= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
pnrjulius comments on Semantic Stopsigns - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (102)
Hang on; it depends what your religion consists of. If, having concluded that "there is a God," you stop thinking and stop asking existential questions, then, fine, you're short-circuiting out of something like fear.
But if you use religion to fast-forward a bit, to skip a few existential questions here and there and ask others further down the line, it's not clear why that would be ethically inappropriate. If existential inquiry is a journey without an end, why privilege the first several questions on that journey above all others?
Does religion actually help us move ahead in the list of questions? I don't see how it does.
It did for me for a while. Having decided that the world was purposefully created by a benevolent deity who left much of it unfinished because he wanted humans to have a chance to complete the world so that the god would have fellow creators that he could relate to, I then moved on to ask (a) what parts of the world are unfinished, (b) what can I do to improve them, (c) what does it mean to be a creator, (d) what parts of the world are already set up as if by a friendly-to-humans force, and (e) how, if at all, can I engage in a personal relationship with creative forces so abstract and mighty as to be impersonal?
To me, anyway, these questions seem more interesting than endless variations on the theme of "Oh, hey, what's this life stuff all about?" and "Is there any point in trying to accomplish things?"
At the moment, I'm an atheist, and don't have much use for religion. I wouldn't say religion is so useful to existential journeys that it's worth trying to cram thoughts into your head that you don't believe -- but while I did 'naturally' believe in a religion, it offered me some useful benefits, which I enjoyed.