily ignore any data that refutes our belief.

This is why sciece is SO important. Must test. Must accept the findings of the data. Must have double blind and pier review and many other standards and thresholds.


No religious person would hold their religion to that level of verification, simply because they want to believe and they know it would fail.....