Religious Buddhism? What kind of beliefs does that entail? I have a Burmese Buddhist friend but his beliefs are pretty incoherent, as far as I can tell. I would appreciate hearing about it since it's one of the few that I don't have a good feel for.
I haven't told my family about it yet; I don't want to make a big deal about it because my mother has some (weird confused) level of belief that gives her comfort, and a large part of that is about tradition. As for my friends, most of them are either consciously atheist or at least not religious, so most of them won't care one way or the other whether I uphold some silly dietary rituals.
I'm still pretty ambivalent on the function of religion as a whole. At the lowest level, I find them perpetuating some incredibly toxic memes. Not just the obvious anti-abortion and anti-gay rights stuff, but (for example) I've also noticed anecdotally that people who were raised religious and then deconvert usually end up with lots of problems because they've been trained to believe in some kind of Deep Universal Meaning that isn't necessarily there and certainly isn't going to be handed to us on a silver platter. At the higher levels you see all the usual problems that you get in a large hierarchical structure; it becomes more about politics than about serving the congregation.
But on the positive side I've met some really good religious people - not just nice, but that rare kind of person who seems to radiate goodness and compassion - and I think that a large part of that goodness comes from growing up in a tightly integrated and cohesive community and knowing with absolute certainty that you're unconditionally loved and accepted. It would be nice if we could recreate that sense of acceptance without having to posit a God, but it just doesn't seem possible since it rests on God being Other and omni-everything.
Neutrally, religion fulfils a lot of important community-building functions, but I'm pretty sure that even if religion vanished tomorrow some other structure would immediately take its place and have most of the same costs and benefits. And I don't think people need religion to engage in mob thinking or bigotry - religion is just a convenient vessel for it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 09:26 pm (UTC)I haven't told my family about it yet; I don't want to make a big deal about it because my mother has some (weird confused) level of belief that gives her comfort, and a large part of that is about tradition. As for my friends, most of them are either consciously atheist or at least not religious, so most of them won't care one way or the other whether I uphold some silly dietary rituals.
I'm still pretty ambivalent on the function of religion as a whole. At the lowest level, I find them perpetuating some incredibly toxic memes. Not just the obvious anti-abortion and anti-gay rights stuff, but (for example) I've also noticed anecdotally that people who were raised religious and then deconvert usually end up with lots of problems because they've been trained to believe in some kind of Deep Universal Meaning that isn't necessarily there and certainly isn't going to be handed to us on a silver platter. At the higher levels you see all the usual problems that you get in a large hierarchical structure; it becomes more about politics than about serving the congregation.
But on the positive side I've met some really good religious people - not just nice, but that rare kind of person who seems to radiate goodness and compassion - and I think that a large part of that goodness comes from growing up in a tightly integrated and cohesive community and knowing with absolute certainty that you're unconditionally loved and accepted. It would be nice if we could recreate that sense of acceptance without having to posit a God, but it just doesn't seem possible since it rests on God being Other and omni-everything.
Neutrally, religion fulfils a lot of important community-building functions, but I'm pretty sure that even if religion vanished tomorrow some other structure would immediately take its place and have most of the same costs and benefits. And I don't think people need religion to engage in mob thinking or bigotry - religion is just a convenient vessel for it.