Is Religion rational?

Spun off of this thread:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13131905060A22842900&

If you want context this current debate stretches back to post #30

But the question is pretty simple, I think:

Do you think Religion is rational, and if no does it still deserve your respect?

EDIT: Oh, now it's locked. This topic is still ok, though right?

edited 13th Aug '11 3:12:18 PM by TheEarthSheep

Hm...

If rational means "based in physical, falsifiable evidence," then no.

Then again, by that definition, neither is atheism.

Do I respect religion? Depends on what it advocates. Generally, speaking, however, yes, I respect faith, regardless of the religion or lack thereof chosen.

..Religion is inherently irrational. we've covered this. That doesnt make people bad for being religious, simply means they hold an irrational belief. Same as "Beginner's Luck" is irrational but widely held.

We haven't covered Religion being irrational, you've just said that it is repeatedly. There's a difference.

No.

On the other hand atheism is indeed rational. For the same reason not believing in the falying spaghetti monster is rational.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:15:05 PM by Baff

Define "rational," please. Since, judging by a certain other conversation I had... and my own intuition... the definition has an annoying habit of drifting from person to person...

It was locked, basically, to inspire this thread.

Religion is rational to the extent that the claims that it makes have as much evidence to support them-and as much argument to negate any associated contradictions-as any non-religious topic. That is, anything that requires "faith" in order to be accepted is irrational to the extent that it requires said faith.

^Basically, in order for a religion to be fully rational, it needs to at the bare minimum be able to address all contradictory evidence, including the arguments that lead to said contradictions. For instance, contemporary Christianity has something known as "The Problem of Evil;" that is, they simultaneously believe in an All Knowing, All Powerful, All Loving God. The contradiction, of course, arises from the fact that there is suffering in the universe. Ergo, either God will not or can not prevent said suffering. If he will not prevent it, he must think that it's A OK for people to suffer (with the implication being that he must not love us enough), whereas if he can't prevent it, it means he's not all powerful. There are other issues with Christianity (and indeed, most religions), but the most general one is that "If I told you that there's an invisible purple unicorn in my back yard, you would not believe me." That is, the amount of evidence and argument required to believe elements not related to one's religion is substantially higher than the amount of evidence required to believe one's religion.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:19:00 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

rational: Based on or in accordance with reason or logic.

That is what Google says.

But your definition is also alright.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:17:45 PM by Baff

~sigh~

Well, then, I keep my position. Religion and atheism are equally irrational, because neither is provable and both are based on different interpretation of the same lack of facts. Doesn't mean we can't respect either position, however.

Also note that, a religion is a theory about how the universe is. It provides supposed information. If you believe there is a storm god, let's call him Zeus, and that Zeus tends to throw lightning bolts when he's angry because he hasn't had enough sex lately, and that Zeus occasionally transforms into a bull to have intercourse with human females (don't ask-it's part of the myth. Kind of)), then you'd expect that if you hear a story about a bull/human intercourse scenario, you're less likely to see thunderstorms in the area.

When you then have thunderstorms hit, you'd be all like "What gives?" That would be contraevidence to your "Zeus needs nookie" theory. Theories are all about their predictive power. When a theory has zero or negative predictive power, belief in it becomes more and more irrational.

Atheism makes the prediction "The world operates according to science." Ergo, when stuff happens, it will always be scientifically explainable. Religion often ALSO says that the world operates according to science. The only reason why you become an atheist vs one of these forms of religion is basically a special form of Ockham's Razor.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:24:12 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

It's often very irrational, but that's quite okay. Rationality is a tool to understand the world around us, nothing more. It makes a woefully inadequate means to live life by.

@USAF You are right.

I will imidiatley go sign up for the church of the flaying spaghetti monster who put the fossils on earth to fool us and make us think our planet is hundreads of millions of years old when in fact its only 6000 years old because science cant prove he didnt do it to troll us.

Compleatley rational.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:24:46 PM by Baff

I must frankly disagree-I live my life in as rational a manner as is possible, and I'm quite happy with that.

@Tomu All faith is irrational?

When I'm trapped in a burning house, I call 911. I have no idea that the firemen are coming, but I have faith that they will. In my experience, calling 911 while in a burning building makes them come. But: I still can't prove that they are coming. I can't see them coming. I don't try to break out of the house, because there's too much smoke for me to stand for too long before passing out. I have to believe, with no evidence other than the call, that the firemen will come. The only time I will know that they are coming or not is when they've arrived. I could die in the meantime. The other people in the house could break out and survive, or they could try and end up dying because they were wrong. There is no way to know which response is correct until you've done it.

Now apply that to religion.

Oh, and the reason God allows suffering is supposedly that it's a trial for everyone or something.

Edit: I was ninja'd... 10 times... while writing this.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:25:21 PM by TheEarthSheep

@Tomu,

That proves that people's interpretations of evidence can be wrong, but not that the basic theory is wrong. Zeus could very well exist. I cannot prove that, however. You cannot, at the same time, disprove it, either. You can prove some facet of my belief in the way Zeus works wrong, but you cannot prove the existence of Zeus to be wrong, independently.

Naturally, if a god shows up, well, that god probably exists, then.

Such is the awesomeness of agnosticism. It's just not a problem anymore.

Edit: Everything does work by science. Supernatural happenings are science we do not comprehend. It doesn't make them any less awesome (to use the archaic definition), it merely means that there is an internal logic to them. Magic A Is Magic A. Just because we don't understand them doesn't mean that they can't exist.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:25:53 PM by USAF713

Re: The fire

You're really equivocating two different kinds of faith here. The faith that the fireman will come is based on the knowledge that the Fire Department exists and has a good record. If however the Fire Department exists, but has an exceedingly terrible record, and you have faith the fireman will come, well, that's "bad faith." That is, faith in something that you have all reason to suspect is not the case.

Re: Answering the problem of evil.

That "answer" really doesn't answer the question, for a long drawn out explanation regarding the nature of all loving and all powerful. Entire threads have been discussed about that topic alone, never with anyone coming out with a different conclusion than they came into, so I'll let you search the archives if you're interested.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:26:48 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I've always felt happiness itself to be irrational at times.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:26:07 PM by Pykrete

@Tomu: Christianity has a record of how Yawheh looks after his bros, it's called the Bible. It's just whether or not you believe the fireman's record.

Happiness can't be rational or rational, per say. Your happiness can be caused by rational or irrational beliefs or understandings of your world, but happiness does not "follow."

^Indeed, a question of whether the bible stands up to scrutiny. A lot of peeps like to tear the Bible apart due to scientific inaccuracies and whatnot. Those are all pieces of counter-evidence; that is, reasons to believe the bible is not, in fact, infallible.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:28:39 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I like to believe that many of the beliefs and practices of Buddhism are rational and thought out. Many things are picked up not solely because some old guy said them, but because you observed and tested it to prove it was indeed truth.

It's way of dealing with problems is rather similar to cognitive-behavioral therapy. Just more ritualized and religious. The mind is the source of dysfunctional emotions and impulses and through a systematized approach one can change their feelings, world view, and behaviors.

The more mystical parts of the cosmology and metaphysics of Buddhism I remain agnostic on though I do hold some belief in them. My belief in those is not at all rational really. More just a vague feeling. I do believe that the Buddhist definition for god is the most likely of the ones I've heard since it's really just a fancy way of saying sufficiently advanced alien. In general though those beliefs are indeed irrational and based solely on my feelings.

Other things about it hold rather well I think. Everything is impermanent. Everything is subject to change and ending. Upon ending the materials of the former thing are reformed into a new thing. Everything is interdependent. A cow cannot live without air and the various things it eats and drinks and so on. It needs that highly recycled grass. Also...Everything is formed out of some very, very small base parts.

Souls by the Buddhist definition operate in this recycling thing too. That is called Samsara. I would think that if souls are real they too would follow this whole "Is born, lives, dies, and is reformed" thing. They are also formed of small base parts. Everything else seems to.

I cannot really speak of other religions due to lacking thorough understanding of them.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:34:32 PM by Aondeug

But you have to imagine that the people who wrote the Bible (with or without Divine Inspiration) wouldn't exactly recognize a car, or a modern city. If they really did see the future (as Isaiah is said to), it wouldn't sound very familiar to us. And so, scientific accuracy can't really be the measuring stick for that kind of thing.

Take another example: The sun holding still in the sky. This could mean that the day stayed static, which could conceivably happen because of a particularly close Super Nova. But Ol' King Herod skipped a day of Astronomy 1050, and thought that the sun just happened to change color, but otherwise was motionless.

Buddhism is pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:38:33 PM by TheEarthSheep

I don't think any system which holds one holy book above another as somehow a more legitimate guide to the workings of the universe can be seen as rational. These things make handy moral guides if gone through with common sense, but anyone who swears by them is fooling themselves in my opinion.

Except you really can't prove anything in the book wrong. In theory, anyhow. Science is, basically, human observation of reality. But just because you haven't seen something doesn't mean it's not real.

I've never seen any country outside of the United States. As far as I know, the entire idea of the Earth and other countries is a farce, and I live in Airstrip One. This is obviously a stupid argument, but you cannot actually prove that I'm wrong unless I step foot onto, say, Britain, and even then, only what I've seen you can prove to me.

Just because it cannot be proven right or wrong doesn't necessarily mean it exists. That makes applying it to real life hard, since morality is relative, but in the abstract, it means that religion is just as founded in reality as non-religion, or atheism.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:46:08 PM by USAF713

Well, before Mad comes along and locks the thread, if you acknowledge that the Bible was written by humans, and as such reflects their limited knowledge, then you admit that it is not an inerrant work.

I have substantially less opposition to those who believe the Bible is a metaphor, for instance, than I do to Biblical literalists.

This is why I class myself as agnostic. Not atheist. Denying there could, possibly, be some higher power or force we don't understand yet is as irrational as stating that it definitely has to be this one set out in these narrow guidelines written 2000 years ago.

I'm discussing the rationality of believing that what is set down in a holy text is true. I'm perfectly on topic.

edited 13th Aug '11 3:47:33 PM by GameChainsaw