[jmcdiesel]

Religion is dying, but spirituality is growing.

I think the interesting part comes from our (and i say our, as in, the HN demographic) tendencies to hold strict beliefs based only on (and limited by) our own perceptions.

The thing is, it comes at you when it comes at you, and you cant tell someone else why they should believe in something they cant see, feel, experiment with or experience.

I was an atheist, almost militant atheist, for most of my life... then my wife became spiritual, started doing tarot and stuff like that, doing reiki (energy healing) etc, and i was open to it, but didn't really buy into it. Then she started having mediumship abilities... and then I felt totally like it was kinda a crock... but then something ridiculous happened.

My father died before I was born, a few months before... She has supposedly been in contact with him, and i liked that as a form of comfort, but again, im a skeptic. Then she described a scene... she described the interior of a car, sitting in a field, with my mom in the passenger seat, from the view of the drivers seat. The car, after she described it to me, was an impala, and she got that it was a 62 model year... and said it was dark gray with one wheel white and the others black... and it was in a field of yellow and purple flowers, and my mom had a red shirt on and jeans... Ive never heard this story, i couldnt have possibly told her any of it, she doesnt speak to my mother, so she couldnt have gotten it from there... but i asked my mom, if they had an impala at one time, and he response was "yeah, it was a dark gray 62 impala with red interior" ... and i asked about the field, and she knew exactly where it was, and even the mis-matched tire... so, to me, I believe now, that there is more than we realize. Be it supernatural, be it a bug in the programming of a simulation we live in, be it just a natural form of energy we dont understand or cant perecieve... but there is something more...

But i dont tell you that story to convince you, or to justify my own beliefs (i have no need to justify them), but to show you that, until something happens to you that pulls your perspective, your personal perspective, so far out of line with your current beliefs, you will never believe, and you will be certain even... and thats the problem with spirituality or religion... you have to come to it yourself, which is near impossible to do, when the religions themselves are constantly trying to force people to believe...

[jordanpg]

> until something happens to you that pulls your perspective, your personal perspective, so far out of line with your current beliefs, you will never believe

I would argue that these are the circumstances under which it is most important to push back against claims that are manifestly, self-evidently false according to basic empirical criteria.

[rosser]

> ...manifestly, self-evidently false according to basic empirical criteria.

Which is fine, as far as it goes. I think there's an argument to be made against Scientism, however, where people are rejecting notions that aren't "manifestly, self-evidently false", but instead aren't even falsifiable. How does that make sense? How can someone take that position, and still consider themselves rational?

Some of the greatest names in the history of science were also mystics. (I'm not talking about Newton being an alchemist and drinking mercury; I'm talking about the likes of Bohm, Einstein, Schrödinger, &c.) We've, instead, decided to repudiate that kind of thinking, and I think that costs us, dearly. The number of scientists of faith, who do perfectly legitimate science but have to hide their beliefs, is staggering, and, frankly, offensive. We have failed if that's how we want to play.

Yes, defending the credulous from the predatory, a stated motivation of so many anti-religionists, is a valuable thing. It should be lauded. So very, very many of the anti-religionists I've met are profoundly smug about their beliefs, though. That's not valuable. That serves no-one. That is actively harmful.

Anything that creates a narrative where you're somehow "better than" the people around you, is mental garbage. It's an ego trap. It should be shouted down far more loudly than whether or not people believe in an invisible man in the sky who watches them masturbate, if that belief is not subsequently used to disenfranchise and dehumanize others — not least because that very "better than"-ness is the root of how we disenfranchise and dehumanize one another.

Hard atheists are often among the most vocally, militantly, confrontationally proselytizing people I've ever seen. The irony is really ugly.

EDIT: phrasing

[jmcdiesel]

Your empirical data is limited by our perception.

Do you really think we know all of the forces at work, that we can perceive them or detect them with the tools we have?

Its rather arrogant to think that we know even "most" of how the universe works, let alone all of it... and if you can admit that we know very little overall, then the empirical data we do have has a lot less weight...