How can people still take the Bible or other the religious texts literally?

[Wahoo Redux]

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

The sacrifice required is typically material comfort in the present, such as giving to the poor, making effort to help others, etc.

For a universalist, who believes that the afterlife is the same for everyone, then the only specific benefit to religious commitment is therefore the spiritual fulfillment in the present. In that case, the more material comfort a person has, the less likely the religious commitment will "pay off", since the spiritual fulfillment will have to be really huge to compensate for giving up personal comfort.

So this is why "religion lite" (which is what I would call the universalist  position) is not terribly compelling; the only time religion becomes "worth it" is one is suffering greatly in some way, so that the material comfort is minimal, so the sacrifice will potentially be worth it.

Thus, to me it's no surprise that the churches of a more universalist persuasion are dying.

Marshy, churches of all stripes are contracting. 

Southern Baptist biggest decline in 100 years

Catholic Church Decline

Protestant Decline

Wikipedia

It is not just your "religion lite" that people are abandoning.  Your very high-handed, prescriptive ideas are typical of why.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.

[Treehugger]

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.

[dismalist]

The premise of this thread has bothered me. The significance of religion for all of us has nothing to do with taking texts literally.

Rather, religions are like big containers, filled with little boxes. Some boxes contain garbage, some boxes contain nothing, and some boxes contain jewels.

Examples of jewels are contained in the 10 Commandments. Societies that behave according to most thrive and supplant others, because they get imitated. No actual need for violence. Meanwhile, the great religions, better or worse, at least make it easier for individuals to get along with their near fellows.

[marshwiggle]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.

In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.

So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.

[Kron3007]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.

In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.

So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.

No, the question was not about how one could support religious belief, it was about believing the religious texts literally.  These are two very different things. 

I think most non-religious people understand the allure and reasons why people would be religious, but believing the Bible literally takes some real mental gymnastics.  It has been revised by man so many times, is riddled with contradictions, and is generally incomparable with logic.  In addition, people who state they believe it literally only believe in the parts they want, and ignore what they don't. 

[marshwiggle]

In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.

So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.

No, the question was not about how one could support religious belief, it was about believing the religious texts literally.  These are two very different things. 

I agree, but taking texts "literally" means something different depending on whether it's talk of "an army of 10000" (in which case 9999 would be wrong),  versus the resurrection.

Most Christians wouldn't put those two things in the same category.

I think most non-religious people understand the allure and reasons why people would be religious, but believing the Bible literally takes some real mental gymnastics.  It has been revised by man so many times, is riddled with contradictions, and is generally incomparable with logic.  In addition, people who state they believe it literally only believe in the parts they want, and ignore what they don't.

I agree with this, but as I said, the hardcore literalists are a small fraction of Christians.

[Treehugger]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.

In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.

So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.

Sigh. You "win," I guess. Still, there isn't any afterlife. Yes, I state it that boldly, because:

1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.

2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)

3. What we do know about human psychology gives us a very convincing and simple explanation for the belief an afterlife: collective wishful thinking. And to that you might add political convenience. How better to get a bunch of people to submit to your authority than the humongous spiritual carrot of heaven and stick of hell. And no one can ever prove they don't exist. Genius solution!


Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own!  Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.

Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world. A personal example: My sister and her husband are conservative Lutherans and true believers. Ok, great! More power to them! Right? However, one source of great stress in my sister's life is that her husband insists on tithing (they donate $$,$$$ every year) although they really cannot afford it, what with my sister's disability which keeps her out of the workforce and the fact that they have two children in college (yes, they have loans and financial aid, but they have to pay some themselves). She will never put it so bluntly, but she is hurt that they cannot even afford to take vacations anymore and they scrimp and save (and I mean really scrimp and save) when they are giving away so much money.

But back to the afterlife. For a very moving take on an atheist's view of what happens to us after we die, see: daylight atheism: stardust, particularly the last full paragraph.

[apl68]

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

The sacrifice required is typically material comfort in the present, such as giving to the poor, making effort to help others, etc.

For a universalist, who believes that the afterlife is the same for everyone, then the only specific benefit to religious commitment is therefore the spiritual fulfillment in the present. In that case, the more material comfort a person has, the less likely the religious commitment will "pay off", since the spiritual fulfillment will have to be really huge to compensate for giving up personal comfort.

So this is why "religion lite" (which is what I would call the universalist  position) is not terribly compelling; the only time religion becomes "worth it" is one is suffering greatly in some way, so that the material comfort is minimal, so the sacrifice will potentially be worth it.

Thus, to me it's no surprise that the churches of a more universalist persuasion are dying.

Marshy, churches of all stripes are contracting. 

Southern Baptist biggest decline in 100 years

Catholic Church Decline

Protestant Decline

Wikipedia

It is not just your "religion lite" that people are abandoning.  Your very high-handed, prescriptive ideas are typical of why.

Churches of all stripes practice forms of "religion lite."  "Religion lite" seems to have been defined above as the practice of those who still maintain some involvement in church after abandoning most of their church's core beliefs.  There's another form of "religion lite," which I've found all too common, in which people still profess belief in all the traditional core teachings, but can't seem to understand that Christianity is also a matter of day-to-day practice.  In churches where a majority of members have developed this attitude, the church tends to become more of a social club than anything else.  Youths raised in these social-club churches tend to get bored and leave eventually.  Because a social-club church doesn't have much of the real power of faith.

In churches where both belief and actual Christian practice remain or have become vibrant there is often significant growth in attendance, and not just by poaching members from other churches.  I've seen it happen.  There's still a great hunger in today's society for what the New Testament offers.  There just aren't that many churches today offering it in the U.S.  In some parts of the world there are, and churches have grown in numbers.  There has been explosive church growth in mainland China in recent decades, for example. 

So kay and marshwiggle aren't wrong about "religion lite."  They're just perhaps overlooking the fact that there are different kinds of it.

A church informed by biblical teaching--all of it, including resurrection, final judgement, salvation by faith in Jesus, AND what Jesus taught about following him day-to-day and spreading his message by living it--is still a powerful thing.  We need more of them.

[Wahoo Redux]

1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.

2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)

(they donate $$,$$$ every year)

I'm actually surprised that it took this long for people to discuss the metaphysical problems of belief.

One of the difficulties in discussing belief in our culture is that, no matter what, people always seem to default to Christian concepts of the "afterlife" as some sort of reincarnated "us" in a perfect Heavenly place, which does not seem empirically possible.  My wife is an atheist, and I irritate her if I try to discuss the subject---so we never do---and she always defaults to the ridiculousness of believing in a benevolent "sky daddy" or an "Iron Age mythology."

Almost every atheist conversation or tract I've read is predicated upon practical impossibility of a Christian cosmology and a loving God/Father/Shepherd watching over us.  "Oh yeah!? Well what about The Holocaust?" which is a valid argument if one begins with this premise.  Christopher Hitchens anyone?

My father passed away 10 years ago this month of cancer.  He was a former Army paratrooper and government attorney without a spec of mysticism about him.  He dutifully took us to church growing up but I think it was just paint-by-the-numbers good American sentiment that good people go to church.  In his later life he actually took some classes on religion that explained the presence of Jesus as an amalgam of several prophets patrolling the Middle East at that time; this idea pleased him.  He was so opposed to anything not concretely Earthly that he got angry at a party when someone mentioned the possibility of flying saucers.  He made such a scene that my mom had me dress up as an alien and come to another dinner party and invite my father to visit my "home planet" to great hilarity.  Later I asked him why UFOs annoyed him so much and responded very directly, "There's no secret way to travel through space!!" (exclamation points included).  Never mind that we don't yet entirely understand time and space and physics---there was just "no secret way!!"

Then he got cancer and had a reaction to morphine that almost killed him.  They had to resuscitate him, and he had the whole "tunnel of light" and "people coming to meet him" and then "telling him to go back."  It is entirely possible that this is the subconscious at the moment of death----but I don't think my dad thought so.  He didn't really want to talk about it.

Then there was the very professional, practical hospice nurse who said, "Your loved one is going to start having conversations with people from his past who have died" and then she said (and again, I emphasize the almost bland, hard professionalism of her nurse-persona) "and this is contact with 'the other side.'"

And yeah, dad said on several occasions, "I just talked with my father."  Sometimes they'd talk about death.  Sometimes they would just talk.  And there were other people too, but my dad did not want to talk about them

I've never known what to make of these things.  If my father had been another kind of person I might have dismissed them as wishful thinking...but there they are.  Right on the mark for what others have said about the near-death experience.

We must acknowledge that these experiences can be explained by unproven (if we are talking about "proof") and incomplete observations by neuroscientists, and we must also acknowledge that we don't know what these are.

Remember that we are Earthbound creatures who don't really, truly understand the cosmos yet and how it all works.  It might be a tad early to be denouncing the "after life" based upon our very, very limited empirical evidence.  So much discussion just strikes me as typical hubris.

Oh yeah----people waste money on all sorts of things.  There are a couple posters here that think education is largely a waste of money, if one chooses the wrong major, that is.

[ciao_yall]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.

Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of

• spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
• pleasant afterlife

I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.

In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.

So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.

Sigh. You "win," I guess. Still, there isn't any afterlife. Yes, I state it that boldly, because:

1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.

2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)

3. What we do know about human psychology gives us a very convincing and simple explanation for the belief an afterlife: collective wishful thinking. And to that you might add political convenience. How better to get a bunch of people to submit to your authority than the humongous spiritual carrot of heaven and stick of hell. And no one can ever prove they don't exist. Genius solution!


Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own!  Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.

Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world. A personal example: My sister and her husband are conservative Lutherans and true believers. Ok, great! More power to them! Right? However, one source of great stress in my sister's life is that her husband insists on tithing (they donate $$,$$$ every year) although they really cannot afford it, what with my sister's disability which keeps her out of the workforce and the fact that they have two children in college (yes, they have loans and financial aid, but they have to pay some themselves). She will never put it so bluntly, but she is hurt that they cannot even afford to take vacations anymore and they scrimp and save (and I mean really scrimp and save) when they are giving away so much money.

But back to the afterlife. For a very moving take on an atheist's view of what happens to us after we die, see: daylight atheism: stardust, particularly the last full paragraph.

What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.

So, is that pure psychology? Or some sort of awareness of something going on beyond the material world that gets interpreted and explained differently in different cultures?

Sorry to hear about your sister and her husband. Even the devil can ask for money "In Jesus' name." The husband gets something out of what he is doing, and clearly he prioritizes whatever that is over a vacation and other niceties for his wife. That's not the church's fault.

Still, SPADIFY.

[Parasaurolophus]

What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.

That's a rather strong claim, and I rather doubt it's true. For one thing, plenty of modern (atheist!) cultures do not subscribe to either a spiritual world or an afterlife qua culture (although they of course possess the concepts, because human beings can communicate with one another). Québeckers are a cultural group, for example, and a vociferously secular one to boot. For another, our evidence only actually covers recent human history, and even then it's not always clear that the cultures in question subscribed to beliefs in a spiritual world and an afterlife (it's a pretty fraught issue in scholarship concerning Iron Age Scandinavia, for instance). And AFAIK, Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in the afterlife, and neither do some Jewish groups. Nor do Taoists, and I think I'm right in asserting that many Indigenous groups don't, either (but I'm no kind of expert). But religious and cultural groups, of course, are not necessarily one and the same.

[Kron3007]

What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.

That's a rather strong claim, and I rather doubt it's true. For one thing, plenty of modern (atheist!) cultures do not subscribe to either a spiritual world or an afterlife qua culture (although they of course possess the concepts, because human beings can communicate with one another). Québeckers are a cultural group, for example, and a vociferously secular one to boot. For another, our evidence only actually covers recent human history, and even then it's not always clear that the cultures in question subscribed to beliefs in a spiritual world and an afterlife (it's a pretty fraught issue in scholarship concerning Iron Age Scandinavia, for instance). And AFAIK, Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in the afterlife, and neither do some Jewish groups. Nor do Taoists, and I think I'm right in asserting that many Indigenous groups don't, either (but I'm no kind of expert). But religious and cultural groups, of course, are not necessarily one and the same.

Yes, and even if that were true, it is just as likely a result of the human condition than any deeper understanding.  Who doesn't want to go to heaven?

Personally, as an athiest, I don't have an opinion about if there is an afterlife or not.  This is far beyond our current grasp of things   It is possible that we just cease to exist and our afterlife is identical to our pre-life.  It is also possible that the quantum mind people (or another as of yet unknown theory) are right and our consciousness is more complex with some form of existence after.  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter to me, I will find out soon enough.

What I do know is that I find organized religion and their versions of God and afterlife to be silly.  I can respect religious people who take the texts metaphorically and recognize the inherent flaws, but the literalists are insane.

[Wahoo Redux]

Respectfully, we sometimes get lost in our academic-style pedantry. 

It is possible to assert that the concept of the afterlife is archetypal, as is the concept of a creator god, sky gods/chthonic gods, personification of natural forces as gods, demons, ghosts, etc. All of that is innately human.  There is plenty to support this.  I am sure that with all these learned people here someone knows of some culture that does not possess the concept of "[whatever]," but that is not necessarily the point.  This is not peer-review. 

I cannot say for sure but I am pretty sure that almost every culture and religion has a very similar cosmology, including an afterlife---Jung and all that.   

And please, folks, yes, the Eastern religions have a much different concept, but look it up----metaphoric perhaps, but there is a cosmology there.  And we think that the cave paintings and rock gatherings in a number of deep caves are the results of stone age rituals. 

[Parasaurolophus]

I think that even in ordinary discourse, we need to be careful about making universal claims, especially when we're trying to use those universally-quantified claims to draw conclusions about human nature or the structure of human psychology. At that point, we're shifting out of ordinary discourse and into academic and empirical territory.

We should also strive to be clear about our terms, even in ordinary discourse. In this case, the boundaries of 'culture' are unclear and, just as importantly, it's not at all clear what was meant by 'spiritual world' (or, indeed, how it differs from the 'afterlife'). The vaguer and more general we are, even in ordinary discourse, the more trivial our conversations.

[Wahoo Redux]

Not sure I entirely agree.  It's legitimate to use specific examples----in fact the things people have said here are very interesting----but again, we can make accurate generalizations that can be applied to human nature.

Fine, there are some religions which don't have a "sky god," but there are enough to say that the sky god is a constant of human mythology.  I am sure that someone who is an expert can make the lineage from Babylon to Egypt to the Etruscan culture to Greece to Rome to Christianity clear (in fact, that would be great) and argue that there is no collective subconscious just a line of appropriated deities, and then point out that the Norse goddess "Hel" probably infused the word and conceptualization of "Hell" into European Christianity, but again I think that misses the point.  None of which explains the Yoruba "Shango" in Africa, for instance, the king/sky god and his thunder.

The point is that there is something innately human in seeking the spiritual through some personification of a king/lord deity and a vision of the afterlife.  We can concede that even if "culture" is not clearly defined.