What is the problem religions are trying to solve?

One of the reasons I'm now an atheist after having embraced an Eastern form of religion for 35 years is that it eventually dawned on me that religions are trying to solve problems that don't really exist. 

This isn't the case with other cultural institutions. 

For example, health care agencies try to solve the problem of people getting sick. Environmental groups try to solve the problem of pollution. Educational advocates try to solve the problem of helping children learn.

It's possible to disagree with how these problems are being addressed, but not with the fact that these are real problems. By contrast, Christianity, along with other religions, sees a big problem with sin. Which raises the question, what are they talking about?

"Sin" is a concept. It isn't something real in the same way sickness, pollution, and a lack of learning are. It's an idea that sprang from the minds of humans. "God" is another concept that doesn't refer to anything real. It's another idea that sprang from the minds of humans.

Put those two concepts together, "sin" and "God," and you've got the makings of a religion -- Christianity. 

Most religious people, though, fail to realize how thoroughly they've bought into the concepts of their faith. So thoroughly, they never question the reality of those concepts. 

Notions like God, heaven, sin, karma, soul, spirit, and such are discussed as if they possessed the same reality as trees, air, sunlight, water, dogs, and other entities that clearly exist.

So my advice to religious believers is this.

Think clearly about what problem, or problems, your chosen faith is trying to solve. If all you can come with is a self-referential statement like "The Bible says humans have original sin that only Jesus can forgive," then you've embraced a bunch of concepts that have no grounding in reality.

An exception is Buddhism, which is why Buddhism often isn't considered a religion, but a way of living. 

Buddhism says that life is suffering. That's appealingly concrete. We know that life exists. We also know that suffering exists. Finding a way to deal with the problem of suffering is the foundation of Buddhism.

Somewhat similarly, my take on Taoism is that the problem it addresses is how to live in a flowing fashion, not being bound by rigid rules or attitudes.

"Flow" is a bit more conceptual than "suffering," but having been an avid student of Tai Chi for sixteen years -- Tai Chi being a physical expression of Taoist principles -- I can confidently say that flow is something that can be observed by others and felt by oneself.

Contrast that with the central concept of the Eastern religion that I belonged to for three and half decades: God-realization under the guidance of a Perfect Living Master. There's no evidence that God exists, so no evidence that God-realization exists.

Likewise, there's no evidence that a Perfect Living Master (or guru) exists. As I've observed before, if you stuck a supposed Perfect Living Master in with a bunch of other people and asked someone to pick out the perfect master/guru, there would be no way they could do this, because there is no concrete reality underlying the abstract concept of "perfect living master."

A recent issue of New Scientist has a column by Graham Lawton called "The war against reality." It deals with the thoroughly absurd notions promulgated by those who embrace QAnon. As Lawton writes:

To cut a long story short, QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that contends the world is run by satan-worshipping paedophiles who traffic children for sex and for a life-extending compound that is extracted from their adrenal glands. 

It is named after a shady character called Q, who posts "inside information" on internet message boards. While it is all total and utter nonsense, two US presidents loom large in the QAnon narrative: Obama as one of the controlling elites and Trump as Q himself or the leader of the fight against the elites and the "deep state", a shadowy organisation that really runs the US.

Totally crazy, right? There's no evidence of what QAnon believes in. Yet a disturbingly large number of people think QAnon speaks the truth. Likewise, there's no evidence of what religions believe in, yet billions of people are religious.

Here'a another quote from Lawton's column that is a great summary of what turns me off about religion.

On a good day, I think of QAnon as a fascinating case study of human psychology and behaviour, laying bare how far from reality our minds can stray, how social forces can drag people into parallel universes and how we can sustain beliefs in the face of what is irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Comments

[Arun Marwah]

Karma is anything that you do. Like i am commenting on your post. I am cutting or ordering cutting of a tree or abusing a person. Etc. Soul is that force in the body which you may call Energy or Soul, which makes our body move. when the soul leaves our body, we are pronounced dead and are buried or cremated as per our religious beliefs.

[Arun Marwah]

sin is related to Karma. Forcing oral or anal or any other form of sex on a male or female or animal is definitely a sin. Murdering a tree or a human is definitely a sin, especially when these have not harmed us in any way. I can give thousands of other examples. But i think the ones i have given are enough to understand my point.

[Sonia]

How can you put all your faith in Science when scientists don't even agree with each other. There are many different schools of thought in the Scientific community.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-it-means-when-scientists-disagree/

I was working at the genomics research institute on MIT's campus the day they were about to run the first Cern experiment. MIT scientists were literally receiving death threats from other scientists over an experiment. Some scientists from other schools of thought were convinced this stupid particle accelerator was going to create a black hole that would grow and grow until it consumed our planet and everything around it. They thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to do more harm to our existence than splitting the atom, while other scientists believed it would become one of the greatest achievements of the 21st century.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/10oct_lhc

Scientists are often wrong. And they spend an inordinate amount of time proving each other wrong. No different from spirituality I guess.

[Um]

The first question to be asked is how did humanity learn about a creator god.

Without mystics, people having inner experiences, nobody would ever have used the word god etc.
They are the ones that came up with stories, I call them games, that explain, the universe, gave answer to the unanswered questions and unsolvable problems of humanity.

They also came up with the answers about death and the thereafter. Humans born with the double instinct of continuity of the individual and the species, want to live forever.

They not only came up with explanations but also with techniques to have the same experiences as they had and with rules on how to live related to their explanation of the universe.... the do's and don't s.

religion evolved from there ... like any other formal organization evolves from small informal activities
See how the organization of santmat involved small gatherings at somebodies house to the properties there are now, properties ruled in the same way as other organizations.

Sin etc is just an tool like legislation in society when the group cannot longer be controlled by the group itself.

these days the problem human faces are more abstract. For every human problem we have created organizations, regional and global, that sees to the problems, run by "experts".

The influx of information in regional bubbles of knowledge, can be compared with a water dam breaking and its content flooding the valley ... that would create chaos of unprecedented scale ... and that is what happened.

No longer can people in regional bubbles hold on to their believe systems and seeing them as "universal". The same holds for political and economic systems.

If a person cannot cope with this influx of information he easily gets confused ... confusion is a life threatening mental state for humans that need the information in order to fight or run. Qanon comes with simple answers to calm the mind like sellers of snake oil do.

Most people know that it is not going to help as they know that being drunk doesn't solve their problems but only a temporarily rest.

Hahahaha .... it is strange to remember that when he was sworn in, he said something in the vein of ...I am going to bring confusion .... well the confusion is there ... global, regional, everywhere.

To that confusion to end is just one answer ... mind your own business in every sphere of life. Don't get involved in the debate, do not follow anybody that comes up with solutions to end the confusion.

Everything will become clear as to what to do when the flood has come to a hold

[Um]

PS from Um

"sworn in" should be "appointed by his uncle" ... :-)

And

If ...the notion of God etc is related to the needs of humanity, than .... one should research those needs first and not in the first place the answers that were given and found in reaction to these needs, in terms of techniques and religion etc.

How deep, honest, urgent etc is that need to experience what these mystics spoke of .... or .... is it more an means to an end.

If one looks around, those who arrived at their set goals successfully, had no or few ulterior side goals. They all were driven by love, devotion, curiosity for that goal to the complete exclusion of eveything else.

Just have an look at the academic world ... they come with the thousands .... and use the outcome for everything but the science they graduated in ... only a few do.

The question remains why are so many accepted for initiation knowing that they miss the dedication that is needed to even advance a little.

[Osho Robbins]

"Karma is anything that you do. Like i am commenting on your post. I am cutting or ordering cutting of a tree or abusing a person. Etc. Soul is that force in the body which you may call Energy or Soul, which makes our body move. when the soul leaves our body, we are pronounced dead and are buried or cremated as per our religious beliefs.

sin is related to Karma. Forcing oral or anal or any other form of sex on a male or female or animal is definitely a sin. Murdering a tree or a human is definitely a sin, especially when these have not harmed us in any way." - Arun Marwah

Arun - you write this as if it is a matter of proven fact.
when in fact - it is just a belief you hold
but to you it appears to be true (because that is how beliefs work. What you believe is true becomes true for you.)

so in your world sin, karma, etc are facts not theories.

in the above narative, Brian states

"Most religious people, though, fail to realize how thoroughly they've bought into the concepts of their faith. So thoroughly, they never question the reality of those concepts.
Notions like God, heaven, sin, karma, soul, spirit, and such are discussed as if they possessed the same reality as trees, air, sunlight, water, dogs, and other entities that clearly exist."

The act of not questioning those concepts is what keeps us stuck. we fully believe that those concepts are reality - not a belief.

so in our world - it does appear that the meditation solves a real problem - the problem of karma and of needing to go back to god and reach sach khand.

so when the guru says "nowhere to go - nothing to do" - that does not fit our world model and we cannot question the guru so we do the only thing that is left - we delete the statement he made - we pretend he never said it and we interpret it to mean something that DOES fit into our world view.
we do this because we refuse to change our world view - it takes a lot to leave a religion.
we have based our whole life on it.
I did the same ; from a young age, all I wanted was to get to sach khand.
I was fully convinced that Sat Purush was a real being - albeit a powerful spiritual being - but a being nevertheless.
Imagine my shock when I discovered there is no such person.
My whole world fell apart.
My goal of reaching Sach Khand shattered. It was the end.
but all ends are also new beginnings.

then began the journey to enlightenment / nirvana.
the journey without goals
but it could not start until I fully gave up the mistaken notions of a separate soul
that is trying to get purified enough to be allowed into sach khand.

all these notions kept me thoroughly stuck in duality

then I realized that I had bought into them - they were not real.
it was ME that was giving those ideas the power of being 'real'

they were just concepts that I had bought into
none of them were real.

I was giving them power over me by believing them.
drop the belief and they have no power over me.

that is the pathway to freedom.

[knowledgegame]

The very fact that scientists disagree is precisely why science makes progress.

Quite different than religion, which tends to appeal to authority and never overthrow earlier
dictums or dogmas.

The essay penned by T.H. Huxley is refreshing here.

http://drnissani.net/mnissani/a&s/Allsci.htm

[Spence Tepper]

Religions are trying to solve human suffering. They have their theories of our original nobility and purity, our fall into sin, and their practices of redemption.
How is it that people find peace and happiness in holding those beliefs, in practicing their faith? How do they find re-emergence and rebirth?

Yet they do.

[Spence Tepper]

What religions assert is that our natural state is whole, knowledgeable, harmonious with all things and happy. And our current state is ignorance, blindness, disconnected, and in pain.

But if you leave all that you are in the middle of, even momentarily, you find peace and happiness.

This is the fundamental basis of faith, religous and spiritual experience.

Religion doesn't actually, at its core, express fact based truths.

Religion explains we can't possibly understand objectively.

Religion teaches in fables, metaphors and similes spiritual truths with the promise of a more objective understanding through communion with God in prayer.

One thing is certain. We are, objectively, part of this creation. We are part of a larger whole, however we come to understand this.

[connectfour]

Quite different than religion, which tends to appeal to authority and never overthrow earlier
dictums or dogmas.

What about Martin Luther? And how all the Chrisitan churches are CONSTANTLY breaking off into new branches... even RS has many different sects. Spiritual and religious people are always questioning their beliefs and the beliefs of others. That's why there are so many different religions in the world and so many sects and so many different paths. There are many different sects of Buddhism and Sant Mat and Christianity. Sunis and Shias, Sikhs...

Religious people are constantly challenging dogma. Didn't the Catholic church recently decide to do away with purgatory? I would say this is exactly the kind of thing that will help the Catholic church to make progress.

It's almost an amusing article...
Pope Francis has abolished hell, purgatory, heaven: papal confidant
10/29/2017 at 5:29 PM Posted by Mary Anne Hackett

[connectfour]

The very fact that scientists disagree is precisely why science makes progress.

Quite different than religion, which tends to appeal to authority and never overthrow earlier
dictums or dogmas.

The essay penned by T.H. Huxley is refreshing here.

http://drnissani.net/mnissani/a&s/Allsci.htm

Posted by: knowledgegame | September 29, 2020 at 11:13 AM

BTW, I very much enjoyed the essay and article you linked.

Despite the scientific method as it is beautifully illustrated in the below excerpt from the article, Scientists are still divided into many different camps. Hard science and philosophy both require critical thinking, but it is applied differently and philosophy is a little more liberal in that it accepts various different arguments.

"The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. There is no more difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, than there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight."

Perhaps mathematics could solve this "God problem". :)

[Sonia]

I believe "thinking" is a skill that has to be learned and refined. It's one of the reasons I have always liked this blog despite the fact I'm not an atheist and have never been inclined to rule out the existence of a collective Superconsciousness.

An overview of Bloom's taxonomy: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Thinking is like breathing. It's what we humans do. It's involuntary. Learning how to think can lead to a greater awareness which leads one to understand themself and where they fit into the order of things. (That was a really general way of saying we all have our own journey--it's important to be educated.)

[Spence Tepper]

"What is the problem religion is trying to resolve?"

We forgot.
And that's the problem.

Now, what did I come in here to get?

We forget all the time.

[Osho Robbins]

There is no problem.

And that is the problem.

Humans like problems
It keeps them busy and feeling important

So “no problems” doesn’t fit with the way humans like to live.

So they create the “God problem”

Which is this:

“I have no evidence of a God. But I like the idea of a God, so I will create a fictional god in my own image”

“ now this God I created doesn’t talk to me. I want to meet him.
He lives in Sach Khand, so now how do I get there?”

Is there a bus service? Oh meditation? Good idea. If I meditate, I can go to Sach Khand and meet this God. That should keep me busy for a lifetime

Or two.

Then I’ll think of something else.

[Neon]

The problem the religions and gurus are trying to solve is: how to get rich off gullible people. Simple as that.