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It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

If you had to pick a religion…

I’m hard on religious belief, but I try to be good to the actual believers. That’s hard to do with (say) apologists, who don’t approach the business of gaining knowledge in an honest way — some kinds of dishonesty aren’t to be tolerated. But there are a number of believers that I quite enjoy talking to.

I was talking to a Christian friend the other day, telling him my deconversion story (the mercifully short version). And he asked a question:

If you weren’t an atheist, what religion would you go for?

That’s tough, I said, because religions don’t do what I’m interested in doing, which is finding out what’s true. More to the point, a lot of religions claim to teach truth, and they advance claims that are either demonstrably false, or else unverifiable and very likely to be wrong.

Religions get it wrong because it’s so hard to get it right. To get it right, you have to observe, make testable hypotheses, observe some more, get other people to check out your findings, and even then what you’ve found is probably a little bit wrong, and it’ll need to be updated in future. If religions went about their ideas this way, they wouldn’t be religions; they’d be doing science. Instead, religions typically get their data from holy books, pronouncements from authority figures, or from traditions. Religions are non-empirical belief systems.

So, in order to accept a religion, I’d have to try one that made minimal truth claims (Unitarians?), or I’d have to be into it for some other reason — perhaps the refreshments.

Some religions are non-theistic (Buddhism, some kinds of Hinduism), and I have some friends that enjoy aspects of those religions, or perhaps it would more accurate in their case to say ‘philosophies’. The Dalai Lama makes noises from time to time about Buddhism’s compatibility with science:

“If the words of the Buddha and the findings of modern science contradict each other, then the former have to go.”

Not good enough, I’m afraid. Nothing can contradict a non-falsifiable belief (think reincarnation).

So I’m afraid that I can’t pick anything. I’m allergic to religion in all its forms. If you put a gun to my head, I’d be UU. At least they’re undemanding, and probably nice most of the time.

6 Comments

  1. I'd be a Rastafarian. Ganga and reggae for the win!

  2. There are some Buddhist branches that don't insist on actual belief in reincarnation and treat it in a symbolic way rather than an objective fact. I'd pick one of those sects, myself if I was forced to choose.

    There is a book by Stephen Batchelor titled "Buddhism without beliefs" that is pretty good and still available from Amazon for under ten bucks.

    Buddhism also, at least theoretically, encourages empirical inquiry into one's own nature and encourages its adherents to discover their own answers for themselves. They haven't quite figured out peer review yet, though, and it's hard to see how observation of one's own mental processes could be subject to it, so I can't see it as being truly scientific, but on the other hand you are the only one who can examine your own mind from within.

    Of course there are also a lot of Buddhists who worship "Buddha" and who might just as well be Christians, singing "Buddha loves me, this I know, for the sutras tell me so."

    It's a big complex religion at least in it's Mahayana versions and a lot like Catholicism in some ways.

    As you point out the Tibetan variant has non falsifiable beliefs. Another is the notion of "pure consciousness", which is supposedly consciousness that is conscious only of itself. I think that's self contradictory myself, but again, not all Buddhist sects insist upon it.

    So I think I'd go with some variant of Buddhism. If I absolutely have to.

  3. This is eerie… I made a post on blog very close to this subject (down to the refreshments) yesterday! I'd pick Christianity, because it's the least intrusive- you can continue whatever lifestyle you have, because you're forgiven for any sins it involves.

  4. I actually joined the Unitarian church two weeks ago. Basically, I figured it was the only one where I could even fit as an atheist. Historically they were more serious about belief, but now the emphasis is on each person developing their own spiritual path…

    Its not about a spiritual path for me though. It really is about being part of a community and finding other liberals in the south. Half of the congregation are like me… Liberal, atheists stuck in the Bible belt for some reason. 🙂

  5. I'm a pantheist for Facebook profile purposes, but I'd not call myself religious. However, I am fairly spiritual. I'd like to see a piece by you discussing your opinion on how you think spirituality and religion intersect.
    My dad's a scientist (lecturing in plant biology at UWA) and my mum used to be very Catholic, being South American, so I feel like I've grown up with both sides available to me. Being raised Catholic gave me a sense of spirituality, but since leaving the church I have found a lot more comfort and truth in spirituality.

  6. I'm much more of a Joseph Campbell – 'hero story' kind of a guy when it comes to religion.

    But if I had to choose a religion I would choose Taoism – Yin Yang sums up life for me in a very short simple way.

    "We're all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is. We reinforce the illusion for each other. That's what a society really is, a little band of humanity huddled together against the specter of a pitch black sea. Everyone is treading water to keep their heads above the surface even though they have no reason to believe that the life they're preserving is better than the alternative they're avoiding. It's just that one is known and one is not. Fear of the unknown is what keeps everyone busily treading water. All fear is fear of the unknown. If someone in such a group of water-treaders betrays the group by speaking the truth of their situation, that person is called a heretic, and society reserves its most awful punishments for heretics. If someone decides to stop struggling and just sink or float away, every possible effort is made to stop him, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of the group. To deny at all costs the truth of the situation."

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