juryjone said:
Pragmatist,
You obviously, as others have stated, put a lot of work into your post. However, I am thoroughly confused.
You describe "mental states" which are "unspeakable", because they fall outside any kind of descriptive, rational words. To simple little me, that puts these states into the realm of feelings. They are not rationally arrived at, they are felt, experienced, by an individual. They are unspeakable, so it's not joy, or pain, lor love, or a bloated feeling. There are no words for them.
And then you assign a word to them. Religion.
Why use the word "religion"? The prime definition of religion I can fnid is "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe". There is no definition I can find that is anywhere near what you describe. So why use this word that is clearly inadequate to your needs, and at the same time carries the baggage of a "supernatural power" which you expressly do not include in your definition?
As to the OP and the subsequent discussion, I have no problem with a skeptic, such as MLynn or Bidlack, coming in and saying, "I believe in a higher power, but I can understand why you may not." YMMV, in other words. But the vast majority of believers are not that way.
Belief in God was earlier equated to love. If you tell me you love your spouse, I have no reason to disbelieve you. I would not try to test that, I would just congratulate you. But belief in God is different. Most of the time, there is also the inherent expectation that not only the believer has these feelings, but the person being spoken to MUST have those feelings as well.
Believers don't come up to me and say, "I love my wife. You should too, because it's just the best feeling in the world." But bring up their God, their religion, and that's exactly the type of argument they will use. "I've had that feeling, and if you just open yourself to it, you will too."
Well, no. That's not the way it works. Not for me at least. Because those feelings are personal. And if religion stayed personal I would have no problem with it. But it doesn't stay personal, does it? Not in any society on the planet.
I'll answer this first in order to clarify one or two points which I don't think I conveyed very well, and I'll answer other replies later.
I don't blame you for being confused! However the confusion arises from trying to encompass the irrational solely within the rational, as I previously said. I am
obliged to assign a word to "the unspeakable" (look I just did!) because how else could I refer to it in discussion? If I leave a nice blank space in my post, it wouldn't exactly be conducive to communication would it?
As an overall label, rather than refer to "the unspeakable" I also use the term "religion". As you say, there are no words for what I am referring to, these are just labels for the purposes of conversation.
But you immediately miss my point when you go looking for a "definition" of religion.
If you were to accept my premise that religion is what I said it was, then it would also follow that it couldn't be defined - and so the last thing one would need is a "definition" for it - a definition being a purely rational construct. On the other hand, the fact that you seek a definition implies that you don't accept my attempt at description and instead insist that it (religion)
has to be something which
can be defined in the first place. But that is begging the question - to do that is to make a prior assumption - and in that event, one could reasonably ask - what is the evidence that religion is something that
can be defined? I didn't try to
define religion - I hope that much is clear now. It would be absurd for me to attempt to do so. I did however try to
describe something which I believe in some (very limited way) conveys what I believe to be the essence of religion.
The word "religion" only carries the baggage of those who insist on (mis)using it to
define something that can be contained wholly within a rational construct. But if you left my description aside and asked some other people who use that word, what they are referring to by use of words such as "god" - then ultimately you find that they would not be able to define "god" and you would arrive at the same place I started from. The things referred to in religion, particularly things like "god", are expressions of experiences (not merely concepts) that cannot be contained within the limitations of ordinary language and rational concepts. So the experience of god is one thing - the
concept of god falls flat on its face because it is absurd.
Now, I wouldn't tend to argue about religion, to argue (with words) about something beyond words is absurd in itself. But putting that aside for one moment, if a believer wanted to express to someone his view of "god", how could he possibly do it other than by simply saying, "Try to experience it yourself and you'll understand"? Or, in your own words, "just open yourself to it". Anything he says
about "god" is meaningless. He cannot convey "god" to you via rational concepts alone. If you demand that he must define or describe "god" you are demanding that he (and of course "god) has to fit into your rational gestalt - which is impossible. So the believer in this respect is in a no-win situation. If you won't try for the experience then it remains incommunicable.
All the above is a totally separate issue from people who proselytize. Believers should
not try to convince others that they should be religious, any more than atheists should try to convince others they shouldn't "believe in god". I have no tolerance for people who insist that I (or anyone) should take up their religion or listen to their dogmas etc. Yes, there are people that do this - many people - those people are unreasonable and misguided, they are attempting to force their ideas on others and that is inherently wrong. But the mere fact that
some members of a group or category (i.e. the religious) act unreasonably doesn't imply that it is unreasonable for
anyone to be a member of that overall category. There are skeptics that behave unreasonably - there are a small minority who feel they ought to force their views on everyone whether they want it or not. So on that basis do we decry skepticism itself? You are right, religion is personal. But in many ways, so is skepticism. The problem is that when people find something they like, they often tend to try to show it to others. Someone finds "god", gets excited and wants to tell everyone else about this wonderful thing he found. Someone else finds skepticism, gets excited and wants to tell everyone else about this wonderful thing he found... That is just an unfortunate aspect of human nature.
So what I'm saying is this: it is mistake to attack religion as a
principle because of the bad behavior of some (regardless of how many overall) people who claim to be "religious". Just as it is unreasonable to attack skepticism as a principle because of the bad behaviour of some who claim to be "skeptical". But if you fail to discriminate between the principle itself and the behaviour of some of its (alleged) adherents then you are committing a fundamental fallacy - at least in my opinion. By all means blast the proselytizers! But please don't dismiss anyone who happens to be religious just because you don't like the way some (self-professed) "religious" people behave.
And lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that
you are attacking religion or dismissing anyone. I'm simply making a wider point. Your problem as you've expressed it is that you don't like proselytizers. Well I don't either, so we're in complete agreement on that. But that is quite distinct and separate from the issue of the validity (or otherwise) of religion itself.
The purpose of my previous post was not to try to "convert" anyone or to get anyone to believe in religion. It was intended to convey the idea that what is most often labelled as "religion", probably isn't and also to point out that it is a mistake to try to force religion into a purely rational framework. Anyone who does so will automatically find religion absurd, but at the same time they are attacking a straw man. It's rather like if I try to debate someone who only speaks Swahili and I can't understand a word he says within the scope of my English comprehension skills. So what I do is simply to dismiss him as an idiot because
if I try to intepret his utterings in Swahili solely in English I find they are gibberish. That way I get to define everything he says as gibberish and therefore he is an idiot. It might be an easy "victory" in terms of debate, but hardly an honest one.
