The biggest problem imo with organized religion

[bellatrys]

is that it validates the very human impulse to think that we can "make up" for things - rewrite the past, undo what we have done, magic away the reality with something else - that we can fix our misdeeds and harms done by harming ourselves in some way.

And we can't. We really can't.

It's not that religions create this idea: as I stated above, it'

Comments

[yeloson]

Yeah, so many people get caught in the transactional mentality when it comes to religion. Part of it is the desperate need to assign meaning to suffering, and that such suffering will be paid back, all things will be made right (and of course, they're going to be receiving the rewards and not the punishments...), etc.

Idries Shah had a great point about it: "When people are doing things they shouldn't be doing in the first place, then want a reward for ceasing to do so." - much like when the privileged want cookies.

Yes, there's a terrifying science saying,

[bellatrys]

"in Nature there are neither punishments nor rewards, but only consequences," which I see is attr to Ingersoll - if you accept that, it's horrible because you don't get that, ahem, consolation of thinking that Well, At Least It Is All To Some Good End, or Well, At Least It's Happening For A Reason, where bad things can be ascribed to Poetic Justice or Ineffable Plans rather than Just Happening To Good People Because Shit Happens.

At the same time, it's incredibly liberating, because it frees you from the truly gruesome consequences of "Transactional Religion" (thanks for that coinage) which really hit home to me when I was studying Boethius (this is why I always wince, and never use seriously, the notion of "consolation" in Christianity) and his blithe "oh well, we/they must have done SOMETHING to deserve it, or else the people who are being harmed are just Extras being used as a Teaching Example to motivate those who are the Protagonists in this Cosmic Narrative" - I don't care if he was just trying to get himself through the night

Re: Yes, there's a terrifying science saying,

[yeloson]

I tend to think of the mystical practices as preceding the organized religions - for example the various taoist practices predate nearly anything else in China, and then later, we saw organized orders and cults arise.

I think it has mostly to do with the fact that the usual mystical premise, "Change yourself" involves all work and no guarantee or obvious reward, while social groupings where people are looking up to you as holy, giving you money, sex, whatever has clear benefits.

It's the natural human tendency for greed plus magical thinking that creates organized religion out of anything. (For example, given the basic tenets of Buddhism, the idea that there should be orders of monks supported by the lay population? Makes no sense at all

!

[bellatrys]

"Pay/give status to someone else to show you how to be a better you." - it's like paying someone else to do pushups hoping you'll become healthier in the process...

Well, the argument is that it's like hiring a personal trainer or a coach...but yeah, it often turns out like "You do the exercising, we'll reap the benefits!" Clericalism as a division of labor to appease predatory gods makes a certain amount of common sense; Clericalism in an ananda-based religious system becomes ever less theologically justifiable. But then, for all the talk of "joy" and "love" and "inner peace" it usually is a fearful one of old predatory gods, underneath. So you end up with the worst sort of feudalism, an elite supported by the labors and wealth of the "lower" classes and immune from the rules, in the name of "protecting" and "serving" as Spiritual Warriors and Lords Bountiful.

Or you can have the worst of both worlds: not just an an elite who gets away - as in the recently-revisted in light of the Murphy Report case of Bernadette Connolly with even

[violaswamp]

Your theological posts are always fascinating.

I think we can take our remorse and channel it into benevolent action--but it never makes up for the wrong for which we feel remorse. There is no such thing as "making up for."

I have been told on occasion that I should enter a seminary

[bellatrys]

of some more - ahem! - universal-tending denomination, of course. I won't say there isn't a certain temptation in it, but - well, for one thing the logistics are as impassable as any other grad school adventure, if for nothing else. And besides I can wreak more havoc as an Independent it's not like there's a scarcity of conflicted and questing clerics today that only I might fill.

There is no such thing as "making up for."

So how do we erase this habit of thinking feeling? Because I've seen it occur, this Transactional or Bribe-Based Justice, between children who were barely old enough for language. Shoot, it's wrapped right up in child-rearing: parents lead children to expect that "good" behavior (that is, behavior the parents favor, even if it isn't always objectively safe, sane, or beneficial to society or the child) will and ought to lead to rewards, and bad (ie disapproved) behavior to punishments, and then of course they go and create massive cognitive dissonance by not holding themselves to their own standards or being

Re: I have been told on occasion that I should enter a seminary

[violaswamp]

I see a distinction between the idea that good (i.e. beneficial) behavior should be rewarded and bad behavior punished (which is an element of the biological instinct for justice) and the idea that bad behavior and its consequences can somehow be erased or washed clean by good behavior.

I think it ought to be fairly easy to make it clear to children that yes, it's good to say sorry when you've hurt someone, and it's good to do nice things for them because you feel bad about hurting them, but that doesn't take away the hurt. If you hit little Timmy with your dump truck, you should apologize, and it's nice if you let him play with the dump truck if he wants to. But he still has the bruise on his head.

But then, I've never raised children, so I don't know if this actually *is* easy to convey.

[bellatrys]

I'm not sure, because it's so rarely tried - it's something that you'd have to really work very hard to eradicate and to inculcate a *mindfulness* that would stop people from doing acts of impulsive rage and wrong, *before* doing them, because there would be no catharsis in beating yourself up to be had. Guilt aka Remorse as a substitute for Empathy in social control mechanisms has *not* worked very well, judging by our history.

[anna_wing]

I suspect that the transactional basis to theism of all kinds, reinforced by the rise of monotheism, is why the insight that created Theravada Buddhism has never really caught on in the West. Epicurus was the only major figure ever to have reached it, as far as I am aware, apart from possibly a little burst from Spinoza (though I find Spinoza rather complex, so possibly I am simply not understanding him properly) a lot later. Both suppressed by monotheism, to which they were utterly antithetical.

Westerners who look to Buddhism mostly go to the prettier and more emotionally acceptable Mahayana schools. Being told that the Way of salvation from sorrow is for you and you alone to walk, that the Buddha does not bless, console, blame, reward, punish, protect or do deals of any kind - that's something that monotheists tend to consider intolerably harsh. Not to mention the doctrine of the non-existence of the self, which is the real deal-killer (sic) for anyone who clings to the idea of personal immortality.

Nobody agreed on what Spinoza was really saying,

[bellatrys]

when I was in college. (Of course, nobody agreed on what Aristotle had been saying, or Plato, or Thomas, either...) But yeah, abstruse.

OTOH, the sense of a dissolution of self in a union with The Divine is a major and common theme in Western Christian mysticism, so not as entirely alien perhaps as surface appearances.

And (tho' like most things not absolute nor consistently-held) the notion of personal immortality is not accepted by all Jews, despite monotheism, and there's a lot of theological fusion going on between the Jewish and Buddhist traditions these last decades.

[nancylebov]

I'm not sure whether this is special pleading, but I think the idea that suffering is pleasing to God is an especially strong theme in Catholicism

No, I don't think it's special pleading at all

[bellatrys]

One of the most *interesting* in every sense of the word, including as in "-times", aspects of Christianity (or, possibly more accurately, The Christianities) is how Jewish tradition was, and continues to be, appropriated without any regard for either how Jewish theologians and faithful understood it in the past, *or* how doctrine and practice have continued to develop into the present. There's been a bit of an attempt lately, but it's not anywhere near as widespread as its opposites. So you get on the one hand, Christian conservatives of various denominations going on and on about how XYZ is mandatory because of Leviticus whilst ignoring ABC which are *far* more important in the Talmud, or in other commentaries, or in the local synagogue

[violaswamp]

I'm not sure whether this is special pleading, but I think the idea that suffering is pleasing to God is an especially strong theme in Catholicism.

I agree. There is a strong ascetic tradition in Hinduism, but it's not mandatory or even recommended for most people. And it's not the suffering that is valued--it's the self-discipline.

[redrose3125]

I tend to think to myself, "offer it up," only when the pain is unavoidable. Frex, I have a head cold with sinus pain right now, and if the ibuprofen doesn't knock the pain out, I might think to myself, "offer it up," but that won't stop me from taking the ibuprofen, or putting hot compresses on it, or trying to relieve the pain somehow. Then again, I come from the liberal end of the RCC, and never really heard people talk about offering up their suffering, or had it suggested to me.