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Comment by thelasthuman | Hacker News Reader

For something supposedly so good on it's own, religion really does try it's best to target vulnerable people. Naive children, desperate people, people who have lost someone, people sick with addiction (referencing the submitting to the higher power step).

Whatever helps during trying times I guess. It just seems to me if religion was so great on its own, it would be approached in a calm rational manner targeted at mature adults with no driving force behind it.

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Alternatively, religion is trying to help those that need it the most. The set of people who need help the most also tend to be the most vulnerable.

Religion is just something that lays the groundwork for individuals' ideology. Looking back on elementary school I now realize that a large part of it served basically the same function and learning reading/writing/math was a parallel objective.

I'm quite salty over how I went to public school and they skipped everything that was politically inconvenient. I switched states in high school and I realized that "social studies" in my old state was basically "history" in my new state sans whatever could lead to people questioning the ideology/narrative of the ruling party (effectively single party state). My girlfriend went to religious grade school and they did the same thing. Evolution was inconvenient so they just skipped it and covered more chemistry/geology/space stuff in science.

When you teach a kid (or any vulnerable person) the same things over and over again there becomes a point where it tends to stick with them even when they later learn it's wrong.

My own sense is that the religions of the world are mostly in agreement about the following things:

* renunciation of self

* acceptance of the world / reality, including suffering

* love of mankind

* love of the gift of life

Religion as an institution, however, is something different than the "message" contained within the sacred texts or traditions of religions (lower-case r).

Some religion attracts fanatics, those who believe "We are right and everyone else is wrong." Within that statement there is a marked absence of acceptance, love of mankind, love of life.

There is also spiritual pride, which is more subtle. In Christ's parable of the pharisee and the publican, we see the publican, who prays in all humility for God's mercy, and the pharisee, who thanks God that he is better than the publican. And many Christians reading that parable will think, "and thank God I'm not like the pharisee"!

>For something supposedly so good on it's own, religion really does try it's best to target vulnerable people.

As does medicine, if you think about it.

As a person of Christian faith willing to share my faith, I'm not sure I "target" vulnerable people. I don't discriminate for who receives my sharing. I'm spoiled to live in a society and social circle that doesn't have a lot of suffering. Even when people pass away, those still living are often rational and emotionally mature enough to understand that their grief is temporary, and that they can move on with life after grieving. We should support them in the manner that they'd find most helpful, and it's not complicated. In fact, if me sharing at that moment would cause them to seethe with hate, I probably should back off; they should be able to feel love from me, not hate, and if they feel hate, I'm doing it wrong.

Correspondingly, I'd need to go out of my way to share with vulnerable people, like to a homeless shelter or an orphanage or the like, as I don't run into many vulnerable people in everyday life. I am sure you would have no issue with my volunteering and donations. You'd only have issue with my sharing my thoughts to these vulnerable people. But again, I'm not targeting them, and I'm not discriminating towards them. I say the same things to people who are mature, successful, and solid. My faith just happens to power my actions, and my actions hopefully reflect my faith. As written in James ch2 v18: "But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds."

If I run into a vulnerable person and my sharing helps them, that's great. That's happened before. If I run into a nonvulnerable person and my sharing helps them, that's also great. That's also happened before. If either of them want to reject me, I feel sad about it, but I imagine it's similar to how a nutritionist feels sad when someone refuses to eat healthy food. If they reject me or my sharing, not much I can do about that, and everyone makes their own decisions. If they don't agree with my decisions, well, despite believing in the Judeo-Christian God, I am not God to make them think the way I want them to think.

I am not sure how to live out my faith and volunteer without sharing what drives my actions. You may find that in poor taste because you do not agree with my faith. But it is not sensible to do some action and at the same time reject or suppress the reason why I perform that action. I posit that it's simply a coincidence that my faith delivers a message that can appeal to vulnerable people. You find it to be malicious and disingenuous. I find it to be logical, as this is what Jesus' sermon on the mount was all about. Blessed are the poor, the weak, the meek, etc.

I'll concede that there are people of faith who seem to care about getting the message out while forgetting what the message actually means. I'm sorry those people exist. But I hope you'll be willing to consider it's not supposed to be like that. The above quoted James ch2 v18 is what it's supposed to look like.

Well said. Thanks for taking the time to post a thoughtful reply.

Religion has nothing to do with the higher power step. That's just meant to assert that there are things beyond one's control, even if your chosen higher power is just your conscience. In fact, 12 step programs are completely agnostic on their own (there are some who try to make it about a religious deity, but that's rare).

AA SPEAKER: Your "higher power" can be anything. It doesn't have to be God. RON HOWARD VOICE-OVER: It's God

Ok, now what if I were to tell you that the idea that "things are beyond one's control" can also be a toxic ideology that pushing people into a forced helplessness position?

That's a pretty broad brush to paint all of religion with.

There are plenty of rational arguments for Christianity for those willing to do due diligence:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/countering-a-dist...

Doesn't look like you've provided any in that link?

Yah, sorry about that. I responded above with a better link.

Do you have an example of those types of arguments? The linked article doesn't actually go into any of then and just referenced books I couldn't find. I'm very curious about this subject because in high school I took theology classes and the monks taught about the logical arguments but the arguments were always a little lackluster (the teacher's knew this going into it). The teacher's point during that section was that it would always require faith.

Peruse the short arguments section on Peter Kreeft's website:

http://www.peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm

I've just read one (http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/design.htm) and it was less than convincing. In fact, I feel like it's a less-crude version of Mac's argument (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk8UdV7GQ0).

I don't know much about Mac, but I'm sure he was inspired by others, as was Kreeft. There's a lot more besides the one you read, e.g.

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-exi...

I've read the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Kreeft and it tries to make these philosophical topics more accessible to the average reader. There are numerous speakers and writers out there, and you may prefer one of them. For example, Tim Keller is quite different and you can hear him here:

https://gospelinlife.com/downloads/literalism-isn-t-the-bibl...

I've enjoyed reading Dallas Willard:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/language-being-g...

Sorry, the link wasn't that good in hindsight. Was trying to respond between meetings.

Here is a better jumping off point :

http://www.veritas.org/how-does-christianity-measure-up/

If you want a very in depth treatment, then:

https://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Knowledge-God-Theology-Lords...

> There are plenty of rational arguments for Christianity

No there aren't. Faith, by its very definition, is irrational.

Faith is not by definition irrational, any more than hope is irrational. It's not provable, but that's different from irrational.

The subject matter of faith may be irrational, but faith-based communities have benefits that ratheists miss out on.

All communities have benefits that those they exclude and other miss out on.

But I'm not joining a communist cell just for the comradeship.

But the thing is: acting rational in every situation requires a lot of mental effort, knowledge, intelligence. Not everyone is capable of this, in fact it is quite rare (because probably you need IQ > 130).

Now, the workaround for people who fail to act rationally on their own was to give them a set of heuristics that they could follow to achieve the same effect without too much thinking, a.k.a. religion.

Of course some religions advocate totally irrational things, like human sacrifices or jihad, but some evolved to the point that following their teachings is a net gain for the society.

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