From what I've seen, religious people tend to forget about religion once the going gets tough. — baker

My own view is people often hold beliefs with minimal commitment to them. Sometimes beliefs are held lightly so a person can feel a sense of belonging in their community.

Furthermore, people often jettison belief systems when things get very hard. - whatever those beliefs may be. An ontological crisis can generate significant disruption wherein the old ideas no longer seem to work.

That said, it goes both ways. A significant crisis is also an opportunity to seek a new belief system, perhaps for consolation.

The secret to being happy in the foxholes is probably to expect chaos and suffering in the first place. Some people are fortunate and do not get to know the foxholes.

The saying there are no atheists in the foxholes refers specifically to the fact that otherwise secular people become superstitious and religious when facing death for the first time in a terrifying war
zone. This falls under what might be called 'folk wisdom.'

There are of course some people who thrive on crisis and chaos. Their beliefs are unlikely to change in the foxholes. If we are to take the 'foxholes' as standing in for the vicissitudes (fortunes and tragedies) encountered in life, then who knows?

I generally think people derive meaning from immediate things - possessions, relationships, community, work, friends, place, hobbies, nature, prejudices, hatreds and loves. I suspect the big questions relating to transcendence play a minor role. Theism or atheism refer to clubs people belong to, it's a rare individual who lives them with commitment.

accept the pointless existence of life and the universe and still feel meaning — baker

Meaning is use.

Even if life was intrinsically meaningless, extrinsic meaning can come from how life is used. Chess pieces on a chess board are intrinsically meaningless. The meaning of chess comes from how the pieces are moved on the board.

IE, meaning comes not from life itself but how life is used.

I've never been able to take chess seriously because it is essentially meaningless. :razz:

chess seriously — Tom Storm

But the meaninglessness of the game may be the very meaning that you are searching for. A Dadaesque rejection of reason and logic for irrationality and intuition, a Continental rather than analytic approach.

As Duchamp wrote: "All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.”

A significant crisis is also an opportunity to seek a new belief system, perhaps for consolation.

The secret to being happy in the foxholes is probably to expect chaos and suffering in the first place. Some people are fortunate and do not get to know the foxholes.

The saying there are no atheists in the foxholes refers specifically to the fact that otherwise secular people become superstitious and religious when facing death for the first time in a terrifying war
zone. This falls under what might be called 'folk wisdom.' — Tom Storm

I was in what would have been a very serious car accident with an 18-wheeler and trailer, around 15 years ago. I got super lucky, the car was smashed, but I was totally fine. So there were no consequences to me or anyone else other than my car crushed and a fence broken when my car flew into it. I managed to open the door and just stroll right into organizing the police and everything on the location, the truck driver more traumatized than me.

When I got home a friend asked if I'm religious now. I replied sincerely: fuck off.

Meaning is use.

Even if life was intrinsically meaningless, extrinsic meaning can come from how life is used. Chess pieces on a chess board are intrinsically meaningless. The meaning of chess comes from how the pieces are moved on the board.

IE, meaning comes not from life itself but how life is used. — RussellA

Exactly my point.

People put so much effort into finding a cosmic meaning to everything that they can go through their entire life without putting much meaning into that life. Accepting the meaningless nature of the objective universe does not mean the subjective experience has to be meaningless, and I think that if one actively finds meaningful things out of the meaningless mess, that is worth every breath of one's life. A futile surrender to religious belief somewhat makes people miss out on actually feeling a meaning of existence within the life that they have. They focus all that energy on the hope of something totally unproven to show itself after death and it means wasting an entire life with the risk of nothing being beyond death, which by any facts about biology, is the truth.

For me, religious belief and people who are consumed by it are one of the great tragedies of the human condition.

Of course, some find meaning in the practices of religious belief, and that I'm not opposed to. The problem I have is when such belief is forced upon other people, indoctrinate them, and consequently affecting many others by the irrationality out of such forced belief. Not many major wars and conflicts have been done without any religious themes.

If people can find meaning in religious practices that doesn't force itself onto others, then that is a purposeful meaning in their life. But it's my hypothesis that we can find "rituals" outside of irrational belief, we can find meaning without irrational belief and we can live happily, even in face of tragedy, without irrational belief. Meditation is a great example of how some religious practices were made into practice outside of belief. Meditation is by many researchers found to be of great health benefit to the physical and mental state of the one practicing it. If someone creates a daily routine, a "ritual", to meditate every morning or every night, it can create a tremendous sense of calm and tranquility. Without having anything to do with belief or religion.

Finding meaning outside of belief systems and religion means it's always a search inwards. Introspection, listening to the inner voice as a guide for the meaning of external events. It requires an open mind, it requires learning new things, knowledge, wisdom, and empathy. Religion and belief is a safety blanket, something to hide under, but never really true when examined. It's always limited and I can't even imagine the horror one feels when dying, getting a sense of nothing being there beyond the horizon when all their lives they've been taught there will be a paradise. Accepting and knowing the end is the end, like a computer being shut off, not showing anything but a black void on the screen, is very scary. But accepting this horrific thing, as it is, removes it of its scary power over you. You know it's the end, memories of you continue past your death, eventually, you are an unmarked grave in history, eventually nothing at all. So you start focusing on the time you have, it's the only thing that matters. The time you have and the things that actually exist; the things that can be witnessed, experienced, felt, learned about, understood etc.

Religious people and people with belief often think of atheism, or the "ideal atheism" as I've been told is my definition of it, as "lacking something". But I would argue that you add something. You add your own existence to the time you are alive, not excluding it as being something temporary before the "real purpose of existing" after death. You dismiss all the "belief noise" and start to actually fill your life with real things, you put your time into those things, skip the wasted time spent on religion and do something substantial instead.

There's more to life than religion and belief.

rejection of reason and logic for irrationality and intuition, a Continental rather than analytic approach. — RussellA

Still requires an atheistic approach. If you reject set "rules for life" then there's an absence of them. If atheism is the absence of belief and faith in God or religious motifs, then the rejection works best within atheism. I still feel that rejection of reason and logic isn't necessary in order to not preoccupy oneself with "winning or losing". You can be very analytical and still not have an interest in winning or losing. Analytical people are very interested in arriving at substantial truths that exist and can be witnessed, but it doesn't mean they're doing it to win, just that they find meaning in the pursuit of knowledge. That pursuit doesn't have an end or is able to be won or lost, it just is a meaning in itself. As life is not a journey towards the end goal, death is not a win or loss, it just is.

As Duchamp wrote: "All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.” — RussellA

It's a relief to know that nothing exists and it's just all a case of words being naughty. But we are back to chess again. Can it be that the man who codified modern art for us by way of a parodic fountain can also reinvent epistemology through a 6th century Indian board game?

Not many major wars and conflicts have been done without any religious themes. — Christoffer

This is not true at all except in the most trivial sense.

the secret to being happy in a foxhole — baker

(Attempting to combine the insights of the 5th C Greek Tigranes son of Artabanus, a 6th C Indian board game, the 18th C German philosopher Kant and the French 20th C avant-garde artists).

Life is like chess, where the pieces and board are intrinsically meaningless, yet there is meaning in use, in that the meaning of chess comes from how the pieces are moved on the board.

Meaning is in the journey, not in the final destination, not in a momentary win or loss, where “Tis not for Money they contend, but for Glory”.

The game is played using one's free play of imagination and understanding, one's reason and logic in harmony with one's irrationality and intuition. In this foxhole of sometimes crisis and chaos, rather than timorously looking outwards for imagined support and consolation, to look courageously inwards in order to find the strength in the reality of one's own existence.

IE, meaning comes from playing the game using the human spirit of imagination and understanding.

This is not true at all except in the most trivial sense. — T Clark

Do you mean that there are rarely religious themes under the actions of people through war throughout history? Including all those who thought they were guided by God or Gods to invade and conquer other lands? I'd say that religious beliefs and similar irrational ideals were the core of most wars and conflicts. Rarely have I found intentions not related to religious themes as reasons for such acts. Maybe you can explain why this is superficial and that there are reasons other than that at play. Remember, even conquers for power were mostly generated by illusions of divinity for the conquerer, rather than conquering for anything else.

I'm with T-dog on this one. There are religious wars but, more often, religion is the excuse and rallying point, not the cause.

EDIT: I seem to be largely defending religion atm. I have no explanation for that.

I'm with T-dog on this one. There are religious wars but, more often, religion is the excuse and rallying point, not the cause. — Kenosha Kid

I'm talking about human history. Quantify the entirety of that before concluding the reasons for all conflicts. I would say that even in the cases where conflicts and wars were seemingly by other reasons, religion has a core anyway.

But, after everything I wrote, this is the thing to hang up on. It kind of shows how the argument gets steered off course when some get triggered by these notions. This is not about religious war, but the need to defend religious history around that seems to be a valuable point to many, to the point of ignoring the rest. I think I've made my point around this specific thing.

We're fast arriving at the point where some larrikin decides to demonstrate that 20th mass murder is the result of atheism (i.e., godless Communism), proving Friedrich Nietzsche right about the inimical consequences of the Death of God. I'll do it now to save time.

I'd say that religious beliefs and similar irrational ideals were the core of most wars and conflicts. — Christoffer

We're talking about religion, not "similar irrational ideals." Here's a link to Wikipedia "List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

It would be wrong to classify most of the wars listed as religious wars, even though they might have had religious components. In general, even most wars where religion was heavily involved were primarily to build empires.

I would say that even in the cases where conflicts and wars were seemingly by other reasons, religion has a core anyway. — Christoffer

Oh sure, if you define religious war to include all wars not about religion, then trivially all wars are religious wars. Perfectly logical.

In general, even most wars where religion was heavily involved were primarily to build empires. — T Clark

Exactly right.

We're fast arriving at the point where some larrikin decides to demonstrate that 20th mass murder is the result of atheism (i.e., godless Communism), proving Friedrich Nietzsche right about the inimical consequences of the Death of God. I'll do it now to save time. — Tom Storm

Ah, that kind of argument again, it's getting old and has been countered so many times without any of the theists able to remember the conclusions of those counterarguments. I think I've countered this a dozen times on this forum. Maybe create a search button for all the biased theists needing to get some counterarguments of that bullshit, I'm tired of doing it over and over in all the evangelical threads of indoctrinated believers.




It's so interesting to see you all focusing on this out of the entirety of my argument. It's like you don't get my point whatsoever.

Actively clinging on to a point that you can stretch to be the only thing to argue about. That "no, not all conflicts are religious, look at these examples, look at all the proof that this is NOT the case". Yeah, sure, some conflicts are not religious in nature or have anything to do with religion. That's not my point. Seriously. If this is the thing that gets people riled up, no wonder I'm fucking right.

In general, even most wars where religion was heavily involved were primarily to build empires — T Clark

That's true but you can have religious empires so the question is where to draw the line between the empire building and the religion as the source.
I think its a worthwhile distinction to make.
Also I think whats really being referenced on the “religion as source” side is just an example of human nature, specifically the tribalism of which religion is an extension of. I think its tempting to blame religion because it’s such a good example of what dumb apes get up to in groups but its really about the sociological burdens evolution equipped human beings with.

Timely thread. Personally I moved away from religion a long time ago, I felt it as indoctrination and limiting thinking more than anything else. I became a new atheist before the New Atheists. Thankfully I moved away from that.

I can see how many, many people can find comfort in religion. Comfort that would otherwise be very hard to find.

I think meaning can be problematic, irrespective of religion. Few people are spared from episodes of doubt, anxiety or meaninglessness, it comes with the ride. Would me believing that in another life I would be assured a meaningful plentiful existence help me in this one? Probably.

What's often missing is the flip side. For every heaven there's a hell. We cannot, unless we know we have acted perfectly, guarantee that our actions wont lead to a much worse eternity, however hard that may be to grasp.

So to answer your question, there's no secret beyond truisms. But these are available for all to see.

That was what Albert Camus' books were mainly about, and others of the 20th century existentialists. I think in Camus' works, it called for a kind of heroism, not to give in to feelings of nihilism or despair even if our existential plight seems to suggest it.

___

Definition of what constitutes religion is problematical, I think, mainly because of the way it was defined and thrashed out in the early Christian church. 'Orthodoxy' means basically 'right belief' or 'right worship' and (speaking of truisms) it was a truism that you defied orthodoxy at your peril. This puts tremendous, almost exclusive, emphasis on 'belief', as a kind of 'proposition' about some being that purportedly does or doesn't exist. But

In most pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of attaining truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were crucial and each had its particular sphere of competence. Logos ("reason; science") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to control our environment and function in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external realities. But logos could not assuage human grief or give people intimations that their lives had meaning. For that they turned to mythos, an early form of psychology, which dealt with the more elusive aspects of human experience.

Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.

Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

But during the modern period, scientific logos became so successful that myth was discredited, the logos of scientific rationalism became the only valid path to truth, and Newton and Descartes claimed it was possible to prove God's existence, something earlier Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians had vigorously denied. Christians bought into the scientific theology, and some embarked on the doomed venture of turning their faith's mythos into logos. — Karen Armstrong

I would add that philosophically, I find atheism barren, because the implications are that life is an absurdity - a thought Camus was very familiar with. It is taken for granted by many people that life arose by chance, kind of a cosmic fluke, and that human life has no intrinsic meaning or purpose. But a lot of that is because of the repressed fear of orthodoxy, so ultimately, and ironically, religion as understood in the Christian world has a lot of the responsibility for that.

What is important about religion is finding the source of what Christians call agapé, unconditional compassion, and what Buddhists call bodhicitta, buried behind all the ruins of the ancient faiths. It is both the easiest and most elusive thing in the world. To turn your back on that because of religion is the cruelest irony.

What is important about religion is finding the source of what Christians call agapé, unconditional compassion, and what Buddhists call bodhicitta, buried behind all the ruins of the ancient faiths. It is both the easiest and most elusive thing in the world. To turn your back on that because of religion is the cruelest irony. — Wayfarer

Religious people are just as likely to be abject and bereft as anyone else. After 30 plus years of working in the field of mental ill health and substance misuse, I am more likely to meet with people who have a faith than not, particularly amongst the suicidal. I think this is because they are more likely to harbor guilt and other negative emotions as a consequence of surviving church initiated traumas. The high levels of sexual abuse and violence perpetrated and covered up by religious organizations has become one of their defining cultural legacies.

“Religion is based primarily upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly as the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."

Bertrand Russell

Agapé.

On topic, I'd never really considered the fact that the whole notion of 'no atheists in foxholes' is a comment less about atheists than it is about religion - the fact that religion is what one turns to when one is in a desperate, base situation of immanent death.

Yes, it is truly fucked up, and there are many victims. Doesn’t really have any bearing on my post, though.

Doesn’t really have any bearing on my post, though. — Wayfarer

Just that it isn't so easy to contrast the barren atheist with the loving believer. Notions of the Absurd are really the domain of faiths where the above evils seem to happen so often on behalf of transcendence and moral foundations.

Doesn’t really have any bearing on my post, though. — Wayfarer

Sure it does. The reality of religion - as opposed to the idealized self-image, which pales before it - is that is has left its mark on the world in trains of blood, and in this one, not at all isolated case, hundreds of dead children.

As far as life being an absurdity without religion, I find the opposite to the case - that religion appeals to the fascist in all of us, who wants to be told what to do by way of some prior cosmic ordering. It is a trembling before freedom, rooted in fear, expressed in the arrogation of tribal campfire stories to cosmic proportion. There are few things more stifling and oppressive. It is no accident that religious history is just another name for a history of oppression and institutional murder and avarice, for millennia. To look at the utter insanity wrought by religious belief and to see in it 'love' is to have have engaged in the highest form of self delusion. It is no accident the most revered Christian theorist of love was the same one to have so vigorously pursued a campaign of persecution against those who dared to deviate from his teachings - Augustine and the Donatists, to wit.

It's so interesting to see you all focusing on this out of the entirety of my argument. It's like you don't get my point whatsoever. — Christoffer

You're on an internet forum, get over it. If a little subdiscussion starts over what you think is one trivial and uninteresting detail, you don't have to entertain it, just move onto the next comment without whining.

Yes, a philosophy forum, meaning, a higher quality should be expected. Outside of picking out a single point, that point has been discussed so many times on this forum and believers defend it saying “No! Religion is innocent, it has no blood on its hands. But look at atheism and communism, that’s where the blood is”.

It’s a blanket statement that’s both wrong and mind-numbingly lacking in philosophical quality. It’s tedious going down that route every time believers get triggered by the notion that religion has a bloody history that isn’t at all as visible on the atheism side. People need to pick up a history book, and also understand what they read.

It's so interesting to see you all focusing on this out of the entirety of my argument. It's like you don't get my point whatsoever. — Christoffer

"It is possible to accept life, nature, the universe, as it is, no more or less..." "...it is possible to accept the pointless existence of life and the universe and still feel meaning"

Given people do precisely this, it must be true. I think for all the lofty talk about meaning requiring some transcendent foundation, I believe people obtain meaning from being in the world, interacting and doing things. Possessions, nature, music, food, friends, family, home, whatever you are into is where your meaning comes from. I believe this is true for theists and atheists alike.

Ah so you clearly do want to talk about it, you just can't handle people pointing out where you're wrong. Figure out what it is you want and act accordingly and, try this, with some maturity. If you want to defend the point, great, but like you say this is a philosophy forum and posts like your last aren't going to cut it: that's just tantrum-throwing. If you don't feel inclined to defend the point, just have some dignity and move on peacefully. If you're just trying to pick a moronic fight, well carry on as you are I guess. I'm here to discuss the matter, including the finer details. For the record, I considered the matter closed several posts ago.

I can't wrap my head around one thing. God, according to theists, imbues our lives with meaning. Without God, they claim, life/lives is/are meaningless. However, if God decides to what purpose each one of us should be put to, this purpose not of our own choosing, shouldn't we be worried rather than happy about this arrangement? There can be no free will under such circumstances - we're all supposed to perform a specific task given to us by God and that's that, no change requests, no complaining, no nothing.

If, on the other hand, free will is as important as people make it out to be, it's more reasonable to assume that God would grant us full self-determination which means we're at liberty to pick n choose our own purpose, our very own meaning, suited to our tastes and temperament.

This, as you might've already guessed, is precisely what an atheist would recommend - life is meaningless in the sense there's no real, forget about grand, reason why we're here. We're just here, that's all. Given this, each person now has power over faer destiny, fae can decide on his own terms, what to do with faer life. The bottom line is we exercise our free will to spend our lives the way we want to and that is our meaning/purpose.

The choices are clear, either one, be like the theist and let God dictate your life's choices (no free will) or two, be a theist still and realize that God's will is for you is to be master of your fate (free will) or three,be an atheist and decide in complete freedom to what purpose you want to consecrate your life to.

A theist should opt for the 2nd choice but the difference between it and the atheist's choice (3rd choice) is trivial.

The reality of religion - as opposed to the idealized self-image, which pales before it - is that is has left its mark on the world in trains of blood, and in this one, not at all isolated case, hundreds of dead children. — StreetlightX

If you read my post carefully you will see it's not religion I'm defending. I said, what is important about religion is finding the source of compassion. But to realise something like the source of compassion, to find if there is a source of that, is rather a religious kind of idea. If you can find a way to seek or express unconditional compassion without any recourse to such ideas then so much the better. But in the absence of that, it doesn't come naturally, I don't think.

I can't wrap my head around one thing. God, according to theists, imbues our lives with meaning. — TheMadFool

It's more that: if what materialism says is true - if we are a kind of 'rogue chemical reaction', the outcome of a 'collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it- then any idea of meaning is basically an illusion.

If ...free will is important ...it's more reasonable to assume that God would grant us full self-determination which means we're at liberty to pick n choose our own purpose, our very own meaning, suited to our tastes and temperament. — TheMadFool

That is actually what mainstream Christianity believes.

let God dictate your life's choices — TheMadFool

And that isn't.

It's more that: if what materialism says is true - if we are a kind of 'rogue chemical reaction', the outcome of a 'collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it- then any idea of meaning is basically an illusion. — Wayfarer

Why? Nothing imbued me with a shirt. I'm still wearing one; it's not an illusion.