NOM

I just read this article:
https://aeon.co/ideas/religion-is-about ... =atom-feed

It was pretty interesting. Not in a "new information" way, but more of a "how does this relate to me" kind of way.

The TLDR is that religion is not for truth, it helps us deal with the parts of life that suck, and it is pretty good at doing it. I thought I would put down some thoughts and questions. We are plodding down an well worn old familiar path here, I dont know why it hit me as poignant today.

Most mainstream religious people accept a version of Galileo’s division of labour: ‘The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.’

Right off the bat I dont know that I agree with this. But since I have only been involved with a culty fundamentalist religion for the past 33 years I will defer with reservations.

While Freud and Durkheim were right about the important functions of religion, its true value lies in its therapeutic power, particularly its power to manage our emotions. How we feel is as important to our survival as how we think. Our species comes equipped with adaptive emotions, such as fear, rage, lust and so on: religion was (and is) the cultural system that dials these feelings and behaviours up or down. We see this clearly if we look at mainstream religion, rather than the deleterious forms of extremism. Mainstream religion reduces anxiety, stress and depression. It provides existential meaning and hope. It focuses aggression and fear against enemies. It domesticates lust, and it strengthens filial connections. Through story, it trains feelings of empathy and compassion for others. And it provides consolation for suffering.

I know some of you here value religion, and some who really dont. I think the main mark is missed here (religion can manage our emotions but does not always), I think the problem lies in trying to lump religions into "mainstream" vs. "extremeist." I dont think that all mainstream religion reduces anxiety for all people. Certainly not if your sexual orientation does not match the mainstream view. I dont see very many pro-religion people talking about how it doesnt work for some.

An emotion such as grief has many ingredients. The physiological arousal of grief is accompanied by cognitive evaluations: ‘I will never see my friend again’; ‘I could have done something to prevent this’; ‘She was the love of my life’; and so on. Religions try to give the bereaved an alternative appraisal that reframes their tragedy as something more than just misery. Emotional appraisals are proactive, according to the psychologists Phoebe Ellsworth at the University of Michigan and Klaus Scherer at the University of Geneva, going beyond the immediate disaster to envision the possible solutions or responses. This is called ‘secondary appraisal’. After the primary appraisal (‘This is very sad’), the secondary appraisal assesses our ability to deal with the situation: ‘This is too much for me’ – or, positively: ‘I will survive this.’ Part of our ability to cope with suffering is our sense of power or agency: more power generally means better coping ability. If I acknowledge my own limitations when faced with unavoidable loss, but I feel that a powerful ally, God, is part of my agency or power, then I can be more resilient.

This interests me because of DW's self-admitted reason for not looking into church "issues" is the her mother's bad health and precarious position with life. I get that. Totally retooling a vision of spirituality in the face of that kind of tragedy is terrifying.
Can those of you who have been through more suffering than I have teach me about how you have dealt with those emotions with and without the faith you grew up with? Did you wish you had the faith you used to have in those times? Did you wish you had religion to help you cope? Were there other coping mechanisms that helped you just as well?

Because religious actions are often accompanied by magical thinking or supernatural beliefs, Christopher Hitchens argued in God Is not Great (2007) that religion is ‘false consolation’. Many critics of religion echo his condemnation. But there is no such thing as false consolation. Hitchens and fellow critics are making a category mistake, like saying: ‘The colour green is sleepy.’ Consolation or comfort is a feeling, and it can be weak or strong, but it can’t be false or true. You can be false in your judgment of why you’re feeling better, but feeling better is neither true nor false. True and false applies only if we’re evaluating whether our propositions correspond with reality. And no doubt many factual claims of religion are false in that way – the world was not created in six days.

Religion is real consolation in the same way that music is real consolation. No one thinks that the pleasure of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is ‘false pleasure’ because singing flutes don’t really exist. It doesn’t need to correspond to reality. It’s true that some religious devotees, unlike music devotees, pin their consolation to additional metaphysical claims, but why should we trust them to know how religion works? Such believers do not recognise that their unthinking religious rituals and social activities are the true sources of their therapeutic healing. Meanwhile, Hitchens and other critics confuse the factual disappointments of religion with the value of religion generally, and thereby miss the heart of it.

I think that I agree with the no false consolation concept. Where ever a person derives consolation and encouragement from is valid. Unless it is something that takes something from someone else. Which is where I think lots of religions get into the weeds.

The bolded part in the quotation above strikes me as the NOM's bread and butter. Some people are good at existing in that space between acknowledging the false judgments about why they participate, agree, support, and attend, and some people are not good at it. I know which type I am.

What do you think of the underlined part? I cant tell you how many arguments that have gone something like this:

Person A ---It is not true because of X!

Person B ---Yes it is! I have been taught all my life it is this way!

Person A --- *Shows some facts*

Person B --- It doesnt need to be objectively true, it is true for me!

I am not wondering if it is clear that religion is untethered to reality, because in my opinion it is (and for a great many people in my life that opinion that I have is also untethered from reality), but I am wondering if that is a overall a bad thing? I think that a realization that therapeutic healing comes through ritual and social sources could go a long way towards helping people keep the benefits (Like my DW) while dispensing with the stuff that is not helpful.

This has been one of the toughest things for me - disconnecting from black and white thinking. Realizing how feelings can be a relative truthiness for that person.

Emower wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 1:56 pm Can those of you who have been through more suffering than I have teach me about how you have dealt with those emotions with and without the faith you grew up with? Did you wish you had the faith you used to have in those times? Did you wish you had religion to help you cope? Were there other coping mechanisms that helped you just as well?

I can tell you about how I dealt with grief from the church's betrayal. At the time, I wasn't capable of wishing I had the faith I grew up with. I wished I had my religious community to help me cope, but they were unwittingly complicit in the betrayal. I was alone. I was an acceptable loss for my community's gain of certainty and pride. My coping mechanism was studying the hell out of human psychology so I could understand what I was going through and why. Deep thought was my painkiller.

I can also tell you how I dealt with depression before and after my faith transition.

Shortly, my religion provided more bright spots in the darkness, but I coped better and developed more robust protection against depression without religion.

My second time through it, I was still a believer, and was the HPGL. I took the ministering aspects of my calling seriously, and helped a lot of people. Those were the bright spots. My religious community and the mindset of following Jesus provided those. But I was slipping in other things, feeling guilty and ashamed, and wondering where God was. I continually vacillated between blaming myself, and blaming him for not helping me when I clearly needed it.

My third time through depression resulted in losing almost all belief in everything supernatural.

My fourth time through it, I was an unbeliever. I expected no help from God. I wanted no help from anyone in the church, because my anticipation that they would think less of me for my unbelief was part of the problem. Instead, I set out to address all of the actual causes: health issues, identifying as a Mormon, and rigid and unrealistic internal rules. I learned how to better avoid the suffering that comes from fear of suffering. I learned how to follow the implicit chains of thought that lead to "Oh no, I'm worthless," and to intercept and change them. I don't think I would have done all of that as a believer, which would have left me more vulnerable in the future.

I think religions are sometimes helpful with emotional regulation. Sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they make emotional problems worse, and sometimes they cause the problems. Sometimes they steal emotional regulation from someone to give it to someone else - like when the church oppresses some of its members to better sell the idea that it's never substantively wrong, or lifts up some members by derogating others.

For me, the Mormon church compounded the suffering. In fact, I think Mormonism only works for those who are successful in life. It is too much of a prosperity gospel to work for the poor or the sick. If you look at the general authorities, most have had kind of a charmed life. They were not abused as children. Didn’t grow up wondering where their next meal was coming from. Never saw their dad beat their mom. Never had dad come home staggering drunk. They were successful students in school, no serious learning disabilities. No serious health problems until old age. They were successful in their careers. They married basically normal good people. No mental health issues in them or their spouse. No domestic violence in the marriage. No divorce. No disabled children. Not even gay children. They have basically lived a charmed life. Then they look at others and instead of seeing their extreme luck, they see themselves as more righteous and blessed for their righteousness.

Toxic. Job’s friends the bunch of them. Looking at Job and assuming he sinned because God would not let bad things happen to a truly righteous man.

One example which may out me. My brother was hit point blank in the back of the head by a twenty-two bullet while hunting. He lived, but...well, just imagine. So, rather than comfort, my mother was lectured about how she should not of let her adult, returned missionary sons go hunting on Sunday. Because my brother’s medical needs were so great, instead of offering what limited help the ward could, the ward completely turned it’s back on my family. Offered no help. Refused to help when begged.

The Mormon church is a prosperity gospel, not a religion that comforts the afflicted. It only offers comfort after a death if the deceased was righteous. If not righteous, then it threatens eternal family separation. Instead of comforting the grieving at a funeral, it uses the time to preach to nonmembers. Rather than comforting the sick, it offers false promises of healing if you are righteous. And let’s not even go into its backwards medieval attitude toward mental health.

Interesting. Just skimmed your top post Emower and this looks fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

alas wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:17 am For me, the Mormon church compounded the suffering. In fact, I think Mormonism only works for those who are successful in life.

I agree. What about religion in general though? And dont limit your response to Christianity. I dont mean to ask for a treatise on how each religion affects everyone the world over, what I am wondering is if people here think generally religion is a help or a hindrance to emotional stability, and what you think your reactions would have been perhaps if you were not involved exclusively with Mormonism?

Emower wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:54 am

alas wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:17 am For me, the Mormon church compounded the suffering. In fact, I think Mormonism only works for those who are successful in life.

I agree. What about religion in general though? And dont limit your response to Christianity. I dont mean to ask for a treatise on how each religion affects everyone the world over, what I am wondering is if people here think generally religion is a help or a hindrance to emotional stability, and what you think your reactions would have been perhaps if you were not involved exclusively with Mormonism?

I have never been haunted by guilt, so the idea of being forgiven of our sins doesn’t do much for me. If Jesus’s followers actually followed, then his ideas of feeding the poor and taking care of each other would be worth staying with the religion. I would like some kind of atonement that undoes the damage to the victims of sin, but people don’t much teach that and Christian groups certainly don’t see to comforting and loving the victims of sin, but just seem to focus on how we are all sinners and so we need forgiveness. No thanks. I will suffer for my own sins, but I am just sick of suffering for other people’s sin also.

Once you get away from Christianity, I find inspiration in something close to pantheism. Nature worship. Some ideas that Buddhists teach about the universe is one. There is divinity in the rocks and trees.

But I have no use for organized religion. They seem more concerned with controlling the members and cash flow than they do in teaching people to take care of each other and to reverence and take care of our earth, to respect the animals our creator made.