Untangling religion from issues with christianity

[sqbr]

EDIT: HMMMMM. So it would appear my framing of this question is flawed thanks to my simplistic understanding of religion and other such ineffable philosophical things my non-arts-major brain gets very confused by. I may take a while responding to comments while I have a serious think about what I really mean.

So most arguments I've seen for being religious use some very flawed arguments. Unfortunately, so do most arguments against being religious, and this bugs me (I'm always more annoyed at the flaws of "my side"). One of the main flaws in both(*) is an assumption that either you're christian or you're an atheist: thus if you can poke holes in atheism people must automatically convert to christianity, and if you can poke holes in Christianity you've proven atheism is the best choice.

And a lot of the time the "Christianity" people are criticising is a straw man anyway, based either on fairly extreme denominations or just particular annoying individuals.

So I thought I'd go through all the things atheists tend to say "all religions" do and see how many are actually true of all religions.

Where I can think of specific counterexamples which prove my point I've included them. To avoid the sense that I'm cheating, I've tried to avoid religions like Deism and Wicca since they were to some extent deliberately designed to avoid the "annoying" bits of christianity , and I'm sticking to large organised religions which are fairly active nowadays.

Also: these "flaws" are not all actually flaws per se, they're just things atheists tend to complain about :)

Many members of any large group of people, including atheists

• Have prats, weirdoes, kooks and extremists
  
• Are smug against those outside the group
  
• Are hypocritical
  
• Use straw man arguments
  
• Teach their children to agree with them
  
• Make overgeneralisations (Yes, this is a generalisation :D)
  

All religions

• supernatural beliefs
  
• a certain amount of reliance on faith (I've become convinced that "faith", like "superstition", too easily turns into a weasel word meaning "Strong belief held by people I think are irrational". It can have positive meanings, but they don't apply to all religions)
  

Most denominations of christianity (with counterexamples from other religions)
And to make it extra clear: these are COUNTERexamples.

• immaterial (probably immortal) soul ()
  
• belief in a god or gods (Jainism, Taoism)
  
• personal God communicated with through worship and prayer (Deism)
  
• interventionist God (Deism)
  
• Afterlife (Taoism)
  
• One size fits all spirituality (Wicca, Mahayana Buddhism)
  
• evangelize (Judaism, Hinduism)
  
• disbelief is immoral (Baha'i)
  
• Faith trumps reason when deciding on spiritual matters ( (religious) Theravada buddhism)
  
• fairly rigid ideas about what sex is and is not allowed (Wicca)
  
• Holy book advocates violence, sexism, racism, etc (Sikhism, plus all the ones with no holy book)
  

Some christians

• nonbelievers automatically go to hell
  
• anti-science
  
• anti-sex/fun
  
• literalistic adherence to dogma
  
• The world is fair and just
  

A LOT of this is probably wrong. I'm as blinded by my limited religious upbringing as anyone else, I'm more trying to get people to think about it than educate anyone, but will fix any errors people point out.

So, what have I missed or gotten wrong? I can see this being something that bugs atheists, christians, and non-christian-religious-types so I expect you all to contribute :D Please note: I'm not interested in issues people have with particular religions that aren't ever claimed to hold for all religions, which is why there's no "Most denominations of Islam" etc section. And I know some non-christian religions do some of the stuff in the christian sections, but not all of them. I single out christianity not because it's particularly bad, but because it so dominates our culture that people have trouble seeing past it.

Also: No taking potshots at other people's belief systems! There is a difference between saying "A common criticism of religion is that it's evangelical" and "I HATE EVANGELISM FOR THESE REASONS...". Do not do the second, take it to your own lj :P (And this includes ranting about how much atheists suck)

(*)Which I have encountered in western, christian-dominated society. I'm sure these arguments take on a very different flavour in, say, India. This post totally doesn't address that.

Comments

[zharradan.livejournal.com]

One problem with all of the above is that many religious people sincerely believe that they have solid evidence for their beliefs - evidence which is as valid as that for accepted scientific theories.

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

True, but said evidence is not actually evidence in the scientific sense. It's more that said people tend to not understand science on a scarily fundamental level.

I have no problem with people having faith without scientific evidence to back it up.* As you said up-thread, Faith is belief in the absence of proof.

What I have issues with is people claiming to have such evidence without actually knowing what the hell they are talking about. ("But $book says it's true!" or "But 1 x 10^x other people believe it too, so it must be true!")

It implies not only a worrying lack of understanding of science, but also a rather weak faith.

(*) I am, myself, quite religious, in a very non-standard way. I choose to believe X despite their being no evidence. That's why it's called faith.

[firvulag.livejournal.com]

yeah, despite no material or visual evidence to others, I have my beliefs for a few reasons, not least of which is having died 3 times on the operating table, in three separate trips. It's called faith for a reason, that's for sure.

[alias_sqbr]

True, but said evidence is not actually evidence in the scientific sense. It's more that said people tend to not understand science on a scarily fundamental level.

Well, some of them may know it's not science but don't consider science the best/only way to know things. ie a personal experience with God is not scientifically verifiable or repeatable, but most people would consider it strong evidence in a broad not-scientific sense.

Which is different from people who claim to have evidence in the scientific sense when they don't, they are annoying. I think it indicates an unwillingness to be honest and say "The scientific evidence is currently against us but we don't care because we know we're right, and will be vindicated one day". Every time I read creationist "logic" I want to hit something :/

[alias_sqbr]

Dammit I spent ages thinking of a response to this and lj ate it!

In short: yes, people's responses to this post has made me think a bit more about different ways of knowing. And I think it's important not to equate non-religious=science=atheism=rationalism=logic=non-dogmatic.