I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I don't believe there is a God as described by the christians, muslims or jews, or supernatural beings as proposed by Hinduism, etc.

However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid.

Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences.

There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied.

I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature.

He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion.

Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.

"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid."

We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.

There is a lot of dogma in the sciences too. To paraphrase Khun: A lot of scientific revolutions and advances happen not because everyone realized they were wrong, but because the old guard slowly ages out of relevance (and eventually die off).

You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.

Progress is not the same thing as perfection. Praying does not a 3GHz CPU make, but people tend look for progress in terms of last year and ignore things that happened say before they where born. In practice a lot of published research is junk, but most religions are hundreds if not thousands of years old, on those timescales science is a wondrous new idea. On a long enough timescale we may run out of reasonable experiments to run, but should 'science' and 'religion' actually become indistinguishable it will be a lot closer to the truth than talking snakes.

What you are describing is simply human fallibility. There is no dogma in science. Science does not mandate that anything be set in stone, never to be questioned, doubted or disputed. And when the "old guard" is made irrelevant, that happens through the scientific method itself.

I'm sorry, but "this is the way it is, because it is the way it is no matter what you say" is dogma, whether on a short or long timescale. Just because it doesn't stick for hundreds of years in a row doesn't change that it is dogma for a generation or two. If it affects funding despite evidence, and what papers get published even if there is good evidence at odds with the model, how is it not dogma?

Does changing the label of the same set of actions make it better somehow?

Also, there is a bit of irony in the statement "there is no dogma in science" as it is a fairly dogmatic statement :)

What I mean is there are no articles of faith in science. There is no equivalent of "Jesus was born of a virgin". Science doesn't tell you that "E=MC2" is never to be questioned. The phenomenon you describe exists, but I don't think you will find justification for it in a scientific text. But you will find justification for religious dogma in the religious texts themselves.

The articles of faith can be looked at as axioms of the worldview. For instance "bible = word of god/statement of truth" is a basic axiom.

Similarly in science you do get certain axioms:

* occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions.

They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly.

NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.

The difference is that science doesn't tell you to dogmatically follow axioms per se. For example, the constancy of the speed of light is an axiom of Einstein's theory of relativity. Evidence that disproves said constancy would eventually lead to revising the theory, just as Newton's axioms were eventually replaced by Einstein's relativity. That's not dogmatic following.

On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.

It seems like you are engaging in goalpost moving and/or strawmanning here. I explicitly listed non-empirical axioms about the method, and discussed some examples. You are replying with an example of empirical axiom as if it is the same thing.

I never denied nor tried to refute that there are many empirical axioms associated with science. I only stated that there are also a priori axioms which are structurally dogma.

Please stop changing the subject.

I misrepresented your argument, and I apologize for it.

Occam's razor it's simply a way to compare two theory's with IDENTICAL results. AKA for all test data A and B produce the same results however A takes 10 days on a supercomputer to compute and B can be done by hand, I will go with B.

It also has a strong theoretical basis. Add enough epicycles and you can smooth out any irregularity's. But, over fit your data and you lose predictive capability.

PS: Preferring the more complex theory is unworkable, because E=mc^2+(10^(-900))m is going to give the same results for any test you could actually carry out. Having no preference has the same basic limitation.

The difference is that science at least eventually converges on the correct answer. Religion is basically a random walk that never converges on anything in particular. Modern science may not be correct, but it's almost universally more correct than science of 100 years ago. When it comes to religious topics, we can't even say what "more correct" would even mean, let alone say that modern religion is more correct than religion from the past.

Metaphysical beliefs notwithstanding, there is a decent amount of convergence on interpersonal interaction between the world's major religions (i.e. mutual respect, Golden Rule). From a non-religious standpoint, this could be because these teachings promote healthier societies compared to an alternative where similar teachings aren't promoted.

That BS religious propaganda. There are many good counter examples. And on the other hand, many wars current and past have intolerance from religious groups as a main component of causes.

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614...

I'm not sure whether to be upset or take it as a complement that my idle random thoughts would be called propaganda. Rest assured, I'm not trying to denigrate atheists, or Sweden for that matter.

The observation was that in less developed societies there are bad religions, good religions, and better religions that promote social cohesion. It was not a statement about modern society and religion vs. morality and lawfulness. Sorry if I offended you.

They might agree on vague general statements of things like mutual respect and the golden rule, but when it comes down to implementation, they don't seem to agree very much at all.

Without hoping to encourage any sort of flamewar, I couldn't agree with that statement more.

I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof.

I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential.

Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion.

That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.

Aren't you describing philosophy instead of religion, in the sense that philosophy is thinking about it, while religion is extracting rules/guidelines and/or dogmas from those thoughts?

Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.

Philosophy and religion are really easy to draw a bright line between when viewing them from 30,000 feet. It's a lot harder to draw a bright line on the ground. Sure, there's some things that are pretty clearly one or the other, but there's a lot of really fuzzy stuff in the middle that's harder to characterize, especially down in the area of the axioms you take.

In this case by religion I mean the sort of things commonly associated with religion, minus the "clearly" religious stuff. For instance, consider utilitarianism. It's a "life-guiding philosophy", which is already treading into religious waters, but the real killer is, what utility metric do you use? Many people who claim to be one or another variety of utilitarianist often try to use some sort of global metric that accounts for not just their own subjective utility, but that of others. But... why? Why not just act based on your own utility? (Including an enlightened utility metric in which one understands that harming others is generally not the right answer due to retaliation or general degradation of the local environment, so not just stereotypical selfishness.) It's awfully easy to call that a sort of non-god/non-spirit religious decision, because there's no objective rational basis for that metric. (And there's not necessarily an objective rational basis for choosing any particular metric when it comes down to it.)

The split among three structures (movements), art, science, and religion, is entirely a human construct. There is no split in actuality.

> That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless.

Most of them are way off. Not even close.

Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits...

I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.

> How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.

I'm with you until there. The point of science is to make testable predictions, to further our knowledge of the world. It's easy to single out creation stories and point to their falsehood to dismiss religion, but religion is not limited to an explanation of how the world is constructed, and it's also not built like a proof where it all hinges on whether or not this story is more allegory or fact. It's not about creating testable hypotheses. It doesn't have to be factually accurate to enrich lives. There is a wealth of truth about humanity that has nothing to do with our physical properties.

Science is tangible and real, and absolutely necessary for discovering and understanding the universe. Any emotional content or context you overlay on top of the application of the scientific method is essentially a religious experience. And that's perfectly fine; in fact, I think it would be weird to know much about science and not feel a sense of awe and wonder, but those senses, that emotional connection, is not science.

I'd say Mohammed certainly got one thing right in saying "there is no compulsion in religion." Either you appreciate it or you don't, like any other form of art. There's no sense in forcing it on people but there's also no sense in talking people out of it. Live and let live.

Some examples of the "new atheists" or commentators who dismiss religion as worthless: Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens

I would rather say they dismiss it as dangerous overall. Religion is many things, and some of the things are good: it provides community, a sense of perspective above the rat race, and an answer to the questions that don't really have answers, like "why are we here". But to do so it requires obedience to a lie, and there are those who believe that truth and reality are too important to allow a comforting lie to have primacy. For them, religion is not worthless, as in "having zero worth": it's worth less than nothing; it's harmful. I can see both sides, but I think I agree with the idea that ultimately it's easier to provide community and consolation to an atheist than to replace the understanding of reality that most religions deny to their adherents.

That is flat out untrue. All of the people you quoted are well aware that religion provides some value/worth alongside the costs. They're all highly intelligent people who are able to perform basic cost/benefit analysis like the rest of us.

What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from?

[edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."

It's a bit of a signal in some religious/evangelical language. "new atheism" implies a few things - there's a renewed urgency, an implied "new" "attack" on religion, etc. It's not meant as an insult so much as a buzzword to signal to the faithful that there's a 'new' menace to ward against.

Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.

"It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism"

I disagree that this "movement" is aggressive. It is only perceived as aggressive because people are not used to having their religion publicly questioned, and held to the same standards of rational scrutiny as other products of human thought. I also disagree that it is "probably" anti-theist. The "new atheists" sometimes ridicule theists, but concede that merely believing in a personal god is fairly harmless in itself. I think they are definitely anti-dogma.

Hitchens seemed pretty anti-theist, and I don't recall him ever saying that belief in a personal god was "fairly harmless".

I was using 'aggressive' from the perspective of those using the term 'new atheist' - should've been more clear on that. I don't think 'new atheism' is 'aggressive', except to the extent that it's being vocal vs 'in the closet' year ago.

Richard Dawkins calls himself a "cultural Christian" and agrees with teaching the Bible as a literary/historical work. I'm not too familiar with the beliefs of the others you mentioned, but Dawkins certainly does not dismiss religion as _worthless_. Unless you define religion as "willfully acting irrational" or something.

Not even just 'worthless', there's a growing anti-theist movement. Whether those above are a- or anti-theist, I can't say for sure, but anti-theists would claim religion is not only 'worthless', but indeed actively harmful to people and society.

Sam Harris believes in experiential religion - that is to say that he's had mystical experiences/unitive states of consciousness. He writes about the importance of spirituality(or esoteric Religion) in contrast to literalist, dogmatic religion on his blog.

Rational, literal, dead religion is often harmful but mystical, experiential, living religion is quite the opposite.

I think religion is very worthwhile. It fills the holes in the human soul.

However, I also believe it is not true.

A person's values and opinions are not inextricably tied to their religiosity. I'm about as irreligious as is possible to be, but two of the nicest most intelligent and genuinely nice guys I know on the planet are respectively a devout Mormon and a guy who's a serious evangelical Christian who does ethnic Chinese American rap and last I checked is planning to attend seminary.

Point being, say no to monoculture, say yes to having interesting caring people who enrich those around them.

First off, my own anecdotal findings are that atheists are some of the best read people on religious subject matters. So I would say many of them have no qualms with reading religious themed work.

Secondly, at its core Zen Buddhism is more philosophy than religion. I'm an atheist and can still agree with most of the concepts found in Zen Buddhism. It's not about worshipping gods but more about the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha who most Zen Buddhist regards as having no particular supernatural powers.

I would hope most non religious people have no bias against it and if they do I would recommend they give that a second thought.

Not just anecdotal. Atheists and agnostics score higher in tests of religious knowledge. See, for example, this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html

Yes. As long as they don't sound arrogant and cocky (I would say the same for reading atheist authors)

I really enjoyed David Bently Hart's defense of Christianity a few years ago. Thick material, but it was fascinating to hear several popular versions of historical events challenged by somebody well-educated. ( Affiliate link: http://amzn.to/IupRsn )

But after thinking about your question a bit more, it occurs to me that you might mean reading religious authors writing about religion. The answer here is also yes, at least for me. A few years ago I completed an audio course in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition and it included several religious authors. This makes sense. Modern western intellectual thought has deep roots in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. Can't study the ancients without understanding what they believed and reading what they said in their own words.

Checking out that book. As a proclaimed Christ follower, I've recently found myself in discussions in which certain historical "facts" (I hesitated to put that in quotes) were tossed my direction which I felt unprepared to answer. As one who believes history to be a small thing to get caught up on given Christianity is about a lot more than that, I think it's very relevant and is a needed piece to intelligently discuss Biblical truth.

I am currently going through the Greatest Books of Western Civilization (Still working on Plato's works), which I believe the audio sets are based on. I haven't gotten to the religious works yet and I literally cannot wait. If you have some writings, notes, that you would not mind sharing, please let me know.

I've done the tapes 3 times. I'm seriously thinking about doing them again this summer. An absolutely great series. It was one of my first from the Teaching Company and it started me on-track to be a raving fan of theirs.

I'll look around and see if I've written up anything.

An authors religion is irrelevant. If the content is good, it is good regardless. The only time I need to know an authors religion is if it's relevant to the topic at hand and I need to make a judgement on which way they might be biased.

The central topic of Buddhism is psychology, understanding that most of the reasons that life is painful are within ourselves.

It's not a religion. It doesn't describe a god, nor does it preclude one. It isn't even a philosophy, because it doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do.

It really is psychology. And as an old programmer from way back, who has always been cynical about life and laughed at the hypocrisy and dogma in religion, I can say straight up that Buddhism is the most intelligent thing I have ever encountered.

Well, that depends on the subject of the book. For example, "Ender's Game" is a great book that I really enjoyed reading, which had many good lessons in it. "Speaker for the Dead" on the other hand, by the same author, was one of the worst pieces of science fiction that I have ever read, largely because the author insisted on waving religion in the reader's face in a most unconvincing way. I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist, so turning him into a practicing Catholic was really hard to swallow.

The worst offenders are self-help books. The moment the author starts rambling about spirituality, religion or other nonsense, it immediately destroys the author's credibility for me: how can I trust what someone is saying when they refuse to apply the rules of evidence to their world view? I'm forced to step back and evaluate what they are saying with more extreme scepticism, and in the end I'm left feeling like I may as well have just thought through the issues myself rather than reading the book (note, thinking for yourself is a good thing - but you don't need some dumb book filled with religious rubbish to give you permission to do it!)

> I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist...

Some of the most narrow-minded fools I've ever met have been atheists, and some of the most analytical have been religious. The reverse is also true. I'm reading a bit of confirmation bias in your observation.

Some atheists are narrow-minded, sure. I didn't say anything to the contrary, although in my experience atheists on average are more broad-minded than their religious counterparts. I also know plenty of very analytical religious people, and even some that are free-thinking. They were all raised in the church, and didn't come to religion by any rational decision. I don't know any religious people that have the combination of being analytical and free-thinking, and converted to being religious as adults. I'm sure such cases must exist, but I'm equally sure that they are as rare as hen's teeth.

You might have heard of Shamus Young (of Activeworlds fame). He became religious (though admittedly not 'devout' in the traditional sense) as a teenager in an atheist household and eventually brought his family along for the ride, and even goes so far as to make the claim that it was a net positive for his life.

His 'autoblography' is fairly enlightening as to his reasons and experience with it (it's about more than just that, though). You can read about it here if you wish: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=13918

Can you elaborate? I don't remember the plot too clearly, but I count "Speaker for the Dead" as one of the books responsible for making me an atheist, as opposed to not having an opinion on the subject.

Depends on what they're writing about, of course. If the writings are religious, I'm quite allergic. Religion is a system of society, I'm not interested in that. On the other hand, if the writings reflect truths that aren't limited to a single religion or only some religions, and that can be found without subscribing to a religion, then certainly.

Absolutely. Religion is a personal view, one that everyone decides. I can't fault anyone for their belief. I loved this story and I generally love whatever I read on this site.

For a non-religious person, death is an even sadder event than it is for the religious... because we view it as permanent.

Right. My comment originated by wondering, "How many HNers would buy his book". His book, that contains this story, is overtly religious in nature. Is this story enough to make you interested in his book even though you know some of the content will be in fierce opposition with your own beliefs?

>>because we view it as permanent

Given an infinite time and an infinite universes, there becomes a small possibility of existence again after death.

(I'm Christian, so I admit that I may be a bit more optimistic than is warranted)

I like this quote from Penn Jillete on the subject of the afterlife: "I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day."

I'm an Atheist, but I often find beauty in religious artwork, writing, or music. In fact, I find myself listening to Christian music fairly often. It's very difficult to divorce yourself from all things religious. We're constantly surrounded by it (next Christmas time, try putting yourself in the mindset of an Atheist.) As an Atheist I can either become embittered by that fact, or I can find value in it despite core differences. I choose the latter option. That said, I take issue with many religious concepts, hence the Atheism.

I don't care about a person's religion unless it negatively affects their words or actions. However, I don't see why you ask here, as I don't see anything religious in this story.

The Mythical Man-Month's Fred Brooks is a devote Christian.

So is Larry Wall.

Donald Knuth too.

The only time I take exception to a religion or philosophy is when either it commands one to do evil, or when its adherents use it as an excuse to do evil. As for individuals, so long as they reject all evil commandments and retain their humanity, I will not criticize their choice in religion or philosophy.

Yes. I believe in spiritual geniuses, like mathematical or literary geniuses. I believe that these people have figured out how, to put it simply, to get the most out of life, and I enjoy learning what they share. I believe Jesus and Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) were two of these people.

I generally find religious writings to be either neutral to my atheist sensibilities, or (in the case of scriptures or apologetics) sometimes quite fascinating. The only time it dips into the negative end of the scale is in the case of glurge.