The Dalai Lama has said that if any part of Buddhism is in conflict with scientific knowledge, then Buddhism must adapt.

1. Is the author asserting that “other people” would not be able to find relief and comfort if they did not have their particular religion with them?
2. Why doesnt the author himself feel the need for this relief and comfort? Does he consider himself superior to the people who do need such relief and comfort?
3. What if the relief and comfort are actually useful evolutionary tools with which most people are born equipped. They just take on whatever story is convenient and available nearby. They will take on new stories even if the current story disappears. This formulation would imply that there is no need to walk on eggshells here. Relief and comfort are not dependent on religion. Religion just happens to be the way they are delivered in a particular setting, but its neither essential, nor primary. Its an epiphenomenon.

My apologies for using this quote but it did seem to be quite appropriate to the thread. Supplanting reason with the illogical adherence to external powers in a fatalistic manner is not only damaging but leaves a person/society open to manipulation and control for whatever purposes by others, often under the false credo that it is “for the common good” or in the “public interest”.

However, certain mysteries of human life remain beyond the senses and beyond the reach of science, at least for now. For example, how to deal with the realization that all life feeds on other life, how to confront the loss of loved ones or one’s own death, how to find your place in the world, etc. These, too, have always been questions addressed by religion, and still are, arguably more effectively than by any other source. Unfortunately, debates about Science vs. Religion are rarely so acute as to distinguish different domains of inquiry and ask — which of us has the best tools?

For my part, I have no use for “all or nothing” defense of religion. We know better, for the better, about a vast array of things. I would welcome some spiritual guidance on my journey through life, but not if I have to surrender all judgment in order to receive it.

This is precisely what I meant when I said earlier that only someone lacking in personal experience with highly ritualistic religious traditions would ever equate them with the mundane rites of secular life. Birthday parties, weddings, Mother’s Day (really?) are trivialities compared to the intense, intense rituals of many religions, especially the older ones.

Have you ever seen Orthodox Jews or religious Muslims pray multiple times each day? The kneeling, rocking, humming, and chanting that goes on and on? The same words, songs, and melodies, repeated over and over and over again, for decade after decade? A lot of people depend on that kind of ritual, and there’s nothing in secular life that comes even close.

You try telling a fervent Jew or Muslim or Catholic to replace their intense, many-times-daily rituals with “weekly dance” or “sport.” Or “workplace farewells.” (Are you joking?)

This is exactly the total lack of understanding that I’ve been talking about, and it’s a big reason for the huge gulf between the very religious and those with a secular attitude. Until you stop and ask yourself, “Why does this person really do what he/she does?” (a question whose answer requires real understanding of the other side), you’ll never come one step toward changing any minds.

Low Math–

It’s not the spirituality per se, or the sense that there’s a God watching over you. Those are components of the religious experience, but it’s the ritual itself that I’ve been talking about here. The question is whether the intense rituals of Catholicism fulfill a need of yours. If they don’t, well, then, good for you! But for a lot of people, that ritual is central to their lives. They need it. And if you try to pull them away from it, they’re just going to cling even harder.

I just wish this was something that people would seriously address in the atheism/religion debate. It rarely even gets mentioned. Do you really think that throwing scientific facts at people is going to change their minds? Please.

We have plenty of secular rituals – birthday parties, workplace farewells, 21st birthdays, baby showers, naming and wedding and funeral ceremonies. There’s valentines and mothers day and remembrance day, and many more. And then there’s more by special interests, as groups have their own traditional special events – weekly dance, sport, sing, whatever, and regular special events.

Traditions can quite easily be broken away from religion – I know secular jews who do Shabbas, and lots of us do Xmas without believing in the spooky magic blood-sacrifice baby. Even the oh-so-fearsome atheist Richard Dawkins enjoys a traditional Xmas.

I’m not sure, though, that I wouldn’t benefit from something approximating what my grandmother got out of Catholicism, at least occasionally. Maybe I don’t “need” it, but I don’t absolutely require a lot of things that I might nonetheless be better off with. Without being melodramatic, there have been a couple times in my life when believing that I really did have a big sky buddy looking out for me would have been quite a comfort. Knowing that I was truly on my own kind of sucked, to be honest. I really came to terms with what that meant when someone offered to pray for me. While I appreciated the gesture, it provided no solace.

Anyway, doom was avoided and life is pretty good, so I’m not preoccupied by these things. I just wonder what spiritual experience is really like. Maybe it’s nowhere near as nice as it looks, and I’m not missing anything. But if I could get something uniquely worthwhile out of intense ritual, instead of nothing at all, which is the case so far, and that ritual somehow wouldn’t cause explosive cognitive dissonance, I’d give it a whirl, certainly.

Actually, my point was that a lot of atheists don’t need ritual. Not everybody needs it. People are all different. If you find the rituals of Catholicism boring, then maybe you’re in that camp. And that’s fine! We’re all different! So I’m not sure that “being right” really has a cost for atheists; losing the rituals doesn’t bother them, because they generally don’t have that inner need for ritual in the first place.

But the corollary is that because they don’t need it, atheists often don’t understand why religious people do; and they’re so unaware of that need that they don’t even realize that it’s central to the whole dispute. All this talk about belief misses the point, but it’s much easier terrain for atheists, because that’s where scientific fact is on their side.

The reason I keep emphasizing this central belief/ritual misunderstanding is not because I’m a religious apologist; far from it. I’m just tired of the total lack of progress in these atheism-religion disputes. If you want to make progress, you need to have a better understanding of the truly underlying motivations at the heart of religion, the reasons why people feel the need to hang on to those silly beliefs. They didn’t arrive at those beliefs through reason, so it’s going to be difficult to reason them out of those beliefs.

Ultimately, a lot of people need intense ritual and structure in their lives, and are defensive of their beliefs in large part because they don’t see how they can keep the ritual and structure while jettisoning the beliefs. And if you want to make headway in religious discussions, you really need to acknowledge that dynamic.

But this dynamic goes constantly unacknowledged by people like Sean et al, so instead we just go around and around in endless circles. That’s what I find so frustrating.

I’ve had conversations with people who I’m truly convinced would act maliciously if they didn’t think they would be punished after death. That, for me, is a benefit of religion (and for Santa Clause for that matter).

It may be that evolution favors the belief in religion to allow such people to live long enough to produce offspring.

What’s a reasonable system of “rituals” for an atheist that would confer the same benefits as those tied to the complete experience of spiritual faith? Seems to me that nothing even close has yet been found. Atheists need to admit this and see if there’s anything to be done about it. If not, be honest about the costs of being right.

I saw the book. Looks interesting, and has a pretty strong point of view. But a particular author’s thesis doesn’t put the matter to rest, or evade the problem exhibited by Sean here.

My only point is that everybody is constantly arguing over belief, and totally ignoring the elephant in the room, namely, ritual.

Has Sean on this blog ever seriously discussed the importance of ritual to most human beings, and how utterly ubiquitous rituals are to societies of all kinds all around the world? How about PZ Myers? Or Dawkins, for that matter? I’ve read plenty of Hitchens, and he rarely, if ever, brings it up. Instead, they attack truth-statements and belief, which are easier and more deserving of mockery.

If you don’t understand the importance of ritual, then you’re missing the boat.

“Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us, it is something we do.” In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought — that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. (taken from Amazon review)

There is a huge spectrum of views and skews on these ideas. Including a pretty large percentage of people who rarely give it much thought at all. As noted by a few people, there are many people who are perfectly OK with science doing science and religion remaining metaphoric.

Its important to remember that while Fundamentalists are certainly driving a very effective anti science program, they are supported by apathy by most of the public, not sympathy.

—Timothy Taylor, archaeologist, Univ. of Bradford

Not taking sides in your ritual/faith preeminence debate but…
Rephrasing my question from #24 which went “unnoticed”.

Can you have ritual without faith?
It seems not.
Then is it not the faith which give rise to conflicts, whether with atheists or believers in a different faith?

Whatever good religion is supposed to do, if it is contaminated beyond repair with an intrinsic vice something has to be done about that “vice”.

In what appears to be a setting purposely reminiscent of a forest of hair sprouting from skin, a gathering of Fleas around a particular hair seem to be vigorously arguing amongst each other; the caption below reads something like:

“The Flea Scientists and Philosophers Debate the Existence of Dog”.

I strongly disagree. Sure, on paper, rituals in most religions are portrayed by the religions themselves as a means to an end; supposedly, you chant and sing and pray as a means to obeying and worshipping God, to reinforcing a set of communal beliefs.

But whatever the worshippers themselves think, or anyone else thinks, in practice, in actual reality, ritual is most certainly not a means to an end. Ritual is the meat of most religions, especially the older ones. Ritual is itself the end, and belief is just an excuse for that ritual. Belief is like the MacGuffin in a lot of films; it’s just there so that the actors all have a reason to be there.

Even those people who are practicing the religion themselves don’t always understand this basic fact—and certainly most of those who oppose religion don’t either—but that’s the way it is.

In truth, for most worshippers, even if they themselves don’t always realize it at a conscious level, belief serves ritual, and not the other way around. Belief is there to justify the ritual. It’s one of the reasons why atheistic movements have been so ineffective at providing rituals of its own.

I can only speak for my own experience, and most of the people I knew in my religious experience, when I say that what kept me there and what kept them there was the ritual, and when I was apart from it for a while, I would begin to crave it.

Atheists often strongly discount the need by most human beings for ritual—serious, elaborate, intense ritual—and that’s one big reason why they don’t understand why people are so attached to their religions. And if you think that the everyday rituals that permeate all people’s lives can compare to the intense, overwhelming rituals that people often find specifically in their religious experiences, then I think you fall into the camp of people who don’t really understand.

And because both atheists and worshippers often aren’t even aware that ritual is the key thing, the underlying issue, they argue instead about stuff like belief instead. They miss the point altogether, and so they never get anywhere.