I thought that in May we should tackle something a bit more contentious at the Stoa—Religion and Spirituality.
More here...
Some questions follow to provoke some thought. Hopefully, we will get a range of views, pro and con, to get us arguing!
We won’t cover all these questions so pick out the ones you feel are most pertinent. Or perhaps you can come up with some better ones.
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And here is a collection of aphorisms on Religion to provoke thought and discussion.
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Religion and ‘another world’
Religions postulate another world beyond this one, which gives our everyday, mundane world meaning and purpose. Sometimes, supernatural beings such as gods and angels give us information about this normally, hidden, spiritual domain. Is this worldview still credible or just beyond belief? If we can’t any longer believe in the old ‘Three-tier’ universe (Heaven, Earth, Hell) does that leave us without meaning or purpose in a cold, impersonal universe? Alternatively, are there aspects of the old supernatural cosmology that we can still hang onto and use?
Can you be religious without religious experience, ie, experience of this other world?
Can you be ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’?
Religion and the Supernatural
Religion and surviving death
We want to live beyond our death for three reasons:
We understandably fear the thought of our own non-existence.
We want justice to be done: we want compensation for our undeserved sufferings and losses in life and we want the guilty punished.
We want meet our loved ones again and continue our relationships with them.
Can you have values and morality without religious faith?
Does religion make you happier?
Does religion make us better people—more compassionate and concerned for the welfare of our neighbours or as Christopher Hitchens says, does “religion poison everything”? Does it make us more tribal and aggressive?
Can you have a cohesive society without a religion that everyone can adhere to? Are there secular alternatives like Nationalism and Political ideologies that can play the same role as religion used to.
Is there a difference between faith and belief? Can you have one without the other? Faith as trust and commitment based on belief but not as a species of belief.
Or is faith just belief in things for which you have inadequate evidence or reasons?
Religion and Cosmic justice
If the universe was created by an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omni-benevolent Father God, why do good people suffer?
Do you believe we live in a just universe? Do people who suffer tragically and unjustly somehow get compensation through a cosmic law which balances everything out in the end?
Are the stories we read in the various religions ‘true’ in a factual sense or can they be said to be ‘truthful’ in the literary sense? True our human condition and ‘true’ ethically? Can religion be accessible to us is we read it as symbolic and metaphorical? Or do we lose something if we take that approach?
How much of your religion is fictional?
Is science incompatible with religious faith?
Does science undermine our dignity as human beings, or undermine our values by turning us into mere objects in a meaningless universe? Does religion by contrast gives us meaning, purpose and dignity?
Do religion and science just cover different domains of human existence like Science and Art do? In fact should we interpret religion as belonging to the domain of art? (See NOMA—Non-Overlapping Magisteria)
